Why You Need People To Like You (Even When You Don’t Like Them)
Authentic Confidence with Dr. Aziz
Dr. Aziz Gazipura, Psychologist and Author
4.8 • 666 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2026
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You can explain your work to a friend over dinner. In front of your boss, the same words fall apart. Most people call this social anxiety, or I just lack confidence in those situations. It isn't either of those things.
In this episode, Dr. Aziz unpacks what's actually firing when you freeze around certain people. The cyberball research from UCLA. The reason your wiring treats social rejection like physical pain. And the strange phenomenon where you need approval from people you don't even like.
This episode covers:
- The brain mechanism that makes disapproval feel dangerous
- Why your social anxiety fires unevenly: grounded with one group, paralyzed with another
- The distinction between disapproval being uncomfortable and disapproval being dangerous
- Why standard confidence advice doesn't move the needle
Discover your approval type. Take the 2-minute quiz at https://www.draziz.com
Watch episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrAzizGazipura
Work with Dr. Aziz directly:
The Unstoppable Confidence Mastermind is a year-long program for people ready to unwire this pattern at the nervous system level. Application at https://www.socialconfidencecenter.com/ucmv3.
Connect:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There's a moment. And if you've experienced this, you're going to recognize yourself in this situation |
| 0:04.6 | where you want to go say something. You've thought about it. You know what you want to say. Maybe you've |
| 0:09.9 | even rehearsed it in your head. And then you get into that situation and what comes out of your mouth |
| 0:13.8 | is different. It's softer. Maybe it's nicer. Maybe you've left certain things out. Maybe you |
| 0:20.6 | didn't even say anything at all. |
| 0:22.8 | And this is not a confidence problem. This is a pattern. And after working with thousands of people, |
| 0:28.5 | I've discovered that there's actually only four patterns that we run. And that's what I'm going to |
| 0:33.1 | share with you today. So let's look at the situation though, because this isn't just you |
| 0:37.0 | relaxed hanging |
| 0:37.9 | out with a friend, right? This is a situation where there's something specific is going on that |
| 0:42.3 | makes you edit yourself or stay quiet or not say what you really mean. And the situation |
| 0:47.8 | has something in common. It could be at work, it could be in your social life, dating |
| 0:51.8 | life with family, but there's one thing that's in common |
| 0:54.2 | across all those domains. And that is you're not quite sure how it's going to go. It could go well, |
| 1:00.8 | whatever that looks like. The person could approve of me. They could say yes. They could nod their heads. |
| 1:05.5 | They could agree. They could hear what I'm saying. They could listen to my feedback, whatever it is. |
| 1:09.9 | Or it could not go well. |
| 1:11.7 | Now, we all know what not going well looks like, right? That's when there are eyebrow furrows and |
| 1:16.2 | look at you, they get defensive. What do you mean? Or they just seem to dislike you, reject you, |
| 1:24.4 | shake their head of you, say no to you. Right. So the unifying theme across these |
| 1:28.9 | situations is I don't know what's going to happen. There is uncertainty in that connection or |
| 1:35.2 | relationship between you and me in that moment. And this could be with a stranger. I don't know if |
... |
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