This Horse Is You

This horse is you.

It was me.

It is all social anxiety sufferers.

This horse could roam anywhere it wants.

But it has been conditioned to believe that it doesn’t have the power to break away from the plastic chair.

The horse weighs 500 kilograms.

The chair weighs 2 kilograms.

This is clearly not a matter of objective physical reality.

The horse is not tethered by anything other than it’s own thoughts.

I repeat.

This is you.

This was me.

This is all social anxiety sufferers.

Why doesn’t it just break away?

There are 3 reasons:

1. Past conditioning

2. Formation of a subconscious paradigm

3. Failure to test the subconscious paradigm

My Personal Experience

Let me give you some examples from my own life, so you can see how this works.

Past conditioning

I was conditioned to have very low self-esteem.

My mother had low self-esteem and was very harsh with herself.

She was, therefore, very harsh with her three children.

These three boys all grew up with low-self esteem and social anxiety.

We were conditioned to believe that we weren’t good enough.

My mother had other mental health problems and a violent temper.

She often aggressively exploded physically and verbally.

Therefore, we learned we were ‘bad’.

Our family didn’t have any money.

So, in a society where success is predicated on financial gain, I learned we weren’t as good as other people.

Our family didn’t live in a normal house.

We lived in a building site with bare floors and walls.

My parents didn’t have a normal marriage.

They would scream and shout hysterically.

Pots and pans would fly through the air.

My mother would shut herself in her room for days on end and try to kill herself.

We didn’t have a normal family unit. My brother was put into foster care at the age of 15 because of delinquent behaviour.

Therefore, I learned I was very different from other people.

Formation of the subconscious paradigm

This was my conditioning, which led me to form the subconscious paradigm:

“I am different”

“I am strange”

“I am inferior”

“Life is scary and unpredictable”

“I am not safe anywhere - especially not at ‘home’”.

Failure to Test The Subconscious Paradigm & Learned Helplessness

Growing up we don’t have the self-awareness to ever question the voices in our head.

“Everyone else has brand name food in their lunchbox and brand name shoes and clothes.

You don’t because you’re poor.

Poor people are inferior to these kids in Air Jordans from nice houses with company cars.

Therefore, you’re inferior”

This is what my mind told me. It must be fact.

We poison ourselves with the toxic thoughts loops that go around inside our heads.

We don’t even consider there might be an alternative inner narrative.

We definitely don’t realise we’re burning neural pathways in our brain -

pathways that with every repetition are shaping our lives and moving us further down a course of misery.

“You’ve got big ears and a big nose.

You’re disgusting.

It’s no wonder women aren’t interested in you.”

This is what the voice in my head said. This must also be fact.

By never testing these paradigms and assumptions we succumb to learned helplessness.

Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness is essentially quitting.

We no longer even try to change our situation because we just assume we will fail.

It is basically giving up the will to live and is more or less tantamount to death.

If not physical death, then at least psychic death.

The death of your human spirit.

The death of dreams and aspirations.

In early experiments dogs were electrocuted, but given a fairly easy option to escape the pain of electrocution - jump over a low dividing wall to an area without an electrified floor.

Once the gods had decided to give up, they wouldn’t even take the short jump over the divider to escape electrocution.

This is the same mechanism as with the horse that gives up trying to escape being tied to a 2kg plastic lawn chair.

It was the same mechanism with me when I never even questioned my negative beliefs or tried to challenge myself.

It’s the same with millions upon millions of social anxiety sufferers around the world.

And it may well be the same for you reading this now.

3. OK, So What Do I Do?

Step 1: Recognise Your Subconscious Paradigms

You have to pull on the reins.

You have to test the fetters that are keeping you prisoner.

You do this by recognising the subconscious paradigms you hold.

These come in the form of core beliefs, your self-concept, the things you tell yourself on a daily basis.

Be very wary.

If you’re anything like I was, your head is probably full of serpents.

These should not be trusted and need to be examined objectively.

Write down all the things you say to yourself.

“I’m so weird and awkward. I’ll never get this socialising thing right.”

“Another weekend alone. I might as well just accept I’m going to grow old and die on my own.”

“Don’t open your mouth! People will know how weird you are if you speak your mind.”

Step 2: Test and Challenge Your Subconscious Paradigms

Question these ideas.

Where do they come from?

How do they serve you?

What evidence do you have to back them up?

What alternatives are there?

What would someone who really loved you say about you instead?

Carry out behavioural experiments and see if what you think is true.

Do people really roll their eyes and snicker if you speak up in a meeting?

Will that person really reject you if you ask them for something?

Find out.

Test if through experimentation.

Step 3: Relearn and Recondition

Try out new things to shatter the myths you’ve been carrying in your head.

New experiences create new neural pathways in the brain.

Learn new, more balanced and realistic thinking and explanatory styles.

Recondition the mind with new ‘inner scripts’.

You can also recondition the mind through external inputs, such as books and podcasts.

Some people think learning more helpful ways to think is just ‘brainwashing’ themselves into toxic positivity.

Well, what have they been doing for the past decades?

Brainwashing themselves with their own internal loops of pessimistic and self-defeatist thinking.

The voice in your head is just a really depressing, malicious podcast host that you listen to on repeat without ever questioning their credentials.

This takes consistent hard work over months and years.

It’s like correcting a dysfunctional mental posture.

If you’ve been slouching in chairs and hunched over desks for decades, you’re not going to be able to fix that in 6 weeks.

Or with one herbal supplement.

Or with whatever other bullshit you see on YouTube.

Reshaping the connective tissue of the body takes months and maybe years.

And in the same way, so will correcting your mental posture.

It is literally a process of rewiring old patterns that have been etched into the brain over years and decades.

You have to replace habitual thoughts and behaviours with totally new ones.

The Payoff

When you do build up the determination and courage to pull on your fetters, you find something amazing.

You find that ‘insurmountable obstacle’ that was holding you back your whole life was only actually a cheap, two-kilogram lawn chair.

Now I’m not saying this is easy.

I’m not saying it was ‘all in your head all along’.

Challenging these long-held beliefs is scary at times.

It’s a matter or life or death for your ego.

And your old self-concept will want to do everything it can to keep you safe and alive.

Even if that means being miserable too.

But when you do summon the courage to push on the walls of the make-believe theatre set you’ve been imprisoned by, you find something truly astonishing.

It all comes tumbling down.

The barred walls of your cell were just cheap polystyrene stage props all along.

As you emerge into the sunlight after years of imprisonment, you’ll discover a world brighter and more vibrant than anything you ever imagined.