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Hey, everybody out there, Aaron here. Today you'll be hearing from a special guest. His name is Mark Metry. Now you may have heard of Mark, or maybe you've seen his book titled Screw Being Shy: Learn How to Manage Social Anxiety and Be Yourself in Front of Anyone, or maybe you've seen his posts on LinkedIn. He's been featured in Forbes. The guy's a TEDx keynote speaker, and he hosts a podcast interviewing billionaires and New York Times bestselling authors. But, once upon a time, Mark suffered severely from social anxiety. In fact, he says he couldn't even make direct eye contact with people.
Now, I believe we all have breakthrough moments in our lives, and some of them happen when we're thriving, but many of these moments happen when we're in a dark place, when we feel like we're at rock bottom. But before Mark describes the breakthrough moment that changed his life, I needed to ask him a question. And while I know it's different for everybody, I just wanted him to describe what social anxiety feels like for him. I don't think that gets talked about enough, like what does it actually feel like?
And so, Mark starts that answer by describing the first life event that may have triggered his social anxiety.
So I'll set the stage for you. Mark had just moved from a big city to a rural area with very little diversity. He's Egyptian American, and so he looked a little different than the folks in his new town. There was some bullying going on, and he was a kid. It was his first day of third grade, and he started feeling strange.
It's almost like someone takes your mind and you no longer have control over it. All of a sudden, you sort of sink down in your chair and you feel like you're shrinking and you're getting smaller. And then all of a sudden, your throat might tighten up. You may find it hard to breathe. If someone asks you to talk, you may just shut down, freeze, or stutter. You may feel like your heartbeat starts to raise. You feel like a lot of pressure in your chest. You feel butterflies in your stomach, and you literally don't feel like yourself.
So it's almost like someone, an AI, an algorithm, is sort of removing you from the situation. And this AI is running, and it's just having you do whatever from its perspective to just get you to survive. So whether that's to run away or whether that's to be shy and don't talk so people can't attack you or just try to stay as small as possible. Or it's acting like you're anti-social or having no friends. Or it's even just like talking about the same thing again and again and again as a crutch to rely on, or using alcohol, or using other chemicals.
So I think that's the biggest thing. And you're right. It affects everyone differently. But really what it is again, it's like this automatic AI algorithm that basically gets you to not be yourself, even if you want to be yourself. The way that I think of it is, imagine there's someone basically trying to get you to believe in a conspiracy that everybody hates you and you're about to get attacked all the time. What happens is when you get trapped in this algorithm, what happens is, you have no idea. And you think that's yourself.
Then what happens is you go throughout your daily life and you have different goals. You want to do things, you want to be a good person, but then it's your time to say something, or you want to volunteer, or you want to contribute, and you just can't say it, or you just can't go, or you just can't do it, or you just can't be yourself. And every time that happens, either in the moment or later or when you're trying to fall asleep at night, your mind is like, "Mark, you're so stupid, dude. Like, what's wrong with you?
I know you're messed up. What's wrong with you? I guess you're just going to be this way forever." And you have no idea you have social anxiety. So you sort of take it out on yourself.
Then that starts to build the sense of like, "Oh, I have to hide this from the world. I have to hide this from the world because there's something messed up with me." And then it just becomes about shaming yourself and putting on different masks and hiding yourself.
Then the worst part about this, too, is that eventually, like I said, this is an algorithmic virus. So the same way that a virus, like in real life, like COVID or whatever, or even a disease or something, eventually it leaks to every area of your body. That's the same with social anxiety. Eventually it goes to everywhere in your body. So, for example, a lot of people who have social anxiety and also anxiety in general, also have some sort of a stomach abdominal gut issue.
They may also have an autoimmune issue, like asthma or skin rashes. And so all these things are sort of connected. And so this social anxiety will leak to every area of your life. And eventually, if it's not addressed, what's going to happen is it's going to leak into even your family, and you're very close friends, and your siblings. And then you have to feel like you can't be yourself in front of them and you have to hide yourself.
It's funny, too, aside from the stories. Like, Harvard did a meta analysis study, and they showed that social anxiety, out of all of the mental health issues in America, it's the most correlated with substance abuse and social isolation, which I think triple your chance for suicide.
So Mark continues to deal with social anxiety as a young man. And despite starting a successful YouTube channel and then starting the world's number one Minecraft server, you know, the video game, and creating a six-figure business all by the age of 16, his battle with social anxiety gets worse.
By 2015, when Mark is in college, he's at rock bottom. He's depressed. He's socially isolated. But the one good thing he would do is take walks. The only problem is that on many of his walks, he would purposely walk in bad neighborhoods and fantasize about being mugged or even worse.
But one very late night, during a walk towards a bridge, something happened that would change his life.
I remember just walking, looking down, and then all of a sudden, something stopped me. And what it was is I just heard a very eerie sense of silence. And it was the kind of silence where it was almost as if someone took a remote control and hit the mute button. I remember right before I lifted my head and I looked around, I don't remember exactly what I was thinking, but I was thinking, "My life has no meaning. I'm in pain. I don't know what to do. Nobody likes me.
I'm a force for evil in the world." All these different things. Like, "I'm messed up. I'm born to be this way." And I remember after that moment of silence, just being like, "Wait, what was that? What are these thoughts?" And for me, I didn't realize it on that night, but through the coming days and the weeks, I basically realized that I had heard those thoughts when I was younger, in the times where I was facing bullying and discrimination, that my brain just somehow had picked up and started to internalize in my own voice.
And so I remember being on that bridge in the middle of the night and not exactly consciously realizing everything I told you. But just almost realizing what I was doing. And almost, I don't want to say snapping out of it, but I just had this hint in the back of my mind that there was something more. And so I remember when I experienced that I just ran home to my apartment at the time, and I remember just crying.
After he stops crying, Mark looks at himself in the mirror and has what he describes as one of his first real moments of awareness. His pants felt tight, and he realized that he had gained over 80 pounds in three months. And from that moment, he talks about a domino effect taking place: changing his diet, studying about mental health, meditation, and, of course, walking for all the right reasons. But since that moment, he's been on a mission every single day to learn more about himself, to rewire his brain, and to create amazing things for people around the world, which he's doing successfully to this day. Mark says he's grateful, and he has a responsibility to destigmatize social anxiety disorder.
You can learn more about Mark's work at markmetry.com.
