Jacob Towery

Yeah, thank you guys for having us. It's great to be on here. Michael, do you want to start us off?

So, Michael, do you have a few minutes? Can we talk for a little bit?

Well, I just want to let you know that you're a fraud.

Well, you're pretending to be a psychiatry resident who knows something about helping people overcome social anxiety. But all of those are just false information.

I was going to say, yeah, I learned from the master himself, and I'm happy to be decent at it now.

Yeah, well said, David. Thank you. And one thing that I forgot to say earlier, but I think is worth saying is that I think one of the many challenges of social anxiety is people often feel very alone and very lonely with it.

And they think, oh, maybe I'm one of the only people that's struggling with worrying that other people are judging me or comparing myself unfavorably to others or feeling very nervous in social situations.

Literally just today, this morning, before I came on with you guys, I had a wonderful college age student who not only had social anxiety, but felt very alone with it and thought maybe her parents challenges were unique. And when you get 100 people in a room together who all have shyness and or social anxiety, it becomes apparent very quickly that you are not the only person struggling with this.

Everyone there is struggling with the same thing. So it helps to very quickly reduce stigma. It helps people not feel lonely with it. People just look around and everyone's dealing with the same challenges. So it very quickly kind of normalizes these are common things people struggle with and we can all together help each other feel better with it.

Yeah, it's a little scary. We will have people as young as 14. We're going to cap it this year at 135. So if you're over 135, you are not welcome at this workshop because it will probably be too demanding physically for you. If you're 135 or younger, we'd love to have you. Yeah, so I learned tremendous amounts about shyness and social anxiety from David and

Yeah, I have. I have had to pay a price. I will confess, I think I was just very fortunate to be born with a brain that had a certain amount of comfort, kind of being gregarious and social early on. But you, David, have helped me to push myself to be even more kind of wild and outgoing and take risks that I normally wouldn't.

And it's paid off tremendously, but I do have to kind of re up on it to not lose it. So for example, last week I was in Norway, I was in Tromsø, Norway, chasing the Northern lights. And I flew there by myself. It had been a long time since I'd flown somewhere internationally, just for a solo vacation.

And about halfway through the trip, I went to this bar by myself and I was sitting there having a drink. And I was feeling a little lonely. And then this group of maybe four or five people walked in and they looked like they were locals and they were sitting maybe 10 feet from me. And I thought, why not just take a chance and go talk to them? Like, what have I got to lose?

The worst case scenario is they reject me and I'm back to where I am now. Like, who cares? So I just walked up to them and I said, you know, I feel a little embarrassed to say this, but I'm traveling by myself. And I was wondering if you guys, if I could join you. And they said yes. What was the expression? He said something. It was a Norwegian expression.

He said something like, knock yourself down before I knock you or something like that, which meant like sit down before I punch you in the face and knock you out. I was like, sure. I prefer the sit down option. So I sat down and they were so great. They were they were it turned out they were. psychology students studying for their doctoral level. And they just presented their theses.

And then like four or five more people came and we had this big crew of like nine or 10 people. I was there with them for hours and they were teaching me about Norwegian history and Norwegian culture and politics. And we were talking and comparing about America, talking about life. And it was so fun.

I was there with them for hours and I would have never had that enjoyable experience if I had not taken the chance of approaching them and seeing if I can join them. And they ended up being super friendly and welcoming.

Exactly.

Yeah. So if people go to finding humans, less scary.com, Michael has created an incredible, pretty simple registration process. And, um, um, so it doubles as a fundraiser. I think last year we raised several thousand dollars for various charities, um, We've allowed the option people can donate to various different charities.

I think there's Save the Children, and there's one to reduce gun violence, and there's one to support people in Ukraine. There is one to support other charities that do effective work like in Africa. People have a variety of options. And then part of why we're having people pay $20 is then if they're ambivalent about showing up on the first day, they can think, well, I've already paid $20.

I might as well show up since I paid for it. So we want people to actually show up if they've reserved a spot. So that's part of why we do it. But we like to think that $20 is a pretty affordable rate for getting something like 16 plus hours of hopefully fantastic content. That's more than a dollar an hour. We can be pretty pricey here in Palo Alto. Sometimes we're up to $2 an hour.

David's books, and we're going to be teaching people a lot of cool skills, learning how to talk to new people, learning how to start conversations, learning how to continue conversations, learning how to stop being self-conscious. We're going to have some flirtation training. We're going to have people learn how to get rejected and not take it personally and have it bother a person so much.

We're hoping that we're going to be offering like $10,000 to $20,000 worth of experience to every single person. So that's what we're aiming for.

For some people, I hope they get a million or even $10 million worth of value out of it.

Then I would say, I don't even know what that means. I don't even understand the premise. What does that mean that you're not good enough? As you yourself, David, have said, well, if you're not good enough, does that mean that they won't serve you a coffee at Starbucks? Or does that mean they won't let you get on the bus? What does it mean if you're not good enough? What happens?

So I don't even understand the concept of not being good enough.

I love that, David. Go ahead, Rhonda.

We'll talk a little bit about consent and We're going to do a lot of different interpersonal exercises to help people learn how to be skillfully vulnerable with others. And it's going to be fun. So it's going to be about 100 people in the room together. We'll have various fantastic people like Rhonda coming and assisting.

I want to say one more quick thing because David inspired me to talk about this, but at the risk of getting a little political, I would argue that the vast majority of violence in the world is

comes down to people seeing people as other or different than they are and somehow inferior subhuman and worthy of being treated poorly or even violently yeah i think that's horrible and i think that's the source of much suffering that exists on the planet and if instead i'm not saying this would be easy i think this would be very difficult if each of us individually

we're willing to, there's a motivational factor, but if we were willing to and able to learn how to see other people as ultimately very similar to us and worthy of love and respect and fundamentally very similar to ourselves, then it would feel absurd to go out and want to murder someone because that would be horrible.

We'd be like killing someone who's similar to us, who shares many of our same values and has had many similar experiences. And that would be atrocious because

So I wish for as many people as possible to join this – again, I mean it's going to sound kind of cheesy, but this idea of seeing people with love and kindness and respect and treating people that way and having a much more peaceful, loving world than – the way it can sometimes be.

Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thanks for having us. This was fun.

And it should be a fabulous weekend where people will hopefully conquer a lot of their social anxiety and shyness if they desire to.

That's right. And it will be in person only. So we get about... 500 questions per year. Will it be over Zoom? Nope, this will not be over Zoom. It will only be in person. But if you want to come in person to California, we'd love to have you.

Oh, if you're overseas, then you can not attend virtually. But if you're domestic, you can not attend virtually.

Yeah, I think those are the big ones.

We'll be doing lots of shame attacking exercises. We decided this year we're going to put that in even earlier because that's always a big hit. And we can help people become a lot less self-conscious quickly. We'll probably talk a little bit about consent. We'll be doing various interpersonal exercises to help people feel more connected with others.

But the big goal is, as you guys know, a lot of people move through the world in kind of a cautious, wary, defensive manner where they see other people as judgmental, mean, aggressive, and they feel like they have to be very guarded. And it's a less pleasant, less fun way of being. And we want to help people who desire to learn how to see people as potential future friends or romantic partners and

have more fun engaging interpersonally.

Thank you. I'm glad you said that. I've wondered, you know, did I spend too much time on that this past year? Because it's something I'm pretty passionate about, but it's nice to hear that it was well-received and I'll make sure to include it again this year.

Exactly. Just strangers, just walk up to them and say, would you like a handshake or a hug? And then you'll get to practice rejection training with that when they say, who are you? Go away.

Yeah, so I'll take the consent part. So This is an area I'm really interested in and I think is tremendously important. And I think that a lot of times people assume that if they want to do something to someone, that then they should get to be able to do it. So if they want to hug someone, they ought to be able to hug anyone they want to hug.

And I don't think that is an optimal way of moving through the world. And instead, I think it's better to touch people if they want to be touched in those ways. So even something that sounds kind of innocuous, like a hug, I think can feel very abrupt and off-putting to someone if they don't want that at that time.

So we practice in the workshop getting in the habit of when you meet someone who you don't already have a very established relationship with, you say, like if I was meeting Rhonda and Rhonda was a new person to me, I might say, Rhonda, it's lovely to meet you. Would you enjoy a hug, a handshake, a wave, an elbow bump, none of the above? Something like that. And then she could pick.

She could say, no, I don't want any of those. Or she could say, I'd love a hug. Or she could say, I don't really feel like a hug, but an elbow bump sounds nice. Great. Let's do an elbow bump. So it gives her options and gives her flexibility and she's not kind of forced into anything. And it takes away my entitlement. Like I'm not entitled to touch Rhonda. She doesn't want to be touched.

And I think it's good training. I'll pick on men, but I think it's particularly important for men to get in the habit of assuming I'm not entitled to be able to touch people just because I want to touch them. I ought to ask first and see if people enthusiastically want the touch I'm offering. So I think that's an important message of the workshop.

And then rejection training, I think, is really fun.

I think you'll agree with me, David. Intellectual learning is nice, but it's largely useless if it doesn't translate into practice. understanding at the gut level and learning how to behaviorally make changes. So everything is going to be practiced. We're going to be practicing consent. We're going to be practicing how to be vulnerable with people.

We're going to be practicing shame attack exercises and rejection training and self-disclosure technique and talk shows technique. Everything will be practiced.

You will. Yeah, you will make a fool of yourself and you will get rejected. And that would be so great. We'd love to have you if you're willing to do those things. And I will make a fool of myself and I will get rejected. And so will Michael and Rhonda and everyone else who's there.

Yeah, that's right. It's a fun weekend. Consent can totally be fun. It can totally be silly. And paradoxically, the more people feel relaxed and comfortable through use of enthusiastic verbal consent, the easier it is for people to ease into being vulnerable and having a good time and relaxing. Exactly.