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I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Occasionally I like to toss questions out for my readers over at the Doctor NerdLove Facebook page and Twitter feed as a way to get conversations going. This week, I asked about a phenomenon that almost everyone who’s tried to get better at dating is familiar with: the fears and thoughts that keep you from approaching the people you are attracted to.
We all have that nagging little voice that sits in our heads and sabotages our efforts to meet new people. You know the one. It’s the little voice of gloom and doom in your brain that likes to churn out the nightmare scenarios that start with your talking to the cute woman drinking her coffee and looking out the window at Starbucks and end with you being tazered by the cops.
“You had to know this was the only way it could end, son.”
It’s shocking – if unsurprising – just how universal these fears are. Everybody, men and women all have felt the fear of rejection, of embarrassment, of abject humiliation. All of us have heard that little voice saying “You’re too fat/skinny/boring/weird. She’s got a boyfriend. He’d never be interested in you. You don’t deserve this. You’re wasting your time.” Every single one of us has pictured making the approach only to have her give that icy stare that says “I am so out of your league” as all of her friends gather around to laugh at us and we’re driven away crying tears of shame.
This is the voice of fear. And it’s holding you back.
It’s time to stop listening to that little voice and start conquering the fears that keep you from the life you want.
You Have Nothing To Be Afraid Of.
Fantasy Vs. Reality
The first step in beating back the fears and self-limiting beliefs that keep you paralyzed are to realize that the nightmare you have about being publicly humiliated by someone you’ve approached is just that. A nightmare. A fantasy.
Repeat after me: it isn’t going to happen.
I should know. In my time I have approached literally thousands of women in just about every place imaginable. Women in bars. Women in libraries. At the airport. At the pool. At the bookstore. At the mall. In clubs. On college campuses. At the gym. Online. At coffeeshops. At concerts.
I have asked out co-workers, flirted with friends, bantered with barristas, winked at waitstaff, hit on porn stars, low-tier celebrities, trust-fund babies, white collar professionals, club kids and just about every variation of stomach-churning “what am I thinking, I don’t stand a chance” scenario you can imagine.
Don’t get me wrong here: I’m not saying I hooked up with all of these people and “oh look at me, I’m so cool!”. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m saying I made the attempt and, as a result, have been shot down more times than I can count.
The worst rejection I’ve ever had?
Stony silence. Being ignored. Talking to somebody and having her turn her back to me without a wordThat’s it. And this was in South Beach, Miami – home to some of the snobbiest, stuck-up-attitude-holding, hardest-to-approach people in the world.
I have never had anyone laugh in my face. I’ve never had anyone demand to know why I thought I was good enough to talk to them. I have never had someone call her friends over to watch my humiliation. Whenever I got shot down, it was simple and usually fairly polite: “Thanks, but I’m not interested.” “Look, it’s nice talking to you, but I need to get back to my friends.”
That’s it.
Ultimately, what you’re afraid of is fear. These voices and mental images are a way of trying to keep yourself from the approach anxiety you feel at the idea of going up to someone new and starting a conversation – not a psychic prediction of what’s about to happen. ((Side note: there’s one major exception to this. Gays and lesbians do have legitimate concern when it comes to approaching strangers. Unfortunately we still live in a culture where homophobia is still deeply ingrained, especially in smaller, less cosmopolitan towns and cities. There are people who may react badly – sometimes with violence – when being approached by a member of their own sex.))
The Brain Controls The Body Controls The Brain
Let’s take a moment and envision a scenario. Imagine the man or woman of your dreams. They’re sitting over in the corner of the bookstore, reading. As you glance over at them, they glance up from their magazine and catch you looking at them. They smile and then look back down at their magazine. A few moments later, you look back at them and realize that they’ve caught you looking at them again… and they’re still smiling at you. You stand up and start walking over to them…
Let me see a show of hands: how many of you start feeling nervous just imagining this? There’s no reason for you to feel anxious: it’s literally all in your head… but you react to it as though it were real.
Your anxiety is a product of your body trying to protect you from what you perceive as a “dangerous” situation: it’s trying to protect you from your own imagined fear. Thus the heightened pulse rate, the shaky hands… your body is getting ready to gauge whether to enter fight or flight mode because you are telling it that you sense that you’re in danger.
But just as your brain can trigger physical reactions in your body to imagined scenarios, your body can help shut down your brain’s fear response.
For all that we like to think that we live in a world of mind over matter, it’s surprising to realize just how much our brains are also ruled by our bodies. Our brains react to the stimuli our bodies provide, regardless of the actual situation. When you feel the sweaty palms, racing heart beat and adrenaline surges that come with approach anxiety, your lizard hind brain processes that as “Hey, we’re in danger! Red alert!” even as your conscious mind recognizes that you’re not actually in danger – this is part of how horror movies affect us even when we know that Michael Meyers or the xenomorphs or Freddy Kruger are fictional creations.
Zombies, however, are totally a thing.
The nice thing however, is that you can use that same principle against your lizard brain. When you consciously remove the physical effects of anxiety, your lizard hind-brain says “Hey, looks like we’re all clear. Adrenal glands can stand down!”
When you start feeling that sense of panic, you need to take control of your body and let it know “hey, everything’s cool”. Take a deep breath, hold it for the count of three, then let it out slowly for the count of five. Do this again: deep breath, hold it, then breathe out slowly. Slow your movements – force your limbs to move slowly and smoothly. Straighten up your posture; imagine a thread attached to the top of your head gently pulling you upwards while you let your shoulders relax and your arms dangle. This will help pull you out of the crouched, defensive posture that we curl up into when we get scared.
You’ll notice that you aren’t feeling as terrified as you used to be… because you’ve changed your body’s reactions, which then forces your brain to accept that everything’s fine.
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There is this classic scene from the movie "Matrix" that I remind myself of whenever I start feeling nervous or scared of approaching someone. It's the scene where Morpheus takes neo to the "jump training" program and tells him the following words:
"You got to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt and disbelief. Free Your Mind."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXv3SSijPFc
This sentence pretty much sums up how I try and shake the fear away from me whenever it shows up.
Plus, the way the scene rolls out is also pretty similar to message in this post: When neo trys to jump for the first time, he may of failed – but instead of smashing to bits on the ground like he imagined that will happen, he falls, but instead of smashing he is bounced back and lands with little damage done in the end. The scene ends with cypher (one of the characters) saying "Everybody falls the first time" – meaning it takes time to get good at the jump, just like it takes time at getting better at dating.
While the article is written with a slant towards debilitating fear, and you might think to yourself "I'm not THAT afraid," keep in mind this same advice still works on the "it makes me slightly uncomfortable" set of reactions as well.
And yes, it does work.
"Repeat after me: it isn’t going to happen."
I have a serious question. What if it has happened? Or rather, you've actually had experiences that make this a realistic outcome?
For example, when I was in middle school, I was the tomboy nerd. Obviously, no one wanted to date me, and at the time, I wasn't interested either. But girls would continuously drag me away from my books to a group of boys, and then play a game of "He likes you! You want to go out with him!" where the boy would be trapped and feverishly saying, "No, no!"
Imagine how humiliating that is– people throwing you at someone else, because they know you're going to be rejected as though you're a slimy thing that they want to wipe off of themselves. And then, at school dances, you ask someone for a simple dance, and because of the previous experience with the girls pushing you at them, they outright reject you. That sort of thing. I wasn't ugly by any means, and I'm much more feminine now, it's just that this experience has colored and given me realistic expectation that YES, this could happen again.
So what now?
Middle School, or high school for that matter, is not the meter stick by which you judge adult life. Just, just trust me on this.
Middle school is the fourth circle of hell.
I'm making a list of what hell is comprised of, didn't even think of middle school (might have blocked it out of there), it sooo belongs there, thank you for helping me to add to my list.
I got a lot of that too. There were girls I had crushes on where news of my interest became fodder for gossip and mockery in seconds.
I was also 13. Life changed rather drastically after school.
Middle school is not the real world. Neither is high-school, for that matter. It's a specialized environment – rather like prison, honestly – where the social rules are different. Especially when you're dealing with a bunch of children in the middle of the whirling hormonal maelstrom that is puberty who are busy trying to sort out that whole "who am I really?" aspect of things and generally act like a bunch of cocks.
TL;DR: middle school blows and bears no resemblance to actual life.
not unless you're a fat girl.
Hey Cathy,
You might be interested in the Fat Acceptance movement. It's pretty spectacular and you can find a community of non-judgmental people.
still ain't gonna get them laid.
i'd have no problem dating a fat girl. Personality and confidence have a lot more to do with attraction than people are willing to admit.
Cathy, look for guys who like fat girls. I spent a great year with a fat girl (had to move to Germany, she had family and a mortgage) and we went at it like deranged lagomorphs. Ask your male friends, and your female ones too; they'll know of someone. Trust me, we're not all closet pedos who like the bodies of 10-year-old boys ( to quote a famous phrase)
What everyone is saying is 100% true. You can't judge real-world interactions and relationships based on stuff that happened in middle school or high school (particularly middle school, which is a ridiculously vicious environment).
It's understandable that the experiences would make you a little gun-shy, but you need to remind yourself that you're in a different situation, and the outcomes will be different.
And I know exactly how you feel. I have a very similar instance, which happened in the 6th grade, burned into my memory. Those sorts of things happened to me over, and over, and over again until about 10th grade, when I made the conscious decision to let other people play their little games, but not allow myself to be drawn into them.
I still had my fair share of rejection and heartbreak, but it was in the context of me asking the guy out or to dance or whatever, and him turning me down (and it was like in the article, a polite "I think of you just as a friend" sort of thing).
In the "mean girls playing games" scenario, the problem (aside from them being childish teens) is that other people have involved themselves in what is supposed to be an interaction between two individuals. Dating is not a group sport.
Oh, oh, horrible middle school stories! I'll share too: in my middle school, we had a group of cute boys who would go ask out the unattractive girls so they could laugh and reject them when they said yes. I turned them down, but a friend fell for it and cried the whole lunch period after. I remember how pathetic she was seen for "not knowing better" and that incident definitely influenced me for a while – there's more dignity in being paranoid than taking someone at face value and being mocked, right? …Umm, right?
Yeah, middle school is a vile place. Good thing full-grown adults aren't the ones attending it! ;D
I like the "three second rule" that you mentioned on a previous posting, because it doesn't give you time to let fear of weird mental scenarios build.
where is everyone getting this idea that south beach is home to these perfect beautiful people? when I went everyone was old and fat
When I was there two years ago, South Beach had two things at all times: incredibly beautiful and utterly stuck up people and criminally overpriced drinks.
When I ordered a well vodka tonic at one bar, I had to explain to the bartender that I wasn't offering to buy the building, I just wanted to pay for my drink.
In my very very limited experience, I've found that imagining how a favorite comic book character would approach the situation calms my fears and jitters. How would Batman approach the this? He'd come in without any fear, slow and methodical. Or Hal Jordan, fearless, relaxed, and sure of himself. Willpower can overcome a lot of things, especially our fabricated fears.
Anybody else do this?
I do, although never in a romantic situation so far. However, I remember trying to channel my inner Wonder Woman and/or Batgirl at my first real job interview (and I got the job, so I guess it worked.) Sometimes the only thing you really need is a little confidence.
I think if I tried that, I'd flub it and end up imagining how Spiderman would approach it…
I've just started reading the Walking Dead comics. Probably not the best source of day-to-day inspiration
I use Dr. Frank N. Furter from Rocky Horror. Anything that didn't go his way he'd just dismiss with a fey flick of the wrist, turn on his heel dramatically and then go have a frosty margarita served to him by Rocky who is wearing a Chippendale's dancer outfit.
Essentially, who gives a damn and let them eat cake.
I've got to say, that the bit about the first thousand rejections is giving me trouble. I've already mentioned I dabbled a bit in pick-up artist culture – one of the things I did is starting Neil Strauss' thirty day challenge. The first exercise seemed simple enough – talk to five people on the street – it didn't seem too creepy or manipulative, just give a friendly, neighbourly line about the weather or something – I could do this. First time I tried, I managed three. The second time, I'd managed four and said hello to an old couple at the bus stop as I passed – the woman reared back and looked at me with utmost suspicion, like I was about to pull a knife or something, and I realised I'd been using these eight strangers and felt like scum.
I don't really know anything about pick up culture but I've started to engage random people in conversation as well just to work on being more social. I don't think its necessarily using the other person moreso than just engaging in typical human behavior. Unless I'm mistaken, I believe the good doctor mentioned something along these lines in a previous post on how to talk to girls. Sometimes its awkward and sometimes you actually manage to connect to someone, however briefly.
It's okay to talk to people. It's not okay to push if they give you a back off. Next time, be aware that old women feel very vulnerable and some with be super defensive.
You're not using them, you're just saying hi.
Though next time, try to practice when you have a valid reason to have something to remark on. That usually makes people feel less threatened.
Relax. We don't have to live in a vacuum sealed bubble. We're social animals!
I just hate that we've been so poisoned with hurtful things that we can't trust one another anymore.
I have a serious question. What if it has happened? Or rather, you've actually had experiences that make this a realistic outcome?
The experience you relate is from middle school, presumably many years ago. Make no mistake, I carried around hang-ups from my youth for a long time, too. I found the best way around it was to screw up the courage to say something. Force yourself to do it, get shot down. Get used to the way things are now rather than the way they were when you were younger. Once you realize its not that bad, it gets easier every time.
The doc has been making one big assumption throughout this article: that the hottie you want to approach smiles at you when she catches you looking at her. In my 23 years, that has never happened. Never. NE. VER. And in fact, usually the girl looks scared or intimidated or something, I really don't know. I don't think I'm that intimidating, I'm dorky looking and wear glasses and everything. But somehow I've never gotten one girl to smile at me the first time our eyes meet. So I hope you can see why these nightmare scenarios go through my head.
Dr nerdlove is really a bene gesserit!
Slightly OT, but I really liked that little "faceless" comic strip, so I googled the last line to see if anyone was discussing it somewhere. One of the top hits was this feminist blog with a easily a couple of hundred comments from people who liked the strip… up until the last panel. They REALLY didn't like what they assumed was the implication that a guy should be able to talk to a strange girl on the train. I read a few dozen comments before I had to get out of there. It was completely undoing everything Doc's article here was trying to get me to think!
It also contradicts the Second Wave dogma of "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."