Killer Techniques To Overcome Anxiety When Approaching Women

I loved Cedar's post on Mystery's forum about approach anxiety and dealing with it properly. If some of these terms seem foreign to you, read Mystery's e-book for a heads up.

Anxiety

Anxiety is a defense mechanism. It exists to protect you from abnormal behaviour. Consider a high steel worker. These guys stand on two foot wide beams hundreds of feet off the ground. They're strapped in, but their body doesn't understand that. The first few weeks are hell.

After that, it's no big deal. Heights don't bother them. Their body has accepted heights as a feature of the environment. It's normal to THAT person. Buddy of mine worked high steel a decade ago. Said the heights were nothing to him at the time.

But he's afraid of heights now. Because HIS ENVIRONMENT CHANGED. He doesn't work high steel. He's not SURROUNDED by his anxiety any more. To him, heights are ABNORMAL now, when they were NORMAL a decade ago.

Approach anxiety is a collection of anxieties. Fear of talking to strangers. Fear of interrupting people. Fear of running out of things to say. Fear of looking dumb (social pressure). And fear of success (a personal favorite).

Talking to Strangers

Talking to strangers is the most common. In our hunter/gatherer days, this kind of behaviour could get you killed. We don't live in a tribal society any more, but our bodies doesn't understand that. Our biological programming is from the olden days.

If you do not talk to new people EVERY DAY, how do you expect to sarge at the bar? You're body will fight you. It will protect you. Unless you acclimate it.

I picked up a pamphlet on breaking habits on the trip to Vegas. It takes 21 days to form or break a habit. If that's true (and it sounds about right), it takes three weeks to overcome approach anxiety. By talking to strangers EVERYWHERE.

That means on the bus, at the gas station, line at the coffee shop, airplanes, work, restaurants, etc. Talk to a new person EVERY DAY. Use a stock opener on them. Like maury povich or dental floss.

Understand that if you STOP being a social creature for any length of time, approach anxiety WILL RETURN.

If lunch-time street approaches are an option, take a walk on your lunch break and open 3 sets. Open and eject if you're not up to stacking material. This will make bar sarges WAY easier. It'll slowly remove the anxiety of talking to strangers.

Fear of Interrupting People

Personal Skeleton. We are raised from birth to be polite. To be considerate of other's feelings, opinion and pasttimes. We are a sensitive society. We're also a wussy society. The alpha man DOES take others into consideration. But he doesn't hesitate to give people the gift of his or her reality.

Why are you worried about interrupting people? Switch places with your target. If you were talking to friends and a supermodel in lingerie interrupted you, would you be pissed? Fuck no. I don't care if I was about to solve world piece.

Women are ALWAYS receptive to their knight in shining armour. Walk in, be the cool guy, and don't care about their conversation. Hell, tease them about it. After you reach the hook point apologize for interrupting and offer to leave. They'll drag you back.

These people lead boring lives. They wake up in their boring bed, they drive to a boring job in their boring car and they hang with their boring friends and talk about how bored they are.

You're not interrupting ANYTHING IMPORTANT. Not at a bar, not on the bus and not in the casino. It's your reality. Everyone else is along for the ride.

Fear Of Running Out Of Things To Say

I hear a lot of people saying 'I hate routines, I just want to talk normal.' Here's the thing. You're not getting laid. Why would you talk normal. Use the damn routines until 'normal' to you is 'attractive' to women.

Routines are normal conversation from someone else. Someone good with women. You're wearing the skin of successful PUAs until you develop your own.

This is why MM focuses on routines. Memorize stock routines from the MM forum, the lounge and bristol lair. After your newbie mission, rotate in personal DHV stories and field test them. You'll have dozens of things to say.

And don't worry about forgetting what to say. It continues to amaze me how, out of nowhere, a routine I haven't used in six months drops into my head in set. Listen to your instincts on this one. If you're in set and a routine comes to mind, USE IT.

Fear Of Looking Dumb

Tylder Durden refers to this phenomenon as social pressure. Women are more sensitive to this than guys are. Your body is protecting you from being outside of the norm. Being normal and boring is SAFE. Being Alpha is DANGEROUS. You are CONSTANTLY being fucked with. You are CONSTANTLY proving yourself by reacting to shit tests, amogs, cock blocks, etc.

How do you deal with it? If you're comfortable in your own skin, then you have nothing to fear. So what if your top hat looks funny. You like it. You don't care if anyone else does. Your mindset is apathy. It's your reality.

Hell, you're trying to figure out why everyone's wearing polo shirts and khakis. Looks ridiculous. Far as you're concerned, they should ALL be wearing top hats. 'Cause then you can wear khakis and stand out.

Fear Of Success

Another personal skeleton. I'm a busy guy. So's my wife. She works part time on weekends and evenings. My son has a martial arts class a few nights a week. If I hit the bar this Thursday and timebridge a girl, I don't have much of a window in which to see her.

I'm close to closing an LTR for me and the wife. She'll take a chunk of our time. What if I find a second one at the bar? When will I have time for a Day 2 or for anything more long term? Where will I find time for all these girls?

Easy. DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT. What a lame fucking excuese NOT to approach. I won't talk to a girl because there's a 1% chance she might become my girlfriend? Focus on the process.

You don't have to timebridge the girl. And even if she's your thing, there's a good chance you'll fuck it up. I've met hundreds of women. And a dozen of those were completely my type. Totally compatible.

Am I upset I couldn't close them? A little. But I keep finding more. 2000 women turn 21 (or any other age) EVERY DAY in this country. Don't worry about fucking it up with one girl. Focus on learning from that girl so you don't fuck up the next one.

This kind of anxiety is all about outcome dependance. Don't worry about where the sarge goes. Worry about how well you sarge. Doesn't matter if you get a bullseye on the shooting range once in a while. Make it happen EVERY time.

Experience

The best answer I have to Approach Anxiety is to remember all the fun times you had after you ignored it. After a few good sets, you'll think back to your favorite right before you open your first set of the night. And bam, with good memories comes good energy.

Example. I don't AMOG. Not my style. But my wing pointed out this AFC leaning in on a two set. Girls were turning away. It was over. And then I noticed an empty space between the AFC and one of the girls.

I took it.

And talked to the guy. Girls were never more cofused in their life. Chatted up the guy who wasn't sure what I was doing but knew he shouldn't freak out.

Then I turned and used the patented Cedar opener on the girls. 'Hey.' With a head nod. Her reply? 'espanol?' I about died. I AMOGed a spanish speaking set. I was cracking up. Got a thumb wrestle out of the target, which got her laughing. I coached the guy what he did wrong and watched him number close her two minutes later.

I'm smiling just thinking about it. And damn straight I'm gonna try and take another set this week. That was too much friggin fun not to do again.

Same thing with approaches. You have some good sarges and the approach anxiety gets less and less of a barrier. You'll have too many positive memories and emotions tied up with sarging. No way approach anxiety will hold you back.

Avoidance

If you don't get over approach anxiety, you'll never overcome A1. Without A1, you can't reach A2. Or C1. Or S-anything, right?

There's ways around A1. Winging, approach invitation and hot game for examples. These techniques aren't solid game. They're flukes. They work, but they hinder your game. You become reliant on a tactic that opens maybe 3 sets in the bar. You can't open the entire room. Don't use these to circumvent your approach anxiety.

There might be some validity to using these in an attempt to develop good feelings in sets, but you become dependant on these techniques VERY quickly. Don't fall into that trap. Make your own reality. Conquer this fear and open some fucking sets.

Party on. And happy hunting.