Handling Your Anxiety Around Women

Sticking Points Re-Visited # 1: Dealing With Anxiety

The biggest problems guys have with women all come down to anxiety.

Specifically they come down to anxieties related to:

1. Socializing – We used to refer to this under the blanket term social anxiety, however social anxiety is different from anxiety that is triggered by socializing.

If you dread going in to the office because you have to say hello and make small talk with your co-workers you may have social anxiety. If you get nervous at 4 PM on a Friday because you know you’re going to have to go out that night, you have anxiety related to socializing.

Approach anxiety is a form of anxiety related to socializing rather than actual social anxiety.

2. Sex – Sexual anxiety can take many forms from size shame, to performance anxiety, to unreasonable concerns about STDs, etc… Sexual Anxiety is not a one size fits all diagnosis and can range from not being able to discuss sex and sexual topics without giggling to not being able to get it up with new girls or have sex have sober.

Since the topic of anxiety is one I could easily write a gazillion words about (and upon which a gazillion words have been written) I’m going to try to keep this as brief as I can.

What is Anxiety, exactly?

Anxiety is an adverse fear based psychological state of mind characterized by restlessness, thought loops, sweating, increased heart rate, etc… It’s key here to draw a distinction between fear and anxiety as fear is a more intense emotion and state of mind.

Also fear tends to happen when we are triggered by something in the real world anxiety is a more paranoid frame of mind where we worry about things that haven’t happened yet.

What problems does anxiety cause for guys trying to meet women?

A ton…. Specifically:

1. Approach Anxiety
2. Escalation Anxiety
3. Fear of going out alone
4. Irrational fear of other guys
5. Fear of approaching girls you’re really attracted to
6. Fear of rejection

and more.

What can you do to deal with your anxiety?

First you need to figure out what kind of anxiety you have, I’m not a DR but they do exist and I recommend if you live in a high state of anxiety and worry about women, sex and dating that you go to see a psychiatrist. You probably don’t need anti-anxiety medication, but you might and there’s nothing wrong with that.

In fact I have recommended plenty of my students go to psychiatrists and several of my more successful students have been on anti anxiety meds to help them deal with physical symptoms like flop sweat, shaking etc…

Secondly you need to attack your anxiety head on with a two pronged combination of knowledge and experience.

When it comes to knowledge you need to educate yourself on where this anxiety came from. If it’s sexual you want to learn as much as you can about sex.

If it’s around socializing you want to look back on your life and try to pinpoint when this anxiety started and if you can (no shame if you can’t that’s why we’re not shrinks) what started it.

Next and most importantly you need to start taking small actions related to this anxiety.

You want to start taking baby steps, literally the smallest possible step that you can take to move yourself a little more out of anxiety. It could be going to the mall by yourself and walking around, meeting a girl off the internet just for sex, or going out and doing slightly embarrassing things in public.

But you want to gradually move the volume on your anxiety down. What may start out as an almost deafening scream of panic and anxiety can be muted with enough exposure and survival. But you need to know what the anxiety is before you can start to do things experimentally to deal with it.

So this is in no way a full primer on anxiety and dealing with it , but it’s an overview of how to deal with the sticking point of anxiety in the broadest terms when it comes to meeting women.

Next time I’ll look at sticking point # 2: Getting Women’s Attention And Getting Them Committed to The Conversation.