Becoming a Pickup Artist – A Core Skills Guide to Game by Pick-Up Evolution Part 6: Approach Anxiety and why we have it.
Legend:
Approach Anxiety
Approach anxiety really encompasses any fear that you may experience about starting conversations with strangers. I believe this comes about from being socially conditioned not to talk to strangers our entire lives.
Edge:
We Created Approach Anxiety
Let’s look at some of the social conditioning that we’ve seen as men throughout our lives. I live in America where media images of love, dating, sex and relationships are abundant.
Think of how many commercials you see where the product makes the man sexy whereas he was a dud before.
Think of how many scenes you’ve witnessed in movies where a guy approaches an attractive woman and she flips out and throws a drink in his face like he’s a flaming piece of shit. Think of how many TV shows glorify the act of some woman rejecting the guy.
They’re not real. They were created by advertisers, screen writers and actors to be interesting to watch.
Still, I can’t help but think that this has had a profound effect on guys in mainstream America and the Western World at large. This is a cultural phenomenon. There are other cultures and American subcultures where the idea of a man having “approach anxiety” is just ludicrous.
What I’m driving at is that those of us who experience “approach anxiety” created the experience ourselves. It may have been active (by interpreting our own failures in life in an unuseful way) or it may have been passive (through witnessing countless media images of approaching women being painful and something to fear).
Regardless, we create approach anxiety and we can deconstruct it, desensitize ourselves to it and replace it with something that is helpful.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I think the two of you are both right. I completely agree with the fact that talking to strangers “is not the norm,” especially when our mothers kept telling us never to talk to strangers.
I also think that movies and commercials give out these images that make us think that’s how things work in the real world – and we know it’s not true but we see it every day, our minds are now trained to expect it.
Another thing I believe that creates some anxiety is a past experience that didn’t work out so well. Maybe you approached someone and she rejected you. The next time you approach someone, that will be the most recent memory and it will attempt to hinder you from trying again because your mind is trained to think that it because it happened before, it will happen again.
Even worse, if you have a traumatic experience (maybe, you did get a drink thrown on you), that will be etched in your mind for a long time. That one experience, no matter how long ago will be your connection to approaching women and that will certainly create anxiety.
But like Edge said, there’s a way to desensitize ourselves, accept the anxiety and turn it into a positive.
Infinity,
As always – you’re speaking my language.
Great stuff as usual.