Finding healthy dating relationships almost certainly requires you to overcome approach anxiety. Think about it, approach anxiety leaves you with fewer options because you're not creating them by meeting new dates. This is the number one reason why people end up settling into undesirable and even unhealthy dating relationships. In fact, some men are so afraid of approach that they're also afraid to commit to long term relationships because of the fear that they might be "missing something better" because they never learned to approach and explore their options.
The good news is that approach anxiety is not a natural fear, it's a learned fear. Anything that can be learned can be unlearned; it's simply a matter of knowing how....
What Causes Approach Anxiety?
I've heard all the silly explanations for why we have approach anxiety, but having a background in sales, I've learned that the reason people fear approaching people is because they fear rejection. Fear of rejection, just like approach anxiety, is a learned fear and believe it or not, most people TRAIN themselves to fear rejection by making it a goal to get someone to say yes. This applies in sales and it applies in dating, here's why...
Imagine yourself running East, what are you running away from? That's right, you're running from West. There's no way to run in both directions at once, and the faster you run in one direction the faster you run away from the other. Now, take that same logic and apply it to rejection and acceptance, the two are just as opposite as East and West.
The problem is that if you make it a goal to approach someone and to get them to give you their phone number or say yes to a date, you're automatically making it your goal to avoid rejection. So you're sending your brain and nervous system mixed messages and trying to get it to run East and West at the same time. Think about it, the first message you're giving it is: "Our goal is to avoid rejection and get a yes." and the other message is: "The goal is to not be afraid of rejection."
This is where the anxiety sets in, your brain is being told to not fear rejection, yet it's being encouraged to avoid it. Avoidance breeds fear, yet your trying to fight that fear at the same time. Naturally, this creates tension in your nervous system just like you can create tension in a string by pulling it in two different directions.
So how do you create harmony and train yourself to not fear rejection?
Going Toe to Toe With Rejection
If avoidance breeds fear, confrontation erases it. Think about it, how do you overcome any other kind of fear? Not by running away, that's for sure. You meet it head on and you do it ON PURPOSE. The on purpose part is key, and if you make it a definite goal to face rejection and ridicule, your fear of rejection will make its departure. To go toe to toe with fear or rejection, start approaching at least one person (male or female) a day with a request that's 100% certain to invite rejection and even ridicule.
I've found that businesses are a great place to do this. For example, ask your dry cleaner if they sell exercise bikes, or go into a McDonald's and order a Whopper (that one's fun). Walk into a bookstore and ask where their lingerie section is. Yes, it's stupid and people will think you're weird and you'll FEEL weird about it. That's the whole point, confronting the experience of social anxiety and inviting rejection.
The more you do this, the more familiar those awkward feelings will become and the less anxiety they'll cause you. You don't have to have a pleasant experience with something to become comfortable with it, you just have to have the experience enough times to build familiarity. Think about it, people become comfortable with awkward and even uncomfortable things all the time simply because they're familiar. Think of the child who grows up around domestic violence and ends up in a similar situation when they get married.
Familiarity drives out fear, so get familiar with the feeling of rejection and pretty soon the fear of it will no longer hold you back.
