The good thing about approach anxiety is that it is self-created, which means that you are creating it and you can stop it. The annoying, fear-inducing feeling called “approach anxiety” is not something that is out of your control and will always be with you; it’s only there because you are allowing it to exist by way of your thinking.
Approach anxiety is activated when you think in ways that cause you to feel anxious, nervous, fearful and hesitant before approaching a woman. Guys who don’t suffer from approach anxiety are those who think in ways that make them feel confident, relaxed and even excited about approaching women. To get to the point where you automatically think in a confident rather than an anxious way, I recommend using what I call “Bridging Mindsets.”
Fixing Your Approach Anxiety With Bridging Mindsets
Bridging Mindsets allow you to feel confident enough in the moment to approach a woman. After a while, you get to the point where you are truly confident and don’t need to use these “training wheel” mindsets to get you to approach. Bridging Mindsets are necessary for overcoming approach anxiety because the settings of human psychology don’t allow us to permanently change from being anxious to confident, depressed to happy or fearful to fearless in one step. The “psychological divide” between anxiety and confidence is too vast and the only way to permanently get across it is to build your own mental bridge. Just like you created your anxiety by thinking in certain ways, you now need to create your confidence by thinking in new ways. You need to “bridge your way across” the divide that separates confidence from anxiety. You cannot do it in one step.
If it was possible to go from anxious to confident in one step, there would be a quick trick or magic mindset and we’d all use it. Psychologists would know about it and the pharmaceutical companies that sell anti-anxiety pills would lose a lot of money. Yet, there is no quick trick and there is no single, magic mindset that instantly fixes approach anxiety. The only way to overcome approach anxiety is to work your way towards a state of confidence so strong that feelings of anxiety become unnecessary, irrelevant and redundant. To do that, you need to create a mental bridge that leads you away from anxious thinking and towards confident thinking.
Examples of Bridging Mindsets
Here are some examples of using Bridging Mindsets to put all of this into perspective for you. If you use “Anxious” mindsets before approaching a woman, you will naturally begin to feel anxiety. However, if you use Bridging mindsets for long enough, you will eventually get into the habit of thinking in way that allows you to feel confident at all times.
Rejection
- Anxious mindset: I will probably get rejected if I approach.
- Bridging mindset: No guy is compatible with every woman he meets. If we’re not compatible, that is fine by me – I’ll just approach another woman who is more compatible with me.
- Confident mindset: This woman will like me. I’ll go talk to her.
Conversation
- Anxious mindset: I will probably run out of things to say.
- Bridging mindset: I know a few things to say to start a conversation, keep it going and keep it interesting, so I should at least be able to get a brief conversation going. I’ll approach her and give it a try.
- Confident mindset: Women love talking to me and I love talking to them. I’m going to chat to that girl over there. She’ll be happy that I came over for a chat.
Other people
- Anxious mindset: Other people are watching. They will probably think I am a creep, loser or sleaze for approaching.
- Bridging mindset: Other people are more worried about how they are being perceived by others; they aren’t sitting around worrying about what I am doing. It is completely normal for a guy to walk over and talk to a woman in an easy-going way. I’m not walking over and trying to pick her up, I’m just going over and having a chat. If we are compatible and it feels like we should exchange numbers or keep talking, I will do that.
- Confident mindset: Other people? I don’t care. I’m going to talk to those girls.
Completing the pick up
- Anxious mindset: If I don’t get a phone number, kiss or sex then I have failed and have been rejected. I probably won’t be able to complete the pick up and the women will think I am a loser for trying to pick them up.
- Bridging mindset: You can’t complete every pick up because no guy is compatible with every woman he meets. I’m simply going to go over, have a chat and see if we’re compatible. If we are, I will look to escalate to a phone number, kiss or sex. If not, no problem – I’ll just talk to some other girls.
- Confident mindset: I’m going to get this woman’s number, kiss her or have sex with her.
See how it works? You have to “bridge” your way to confidence. After using Bridging Mindsets for long enough, you will eventually get to the point where you automatically think in a way that allows you to feel confident. To put this into more perspective, I will explain the Confidence Building Process.
Confidence Building Process
1. Bridge
Use Bridging Mindsets to feel “confident enough” in the moment to approach women.
2. Gather
When you approach women, focus on gathering as much positive evidence as possible that you can approach women and are getting better at it.
By “positive evidence” I am referring to anything that went well with the approach (e.g. the women were happy to talk to you) and anything that is getting better (e.g. your confidence and conversation skills are improving). If you try to use this Confidence Building Process without gathering positive evidence from real life approaches, it will not work and your approach anxiety will remain. Step 2 in the process (gathering positive evidence) is essential to overcoming approach anxiety because you need that real life evidence to support your new, more confident way of thinking. Without it, all you are doing is “thinking positively” and we all know that positive thinking is no cure for approach anxiety.
3. Repeat until confident
Repeat Steps 1 and 2 until you automatically begin to think in a confident way about approaching women, without having to use Bridging Mindsets. When you reach this stage, your approach anxiety will be gone and you will be able to confidently approach women at will. Anxiety or nervousness won’t even have a chance to exist in your mind because you will feel confident about the approach and confident in your skills with women.
How long does it take for a guy to get from Step 1 to Step 3 in the Confidence Building Process? That depends on how often he approaches and how much positive evidence he gathers to support his new, more confident way of thinking. From my experience helping guys with this problem and from overcoming it myself, it takes most guys about 3-6 weeks to completely get rid of their approach anxiety using this process.
More Examples of Bridging Mindsets
When you’re at Step 2 in the process, you really need to put some effort into thinking in a more confident way. The best way to do this is to continue using Bridging Mindsets until you get to the point where your confidence is consistent. Eventually, your confidence will become so strong that it won’t make any sense to feel approach anxiety. Your natural way of thinking will be that of confidence, so anxiety will feel unnecessary and irrelevant when it comes to approaching women.
Here are some examples of Bridging Mindsets that you can use as you’re going about your everyday life, or right before you approach a woman:
- I’m getting better at this.
- I’ve been learning a lot of great stuff and my confidence is improving.
- Approaching women is becoming easier and easier for me.
- My conversation skills are getting better every time I practice.
- I’m getting better reactions from women most of the time.
- I feel more comfortable in interactions with women now.
- Approaching women is becoming fun.
- I no longer allow anxious thoughts to pollute my mind.
- I can feel my confidence growing stronger everyday.
- I can’t wait to talk to more women.
If you don’t use Bridging Mindsets and instead continue to allow anxiety-inducing thoughts to overwhelm your mind, then you will only be adding fuel to your approach anxiety. Here is the type of anxiety and fear inducing thinking that you need to avoid when going through the Confidence Building Process to eliminate your approach anxiety:
- I’ve tried to approach before, but I just get anxious.
- I can’t do this.
- Women are too picky.
- Women reject guys all the time.
- I’ve been rejected before, so it will just keep happening.
- I don’t know what to say to women.
- Women don’t make it easy for me.
- I’m no good with women, so there is no point in trying.
- I can’t get any better.
- I’m stuck like this.
- I guess I’ll just have to stick to porn.
To truly overcome your approach anxiety, you must make a conscious decision to change the way you think about approaching women. Procrastinating or hiding from the problem will not get rid of it; you have to tackle it head on. You must stop thinking in the ways that cause you to feel nervous, fearful and anxious and start thinking in the ways that make you feel confident and that push you forward to success.
When Your Approach Anxiety Is Eliminated
When you bridge your way to true confidence with women, you eventually get to a point where your confidence becomes so strong, consistent and authentic that you don’t stop to think before an approach. You are no longer worried about whether things might go wrong or what you’re going to say, so you just approach when you see a woman you like. At that level, approach anxiety doesn’t even have a chance to exist because you are confident and you’re just doing whatever you want.
We Are Lucky That Approach Anxiety is Fixable
If approach anxiety were an untreatable disease, then we would all be doomed for life and would have to resort to porn or to accepting unattractive women who hit on us once in a blue moon. Yet, approach anxiety isn’t a disease and it isn’t untreatable. Approach anxiety is created from within a guy’s own mind by his own thinking and that is a good thing because it means that it is fixable. When you go through the process that I’ve described in this article, your approach anxiety will eventually disappear and be replaced by a strong, authentic and consistent state of confidence.
However, let me make one thing absolutely clear: this only works if you do Step 2 in the process. You can’t eliminate approach anxiety just by thinking about it. You must gather real life evidence that you are getting better at approaching women, that women are responding more positively to you and that you are feeling more and more confident around women. If you avoid approaching women and try to “think your way to confidence” all you will be doing is useless positive thinking. You have to do Step 2 in the process to give yourself real reasons to feel more confident and to start letting go of your anxiety.
Read More: The Pill That Cures Approach Anxiety
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