Overall Thoughts On Guys Being Nervous Around Women

Every guy has felt nervous around women at some point. Their nerves likely cost them an opportunity of some sort. Maybe they never talked to that cute girl in their class, or they wanted to kiss someone but couldn't do it. For some guys their anxiety is their biggest barrier to success. Guys who are older and inexperienced with women were likely born with a predisposition to feel this nervousness much more strongly than most.

The mental and physical symptoms that occur can be pretty unpleasant. They lead to what psychologists call Escape and Avoidance behavior; If you find yourself in a nervousness inducing situation you want to get out. If you're not in such a situation, you won't go out of your way to put yourself in one. At the exact moment you feel nervous, making those feelings go away trumps your longterm interests.

Being in fear-inducing situations with women is unfortunately optional

The worst thing nervousness-wise is that it's never mandatory to go after women. So if you wuss out of something there's no penalty. You have to give presentations at work and at school, you have to go to job interviews, but if you're too scared to approach someone at a bar or ask them to hang out, no one is going to come after you. In fact the relief you feel for backing away from the uncomfortable situation can reinforce your wimpiness in the future. Guys who are too nervous to even approach girls can have years of their lives pass them by with no chance of getting into a relationship in sight. It happened to me.

Nervousness breeds excuses and rationalizations

A strange thing about guy's anxiety around women is that it often hides itself behind reasonable sounding justifications for why you didn't want to do something. Our brains seem to have a hard time admitting we didn't do something due to nervousness. Recognize any of these?

That's just a small sample. The human mind is endlessly inventive when it comes to generating reasons to excuse its own lack of courage.

The only reliable way to overcome your nervousness is to expose yourself to the things that scare you and get used to them

This applies to any anxiety-inducing situation, not just women. You just have to take your lumps, put yourself in uncomfortable scenarios, and build up a tolerance for them. You need to experience firsthand that you actually can manage in these situations and not the world won't end. Over time they won't phase you as much.

At the time, building up your courage like this isn't exactly fun. The first few times you do something nerve racking you're going to feel rough. You're going to sap your willpower trying to fight back your jitters and in convincing yourself to go through with it. If you puss out at times, and you will sooner or later, you can be quite hard on yourself. Afterwards you may feel proud, but at the time it's difficult. The temporary pain you put yourself through is more than worth it though in terms of the options it opens up in your life.

You must deal with anxiety directly because it's a raw, primitive emotion

The anxiety guys feel around girls is totally out of proportion to the potential downside involved. Sure you can give a scientific explanation for why men are as scared as they are around women, but it doesn't really change the annoying reality of guys feeling more fear than they logically should. That's just the way anxiety is though. If something makes you nervous, it just does. You can't reason your nervousness away. You have to show your reptile brain firsthand that it has nothing to be scared of.

You can save yourself a huge amount of time if you realize and accept you must overcome your fears this way

Directly inoculating yourself against your fears is worth it, but it still causes all sorts of uncomfortable feelings. Many guys don't feel up to the challenge and proceed to waste tons of time looking for an easier solution. I know I did. There isn't one, but that doesn't stop them from looking anyways. There are guys who never get out of this stage. Some common paths guys travel in search of the non-existent easier solution are looking for some epiphany or logical insight that will make their nerves go away, and looking for a magical piece of advice that will erase their fears instantly. I go into this more in this article:

Common Magic Bullets Guys Hope Will Cure Their Fear Of Women

Seriously, if you realize and accept there's no way around it, and that you have to tolerate some discomfort to become more confident around girls, you can shave years off your development in this area. If you want to get better with women you're going to have to face your fears eventually. You might as well get it over now and start having success as soon as possible, rather than putting it off.

Different fears offer different challenges in overcoming them

Assuming you want to directly work on your fears, you have to deal with the different varieties in their own ways:

Learning to approach strangers is easy in the sense that it's simple to practice. There are always people around you can talk to. However it's hard in the sense that it's probably the strongest woman-related fear guys have. You may have to approach dozens of girls (or more) before you're comfortable doing it. My advice on being able to do this is here:

A Systematic Plan To Get Yourself More Comfortable Talking To Strange Girls

Being comfortable 'making moves' (e.g., asking someone out, going for a kiss) on girls is easy in the sense that you can get used to doing it pretty quickly. But it's hard in that it's not something you can practice whenever you want. You have to actually get yourself into a situation where you have a chance to do it. My advice on being able to do that is in this article:

Advice On Getting Comfortable Making Moves On Women

You can never totally overcome your fear around women

Just like experienced speakers or performers still occasionally get twangs of anxiety, your nervousness around women never quite leaves you. If you consistently work on overcoming your anxiety, you can greatly reduce it in most situations. However once you've attained some confidence, you have to maintain it like you would your physical fitness. If you take yourself out of the game and get rusty, you'll find your previously reliable confidence will have dissipated the next time you have to use it. But again like exercise, it's easier to get back in shape than it is to become fit for the first time ever. But even if the process is quicker the next time, you still do need to rebuild your courage. It's an ongoing struggle.


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