Love this thread.
I could be speaking about this for days! Actually I used to have social anxiety, so I know quite a lot about this.
And instead of just giving you a line you can tell yourself i want to break down the whole model I learned by hacking my social anxiety. So I will try to the best of my ability to explain the dynamics at play in approach anxiety. Il try to make it painstakenly simple for you.
First you need to have clarity about you purpose in life, I will come back to why this is piviotal for getting over AA. I believe everybody has a life purpose and your fulfillment in life will be to the degree you are able to live authenthic to your purpose. Too many people are trying to live everybody elses life purpose instead of our own. This comes from a deep seated shame. The feeling of not being good enough.
If something support your purpose in life (your values and priorities) it is good, if something challenges your purpose in life it is bad. IN YOUR perception (mind).
However the truth is thatthe event is neither good or bad, but you choose to judge it as good or bad.
So let's go DEEP here... So you are not seing actuality (what objectively is), you see a REality based on your value judgements. This is how two people can be witness to the same event, but have different emotions from the same thing. One might think the person was rude the other did not have that perception of rude at all. Or when everybody is watching a movie at the cinema and all people have a different emotional experience of what they see.
So you live in a REality based on your value judgement (support or challenge to your purpose).
You can be more or less connected to your life purpose.
like this:
Purpose, highest priority
Objectivity
"I choose to" / " I love to"
"Life is happening for me"
Activates best part of the brain
Inspiration, presence, disipline, dedication, focus, love
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Frustration, stress, procrastination, black/white thinking
Activated most primitive part of the brain
"Life is happening against me"
Subjectivity
"I need to" / "I have to"
Ego, lowest priority
The more you live in your purpose, the more objective you are, you are not in black/white thinking. You see challenges as on the way when you see the challenge helping you towards your purpose.
So talking about approach anxiety... It basically is about fear of rejection, you want to avoid the "bad" experience of being rejected.
However, you cannot have a bad experience about someone rejecting that 1+2=3
it is just factual correct that 1+2=3
People can have their opinion, but you know the facts.
So you can only have a bad experience of something you partly agree with.
And when someone rejects you, you are actually getting information on what you already reject in yourself. That you still have not learned to love.
Have you ever had a really bad experience, to see 5 or 10 years later to become grateful for it. Now you can see that it was a ON the way and not IN the way in your life (purpose). And you are not thinking black/white anymore. So if someone comes and says, oh that event was very bad, but you say to this person, no actually now i am grateful for it, it was an important part of my journey.
And here is where the magic comes in that even the legend Mystery would be impressed about... You do not need 1 month, 3 years or 10 years or a lifetime to find the meaning for a bad experience. you can do it here and NOW.
So following the law of balance, life has pain and pleasure, challenge and support, positive and negative. And when you find something meaningful you will endure the pain in pursuit of its goal. Your purpose is what is the most meaningful for you.
So when you can define what you truly are afraid of when approaching a girl. You can easily link whatever that is this to your purpose. so you start to see meaning in the rejection, you see the value in it. And that dissolves the approach anxiety.
There is actually another dynamic of this that we have not adressed, and it is the unsexy part of this process.
And that is how big your fantasy is about the result you are looking for. What I am talking about here is basically needyness.
The more you need the girl to accept you the more you are going to experience approach anxiety. You are basically delegating your own self-worth to someone outside of yourself. And because you see way more positives than negative, the law of balance comes in to make sure you get back to balance. Because it is unsustainable and your mind/brain is designed to create fear to bring you back to balance to actually break the fantasy you have about the result.
Understand this and you will actually be able to embody freedom of outcome and non-needyness as the legends of PU have been talking about. and you can unleash your true confidence. In my world I call this self-love.
Also worth noting for something you can tell yourself as a reminder... Everybody has their own purpose, and if you support their authenthic priorities and purpose, they will accept and open up to you. But if they cannot percieve you being supportive to their life they will close down. So rejection has nothing to do with you as a person, it has to do with how you are coming across in the moment to this individual. communicate yourself effectivly and you have someone who accepts you. If you fail the person will reject you.
Again, rejection is not about you as a person, it is about the other persons priorities and value judgement. That is something powerful to say to yourself when you experience an rejection because of taking it personally you understand that in this moment i was not able to communicate myself effectivly towards what was important to this person.
That is why my date game is so powerful, because I find out what they true priorities are and ask questions about that, and all of the sudden I am the best talker in the world even though they are doing all the talking.
I wrote a thread about my journey from social anxiety to a vibrating dating life. You can check it out here on the forum if you wanna dive deeper into this.