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This post will deal with various therapies that go further than cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). You actually don't need to understand very much of the theory here to do the exercises, but I do provide a lot of theory as there are guys who are interested in a deeper understanding. I have studied this topic for the sake of seduction since 2012 and helped rehabilitate several people I know, including a couple of very traumatized ones with really fucked up upbringings. So the information density will be very high and the post is somewhat non-linear. There is also some information about how body-oriented therapies relate to CBT and meditation.
Basal architecture of the human brain
A huge problem of Western psychology as opposed to Eastern practices like Zen and Yoga is how logical and top-down it is. Maybe this can be traced back to the fact that some of the philosophical founders of Western thought were rather Asperger. For example, a claim such that the one of Descartes, "I think, therefore I am" could be read to imply that rational thought is primary, and that your overall mental state is determined by your logical thoughts, not the state of your body.
Modern neuroscience would scoff at such a claim. At the physiological level, the brain is organized with evolutionary older parts at the bottom and progressively younger additions on top of it. A scientifically obsolete, but still very pedagogical model is the so called "Triune brain model", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain where the basal parts originating from the days of our reptilian ancestors is the denoted the "R-complex", the mammalian brain on top of it is denoted the "Limbic system" and the wrinkeled, outer "Neocortex" is the part we have in common with the higher primates. One can summarize the model as that the R-complex will control functions that basically keep you alive like digestion and emotions such as anger or fear that we have in common with the more basal vertebrates. The limbic system governs basal emotions that are common to mammals (basic social behavior, caring for infants etc) and the neocortex is involved in more abstract thought, language and the advanced social emotions of the higher primates. Yes, some of the Great Apes can communicate with sign language.
While the model is an oversimplification (you will for example lose your short-term memory or even lapse into a permanent coma if the certain limbic or R-complex structures are damaged), it is still a pedagogical model in the sense that if two different levels of the brain want to do different things, the more basal part will usually "win" as they are closer coupled to the body and more nerves are running up to the higher parts of the brain than down from them. Imagine trying to starve yourself to death or suffocate yourself by holding your breath. You can fight your urge to eat or breathe for some time, but usually the lower parts of the brain will simply "hijack" your upper parts in the end in some fashion and override such detrimental conscious wishes.
Coupled to the lower parts of the brain is the spinal cord and multiple nerves surrounding internal organs (the viscera) and musculature. These nerves will constantly monitor the state of the organs and the muscles, and if something abnormal happens, the brain will go in some kind of an alert state. For example, eating something poisonous will often cause the brain to induce nausea and passivity - this is so that toxins shall be vomited up instead of being absorbed and that you shall remain passive to enhance the chances of recovery.
How conflicts and threatening situations are handled by the nervous system
In a conflict situation there are four main ways of responding: 1) Negotiation, 2) Fight, 3) Flight and 4) Freeze, which is doing nothing and hoping for the best.
Interestingly, the human nervous system have employed all of these responses and they are executed in the opposite order of when they evolved. A scientist whose name is Stephen Porges has made large contributions to this theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvagal_theory
The oldest response is the "Freeze" response. The oldest vertebrates like amphibians and basal reptiles had in many cases likely no ability to generate their own body heat like mammals have. This means that they have very limited stamina as chemical reactions are slow at low temperatures. Thus, in many cases, the only defense they have is to pretend that they are dead. I once observed this when my cat had caught a toad. It just froze completely and was lying upside down, seemingly dead. I removed my cat from it as toads are poisonous. 5 minutes later the toad awoke and just jumped away like nothing had happened.
Freeze responses are also why you can literally scare mammals to death under some conditions. The entire body simply shuts down so that life-threatening conditions may arise from lack of oxygen etc. Freeze-like reactions should be common to anybody who have ended up in social situations they are unable to handle and where there is not even an escape. Note how physiologically unpleasant they are and how they may stick for quite some time.
The second oldest responses are the "fight or flight" responses. I am not sure it is known exactly when these arose, but they probably originate in mammal-like reptiles or basal mammals with faster metabolism. These had the stamina to fight opponents, or flee if the threat was too serious to put up a fight against.
The youngest response is the negotiation response, which is usually referred to as "social engagement" (SE). This consists of discussing, arguing without being angry or afraid, trying to bargain a solution etc. It has emerged in mammals with more complex social behavior than just fighting each other over disagreements and takes a nonverbal form in other animals than humans.
The very interesting thing to note here is that the processing of conflicts and threatening situations goes from younger to older responses. You evaluate an immediate threat. Can you negotiate? If yes, SE is triggered. If no, the next level evaluation is: Can you fight it? If yes, you go into fight. If no, you evaluate whether you can flee. And if that also fails, the freeze response is triggered: Do nothing and hope that you survive.
In general, the more capacities you have, the younger responses will be employed. Most AFCs are in a flight state or a freeze state if social threats arise. Higher intermediates in the social hierarchy (think the high school bully) tend to handle conflicts in a fight state. The social leaders tend to be nearly always in SE. Notice how elite level politicians and debaters will never freeze, retreat or get mad, but just keep argue their point in a calm and slick fashion.
This is also why you have a lot of angry guys on pickup forums. They have increased their social and sometimes physical capabilities and thus will tend to respond with fight instead of flight or freeze. The top level PUAs tend however to be very calm, they will always respond to provocations in SE.
What are psychological traumas and amygdala hijacks?
Psychological traumas are simply fight, flight or freeze reactions that have somehow gotten "stuck" in the body. For example, a threat causing the fight or flight response to fire will cause increased heart rate and mobilization of musculature, among other reactions such as shaking. Now the important thing, if this reaction does not complete, the reaction may get "stuck" in the body, causing the a permanent state of higher alert than normal. The reason why this can happen is that humans have a lot of neurological circuitry on top of the circuits most other mammals have and these may interfere with the basal reactions, as remarked above. Such a "stuck" response is associated with stiffness, which act as a suppressor of shaking. Note how generally stiff and facially non-expressive a lot of AFCs are. This is also true for the typical over-compensating bully, who is a lower-level dominant male. Charisma is the opposite of facial stiffness and is essentially an indicator of a healthy emotional baseline state, that is why it is so attractive. Facial stiffness is also a very red flag when meeting women, it signifies that she has major mental issues. The reason why this "stiffness" response is induced is likely a way to temporarily save face from excessive displays of emotion. Many cultures have rituals and practices to remove the stiffness now and then, something which is regretfully lost in modern Western culture.
A psychotherapist, David Berceli, observed these dynamics while being in some war-torn area where the culture was so that public expression of fear by adults was shunned. The children would get scared by acts of war, but they would shake of fear and would not get traumatized. However, the adults who attempted to keep a straight face ended up getting traumatized. He used this observation to derive a treatment called Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) which I will discuss below. It basically works by deliberately inducing the shakes so that old traumas stored in the body will release.
Traumatization may be due to either a few major traumas like from violence or accidents, or hundreds of micro-traumas from bullying, a bad upbringing, high levels of stress etc. The first is called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the latter is called cPTSD (complex PTSD). To decondition cPTSD may in general take months as there are limits on how much of the traumatization you can remove in one session.
PTSD may be regarded as a generalized hypervigilance. Just as the intelligence services are significantly more on guard right after a terror attack in an area, the human mind is in a hypervigilant state after a traumatic event. PTSD tends to be induced in situations where the freeze response was triggered, that means, there was no escape. Prolonged bullying in families, school and workplaces tend to induce PTSD as this is literally in many cases hard to escape for the victim. Subordinates in social hierarchies have been shown to have higher level of bodily tension and elevated stress hormones.
The brain has two pathways for threat processing to improve reaction time. One is a conscious evaluation, utilizing the neocortex, where you essentially make up your mind about, say, is this animal dangerous or not, and then consciously choose how to act. But there is also faster pathway where information from the sensory organs is routed directly into the limbic structure called the amygdala. Now, if you have a traumatic memory similar to the sensory stimulus, say you were once bitten by a dog and got traumatized and, later, a dog is barking at you, this sensory impression may MATCH by the information previously stored in the amygdala and a so-called "amygdala hijack" is effectuated. This is an immediate, reflexive response causing a freeze or a fight or flight response.
en.wikipedia.org
An example of such a hijack can seen in the movie "Born on the 4th of July". A US marine has returned in a wheelchair from Vietnam after accidentally having shot a child in combat. He is supposed to hold a speech when a child in the audience cries, and then he just gets a flashback to the war event and freezes up.
Another example of hijacks are highly indoctrinated people who get exposed to material that is offensive to their world view. This often will cause the person to go into a reflexive rage where any subsequent logical arguments are not even processed.
TRE will remove such hijacks. The stimulus goes from being perceived as instinctively threatening into neutral. Any memory related to the trauma will go from emotionally charged into neutral "it just happened". Flashbacks will disappear. The mental map will only update after the emotional reaction has completed (cred: Illuminatus).
How does traumas relate to approach anxiety?
Approach anxiety (AA) seems in my experience to be more or less synonymous with social anxiety. Hesitation to make approaches is not a single-cause phenomenon and it is possible to approach even when anxious. The absence of approach anxiety cannot therefore be defined simply as being able to approach, but rather absence of fear when approaching. TRE is extremely efficient to remove the actual fear of doing approaches and social anxiety in general.
There are other causes of hesitation to approach that TRE will not change, but these cannot be said to be anxiety-driven. Sometimes, making a smooth approach may be difficult due to club layout or dynamics, or you may be hesitating due to language barriers, or simply be in a very shitty mood. These are separate problems from anxiety. Likewise, being an introvert has nothing to do with anxiety, introverts are simply less interested in socializing with randoms.
There is a lot of confusion on this issue as non-traumatized guys are 100% unable to grasp the nature of guys with a visceral anxiety of approaching. Note also that pushing somebody with anxiety on the visceral level to approach is a totally horrible thing to do. You will essentially ping the trauma without providing a release valve due to the perceived non-safety of the situation and the person may become worse. The correct action here is to use TRE to remove a fair share of the anxiety and then, when going out later, get the person into good mood and somewhat sociable state in general. Berceli states in the video linked below that people in SE will socialize naturally, I can confirm that this is the case and I therefore oppose any claim that AA is somehow inevitable or hard-wired.
When the traumas are gone, training regimes such as mass approaching is appropriate. Attempting to mass-approach or go out every day before trauma levels are significantly down may cause worsening of the conditions or even burnout, this is something I have seen happen.
www.girlschase.com
What sort of therapies are available?
Here comes a brief explanation of the various therapies and how they integrate with each other.
TRE
This technique is hard to explain in words, but easy from a video. Here is one good one:
and here is a bit of theory for the specially interested reader
Berceli also has a website with a store https://traumaprevention.com/
Note that if you are severely traumatized, the first TRE sessions should be done with a certified TRE instructor. There has been cases of people going temporarily half-crazy from getting up too much of stored traumas at once. Also, prepare to feel rather shitty in terms of paranoia or nausea after heavy releases. This is simply symptoms of neural overload.
The training courses in TRE require you to do several tens of sessions in order to graduate to an instructor level. This is probably also what the average guy with such problems should do, maybe one session of 10-20 minutes every 7-10 days for several months. Shakes usually start in your legs or stomach area and will spread to upper body and finally the face. If you over time do not manage to activate the entire body including the face, there is still some stiffness to release and it may be a good idea to see an instructor.
Notice that you may get ill-tempered for a while by doing TRE. You are essentially removing conditioning suppressing anger and dealing with emotions from lifetime of threats and conflicts. The good thing is that once such states are evoked, you will get them up a last time, the emotional reaction will complete and the trauma is gone. You may also become rude. As long as you just keep doing the exercise, you will by time learn to moderate yourself again, now by your own compass, not society's.
TRE will also tend to induce severe nightmares after major releases. Nightmares are essentially the brain trying to make sense of the baseline threat state and this will go on indefinitely until the problem is "solved" by the completion of the reaction. Individuals with PTSD may be permanently plagued by nightmares and sleep terrors. After years of TRE I actually almost never have a nightmare. Even dreams about seemingly scary topics have no fear state associate with them.
Code of the Natural and stretching exercises
Code of the Natural (COTN) is a system developed by Rob Brinded, a sports trainer. It consists of a multitude of vidoes and a book. These exercises are great for getting a more dominant and attractive posture, and will also improve your psychological state.
While there are newer products that are being sold by Brinded, the old COTN seems now to be free:
I got a lot out of the squat, the hamstrings and the tennis ball exercises, but many of these are relevant. The squat is important to avoid forward head posture, which may come from sitting too much in front of computers etc. This is important to remedy as it looks really nerdy.
People who sit too much should also stretch the hip flexors to not get a forward-tilted pelvis, this does not look good at all. Some of the COTN exercises will likely address it. In my experience this has to be done almost every day. You can also just stretch such as in this video:
Note that Rob Brinded has a dominant body language and good posture, while David Berceli is merely a very relaxed guy. This should illustrate the difference between COTN and TRE. COTN certainly has a bit of an inner game and relaxation effect, though. I always do some COTN and the hip-stretch before hitting the field in order to loosen up.
Breathing terapies
Several breathing exercises are useful for down-regulating anxiety. They work because the breathing rate is linked to the heart rate, which is again linked to the fight or flight response. One very simple technique is to inhale rather quickly, hold your breath for some seconds and then exhale slowly. I have heard that techniques such as Pranayama Yoga and Qigong are highly effective, however I only have minor experience with the first of them.
TRE releases in the diaphragm are crucial for getting your breathing further down in the stomach region, causing a deeper and more dominant voice. Note how squeaky the voice of anxious or nerdy guys tend to be. Such TRE releases follow a movement pattern reminiscent of crying, coughing or even puking (but without actually puking). My TRE trainer stated that voice-work without such removal of stiffness in the diaphragm tended to not be successful in the longer run as the stiffness causing the problem is not addressed.
Meditation
Meditation practices have been shown to improve well-being and mood control. They work by growing more nerves from the neocortex to older structures, in particular the amygdala. Thus, fear and bad mood will come under more cognitive control.
Many of these practices will work. A very simple one is the 3-3-3 meditation:
More advanced tapes can be obtained. I would in particular recommend Yoga Nidra Meditation by the old-school guru Hypnotica. When you listen to this, you will find that his nick is well-deserved! He also has a product The Sphinx of Imagination which I also recommend hearing at least once.
You should be a bit careful with meditating before you have cleaned out major traumas with TRE, as you may trigger a violent release. These techniques will by experience grow together, that is, when you quiet your conscious mind with meditation, TRE shakes will start to appear. In fact, the body will tend to shake almost spontaneously after many sessions of TRE, only by entering the TRE-position in the video above.
CBT
has been discussed here:
www.girlschase.com
www.girlschase.com
Note that CBT will NOT directly address traumas and hence AA (other than stupid pure cognitive beliefs like "women dislike being approached") in many cases and I believe that it may only somewhat work because the therapist may trigger the trauma and cause it to release due to a safe, comforting atmosphere. For example, the client finally gets mad or cries about being wronged and the emotional reaction completes, releasing the trauma. It has actually been found that the source of therapy is less important than the relation between the therapist and client, underpinning the claim that the most important is simply to get the client comfortable and in SE so that traumas may release naturally.
CBT is however highly effective for fixing high-level mindfucks or errors in the pure cognitive processing of reality by the higher brain parts. More basal and diffuse emotions like fight, flight or freeze states should be handled by the bodily techniques. Note the much higher resolution of the former than the latter, reflecting the much higher cognitive capacities of current humans vs primitive vertebrates.
Some other exercises that should be done to get the physiological baseline state right
Make sure your diet includes enough of vitamin B, C and D. These catalyze amino acids into neurotransmitters, that is the signal molecules of the brain. If these are lacking, severe depression may result. Especially vitamin D may be lacking in Western diet and people living in areas with little sun in the winter. This is especially serious for dark-skinned individuals living at high latitudes as vitamin D is generated by sunlight absorbed in the skin.
I do not recommend being a vegetarian as several important amino acids generating neurotransmitters and hormones are present in meat. In Japan they even call the guys getting laid for "Carnivore" men and the incels for "Herbivore" men. If you insist upon a vegan diet, ask a doctor about how to supply the required amino acids and vitamins.
I highly recommend lifting weights or doing full-contact combat sports 2-3 times a week to ensure testosterone levels. Also being a weight lifter and/or engaging in any kind of full-contact martial arts will induce a dominance and fearlessness that cause a lot of AMOGs to mind their own business. Fucked up hormonal balance is a big reason why many guys have erection problems nowadays. Physical exercise also elevates human growth hormone which causes slower aging.
Final words
I hope you enjoyed this post. Questions and comments are of course welcome! I finally wish to give my friend COCPORN credits for setting me on this track in the first place by introducing me to COTN and TRE back around 2012, and for various other people in the PUA circles who have participated in the theorizing or as guinea pigs.
Basal architecture of the human brain
A huge problem of Western psychology as opposed to Eastern practices like Zen and Yoga is how logical and top-down it is. Maybe this can be traced back to the fact that some of the philosophical founders of Western thought were rather Asperger. For example, a claim such that the one of Descartes, "I think, therefore I am" could be read to imply that rational thought is primary, and that your overall mental state is determined by your logical thoughts, not the state of your body.
Modern neuroscience would scoff at such a claim. At the physiological level, the brain is organized with evolutionary older parts at the bottom and progressively younger additions on top of it. A scientifically obsolete, but still very pedagogical model is the so called "Triune brain model", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain where the basal parts originating from the days of our reptilian ancestors is the denoted the "R-complex", the mammalian brain on top of it is denoted the "Limbic system" and the wrinkeled, outer "Neocortex" is the part we have in common with the higher primates. One can summarize the model as that the R-complex will control functions that basically keep you alive like digestion and emotions such as anger or fear that we have in common with the more basal vertebrates. The limbic system governs basal emotions that are common to mammals (basic social behavior, caring for infants etc) and the neocortex is involved in more abstract thought, language and the advanced social emotions of the higher primates. Yes, some of the Great Apes can communicate with sign language.
While the model is an oversimplification (you will for example lose your short-term memory or even lapse into a permanent coma if the certain limbic or R-complex structures are damaged), it is still a pedagogical model in the sense that if two different levels of the brain want to do different things, the more basal part will usually "win" as they are closer coupled to the body and more nerves are running up to the higher parts of the brain than down from them. Imagine trying to starve yourself to death or suffocate yourself by holding your breath. You can fight your urge to eat or breathe for some time, but usually the lower parts of the brain will simply "hijack" your upper parts in the end in some fashion and override such detrimental conscious wishes.
Coupled to the lower parts of the brain is the spinal cord and multiple nerves surrounding internal organs (the viscera) and musculature. These nerves will constantly monitor the state of the organs and the muscles, and if something abnormal happens, the brain will go in some kind of an alert state. For example, eating something poisonous will often cause the brain to induce nausea and passivity - this is so that toxins shall be vomited up instead of being absorbed and that you shall remain passive to enhance the chances of recovery.
How conflicts and threatening situations are handled by the nervous system
In a conflict situation there are four main ways of responding: 1) Negotiation, 2) Fight, 3) Flight and 4) Freeze, which is doing nothing and hoping for the best.
Interestingly, the human nervous system have employed all of these responses and they are executed in the opposite order of when they evolved. A scientist whose name is Stephen Porges has made large contributions to this theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvagal_theory
The oldest response is the "Freeze" response. The oldest vertebrates like amphibians and basal reptiles had in many cases likely no ability to generate their own body heat like mammals have. This means that they have very limited stamina as chemical reactions are slow at low temperatures. Thus, in many cases, the only defense they have is to pretend that they are dead. I once observed this when my cat had caught a toad. It just froze completely and was lying upside down, seemingly dead. I removed my cat from it as toads are poisonous. 5 minutes later the toad awoke and just jumped away like nothing had happened.
Freeze responses are also why you can literally scare mammals to death under some conditions. The entire body simply shuts down so that life-threatening conditions may arise from lack of oxygen etc. Freeze-like reactions should be common to anybody who have ended up in social situations they are unable to handle and where there is not even an escape. Note how physiologically unpleasant they are and how they may stick for quite some time.
The second oldest responses are the "fight or flight" responses. I am not sure it is known exactly when these arose, but they probably originate in mammal-like reptiles or basal mammals with faster metabolism. These had the stamina to fight opponents, or flee if the threat was too serious to put up a fight against.
The youngest response is the negotiation response, which is usually referred to as "social engagement" (SE). This consists of discussing, arguing without being angry or afraid, trying to bargain a solution etc. It has emerged in mammals with more complex social behavior than just fighting each other over disagreements and takes a nonverbal form in other animals than humans.
The very interesting thing to note here is that the processing of conflicts and threatening situations goes from younger to older responses. You evaluate an immediate threat. Can you negotiate? If yes, SE is triggered. If no, the next level evaluation is: Can you fight it? If yes, you go into fight. If no, you evaluate whether you can flee. And if that also fails, the freeze response is triggered: Do nothing and hope that you survive.
In general, the more capacities you have, the younger responses will be employed. Most AFCs are in a flight state or a freeze state if social threats arise. Higher intermediates in the social hierarchy (think the high school bully) tend to handle conflicts in a fight state. The social leaders tend to be nearly always in SE. Notice how elite level politicians and debaters will never freeze, retreat or get mad, but just keep argue their point in a calm and slick fashion.
This is also why you have a lot of angry guys on pickup forums. They have increased their social and sometimes physical capabilities and thus will tend to respond with fight instead of flight or freeze. The top level PUAs tend however to be very calm, they will always respond to provocations in SE.
What are psychological traumas and amygdala hijacks?
Psychological traumas are simply fight, flight or freeze reactions that have somehow gotten "stuck" in the body. For example, a threat causing the fight or flight response to fire will cause increased heart rate and mobilization of musculature, among other reactions such as shaking. Now the important thing, if this reaction does not complete, the reaction may get "stuck" in the body, causing the a permanent state of higher alert than normal. The reason why this can happen is that humans have a lot of neurological circuitry on top of the circuits most other mammals have and these may interfere with the basal reactions, as remarked above. Such a "stuck" response is associated with stiffness, which act as a suppressor of shaking. Note how generally stiff and facially non-expressive a lot of AFCs are. This is also true for the typical over-compensating bully, who is a lower-level dominant male. Charisma is the opposite of facial stiffness and is essentially an indicator of a healthy emotional baseline state, that is why it is so attractive. Facial stiffness is also a very red flag when meeting women, it signifies that she has major mental issues. The reason why this "stiffness" response is induced is likely a way to temporarily save face from excessive displays of emotion. Many cultures have rituals and practices to remove the stiffness now and then, something which is regretfully lost in modern Western culture.
A psychotherapist, David Berceli, observed these dynamics while being in some war-torn area where the culture was so that public expression of fear by adults was shunned. The children would get scared by acts of war, but they would shake of fear and would not get traumatized. However, the adults who attempted to keep a straight face ended up getting traumatized. He used this observation to derive a treatment called Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) which I will discuss below. It basically works by deliberately inducing the shakes so that old traumas stored in the body will release.
Traumatization may be due to either a few major traumas like from violence or accidents, or hundreds of micro-traumas from bullying, a bad upbringing, high levels of stress etc. The first is called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the latter is called cPTSD (complex PTSD). To decondition cPTSD may in general take months as there are limits on how much of the traumatization you can remove in one session.
PTSD may be regarded as a generalized hypervigilance. Just as the intelligence services are significantly more on guard right after a terror attack in an area, the human mind is in a hypervigilant state after a traumatic event. PTSD tends to be induced in situations where the freeze response was triggered, that means, there was no escape. Prolonged bullying in families, school and workplaces tend to induce PTSD as this is literally in many cases hard to escape for the victim. Subordinates in social hierarchies have been shown to have higher level of bodily tension and elevated stress hormones.
The brain has two pathways for threat processing to improve reaction time. One is a conscious evaluation, utilizing the neocortex, where you essentially make up your mind about, say, is this animal dangerous or not, and then consciously choose how to act. But there is also faster pathway where information from the sensory organs is routed directly into the limbic structure called the amygdala. Now, if you have a traumatic memory similar to the sensory stimulus, say you were once bitten by a dog and got traumatized and, later, a dog is barking at you, this sensory impression may MATCH by the information previously stored in the amygdala and a so-called "amygdala hijack" is effectuated. This is an immediate, reflexive response causing a freeze or a fight or flight response.
Amygdala hijack - Wikipedia
An example of such a hijack can seen in the movie "Born on the 4th of July". A US marine has returned in a wheelchair from Vietnam after accidentally having shot a child in combat. He is supposed to hold a speech when a child in the audience cries, and then he just gets a flashback to the war event and freezes up.
Another example of hijacks are highly indoctrinated people who get exposed to material that is offensive to their world view. This often will cause the person to go into a reflexive rage where any subsequent logical arguments are not even processed.
TRE will remove such hijacks. The stimulus goes from being perceived as instinctively threatening into neutral. Any memory related to the trauma will go from emotionally charged into neutral "it just happened". Flashbacks will disappear. The mental map will only update after the emotional reaction has completed (cred: Illuminatus).
How does traumas relate to approach anxiety?
Approach anxiety (AA) seems in my experience to be more or less synonymous with social anxiety. Hesitation to make approaches is not a single-cause phenomenon and it is possible to approach even when anxious. The absence of approach anxiety cannot therefore be defined simply as being able to approach, but rather absence of fear when approaching. TRE is extremely efficient to remove the actual fear of doing approaches and social anxiety in general.
There are other causes of hesitation to approach that TRE will not change, but these cannot be said to be anxiety-driven. Sometimes, making a smooth approach may be difficult due to club layout or dynamics, or you may be hesitating due to language barriers, or simply be in a very shitty mood. These are separate problems from anxiety. Likewise, being an introvert has nothing to do with anxiety, introverts are simply less interested in socializing with randoms.
There is a lot of confusion on this issue as non-traumatized guys are 100% unable to grasp the nature of guys with a visceral anxiety of approaching. Note also that pushing somebody with anxiety on the visceral level to approach is a totally horrible thing to do. You will essentially ping the trauma without providing a release valve due to the perceived non-safety of the situation and the person may become worse. The correct action here is to use TRE to remove a fair share of the anxiety and then, when going out later, get the person into good mood and somewhat sociable state in general. Berceli states in the video linked below that people in SE will socialize naturally, I can confirm that this is the case and I therefore oppose any claim that AA is somehow inevitable or hard-wired.
When the traumas are gone, training regimes such as mass approaching is appropriate. Attempting to mass-approach or go out every day before trauma levels are significantly down may cause worsening of the conditions or even burnout, this is something I have seen happen.
Get Way More Out of Your Club Pickups with Mass Approaching
Mass approaching gets a bum rap. When it’s used well, it stops being sloppy and scattershot… and becomes a savvy, effective way to meet many women in a hurry. Contents 1. The Evils of Mass Approaching 2. The Benefits of Mass Approaching 3. How to Mass Approach Correctly 4. When Not to Mass...
www.girlschase.com
What sort of therapies are available?
Here comes a brief explanation of the various therapies and how they integrate with each other.
TRE
This technique is hard to explain in words, but easy from a video. Here is one good one:
and here is a bit of theory for the specially interested reader
Berceli also has a website with a store https://traumaprevention.com/
Note that if you are severely traumatized, the first TRE sessions should be done with a certified TRE instructor. There has been cases of people going temporarily half-crazy from getting up too much of stored traumas at once. Also, prepare to feel rather shitty in terms of paranoia or nausea after heavy releases. This is simply symptoms of neural overload.
The training courses in TRE require you to do several tens of sessions in order to graduate to an instructor level. This is probably also what the average guy with such problems should do, maybe one session of 10-20 minutes every 7-10 days for several months. Shakes usually start in your legs or stomach area and will spread to upper body and finally the face. If you over time do not manage to activate the entire body including the face, there is still some stiffness to release and it may be a good idea to see an instructor.
Notice that you may get ill-tempered for a while by doing TRE. You are essentially removing conditioning suppressing anger and dealing with emotions from lifetime of threats and conflicts. The good thing is that once such states are evoked, you will get them up a last time, the emotional reaction will complete and the trauma is gone. You may also become rude. As long as you just keep doing the exercise, you will by time learn to moderate yourself again, now by your own compass, not society's.
TRE will also tend to induce severe nightmares after major releases. Nightmares are essentially the brain trying to make sense of the baseline threat state and this will go on indefinitely until the problem is "solved" by the completion of the reaction. Individuals with PTSD may be permanently plagued by nightmares and sleep terrors. After years of TRE I actually almost never have a nightmare. Even dreams about seemingly scary topics have no fear state associate with them.
Code of the Natural and stretching exercises
Code of the Natural (COTN) is a system developed by Rob Brinded, a sports trainer. It consists of a multitude of vidoes and a book. These exercises are great for getting a more dominant and attractive posture, and will also improve your psychological state.
While there are newer products that are being sold by Brinded, the old COTN seems now to be free:
I got a lot out of the squat, the hamstrings and the tennis ball exercises, but many of these are relevant. The squat is important to avoid forward head posture, which may come from sitting too much in front of computers etc. This is important to remedy as it looks really nerdy.
People who sit too much should also stretch the hip flexors to not get a forward-tilted pelvis, this does not look good at all. Some of the COTN exercises will likely address it. In my experience this has to be done almost every day. You can also just stretch such as in this video:
Note that Rob Brinded has a dominant body language and good posture, while David Berceli is merely a very relaxed guy. This should illustrate the difference between COTN and TRE. COTN certainly has a bit of an inner game and relaxation effect, though. I always do some COTN and the hip-stretch before hitting the field in order to loosen up.
Breathing terapies
Several breathing exercises are useful for down-regulating anxiety. They work because the breathing rate is linked to the heart rate, which is again linked to the fight or flight response. One very simple technique is to inhale rather quickly, hold your breath for some seconds and then exhale slowly. I have heard that techniques such as Pranayama Yoga and Qigong are highly effective, however I only have minor experience with the first of them.
TRE releases in the diaphragm are crucial for getting your breathing further down in the stomach region, causing a deeper and more dominant voice. Note how squeaky the voice of anxious or nerdy guys tend to be. Such TRE releases follow a movement pattern reminiscent of crying, coughing or even puking (but without actually puking). My TRE trainer stated that voice-work without such removal of stiffness in the diaphragm tended to not be successful in the longer run as the stiffness causing the problem is not addressed.
Meditation
Meditation practices have been shown to improve well-being and mood control. They work by growing more nerves from the neocortex to older structures, in particular the amygdala. Thus, fear and bad mood will come under more cognitive control.
Many of these practices will work. A very simple one is the 3-3-3 meditation:
- For three minutes, sit with closed eyes and feel the sensations of your breathing in your belly.
- Then, for three minutes, move your attention around in your body every fifth second, to new places all the time.
- Then, for three minutes, focus on the sensations in the area of contact between your body whatever you sit on.
More advanced tapes can be obtained. I would in particular recommend Yoga Nidra Meditation by the old-school guru Hypnotica. When you listen to this, you will find that his nick is well-deserved! He also has a product The Sphinx of Imagination which I also recommend hearing at least once.
You should be a bit careful with meditating before you have cleaned out major traumas with TRE, as you may trigger a violent release. These techniques will by experience grow together, that is, when you quiet your conscious mind with meditation, TRE shakes will start to appear. In fact, the body will tend to shake almost spontaneously after many sessions of TRE, only by entering the TRE-position in the video above.
CBT
has been discussed here:
CBT Series Part I: How to Do Cognitive Therapy on Yourself
Any guy who has ever set his foot on a forum devoted to the study of seduction or who has purchased a book on the topic is likely to be familiar with the expressions “outer game” and “inner game”. He will know that “outer game” advice consists of learning new behaviors, while “inner game” advice...
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CBT Series Part II: How to Do Behavior Therapy on Yourself
An introduction to cognitive therapy (CT) was given in the previous article in this series, and I recommend reading it before reading this article. A short refresher on the article about cognitive therapy is that your mind is equipped with mechanisms that ensure you don't take on physical or...
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Note that CBT will NOT directly address traumas and hence AA (other than stupid pure cognitive beliefs like "women dislike being approached") in many cases and I believe that it may only somewhat work because the therapist may trigger the trauma and cause it to release due to a safe, comforting atmosphere. For example, the client finally gets mad or cries about being wronged and the emotional reaction completes, releasing the trauma. It has actually been found that the source of therapy is less important than the relation between the therapist and client, underpinning the claim that the most important is simply to get the client comfortable and in SE so that traumas may release naturally.
CBT is however highly effective for fixing high-level mindfucks or errors in the pure cognitive processing of reality by the higher brain parts. More basal and diffuse emotions like fight, flight or freeze states should be handled by the bodily techniques. Note the much higher resolution of the former than the latter, reflecting the much higher cognitive capacities of current humans vs primitive vertebrates.
Some other exercises that should be done to get the physiological baseline state right
Make sure your diet includes enough of vitamin B, C and D. These catalyze amino acids into neurotransmitters, that is the signal molecules of the brain. If these are lacking, severe depression may result. Especially vitamin D may be lacking in Western diet and people living in areas with little sun in the winter. This is especially serious for dark-skinned individuals living at high latitudes as vitamin D is generated by sunlight absorbed in the skin.
I do not recommend being a vegetarian as several important amino acids generating neurotransmitters and hormones are present in meat. In Japan they even call the guys getting laid for "Carnivore" men and the incels for "Herbivore" men. If you insist upon a vegan diet, ask a doctor about how to supply the required amino acids and vitamins.
I highly recommend lifting weights or doing full-contact combat sports 2-3 times a week to ensure testosterone levels. Also being a weight lifter and/or engaging in any kind of full-contact martial arts will induce a dominance and fearlessness that cause a lot of AMOGs to mind their own business. Fucked up hormonal balance is a big reason why many guys have erection problems nowadays. Physical exercise also elevates human growth hormone which causes slower aging.
Final words
I hope you enjoyed this post. Questions and comments are of course welcome! I finally wish to give my friend COCPORN credits for setting me on this track in the first place by introducing me to COTN and TRE back around 2012, and for various other people in the PUA circles who have participated in the theorizing or as guinea pigs.
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