Social Anxiety

[Anonymous]

Hi Chase!
I have read your articles on social anxiety and how to make new friends. I have to admit that I am very poor at making new friends and still have certain social anxiety, especially with people around my university.

I have always wondered how some of my friends can do all those social network so well and yet I simply have a hard time to even approach and talk to a group of students. Those guys including an extrovert who is very good at DJing and Partying, His level of social success is incredible since he simple keeps talking to people, inviting them to parties after parties, and all he has for them is fun. He provides them with fun and people treat him with gratefulness. Girls, of course, flock to him.

I, on the other hand, am essentially an introvert. I feel quite scared with people in bar environment, especially those who come from the same university. That feeling of uneasiness still pervades, as I cannot relate to them in any level. Most of the times people will speak about disconnected issues that I have a hard time to follow and usually find all of these topics very boring. I either end up being alone or go home. It feels tiresome yet I feel very disappointed about myself.

This, of course, affects greatly my ability to hook up with girls who like me, really dig me. You know I have only had sex 3 times in life, and 2 times already with hookers that I don't get much satisfaction, only with 1 Italian girl who is pretty enough and click with me at certain levels. My sexual confidence is all times low, I don't know how to touch chicks properly while all the cool dudes have the freedom to prey on girls who like me.

I have made certain efforts in removing my anxiety, like using meditation to calm my mind down, yet it's still so hard to pound through those mental blockages.

My background is that I come from a very conservative country: Vietnam, and the concept of sex there is just so backward and strange that I cannot find it any useful at all in my new situation. Most of hook-ups my school is done by hanging out at bars, clubs, with alcohol. I can go to bars and clubs, but I don't drink, and fun enough I have most fun with people I have never seen before. It just seems that I am somewhat of a social outcast.

This bothers me so much that I tend to feel really down, as while my friends get laid like crazy I have to fucking study, and when I graduate I am still an inexperienced dude with no sexual experience. I feel so frustrated that I just want to drop out of university and go to work. Studying once has been my passion, now becomes something I resent so much. It's the core of almost every depression I have gone through.

Most of the girls whom I like have probably fucked guys in my school, while I end up with nothing.

I go to nightclubs alone some nights just to poke girls at the belly and try to escalate physically. Truth is I have never felt very comfortable of touching girls. I just watch one of my black friends who appear to have banged less than 30 chicks in his life, and all he does is to hug girls. I feel very weird when I do this.

 

[Light]

Hi Isidia,

I'm not Chase, but I do feel you, so I'm going to summarise a few things for you.

Your main problem here has nothing to do with girls, or your lack of skills. Your main problem is your Mindset and your Fear.
Your main problem is "What you THINK you are incapable of, and what you BELIEVE."

"Whether you think you can, or you can't, either way you are right" - Henry Ford

What you lack at the moment is confidence, and BELIEF.
You MUST BELIEVE that you are also capable of doing what other guys can do.
You MUST BELIEVE that you are also an Extrovert, not an introvert.
You are who you want to be.

You see... by reading your story, you yourself are already telling yourself who you are, and what you can or cannot do.
These are your EXCUSES. This is the story you are telling yourself.
Good thing is you already know where your problem is. So you can to fix these problems.

How do you fix this problem? Simple: You tell yourself a different story.
You tell yourself that this is not you. Tell yourself that you are Awesome, and you can also approach girls like James Bond or any other role model you may admire. Because once you start to believe in yourself, you won't even see any of this as problem. You would become a bigger person, bigger than your problems. How do I know? Because I don't see any of this as problems at all. Neither does Chase or anyone else. We are bigger than these problems. So theoretically, they are not problems. Once you can overcome this, I assure you that you will have no problems putting all the other skills into practice.

Your other Problem as mentioned earlier is simply Fear.
The fear of being rejected. The fear of doing things wrong.
You need to conquer your fear, and understand that everything you do is for learning purpose, so it doesn't matter if you do things wrong.
There are so many girls out there, losing a few girls doesn't mean anything.

Also, Don't Compare Yourself to your friend, or anyone else. Who cares if your friend has slept with 30 girls or more?
Once you start comparing yourself with someone, you will be discouraged.
Not everyone can drive a Lamboughini, but I'm happy with just a Honda Civic. It still gets me from A to B.
You only need to hit it right with ONE girl, and your confidence will increase dramatically.
In fact, having a friend who has experience in girls is a GOOD thing. LEARN FROM HIM!
Ask him for advise, or simply just copy what he does. Model him. If he can pull 30 girls, then it won't be hard for you to learn 10% from him and pull 3 girls!
There are many other guys out there who are just as helpless as you are (or at least they think that they are helpless), and they don't even have a mentor or a friend who is good with girls. But you do, so use him!

To Summarise:
1) Believe in yourself
2) Conquer your fear, and just get out of your comfort zone and do what you must do. Copy your friend and do what he does. If he hug girls, then just hug them. You will get used to it eventually.
3) Don't compare yourself with others. But Learn from them, and improve yourself at your own time.

You can see that all the points I have mentioned above is to do with YOU and Yourself. No one else can really help you.
Only you can help yourself. These are the inner qualities of each and every human being.

I hope this helps, and good luck.

 

[jonnywishbone]

Hey Isidia, I hear your story and can relate a lot to the things you are dealing with. I think one of the difficulties with offering advice to help you is often we have to make these realisations through our own experience to really begin to change. Anyway, I'll mention a few things that have worked for me, hopefully they might give you some help...

1. Read chase's article in the blog on beating depression. This is pure gold.

2. I suffered depression for many years, but now I never experience it. This happened because I realised depression is actually "helplessness". Depression happens when we feel there is no way out, and we are in a hopeless situation. The truth is, unless we die, there is always a way out. It might not be easy, but there is always a way. Next time you feel depressed, try renaming it to feeling helpless. Ask yourself "what do I feel helpless about? what can I DO to get out of this?"

3. As Light mentioned, the other problem is fear. I used to think social anxiety was just that - anxiety. But really it is fear. The fear makes you avoid things (under the disguise of thoughts like "they won't like me", or "I'll look stupid" etc). It sounds cool though that you are getting out and about and trying things which is great. What I would watch out for is the subtle ways that anxiety works. I found that I would get into social situations but I would "hide" by not making eye contact, or just talking to people i felt comfortable with, or hiding my personality by trying to act 'cool' etc. All these things actually make it hard to connect with people, so when you think you are not connecting well it might be that you are hiding yourself. Not sure if I explained that too well, but PM me if you'd like more details.

4. ALWAYS evaluate yourself on the effort you put in, not on the outcome. I can't emphasise this enough. If you go out and say "I'm going to talk to 3 girls tonight, make eye contact, smile, and touch them gently on the arm", and that is what you do then that is all that matters. Celebrate this shit to yourself like you just won the lottery. Even if they all reject you, it doesn't matter. You will never have control over how other people react to you. All that matters is that you act in a way that YOU value. Once you set the rules in your own mind you are free to let go of what anybody else thinks about you.

Anyway, hope some of this is helpful to you, good luck and stick at it dude.

 

[Flames]

Hello Isidia,

What light said is exactly it and I can't really add much to that, but the best thing I ever read was a phrase that said something along the lines of people play roles in life, and you can change anything about your character instantly if you want to, but that sometimes people expect you in a certain role and try to keep you there.

It sound like you've been placed in a role that you in yourself don't want, and maybe either others (or yourself) are keeping you in that role.

We all get dealt certain cards in life, you need to keep the cards you like, and discard those you don't. It's the only way to end up with the hand your aiming for.