Hey I have a question. And I hope you have an answer. This is a question about a struggle I have faced and anyone else who is in the same boat as me, so if you're here looking for a witty response to a miscellaneous(holy shit I spelled that right? Fuck yeah!) text that will ensure you a lay then kindly press the backspace button. But you want to offer support or read about a struggle of an odd person in a sea of oddities to provide insight perhaps, then press on, good sir. I tip my hat to you.

But first let's fill you in on my background with the PUA community. It's minimal. All I've done was read plenty, listen plenty, never open strangers, but in a way this has helped me. I'm a refined nerd and now have the ability to attract (most) girls if I put in an effort to and make friends with relative ease. And as I became more confident, I hit plateus. How the fuck do you spell plateus? But these plateaus I did not overcome. I never hit my goal of landing my one-it is and never had the confidence to go out and meet new people on the streets, complete strangers at least. Not hot nor ugly. This I faced and more. And so when I hit my first plateau, I felt utterly helpless. With no help from my friends (they're all (mostly) AFC's) I kept felt myself failing to scale this roadblock and proceed on with my social life. This hit me hard. It sent me into a depression (I was previously depressed with my social inadequacy prior to stumbling upon this community). By the way you are all awesome and if you were girls, I'd go so far as to say that you might be cool enough for me to drop negs. But back to my story. The gist of it is I relapsed into depression, feeling completely socially inadequate and uncomfortable in my own skin. As the time of this depression pressed on, I find alternate methods of pleasure as opposed to social interactions, mainly video games and food (I recently stopped playing starcraft 2 because pussy trumps it in my book. Also I gained a lot of weight). This is fine at first, but as I find myself feeling more and more distant from society as I huddle in my cave of a bedroom and proceed to destroy Protoss n00bzorz, I begin to feel my social skills slipping away from me. All the "game" and self confidence and superior social skills seem to hide like a little bitch in the back of my brain. I begin to start to wonder if I'll ever get them back and as more time passes, my hope dwindles from a motherfucking forest fire to the dim light of a candle. I search my brain for the confidence I had recently obtained with this shitty light and cannot find it.

But then everything changes. But first I feel my confidence is so shot that I don't go out and meet new people nor do I call my friends, in fact I am feeling so inadequate that I bitchslap the fuck out of my phone when my friends ring and make excuses in my head. "Ok so if they ask" my metaphoric pussy seems to utter "I lost my phone. Yeah, that's it, I just lost my phone and they'll have to forgive me because I'm their friend… right?" I unconvincingly tell myself. That's how fucking bad it is. I lose faith in myself, but most importantly faith in my ability to maintain relationships. But it all changes when something happens, and this always happens. Somehow by fortunate events, a girl would appear in my life, and I would talk to this girl, feeling inadequate, but slowly feeding my confidence as I notice more and more positive reactions from her. "I'm fucking awesome" I begin to say to myself. And in truth I am. I'm fucking awesome. So awesome that in fact, reach into your pants right now. You feel that sticky residue? That's your jizz.

All in all, I gain my confidence back, somehow my social skillz re-emerge, but as a downside I find I have to conquer my approach anxiety to friends of friends and the unknowns as well as my disability of placing beautiful women on pedestals in my mind. This is a problem. And this has happened to me on more than one occasion. I'm actually recovering from this depression now and can proudly say that I'm currently fucking awesome. I'm no prophet, so I don't know if this is going to happen again, but I'm really hoping it doesn't. Because when it does, I consider investing in a stool and strong rope.

And that leads me to my question: Does this happen to anybody else? Have you heard anyone else having this issue? Or am I just a freak? Support or suggestions would be great. Antidepressants? Smoke more weed? Hell, toss me a fucking bone because I need support of people who are awesome just like I.

I'm an avid video game player. If you played WoW at all, I'd gladly link you my armory - I have the insane title and shit. I've been massively addicted to games since I was like 2-3 when my grandfather introduced me to mario.

That said, I do feel your pain on some level.

On the other hand, I think of myself as awesome. Your problems sound like they come from self-limiting beliefs, whereas I don't have any self-limiting beliefs, so how can I accept that you're awesome like me?

I'm not trying to put you down, I'm jokatively saying... how can you honestly go up to anybody and say "I'm awesome!" followed by "Too scared to approach girls!"?

That is, it seems your interest in 'game' picks up when you meet a girl. You want to know all the right things to say and exactly how to act, so 'game' is useful. At the same time, you still have one-itis - you're putting her up on the pedestal and it sounds like you're looking for an LTR and not a lay.

Whether things work out or not, 'game' is no longer useful. You don't need 'game' to keep an LTR going, and you don't need 'game' to be single (if you aren't proactively looking for a lay), so your interest in 'game' disappears. Without that interest, you return to previous status quo and go back to doing what you were doing previously - gaming/whatever other hobbies/interests you might have had.

The answer is simple but there's no get-rich-quick scheme to it. You need to realize what you want and commit to that. You want to game? Then you're at the right place, but nobody here can game for you. You can know all the wittiest lines in the world; you can INVENT all the wittiest lines in the world - but if you refuse to approach strangers, where's your game? It's like you're a hermit GM of chess, but refuse to ever play anybody - nobody will know how 'awesome' you are, my man.

Once you realize what you want - is it 'game', an LTR, or just doing whatever whenever? If you want to 'game' you need to pick that up. It doesn't need to be all day every day but you need to be able to approach strangers - hit up the newbie mission. I've seen people bitching that the newbie mission was too hard, and I've seen other people arguing that it couldn't get easier.

If the newbie mission is too hard, start even slower. The way I started was saying hi to people that OTHER PEOPLE in my position say hi to - security guards at my campus, the clerk in my local convenient store, etc - I just walked by and (IF THEY'RE LOOKING) said "Hey!" If they weren't looking, I didn't pursue.

Once I got more used to saying hi to clerks/security guards, I started saying hi to people I saw who definitely wouldn't be a dick to me (Faculty in a school/university, for example, will probably just assume you're a student they forgot they had). This can also work with, say, general staff at a mall (Like janitors and shit). People PAID to do their job, basically, but I mean in particular those who don't see a lot of socializing who will be a bit harder to approach.

Then try the newbie mission. Baby steps are baby steps, but if you refuse to even do that, what's next?

Well, if you utterly refuse to attempt to overcome your AA, you're not going to be able to 'game'. In my opinion, you don't need 'game' to forge real friendships/relationships (I think some people might disagree, but my grandparents have been married 50+ years without 'game' so I'll stick to my guns on this one). If you don't want to 'game' and just want to learn how to 'manipulate' (much more useful general skill, can be applied to LTR's and friendships - 'game' is technically short-term manipulation) then you might want to try somewhere that helps deal in manipulation of friendships.

If LTR's aren't your deal, than what is? You're having these waves of "I'M THE MAN" followed by "I'M SHIT" because you're just taking the flows of life, brother. One day you HAPPEN to meet a cute girl or whatever, and YOU'RE THE MAN, and maybe you guys date and break up or it never works out or whatever, and you're back to OH I CAN'T APPROACH STRANGERS SHIT.

You gotta break that cycle and frame for your own life, man.

Hi, I think i know what you mean and i think i have experienced a similar sort of thing (and by the way im by no means an expert).
But what your experiencing i think maybe to do with your ego, i know alot of people have mentioned this alot on this website.

First of all the fact you cant approach strangers shows your ego is low and you fear that you cant take regection as you will be worthless. However you shouldn't let external stimulus's effect your own self worth, you control you, no one else in this world.

Secondly this high then low situation maybe also because of the ego, to start of with you feel inferior in some area (pick up, so did most people on this forum at some point) so you learn the stuff get good now all of a sudden you feel superior and its like wow you know what im a genuis and im great....However when your in this sort of state of mind theres no middle ground so one knock or sometimes even one bad thing happens and boom your right back at the bottom again or even worse.

So what im trying to say is you should learn to say to words FUCK IT and let it go you are the same guy when you were feeling superior however your thoughts are changed....... you are not your thoughts.... you and you alone control your thoughts no one else, you shouldnt let your thoughts control you.. focus on the postive ones.

I can help you with that. Write on personal if you're interested.

_________________
Test out my new Approach Anxiety technique, that eliminates your AA
in UNDER an hour (2022 updated)

You can try it here Here: New AA Cure

Dude it's not at all uncommon, I have that and still do relapse sometimes but each time a little less severe and I quickly bounce back.
We all have up and downs, relapses to old habits. Do not smoke weed or any other drugs for that matter of fact. I believe game is still in you, it's not something you can just simply shed, like a bicycle it just might be a bit rusty now.
Work on your inner self. Go to gym, complete tasks that you feel is right. I also suggest you envision things happening, ie positive thnking (see yourself laying that girl you want to approach next).
Spend 5 mins a day analysising yourself in the mirror, talking to yourself, be honest. But learn to love your deficits and say " this is who i am and i accept that, if other people can't they can f off". Self perception is key.
From my experience this has helped me greatly. And lastly but most importantly, try to block out self-destructive thoughts. Practice that everytime you start hearing those negative voices of your conscience, I think that is the single most crucial thing I had to overcome before I improved.

Hope this helped.