A famous line from Mystery, is that we have been evolutionarily hard-wired to fear the approach. The thesis of this post is that this idea is absolute bull-shit, and has no scientific backing. While its true that if a cavemen steps out of line and talks to the wrong girl, he can be killed or kicked out of the tribe, it is actually irrelevant to modern-day approach anxiety.

Before I can talk about how to remove approach anxiety so that it never, ever comes back (this is how my life is), I need to lay down a few scientific facts right out of my Psychology 101 textbook.

Principle 1:
Behavioral psychology states that all behaviors and emotions are learned. Cognitive psychologists would say that improper feelings, behaviors, motives are a result of improper thinking.

Principle 2:
Classical conditioning. Do you know what classical conditioning is? It is learning through association. Here's a famous example from an experiment once conducted by Ivan Pavlov: A dog is shown a bowl of food, and salivates. This happens several times. This means that the unconditioned stimulus (US) is the food, and the unconditioned response (UR) is the salivation. Next, imagine that every time the dog is shown the food and salivates, a bell is rung in the background. After enough experimental trials, the dog will salivate to the bell, even if no food is shown.

So how does classical conditioning apply to the learning of approach anxiety? Hint: The whole "caveman theory" only may contribute to the learning of approach anxiety. Just as we learned AA, we can unlearn it. It is NOT hardwired into our system.

First of all, when we do our first approaches as "PUA"s (although that's such a phony term), chances are we fear rejection. Most people do not want to face their fears. So, our body produces fear as a part of our fight-or-flight response in our brains. This can be traced back to our Amygdalas, also known as "fear central" in the human brain.

What happens is, eventually we get a few (or many, in my case) solid approaches under our belt, but approach anxiety is still there, whether strong or not. Remember, classical conditioning? And the cognitive-behavioral view of psychology? But even though our thinking has been corrected (we KNOW, rationally, that an approach cannot hurt us. We've done hundreds and are fine), we still feel that approach anxiety. This is because it has been hard-wired into us after so much prevalent fear.

Ever notice that the first approach is the toughest, while the rest of them for that day/time-period are easy and free-flowing? If this isn't the case for you, chances are it is for somebody else reading this. This is because we un-learn our fear response. However, when the night/day is done, and you go back to do more approaches the next time you're out, that anxiety comes back. That is because the AA was temporarily reduced/un-learned the first day, but not the second day.

The goal here is to un-learn approach anxiety completely. So what IS learning? Well, what happens is that the neurons (cells) in our brains form connections. This goes for any skill, technique, instrument, hobby, habit, that we do. ANYTHING. Even humor. When we have approach anxiety, the connections re-form and get stronger. When we over-come approach anxiety, the connections "prune" and become less dense/powerful.

"Overcoming" approach anxiety is one thing. Getting rid of it is another, and can take a while. What you must do is not think about your approach. You simply have to go in. You have to remember every single time that your approaches went well, and be totally indifferent to the odd times that it didn't. You need to truly feel that you are higher value. You need to unwaveringly believe that she will respond well. Also, you've gotta go out. Just do it. Word to Nike.

Don't buy into that sh*t that approach anxiety is evolutionarily designed. Even if it was, so what? You can un-evolve. Humans are highly adaptable creatures, and we can easily overcome and defeat our outdated emotional system. Truth is, when you are so certain that you have value--- that you're offering value to her, that you are a total, awesome boss, you have nothing to be scared about. And after enough time of believing it, collecting reference experiences to support you beliefs, you start to really kick ass out there in the field.

ENJOY!