Dealing with Fear of Rejection
del.icio.us This Pageby
Mike Pillinski
Author, High Status Male
(Drawn from this month's Reader
Mail...)
Two different guys had very similar questions about making that vexing
first contact with a woman, which I feel I was able to address with a
common answer. See what you think of this:
Hello Mike,
I recently had a visit with my therapist and she gave me some new
insights regarding my fear of rejection. She says that the
best way to overcome shyness and fear of rejection was to ask as many
women as possible out for a date, and the more I got rejected the faster
I would get over the fear. I would like to know your opinion about
this since you have been in this situation before. I tried to cold
approach this one woman I encountered at the mall, but it turns out I
just should have kept on walking and minded my own business.
~ George
Mike,
I have your book Without Embarrassment and I have just a few
questions for you. Mainly, I don't know when or where to apply the
techniques that you've described! I have never been to a bar/club
in my life, and I'm really not into that scene, so where is the place
that I can use your techniques without looking like some kind of crazy
asshole?
For example, any time that I actually muster up the guts to use a
non-verbal "let her catch me looking" technique, she ALWAYS looks away
less than 2 seconds later, which in turn makes me more nervous about
doing it again. Do you make eye contact with her for 5 seconds,
then look away for 2, then smile? Or do you smile immediately
after second 1 or what? Don't you think that women figure only
weird-o's do stuff like this?
Whenever I go to the mall, I don't see other guys even sneaking a
glimpse at the women it seems. They walk by and act too cool to
say anything, so you might understand why I feel funny trying this stuff
when no one else seems to be doing it. Also, the other thing is,
every time I see a really hot chick I'm always at a loss for words.
Now-a-days no one breaks the ice by saying, "Hello, my name is John Doe,
what's yours?" That's uncool, retarded, and just the antithesis of
smooth. So how in the world am I supposed to talk to someone I
don't even know? I understand the process involves making some
"witty or clever" remark about the current situation you are in with the
girl and including them in the comment, but I still seem to be at a HUGE
loss for how to begin. Help please!
~ Larry
George, what your therapist described for you is called
desensitization therapy -- a process whereby you keep
re-exposing yourself to a stressor that's been creating an unreasonable
fear within you in an attempt to exhaust your brain's response to it...
until you simply STOP being afraid. This can work on anything from
fear of heights or spiders, to fear of rejection -- but it takes a lot
of determination, time and effort to accomplish properly. A
program like this has to be approached as a long-term
self-improvement project that you must make a serious commitment
to achieve -- sort of like a diet & exercise push to lose 50 pounds by
Christmas. You have to start in the springtime, not November!
It's impossible to approach these sorts of things like some quick stunt
that you can pull off on a whim whenever you feel the urge to, and then
expect immediate results. This is a brutal way to attack any fear.
I'm not surprised she blew you off with this supposed "fix" though,
because women for some reason tend to disregard a man's fear of asking a
woman out on a date as a bullshit issue (I'd like to see them try
it!), and so they usually offer up simplistic sort of "just do it"
advice.
They have no concept of the life-damaging consequences of this problem!
Let me give you some different ideas that might make things easier for
you.
Look guys, the "system" that I teach in both my books for meeting women
is really more like fishing than it is hunting. By that I mean you
take steps to improve your look, style, behavior and attitude in a way
that suggests you are a guy who has something on the ball and/or is
going places in life. This all serves to elevate your "male
status" (as measured against other typical guys) in such a way as to
attract the attention of women around you. The big idea here is to
GET ONTO THEIR RADAR SCREENS and stop being so damn invisible.
This little change, this pre-recognition, can make it a hundred times
easier to take a chance on trading a few words with a girl that you
didn't know only moments ago -- as opposed to having to pull up an
enormous amount of courage in order to get up into the grill of some
chick who couldn't even care that you exist. Who needs that kind
of stress? This is supposed to be fun!
You always want to draw signals of interest from women and do it
wherever you happen to be in your daily travels, as your sort of "modus
operandi" -- rather than go trekking off on these mall missions with the
idea of staring them down with some kind of precision eye contact or
running a hypno-pattern on them like a snake charmer. In everyday
life situations, our normal "look away" reflex prevents any sort of
extended eye contact with most strangers anyway. Romantically
significant eye contact between men and women occurs mostly in
situations where a background social "pass" exists, such as at parties
and nightclubs. Otherwise it's difficult to pull off this type of
non-verbal signaling. This is one of the misunderstandings in my
book that I need to correct in future revisions as I don't think I
explained this adequately enough, and for this do I apologize.
Catching eye contact alone is not a street technique... it has to occur
in the context of you having already shown up on her radar screen.
Maybe all this stuff would be clearer if we took a step back and looked
at the entire picture in a more philosophical sense instead of being so
focused in on all this "minutia of technique". Stop and think for
a moment what you're actually doing here. You're a salesman trying
to sell a product, and that product is YOU. How best to sell any
product? Well, if you can, you offer some kind of free sample or a
test drive, right? In our case, we want to show off what our
personality is like, what sort of character or type of guy we are.
Call it a PERSONALITY SAMPLE if you will. So
whenever you're out and about and in the proximity of a cute woman who
interests you, you'll always want to be demonstrating just a little bit
of what you're like, what kind of guy you are... adventure seeker,
science nerd, tough guy, spacey dreamer, artistic / musical lover,
down-to-earth working man, harmless lovable fuzz-ball, funny-joker guy,
go-go business dude, yada, yada, yada... like that. Do it with
dress, style and attitude.
What I'm saying is... don't hide what you are all about behind some fake
persona, advertise it! "Free personality samples here... take
one!" This way you'll only draw in those women who dig your
style of guy, which are the ones who will ultimately make the best
lovers/girlfriends/wives anyway. Not some bitch who feels like she
got sold one thing and ended up with something different, and now she
wants a refund!... (and will make your life miserable until she gets it
by trying to CHANGE you into whatever she thinks you ought to be...)
Look, you can't be everything to everyone and be universally desired, it
just ain't possible. You have to select what naturally suits your
demeanor and life interests and BE that guy (the Bait), drop your hook
in the water, and see which fish come nibbling.
Those are the women that you can then take the next step in pursuing
with a lower risk of being rejected (but not zero, it's never zero).
Two additional things here: 1) there's a built-in compatibility factor
(hey, just like e-harmony! ;-) and, 2) it's EASY to be confident and
thus show off your best HSM game when you know you're shooting at
fish in a barrel... i.e., by working a girl who seems to dig
you right from the start.
"But Mike, I don't LIKE the kind of women that tend to like me...
they're all fat and ugly..." Then change your sales pitch and stop
working the bottom of the food chain!
This stuff is all under your control, so get to work experimenting and
changing and upgrading whatever about yourself that you must in order to
begin showing up on the radar screens of the types of women that you
desire. I can't give you a fashion makeover through a
string of words or put scripted dialogs in your mouth because I can't
anticipate the type of culture you live in or the situations and women
that you'll encounter. YOU have to use your own brain and work out
these types of specifics on your own. Writers like myself can only
give you guidance and offer suggestions based upon our own life
experiences. I haven't been everywhere and done everything yet
(I'm working on it), so you will need to use your own ingenuity to fill
in all those gaps that I couldn't anticipate for you.
Okay, so we showed up on her radar, now what? Next, you must be
AWARE of the signals that interested women are sending you and respond
to them appropriately. I've found that awareness is a very big
problem with a lot of guys who have limited experience with women...
they are simply clueless as to when they are being signaled by a
woman! Humans negotiate closeness by employing a large
variety of non-verbal signals, eye contact certainly being one of the
most powerful among them. But women are usually very careful only
to signal those men who really interest them, and sometimes only in
situations where people are normally socializing and feeling free to do
so (given a "pass") such as parties and clubs, as I mentioned earlier.
In these types of situations reading the eyes, timing a look-away lag,
etc. is a useful skill to have. More than that however, is
simple awareness.
Stop being such an "awareness zombie"... WAKE UP!
Alright then, if her signals seem favorable, that's the time to
try and get her number or e-mail (slam those digits right into your
cellphone memory before you forget them), a coffee date, or just offer
her your own card with some contact into on it. Here's a neat
trick: make up your own business cards (use those Avery 10-up cards)
that proclaim you as being a teaching "expert" or practitioner of
something that you're either good at or enjoy doing as a hobby.
You like to jet ski? Well... it now seems that you TEACH
jet-skiing. Lessons available... imagine that!
(And, she can have her complimentary first lesson if only she'll give
you her number...)
My own card proclaims that I'm a freelance writer and web designer.
I only write for myself of course and don't really market these
services, but the mousey little bookworm types that I dig are impressed!
You fly light airplanes? Scenic rides available! Are you a
great swimmer? Swimming lessons, personal tutoring available.
Like to workout? Personal training, first lesson free. Of
course, all this stuff is only available if you happen to be a hot
chick! The old fat guy who wants to learn salsa dancing and ran
across one of your cards on a public billboard is in for a rude
surprise. (I hope!...)
What I'm trying to say is, be proud of whatever you are and use
it to build up your apparent male status via a style and attitude
projection that's uniquely yours... and start getting noticed.
Don't be one of these wishy-washy, "I-don't-know-what-I-want-from-life"
sort of dopes that floats through life bouncing along aimlessly like a
turd through a sewer pipe. Use you head, have a goal, get some
purpose and determination and get to work solving whatever social
problems that you are currently experiencing. Use some of these
ideas I'm presenting to develop a work-around for whatever you feel your
current personal shortcomings might be.
Let me also make it clear that when I talk about doing any of these
things I mean it within the context of repeated exposure, not
this instant pick-up crap. Forget about trying to deliver some
kind of super-clever "pick-up" rap to a stone-cold stranger out on the
street, this idea is royal bullshit for most of us who aren't already
Naturals. Guys who possess a naturally smooth rap with girls just
generally flirt with women very flagrantly anywhere and everywhere they
find them and FORCE a reaction out of them -- there are no "secret
words" to practice in front of a mirror that can turn any old schlep
into an instant player. It takes a clear head, courage, and an
awareness of the effect you're having on the people around you, and how
you appear to them (self-image).
Think I'm kidding? Then really stop and consider the entire notion
of the cold approach for a moment. What you're trying to do is
"stun" some girl who is a perfect stranger into feeling enticed enough
by your sudden appearance to agree to some immediate get-together or a
date in the near future. She's got to be willing to TRUST that
you're not some slick-talking psycho (or just a plain old needy
pain-in-the-ass desperado), and either agree to give you her contact
info or agree to accompany you somewhere RIGHT THAT MOMENT.
Wow!... that's a tall order. And how do you plan to go
about stunning her? With your GQ looks? Great physique?
Or maybe you're a famous movie star and you can just stun her by showing
up. Most of us are just average Joe's who don't have any
super-special qualities that can attract women to us like flies.
We need to work at it in a more gradual sense.
What I'm getting at here is that you will most likely have to grind
them down slowly with repeated exposures to your personality sample
before you can begin to see those precious signs of return interest that
we're looking for -- which is why your best chances are always going to
be found in situations like school, work, neighborhood bars, local
restaurants, etc. where you have an opportunity to build a connection
over the course of several encounters. It's all about showing up
on her radar, establishing a connection, building trust, and most of all
MODELING the types of behaviors (upbeat, sexy, flirtatious, joking,
etc.) that you want the girl to REFLECT back to you. She will pick
up on your vibe, and if she runs with it then you know you've got a nice
little bite on your line, right?
This, my friends, is how the game is best played Without Embarrassment!
(Sorry, I couldn't resist!)
And now, one final wildcard in regards to receiving that return
GO signal: sometimes you won't get one EVEN IF SHE'S INTERESTED IN YOU!
That's right, after all I've just told you, you've sometimes just got to
go ahead and act in the complete absence of these precious signals if
you really want a shot at that ONE particular girl that you've
missile-locked on. I've talked to many of my friends about
this who tell me that their current girlfriend or even wife continued to
give them the cold shoulder UNTIL THEY ACTUALLY ASKED HER OUT...
then (to their amazement) not only did she agree but did so
enthusiastically! As in, "why did it take you so long to ask
me out, you dummy?".
I believe this happens because pushing through a chick's apparent
disinterest is a TEST that a lot of them run to see who the really
interested guys are, AND which ones have enough balls to muster up the
courage to make that scary first social move! They're not REALLY
interested in you unless you can pass this unannounced test.
Cute, eh?
This means that, regards of the "rules", sometimes you just have to
throw caution to the wind AND GO FOR IT ANYWAY! This, my
friend, is the wacky and unpredictable world of women... and why you can
never really know just how close to scoring you ever actually are until
you open up your mouth and find out. Maddening, I know, but
that's the checkerboard we're playing on.
Mike Pillinski
High Status Male
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About the author:
Reformed "social nerd" Mike Pilinski overcame an incredible case of rejection phobia by learning how to mimic behaviors and attitudes that women universally find attractive in so-called high status or "alpha" males. Visit Mike's website High Status Male where you'll find his highly acclaimed e-books "Without Embarrassment: The Social Coward's Seduction System" and "She's Yours For The Taking: A Man's Guide to the Seduction and Enchantment of Women".