Hey guys, I know there are a lot of posts on approach anxiety, but I wanted to talk about something very specific, which is approach anxiety that is caused by or exacerbated by General Anxiety Disorder (or really any form of psychological anxiety). I have a field report that I'm going to work into this which was a failure, but the important part was that I destroyed my anxiety.

First, here's a post I really like about the perspective of someone with anxiety. It's a long read, and definitely optional, but it helped me understand and give a name to my anxiety. In case it is important, I wrote this article.

So typically what happens for me is when I want to go talk to a woman I think is cute, I experience a block that stops me from saying what I was going to say. I experienced this with the first part of my FR, however it was with a coworker of hers. We're friends and they both work in the coffee shop in my work building. He and I ride the same bus. I wanted to tell him that I thought she was cute to see his reaction, since I had been getting IOIs while ordering my coffee, but wanted to determine if it was customer service, or a legitimate flirt. Before I said it, I felt a block in my chest that made me stumble over my words. I don't know how else to explain it.

I've also been chatting with a woman on okcupid and she let me know that she wanted to meet up this weekend. I realized I had to make a choice. OKC woman is roughly an HB5 and coffee shop girl is HB9. I knew I preferred HB9 because of her style, tattoos, and hobbies that we had talked about. Plus I had personal contact with her, so I wanted to get her number and have a definitive answer before committing to the weekend date. This didn't happen the way I thought it would, but that's not the important part.

Last night, I decided I had to ask her today. Being fairly stubborn, I set my mind on this task and didn't let it go. I was getting waves of anxiety knowing that I would be doing this ballsy thing (at least it is a ballsy thing for ME, being anxious all the time). All evening I was trying to hype myself out of the clenching fist, and had moderate success. However I woke up this morning with a strong feeling of anxiety. I worked to knock it down and was able to put it out of my mind.

Perhaps the most difficult part of controlling my feelings and enhancing my inner game was the fact that anytime I started thinking about things other than her, I would accidentally remember that asking her out was a thing I had to do in 45 minutes or so, and would get a small panic attack before calming down again.

What changed my feelings about this was the realization that... holy shit, I am a normal, confident dude, heading to go do a thing that normal people do. I thing this girl is cute so I want to see if we have chemistry. This isn't some big event, or pedestal. In the context of the rest of my day, the 5 minutes would be absolutely inconsequential. Further, either outcome would make me happy. If she said yes and wanted to grab coffee with me that afternoon, then I'm happy! If she said no, I wouldn't have to give a fuck anymore, and I'd be happy! That realization really is what brought me above my normal anxiety and my AA.

To be fair, it helped that we had already chatted a couple of times, so I wasn't some random stranger.

So the tl;dr/moral of the story is, that to overcome GAD AA, you just have to realize that in the story of your day, the 5 minutes you engage in conversation with someone you already feel comfortable around is going to be inconsequential to the 8 other hours of work, and the 2 hours at the gym, and the 1 hour of video games that will dominate the rest of your day. This goes along with the whole concept of not putting people on pedestals. Women are people, just like you and me. They aren't some alien race or horror film murderer. Most people are polite and nice and won't get horribly offended and loud in front of everyone. That's a relic of 5th grade anyway, and if someone does that to you, they aren't mature enough to be considered for your attention.

I hope this helps, as the realization helped me out immensely.