I am a college student. I am not too bad at talking to women but I have a lot of trouble with initiating interaction. If I can't initiate, then all my other skills are moot, so I am working on my approach. Friday night I went to a dance party (dark room, lots of grinding) and found myself crippled with AA. I was walking laps around the dance floor just to have something to do and to scope out prospective girls. Almost automatically I would leave every five minutes and just chill in the bathroom so as not to deal with my anxiety.

After being stuck in this loop for 20-30 minutes, I decided to give myself a goal. I had to ask five different girls to dance that night. I was to give no thought to the outcome, only the number of attempts. This mindset was immensely transformative.

I asked an HB7 to dance, she said yes. We started grinding and about 15 seconds in, she launches away from me to go embrace a friend who just arrived. I brushed it off and was happy that my attempts score increased to 1. I took another bathroom break to pull myself together. I should have just moved on to the next girl, but I was happy enough at having worked up the courage to ask that girl to dance.

I returned to the party and found a HB6, who turned me down. This did not bother me, my score just increased to 2. Shortly after I make an attempt with a HB7, who claims she has a boyfriend. No worries, I'm at 3/5. It was becoming a game to me. My goal was not "fuck a HB10." Baby steps... my goal was instead "just make some attempts." Every rejection only came after a success of having asked in the first place. That's two steps forward and one step back in my book. A net gain.

Finally, I see a HB6, I ask her to dance, and she says sure. Immediately she was into me, holding my hands while grinding, a clear IOI since most girls just keep them at their hands at their sides. As we're getting our groove on, I twirled her in toward me and went for the kiss. We made out for a while and kept dancing. Eventually I asked her to come back to my place, but she said all of her friends were still at the party and that maybe she would later. I made sure to dance so her back is toward her friend group so she stops looking over at them/ telepathically communicating.

Throughout, we exchanges small talk and I stayed a little cocky but nice, poking fun playfully at her attachment to her friends. Eventually I again proposed we leave, this time she noticed most of her fiends had gone and one of them was also dancing with a guy, so she was ready. I took her back to my room and got to second base (I feel like a high schooler saying that). I obviously would have liked to go farther with her but going from pacing the floor like an anxiety-ridden lunatic to having a topless girl licking my abs is a major improvement.

TL;DR- Turn approach into a game. Set a goal for yourself denoting how many girls you want to talk to. Don't worry about the success of each encounter, you gain more from overcoming AA than you lose from an awkward interaction. Without an approach, there is nothing.