Why You Have Approach Anxiety (and How to Fix It)

You’re at a friend’s party. It’s crowded but out the corner of your eye, you see a woman you find attractive. What do you do?

If you’re like most guys, you either:

1. Have heart palpitations, act nervous, and don’t go talk to her
2. Shove it down and forget feeling attraction

If you feel like you’re the only person on Earth who’s experienced this, don’t. Approach anxiety is a universal feeling and state that affects most people, especially men at any stage in their life.

At the end of this post, you’ll come away with knowledge on how to overcome and deal with the problems of approach anxiety.

Whether you’re in your early 20s or even early 50s, no age is too late to defeat approach anxiety.

Note: Unstoppable Rise is not a dating advice site. However, approach anxiety is a problem that affects people (especially men) from living the life that they want to, therefore it’s worth talking about.

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What is Approach Anxiety?

Approach anxiety is exactly what it sounds like: feelings of apprehension when approaching a particular individual. This could be an attractive person, your boss, or even the person behind the counter at your local coffee shop. Regardless of who it is, they all revolve around the same feeling of “constriction“.

Approach anxiety dampens your true personality and stops you from truly expressing yourself.

How Does Approach Anxiety Affect Me?

Approach anxiety affects different people in different ways, but they all revolve around a core of limitation and restriction.

Psychologically, it feels like you’re bounded in chains. Physically, this can be seen in restricted body movements and a feeling of being “stifled”. If you’ve ever been one of those guys at a bar or club who looks on at all of the beautiful women on the dance floor unable to jump in, you’ve certain felt it.

But it’s not just with women. Approach anxiety can:

• Prevent you from asking others for help when you really need it
• Keep you from having an important conversation with your boss (like about a raise)
• Make you not go to a professor’s office hours for extra assistance if you’re in school
• Keep you stuck in a lower state of existence where things are just “hard”

At its worst, approach anxiety manifests as debilitating social anxiety and can prevent you from even leaving the house.

All in all, you live a fraction of your potential when you have severe approach anxiety. And of course, this is no way to live.

Why Does This Happen?

Approach anxiety is a ball of yarn with multiple strings and unraveling it can be quite a task.

It’s not my job to do that and dive into your past (more the work of a therapist) but I’ll bring up some of these “threads” so that they’re in your awareness. Once you’re aware about them, you can decide what course of action you should take.

Your Conditioning

During the socialization process, many of us are taught how to act in the world. This comes from a combination of our parents, peers, teachers, authority figures, and media.

Some people may have had all of these forces on their side. They may have been physically gifted, smarter than everyone else, or physically attractive leading these people to treat them better than someone who did not have these things.

Some people may have had all of these forces against them, leading to bullying in different forms.

In addition to that, some guys may not have been taught how to be strong and were instead taught “nice guy” type behavior, implying that asserting themselves is wrong.

Whatever the case may be, everyone’s conditioning is different and all of these factors will create the mindset of the individual.

Wrong Mindsets

Following this conditioning, you may have the wrong mindset when it comes to people and as a result – life.

Your psychology is everything in life and if you haven’t be taught how to have a strong mindset, everything else you do will come up short.

You may have been told that everyone who looks better than you, has a better job than you, or has done more than you needs to be bowed down to.

Of course this mindset is going to create approach anxiety. Why wouldn’t it?

Lack of Exposure

The last reason could just be you lack exposure and experience with people who are seemingly high status.

There are many guys who spend all their free time in solitary activities such as video games, watching television, etc. and don’t interact with their peers in high school and or college settings.

This of course is going to lead to anxiety and lead to acting “weird” around people (AKA “loser type behavior“.

Over time, you can change this through repeat exposure (more on that soon).

How to Get Rid of Approach Anxiety and Overcome It (6 Actionable Tips)

There is only one real way to overcoming approach anxiety and that’s to face it head on. You’ll just need to get over the fear of rejection and stop seeking validation from people, which involves developing masculine confidence. Depending on your situation, you may want to use some or all of these tips.

1. Reframe Your Situation

When you’re suffering from approach anxiety, it’s very easy to for you to believe that you’re “on the backfoot”, like you’re trying to swim upstream.

Well, that’s one way to look at it.

Another way to look at it can be as an opportunity for you to exercise courage and get stronger by starting a conversation. You see, tough situations make people better. Without the chance to overcome a situation, people don’t grow. In this case, this situation is good, even great.

This process is known as “frame control” and is one way to gain control of your life. You feel so good when you do this.

Implementation: Start looking as your approach anxiety in a new light. View it as a way to become stronger from facing your fears.

2. Get Grounded

The psychology behind approach anxiety involves too much “up in your head” thinking, not enough self and body awareness. The opposite? Getting grounded in the present moment.

In the present moment, there’s no time to analyze, ruminate or project. There is only action. There is only “this”.

Think of anxiety as a leaf in the air. it goes wherever the wind takes it. Then think of groundedness as an oak tree in the ground. It’s solid, it remains rooted. It is present.

Be the oak, not the leaf.

Implementation: Anything that puts you in your body rather than your head is perfect for getting grounded. Think of things like yoga, meditation, cold showers, lifting weights, hard cardio – anything physical is good. Even a walk helps. This is part and parcel of what is known as “inner game“.

3. Gain More Reference Experiences

The theory goes that the more someone is exposed to a particular stimulus, they will develop resistance to it over time (up to a point). In a psychological setting, this is known as “systematic desensitization” and is the root of exposure therapy.

With regards to social and/or approach anxiety, the more you exposure yourself to the cause of your anxiety, the more resistance you will gain to it.

This can be anything from public speaking, to talking to someone at work, or approaching a woman at a party. There’s a chance that some of these situations will go badly but there’s a big chance that many of them will go well. The more you do those things, the more comfortable you will be with them.

As Emerson said: “do the thing and you will have the power”.

Implementation: Find opportunities to gain experiences where you have things go right in your favor in regards to your anxiety. Your subconscious mind creates a “filing system” of sorts where you can draw upon experiences that assert your view of reality. The more times you approach someone and it goes well, the more subconscious “wins” you collect. This alone can change your personality.

4. Have Something to Bring to the Interaction

Part of the reason why someone may feel anxious to approach someone is because they view them as having “higher status” than them. They may be “cool”, more attractive, or seemingly have a lot more things going for them in comparison to the person having the anxiety. The person with approach anxiety may believe they have nothing to offer.

But if you’ve been living life and doing things, you always have something to offer. You may have traveled to far off places, worked in a cool career, or just have interesting life experiences. This is the “spice” you bring to the interaction and it only comes from you.

Implementation: If you’ve been constantly doing things, it’s very possible that you have a reservoir of experiences to draw upon. As mentioned in #3, you build confidence from doing things. Why not bring that confidence to an interaction? If you do, people will always be interested in what you have to say.

5. Frequently Push Your Limits

In self-improvement, the mindset is to constantly challenge yourself to grow. Meaning, you consistently push what you consider your “baseline” to higher levels. This goes for all areas: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

How does this relate to approach anxiety? When you start to do things that are hard, that create a lot of fear, that are uncomfortable, you do two things:

1. You get used to doing uncomfortable things
2. You create self-esteem which comes from self-efficacy

These things can be enough alone to shatter approach anxiety. When you wake up at 5am and go for a multi-mile run every day, how is that going to seem in comparison to approaching someone?

Implementation: Find ways to challenge yourself in all areas of life. Expose your weaknesses. Do things that you aren’t comfortable with.

6. Therapy + Medication

I wanted to leave this for last because in many cases, it’s not necessary. Many guys would be best served in just facing their fears head on and gaining exposure to/with them. However, if you have an irrational, debilitating case of anxiety this may very well be at the top of the list.

When you meet with a therapist, they may or may not decide to put you on some sort of medication. Medication can be a great tool to temporarily overcome anxiety on a neurochemical level, while you get other lifestyle essentials in place.

Implementation: If you have really bad anxiety, be open to the possibility that you may need therapy and/or counseling. A therapist can help walk you through your fears/subconscious programming. As a last resort, a therapist may decide to put you on medication. BetterHelp is a great place to start.

Conclusion + Wrapping Up

After a while, you will start to see that approach anxiety is a mental and psychological issue created by feelings of unfamiliarity and unconscious conditioning. In conquering approach anxiety, the goal is to challenge that conditioning and expose your weaknesses.

I won’t lie, it’s not fun, it’s not like sitting on the couch on a weekend watching movies – but it does provide a sense of vitality to your life.

Once you make the unfamiliar familiar, your life opens up in new ways that can’t be explained in a simple article.

So now I want to hear from you: how are you dealing with approach anxiety if you have it? Sound off in the comments.