How To Deal With Embarrassment

I’m walking through the park, looking for girls to approach on my daily lunch outting. I walk up to this girl sitting at a table eating.

“Hi. I was just heading back to work and I wanted to come say hi.”

“I’m married,” she says with a bit of a snarl.

“My name’s Eric,” I say. I’m not really into married girls, but I’m just being friendly.

“I’m married!” she says really loudly, just below a yell.

I notice other people in the viscinity turn and look at what’s going on.

“Cool,” I say and turn and walk away.

Immediately the affects of embarrasment take hold. I start to blush. A cheap, fake grin comes over my face. My blood pressure starts to rise. I just want to hide, not be there. I just want to get away.

As the day progresses, I notice that I’m beating myself up over it. It’s that same feeling I get when I say or do something stupid in a social situation, when a make a faux paus. Like when I do something inappropriate.

“Why didn’t I notice the wedding ring?” I say to myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I think

It’s a gnawing, ruminating feeling. It is no longer embarrassment. I’ve allowed the embarrassment to turn to shame.

In the past few months, its been a project of mine to understand the rejection, embarrassment, and humiliation that can accompany a pickup. It is something that inevitably we all feel and must deal with.

Embarrassment is social emotion that evolved us to function in social situations. When you accidentally spill a drink on your friend’s girlfriend, it’s a positive thing to act embarrassed. It shows you care.

However, the fear of embarrassment has many times stopped me from doing a pickup. Picture a crowded subway platform. There are twenty people around within earshot of your pickup. The stakes are much higher because you don’t want to feel that uncomfortable embarrassment.

Embarrassment can be understood as the opposite of social confidence. The confident alpha guy absorbs the spotlight, enjoys being seen. Being comfortable with being seen is part of being alpha.

When you are embarrassed you want to hide.

It is important to learn to accept the possibility of embarrassment and learn how to best deal with it. I have two suggestions.

The first is probably one of the most important things I’ve learned about pickup and about becoming more alpha.

If you get embarrassed, there is really very little you can do to avoid the symptoms. Your body reacts to the situation. You cannot control it. You cannot make yourself not feel embarrassed just as you cannot make yourself feel embarrassed.

But what you can do is stop it from turning into shame. If you get embarrassed, accept the feeling. Allow yourself to feel embarrassed. The best thing I’ve found is to be internally silent at this point. Don’t look back over the pickup to see what you did wrong right now. There will be time for that later. You will not forget the details of this.

Your body is in an aroused phsysiological state right now. The feeling should last maybe about five minutes, ten minutes tops. Most of the time, your body will be fully calmed within 15 minutes. All that physiological arousal will have passed. After that, you will be in a different state, both physically, mentally, and emotionally.

It is at that point that you need to congratulate yourself for doing something very very good. You put yourself out there. You approached and it didn’t go well. That’s excellent! Yes, it’s good to look back over the approach and figure out what you could have done better. But make sure that first and foremost you are congratulating yourself for even doing it.

Because if you allow yourself to feel bad at this point, if you allow this “failure” to turn to shame, your next pickup will be affected. Conversely, if you can just blow it off at this point, if you can say fvck it, I’m not going to feel bad, your next approach will be that much easier.

Part of being outgoing, being extroverted and being a socially confident guy, is being willing to take risks and learning to be desensitized to when things don’t go so well. Stop ruminating on failure!

The second important thing you can do, is act confident once you become embarrassed. Stand tall, walk slowly away.

On the approach, Pickup 101 teaches a “fake it till you make it” approach. You learn the mechanics of confidence and how to act confident, regardless if at the moment you arent’ confident. You can still act confident even if you are nervous, even if you have anxiety. Eventually your body will become more comfortable with approaching.

The same can be applied to embarrassment (and rejection as well). If you become embarrassed, you may not be able to stop yourself from feeling embarrassed, but you can still act confident. You can eliminate low-status behavior as you walk away from that “failed” approach. Pretty soon you will find that you are less susceptible to embarrassment.

Embarrassment will no longer be something to be feared and avoided. You’ll be able to place yourself into more situations where you risk embarrassment and become less sensitized to it.

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posted in Embarrassment and Rejection