Thanks!

Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but many people are deeply irrational.

Thinking about why you’re fearful to ask her out is a way that you’re managing to avoid asking her out. Just ask her out OP. You’ll feel better afterwards.

Yes, yes you have.

Showerthoughts goes meta

Bingo! “If we make it easier for you to survive, you will become harder to take advantage of”

It’s a great idea but driving eyeballs there would be so difficult given how conservative academics can be with regard to where they prefer to communicate.

You’re a perfectly normal man who has developed a social anxiety disorder. I might say that the cause was that you were traumatized, but if so I’d qualify it by saying it was a “small t” rather than a big one. All trauma has a similar structure to it but it is useful to differentiate between ordinary and extraordinary events that cause it to happen. Anyway, totally and boringly normal. You are not a loser, just a guy whose anxiety and shame have been turned up to 11 and subsequently has become avoidant of relationships.

Anxiety is perpetuated by avoidance. The more you avoid, the more mysterious and apparently dangerous that which you avoid will appear. The way out of it is to confront your fear by (in this case) asking women you find a bit interesting out for a date. When you do this your anxiety is going to ramp up fiercely. That’s your anxious part trying to “keep you safe” just like when a dog barks at the mailman. The “mailman” (eg., women) aren’t really dangerous but your “dog” thinks they are and so will growl and put you in the mindset to run away. When this happens, tell your anxious part that he is a good boi and a good “watchdog”, but also tell him that he isn’t in possession of the facts (and how could he be? He’s just a “dog”!). Tell him you’ve got this and then follow through with the dating. It will get easier with practice.

You’ve got this OP. You aren’t weird (just anxious and ashamed like half the population of the world). You just need to push through your anxiety by doing the thing you are afraid to do.

“And it went wherever I did go!”

The problem is like the boiling frog analogy. Its never easy to get consensus on whether the latest insult is too much and so inertia holds everyone in place until its too late.

We’ve already had a legendary post occur but I don’t have a ink to the source. Can anyone help out?