Over the years, I just saw so many men coming to me for that same problem that I
was talking about earlier.
That problem of I can't approach a girl.
I don't know what to say.
I don't know how to build the confidence.
I came up with a strategy to help some of these guys and it's called systematic desensitization.
I'm not going to lose you yet…hang on.
It's a fancy word for basically desensitizing you to a phobia or a fear.
I didn't make it up.
It was an actual term.
It's used in CBT, which is cognitive behavioral therapy.
And this is a process that helps you baby step your way to getting over a fear of whatever.
I'll give you an example of what this looks like in a non-dating context.
Let's say you have a fear of spiders, right?
Which is called Arachnophobia.
What they would do to get you over the fear of spiders is they would expose you to spiders
and a very slow process.
For example, they would put you in a room and then there would be a box with a spider
in it.
I'll say it's a tarantula…and there would be a sheet over it.
Now you're in the room with the box and you know there's a spider in there and you get
used to that.
And then the next step after that person who's like, okay, I'm feeling good about this is
let's take off the sheet.
Now it's like, okay, you can see the spider, there it is.
And then we get you used to that.
And then after that, well, okay, let's take off the lid and now the spider could roam
free.
Let's get you used to that.
Next step is maybe let's have someone hold the spider and come up to you but stand five
feet away and then stand one foot away.
And then, okay, let's put this spider on your arm.
Okay, now let's let it crawl around.
Okay, now you can ask the spider on a date.
Okay, maybe not that part, but that's how they would desensitize you to a phobia or
fear.
So, I took that, and I applied it to helping these guys with shyness.
So, I do a very similar process.
So, let's say in my case, the end goal is not having a spider crawl on your arm, but
it's going up to a woman starting a conversation, maybe talking for five minutes, and then getting
to the point where you can ask her out.
Maybe you get rejected and maybe you don't, but you get to that point.
That would be the end point.
Our goal is to get a guy there.
So what would we do?
So, first what I have a guy do is let's just go up to a girl and say, hey, excuse me, what
time is it?
And then just walk away.
Okay, how's that?
Then I had asked the guy, I know how did that, how did that go?
How did it feel?
Depending on how scary that was, maybe we have him do it again.
Maybe we do it a lot.
Maybe.
Oh, that was really easy.
Let's take it to the next level.
Let's go up to a girl and say, excuse me, do you know where the nearest Starbucks is?
Okay, how's that?
Okay, now let's go up to a girl.
Say, hey, where's the nearest Starbucks?
And then continue conversation.
Try to continue conversation after that.
That was good.
Now let's go to a girl.
Let's give her a compliment and try to talk from there and just continue to baby step
all the way till they felt comfortable enough to go up to a girl and just start a conversation,
feel comfortable talking to the opposite sex and then asking them out and then getting
used to rejections.
And then I go through what would be called rejection therapy, where I have guys go out
and get rejected as much as they can.
So eventually you get rejected 50 times in a row and you're like, oh, wait a minute,
that's not so bad.
It's not really a big deal.
And then one a lot of guys find out is when you go out and try to get rejected and you
make it more of a numbers game and you go in and try to say talk to 50 girls in a week,
you actually don't get rejected that much.
I've had guys who have no social skills whatsoever, just talk to enough girls and they can get
a date from that because they just tried because they've put themselves out there.
I'll tell you a quick story about a recent client of mine.
I have a, a client that I have been working with for probably about two and a half months
at this point.
And this guy is a very socially awkward guy and he has extreme social anxiety.
And I remember when we were getting on the phone because we were doing phone coaching,
he would nervously laugh when we'd be talking.
And I'm a funny guy, but I'm not that funny.
Okay…and so he'd be laughing just like after everything he would say.
And it took him six weeks to just get over, not laughing nervously on the phone with me.
You can imagine how bad this guy was.
In the first week I gave him the famous line, what time is it?
Right…
Go up to a girl, ask what time it is.
Let's see how you do with that.
It took him three weeks to get to the point where he was comfortable enough to ask a girl
what time it was.
So again, you can imagine pretty severe social anxiety.
Now cut to eight weeks in, he calls me up and he goes, Trip, you're never going to believe
it.
I go, what's going on?
He goes, I'm so happy right now.
Great.
Tell me what happened.
He goes, well, I did exactly what you said.
I went up to a girl, I gave her a compliment and we talked for five minutes.
And I said, that's amazing.
And he said, I never thought in a million years I'd be able to do that.
And it gives me so much hope that this is possible for me, because I never thought that
being able to just talk to a girl would be possible.
And I was like, dude, that's incredible.
And I go, so what happened?
Did you ask her out?
And he goes, I did.
I go, what did she say? he goes, she said she's a lesbian.
And I started cracking up…I was like… but he didn't care.
That wasn't even the point.
He was still so happy.
And I think the reason why he was happy is because this guy, just for five minutes with
a conversation with this girl, he got to taste what it would be like to just feel accepted.
Caitlin, you were talking about this earlier, right?
And we have now both coming to a very similar conclusion, right?
Acceptance …and he got to experience that.
And you know, it's not the shy guys who want to feel that.
We all want to feel that we want to feel accepted, we want to feel desired, want to feel loved.
We don't want to feel judged.
And for him, because he put himself out there and he worked so hard to do it, he got to
experience what that might feel like.
That is what I think is making these guys really happy.
And then of course great byproducts of that are getting a girlfriend and having a dating
life.