PUA and artificial 'social skills' vs. Real confidence

[mattyman]

The main thing I want to point-out here, is how trying to 'fix' it can in fact be part of the problem.

What a lot of conventional advice fails to realise is that, a lot of people who describe themselves as shy, think they lack social skills for the simple reason that anxiety impairs performances. Examples would be things like mind-going blank, stumbling, accidentally interrupting, not being able to listen/concentrate etc. It is symptoms like this, that people are often wrongly accused of. A lot of such [people are absolutely fine in their element.

The question is, what is the source of inhibition, and what makes you feel awkward?
It's fairly simple, it's the UNWILLINGNESS to both a) make mistakes and b) feel nervous and have signs showing (for fear of being judged negatively). The reasons why this might be so I'll cover.

Now for some of you, particularly if you've been around judgemental assholes, or people who're hyper-critical of each and every knit-picking detail of how you interact, I cannot really blame you.

Learning silly artificial conversation flicks, pick-up routines is not the way forward, as is learning body language techniques to impress someone. This is for the very simple reason that it's buying into fear and unwillingness to feel nervous. In other words, it's encouraging a perfectionist approach.

Now, this is the part that will be relavant here. You'll often here about people who're awkward being talked-about in a highly negative light. You'll see visible signs of anxiety being described as 'acting weird', 'creepy' and so-forth. So it's no surprise that this makes the problem worse, since when one is in a situation they feel awkward, their minds focus on things like this, from which they then start to make predictions, which in turn rouses anxiety, which in turn inhibits them further.

In order to overcome awkwardness you MUST learn to be more forgiving of yourself than the society around you is. That includes not listening to the sickening ways that some people describe quieter individuals.

Real confidence is built upon realising a) it's OK make mistakes b) that the worst isn't always likely to happen (I'll make them awkward, they'll think I'm boring/creepy etc.) c) That you can handle any negative outcome you might get

By learning artificial 'social skills' you're unwilling to make mistakes. You're buying into the idea that 'I must say this, this and this right, or else I'll get rejected.' Get my drift? Chances are, if you do that if interactions do go well, you're probably walking away like you've had a near miss. The BIG DISADVANTAGE is that this approach leaves you feeling vulnerable to not performing perfectly in interactions. It's a perfectionist approach. It's not natural.

[Devil Dog]

Real confidence is built upon realising a) it's OK make mistakes b) that the worst isn't always likely to happen (I'll make them awkward, they'll think I'm boring/creepy etc.) c) That you can handle any negative outcome you might get

a, b, and c are part of PUA, a huge part of it. Let's summarize the group as "losing the fear".

This good/bad, right/wrong, black/white dogma is the main thing which holds many HA members back. There seems to be a need to polarize every issue or theory.

The fact is that there are aspects of PUA which are useful with any woman anywhere. Losing the fear is one of those things. Fear is not attractive to women in any society.

Before any of you rebut my post please read this definition and keep it in mind:

A straw man is a common type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[3] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having denied a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet inequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and to deny it, without ever having actually denied the original position.