I planned to do five approaches today. I didn’t. My energy was extremely low. I had slept maybe three hours the night before, accumulated stress during the day, and my body was honestly screaming for rest. So after work, I went home, ate, and ended up taking a 3–4 hour nap. I woke up around 8 p.m. Before that nap though, something important happened. While eating, I decided to remove all distractions — no phone, no music, no podcast. Just eating and being present with the meal. And I noticed how uncomfortable that was. My attention kept trying to pull me toward stimulation. Music. Videos. Anything. When I don’t distract myself, this background feeling comes up — a kind of shame, a sense of being broken. It feels old. Accumulated. Like it’s been running for years. As a kid, my parents fought constantly — every day for years. My escape became gaming 10–15 hours a day, porn, anything to numb out. That pattern of soothing through distraction stuck. And I’m starting to see that pickup has been one of those compensatory behaviors too. There’s this internal voice that pushes me to go do pickup, not always from inspiration, but from a need to feel whole. To feel like I’m progressing. Like if I get better with women, I’ll finally be okay. So tonight, when that urge came up again, I decided not to follow it blindly. Instead of getting off the metro early to go “hunt,” I told myself: no. I see where this is coming from. I’m going to the gym. I’m staying with the shame instead of trying to soothe it. That felt like a win already. When I arrived at the gym, I saw a really cute girl working out with her friends. I hesitated for about 5–10 minutes. Just sitting there, debating. Then I told myself: “As soon as I rack these weights, I’m going in.” And I did. I opened direct: “Hey, how are you doing?” The moment I approached, the stress vanished. I relaxed instantly. She was actually more nervous than I was — fumbling words, tense tone. In the past, I would’ve made that about me. “Bad opener. I’m awkward. I messed it up.” None of that happened this time.

I planned to do one approach today — and I didn’t do it. On the surface, there were practical reasons: it was snowing hard, extremely cold, Tuesday evening, very low volume of people. I maybe saw one or two girls I found attractive. But the truth is, those were just conditions my mind used to justify inaction. What actually happened was fear. I noticed that I keep waiting for the “right internal state” before approaching — some feeling of confidence, attraction, clarity, or calm. And even when I tell myself I don’t need that state and should just go anyway, my mind immediately fires back: “If you go now, it’ll be awkward. You’ll embarrass yourself. You’ll feel shame again.” At that point, I freeze. So instead of approaching, I decided to just walk around and look at girls I found interesting and stay with whatever came up in my body. And it’s always the same pattern: the moment I see a girl, fear hits instantly. No attraction. No curiosity. Just fear. When I stay present with it, the fear comes in waves — up, down, up again. During the down moments, I feel slightly more relaxed, but then it spikes again and I’m frozen, waiting for a “better emotion” to appear before I act. Another thing I noticed: my mind starts telling me the reward isn’t worth the risk. “She’s not that attractive.” “You don’t even like her.” “Why put yourself through rejection for this?” Looking at it honestly, that’s just another way fear keeps me inactive. Then there’s another layer: authenticity. If I imagine approaching anyway, my mind says: “Your opener won’t be authentic. You don’t feel attraction in your body. You’ll sound mechanical. She’ll reject you immediately.” At that point, my mind pulls up memories of past rejections, and I shut down completely. All of this traces back to one core thing: fear of rejection — and fear of being exposed as I am. There’s a deep belief running in the background that I’m broken or wrong. I noticed this especially while sitting in the metro. I saw a girl — tall, blonde, nice skirt — and I was completely paralyzed. Not because of attraction, but because of this silent belief: “I can’t approach because there’s something wrong with me.”

I had a really interesting realization today during Chinese class that felt directly connected to the course. I noticed how much of my “personality” — especially humor — is actually built on survival mechanisms. People were joking around, everyone was laughing, and I felt this spike of neediness in my body. An urge to jump in, add to the joke, be witty — not because I genuinely wanted to, but because I was afraid of disappearing. Afraid of not being seen or included. It hit me that my humor isn’t about expressing joy — it’s about securing attention and approval. It’s value-taking, not value-giving. When I questioned that, I saw the core belief underneath: “If I don’t do something — if I’m not funny, interesting, or active — I won’t be liked. I can’t just be. I need to earn love.” And everything around that is fear. As I stayed with it, my body went straight into freeze: chest tight, belly tight, facial tension. Same exact sensation I’ve noticed during approaches when I introduce longer pauses or stillness. The moment I stay present and stop compensating, the body reacts as if I’m about to get hurt — and instinct completely disappears under that fear response. So my question is about what to do with that layer. Is the work simply continued exposure — staying present inside the fear long enough for the nervous system to rewire and realize nothing bad happens? Or is there something deeper that needs to be consciously released — a belief, an attachment to identity, a need for approval — before presence can feel natural and embodied again? When I stay present and let the fear be there, I can observe it — but I also feel flat, frozen, disconnected from instinct and aliveness. It freaks girls out when I just stand there looking at them its too intense. So I’m curious where the focus should go at this stage: – staying with sensation until it resolves – gradually increasing stillness and pauses in interactions – or letting go of the need to “fix” the fear altogether I’d really appreciate clarification on what the next step is here, because this feels like I’ve hit the core of the pattern — but I want to integrate it correctly rather than turn presence into another forced technique.

I recently picked up meditation again, and combined with the awareness we talk about here, I’ve made quite a bit of progress in my social life. I’m super aware of the fear when it comes up. I don’t do that many approaches - it’s not my main focus - but my social interactions have drastically improved just from noticing. It’s honestly crazy. It’s hard to describe, but conversations just seem to flow so much better. You know that awkward feeling you can get when you’re three people in a room and one leaves? I felt that today. And the simple fact that I noticed it made it almost go away. I instantly felt my head “clear up,” and I was able to crack a joke. I also caught myself striking up a conversation with a guy working in a shop - it just came naturally. I didn’t even think about it. Right now I’m writing this in a board game café. I felt a bit bored today, so I decided to go out. I’d heard they host some events, so I wanted to go there in person and ask them. On my way there, I felt this sudden sensation - fear. They’re probably busy. Will they think I’m weird for asking? You guys know the usual. But I noticed it, and that made it manageable. I was able to ground myself pretty easily. I went in, and it turned out they were great, and we ended up chatting a bit.

Met JC Wagner at work. I said “big favor just choose all of them”. She cracked up laughing. We spoke, she use to work in bakery, she loved it. She agreed to coffee after getting out of a relationship.