Are You a Shy Guy? How to Stop Being Nervous Around Girls
Being known as the “shy guy” can be bothersome, especially if you regularly feel nervous or anxious around girls. Perhaps you’ve embarrassed yourself in front of a girl in the past due to nervousness or this struggle is hurting your dating life.
Either way, you don’t have to resign yourself to being doomed to nervousness around girls for the rest of your life. There are some things you can do to overcome your nervousness around girls. Here are a few thoughts on that.
Stop Trying to Be Perfect in Your Interaction with Girls
If you’re currently struggling with how to stop feeling anxious around girls, that isn’t where you have to stay. Things can get better by taking some intentional steps towards growth.
You don’t have to accept that there’s nothing you can do to make things better. That simply isn’t true. We all fail and what we forget in our failure-phobic culture is that failure is a necessary step along the path to success.
Does a mother fault their child for stumbling or falling when they’re learning to walk? Of course not! A lot of “failure” needs to happen before success can take place. In the same way, every valuable human skill has to be learned through a series of disappointing attempts.
When fishing, if you’re not getting snagged occasionally, you’re not fishing close enough to where the fish hang out. In the same way, if you’re not getting “snagged” or goofing up from time to time, you’re not putting yourself out there around girls enough.
When interacting with girls, don’t view messing up as something that has to sink your ship. Messing up quite a bit is inevitable for everyone. Failure is really only failure if you give up. Instead, view failure as something that’s meant to perfect you rather than punish you. It tells you what to do differently next time.
Rewrite Your Script
Are you currently struggling with how to talk to girls? If so, the first temptation you’ll likely have is avoiding them altogether.
This approach is a dead end as you have to be around girls to get better at how to approach a girl as well as how to impress a girl. Identify the sneaky, self-defeating scripts that play in your head and undermine your success.
Maybe you hear, “I always make a fool out of myself around girls.” Instead, replace that thought with, “Everyone makes a fool out of themselves around girls sometimes but that doesn’t have to define me. In time, I’ll learn how to stop being shy.”
And remember this tip from Jeremy Nicholson, M.S.W., Ph.D. in his Psychology Today article entitled, “How to Reduce Dating Anxiety.”
“The unique feature of successful daters is not the absence of “dating anxiety”, but rather the ability to control it.”
Focus on the Girl Instead of Yourself
Want to take the pressure off yourself? Stop worrying so much about your thoughts and feelings. Instead, think more about the girl you want to talk with. That’s the most crucial step in learning how to get a girl to like you. They need to know you care.
It may be hard for you to see, but the girl you so badly want to interact with also has her own inherent insecurities she’s trying to work through. In fact, you might be surprised to learn an aspect you find beautiful about her is something she struggles with self-esteem issues over.
The girls you feel uncomfortable around aren’t immune to struggles. Just like you, they have their own scars they’ve dealt with, other scars they’re not sure how to heal from and much more.
Ironically, focusing on getting a girl to like you is the surest way to do just the opposite. However, staying attentive to the girl’s concerns instead of your own quite possibly could help the two of you to develop a bond.
Consider Counseling for Your Social Anxiety to Get Over Being the Shy Guy
Maybe you’ve tried all the advice you could find but you’re still wondering, “Why can’t I talk to girls?” That’s a possibility but isn’t a reason to give up hope.
It’s worth considering counseling in such cases. You’ll receive confidential encouragement and evidence-based strategies from a licensed professional about how to overcome your social anxiety.
We provide counseling in Orange County, California for a variety of challenges. Social anxiety is a more common struggle for people than you may think. You can schedule an appointment with us today to start eliminating that anxiety. The OC Relationship Center has office locations include Mission Viejo and Newport Beach.