Yet more NLP BS

[microdot]

It's not rude, it's light hearted...

Try telling that to someone suffering from lung cancer as a result of passive smoking and see how light hearted they think it is.

 

[Stray Cat]

Try telling that to someone suffering from lung cancer as a result of passive smoking and see how light hearted they think it is.

Got any evidence that passive smoking is responsible for the lung cancer?

 

[microdot]

Got any evidence that passive smoking is responsible for the lung cancer?

 

[Stray Cat]

I'll take that as a no then?

And now tell me why "someone suffering from lung cancer as a result of passive smoking" would be in a smoking area!

 

[microdot]

And now tell me why "someone suffering from lung cancer as a result of passive smoking" would be in a smoking area!

And why wouldn't they?

 

[fuelair]

What do you think of these two characters:

Ross Jeffries, whose website is speedseduction.biz
Kenrick Cleveland, maxpersuasion.com

The first one claims to be able to hypnotize any woman into bed by using hypnotic patterns full of embedded commands (ericksonian hypnotic suggestions), which will describe a state (like arousal, for instance) and then link it to yourself by means of an anchor (if i understand correctly, the "anchor" has its origin in pavlovian psychology). I've looked through some forums and found guys claiming to have "created a hypnotized sex slave by using Speed Seduction", and stuff like that. Sounds like BS, but the reasoning behind it is quite clever.

The second guy has applied the same principles to sales. He has some videos on youtube where he's setting an "amnesia anchor" and his products claim to be able to destroy any objection from costumers, etc, etc.

The two nlp-spawns need debunking. What do you guys think?

The first objection a salesman "destroys" is when I halt listening and leave.

 

[microdot]

The first objection a salesman "destroys" is when I halt listening and leave.

Sorry, I don't quite understand - which of your objections specifically is it that the salesman "destroys" when you halt listening and leave?

 

[MikeSun5]

It's not rude, it's light hearted...

I heard a comedian say this bit once:

ANNOYED PERSON: "Excuse me, but your cigarette smoke is bothering me."
SMOKER: "Yea, well it's killing me."

I don't smoke, but I say live and let die. If you don't like smoke, stand upwind.

Anyway, to get back on topic...

Well, the standard model for that would be what is known as the fast phobia cure.

The "fast phobia cure" is not mentioned on your website, so I looked it up on another NLP website. I'm amazed that people believe in this stuff. Here are the four three steps (I like how it starts with zero ):

STEP ZERO: Calibrate to phobic response. You need the client to be able to have a phobic response there and then. There is no point doing the Fast Phobia Cure on experience which doesn't make the client phobic.

STEP ONE: Get client to see a black & white image of themselves JUST BEFORE having a phobic response.

STEP TWO: Get the client to imagine stepping out of themselves and going to a nearby safe place. Traditionally, this is the projection booth in the theatre. Allow them to watch black & white movie.

STEP THREE: Step back into self at the end of movie, re-add critical submodality colour and run backwards.

It's just that simple!

I'm going to have to refer to JFrankA on this one. How in the hell do you "get" the client to do any of that stuff? I guess I just don't see how "getting a client" to imagine themselves jumping in and out of black and white/color movies would make your hypothetical patient want to swim.

Seriously, that stuff sounds as far fetched as the blue green crystal therapy idea.
I mean, "re-add critical submodality colour and run backwards." What in the hell IS that?? Is that trying to remove the client's fear of swimming, or just replace it with severe confusion?

 

[Lothario]

Hex no. One of the reasons I left Europe is all the bubbles in everything.

Most of the bubbly drinks we have here are courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company

The "fast phobia cure" is not mentioned on your website, so I looked it up on another NLP website. I'm amazed that people believe in this stuff. Here are the four three steps (I like how it starts with zero ):

I have to quote a few lines from that website. First:

Richard Bandler has said that this step 'blows out the phobia - that once a client has done it, they can't ever run it forwards again.' I don't know if that's true. Bandler obviously has some understanding of neurology but I've no other reference for this.

Well, Bandler told me that this will cure people so i use it on people and they pay me their hard-earned money, but i'm not really sure if it works. Brilliant.

"Now, if you saw yourself running away from blue baked beans, what would that be like?"
She gave me a puzzled look and said "That would be silly."

Bingo. That would be silly. My thought exactly.

 

[microdot]

The "fast phobia cure" is not mentioned on your website, so I looked it up on another NLP website. I'm amazed that people believe in this stuff.

Well, Bandler told me that this will cure people so i use it on people and they pay me their hard-earned money, but i'm not really sure if it works. Brilliant.

I must confess that if that particlar web page was the only thing I'd read in order to find out more about the fast phobia cure I'd be confused too and it's probably a little unfortunate therefore that this particular site was the first one listed on Google's results for the search term fast phobia cure.

I'm not suggesting that this is the only article you considered but that would be a lovely example of that old enemy to critical thinking - good old Confirmation Bias.

Now I wouldn't want to be seen to be pointing you in a particular direction but there are other websites listed in the Google results which offer more detailed and easy-to-follow descriptions of the process if you care to look.

"Now, if you saw yourself running away from blue baked beans, what would that be like?"
She gave me a puzzled look and said "That would be silly."

Bingo. That would be silly. My thought exactly.

Just to put this in context I would point out that the lines you've quoted were cited as being spoken to a person with a phobia of baked beans (probably as irrational a fear as one could have).

I think the point that they are trying to make here is that being afraid of baked beans in general is silly.

Ergo, if the person with the phobia finds blue baked beans silly, why should they be afraid of regular coloured baked beans if the only difference between the two is colour?

 

[Maia]

The more I'm reading about the NLP version of getting rid of phobias the more confused I am, so for reference, standard treatment for simple phobias comes from cognitive behavioral therapy. It's basically exposure therapy. Figure out what frightens you the most and then expose yourself to it in controlled and escalating doses. If your phobias is spiders, for example, you'd eventually end up letting a (harmless) spider crawl all over your hand. It works very well for simple phobias; for long-term success, though, you really need to be sure that a simple phobia actually is all that you're dealing with. Compared to standard treatment, how does the NLP version stack up?

 

[JFrankA]

I heard a comedian say this bit once:

ANNOYED PERSON: "Excuse me, but your cigarette smoke is bothering me."
SMOKER: "Yea, well it's killing me."

I don't smoke, but I say live and let die. If you don't like smoke, stand upwind.

Anyway, to get back on topic...



The "fast phobia cure" is not mentioned on your website, so I looked it up on another NLP website. I'm amazed that people believe in this stuff. Here are the four three steps (I like how it starts with zero ):



It's just that simple!

I'm going to have to refer to JFrankA on this one. How in the hell do you "get" the client to do any of that stuff? I guess I just don't see how "getting a client" to imagine themselves jumping in and out of black and white/color movies would make your hypothetical patient want to swim.

Seriously, that stuff sounds as far fetched as the blue green crystal therapy idea.
I mean, "re-add critical submodality colour and run backwards." What in the hell IS that?? Is that trying to remove the client's fear of swimming, or just replace it with severe confusion?

The theory is that the mind has attached a vivid, real, scary emotional response that stimulus. The stimulus/emotional response connection is reinforced every time it's felt. Also, it's irrational not only because there really isn't something scary to it, but because the person can't pinpoint exactly what happened and why the reaction.

So the idea is to give the stimulus another emotional response, and not only an emotional response but a very vivid image, sound, feel "memory" in the mind. Instead of making that person have the fear stimulus/emotion connection, that person is "distracted" with this other stimulus/emotion connection. The person keeps replaying that new stimulus/emotion connection. That takes away the power of the phobia.

I can say it does work with some people. Not all. To be honest, I tried it on myself (I have a very strange phobia) and it didn't work at all.

I think it works like hypnosis or anything else. Depends on the person's choice and desire.

 

[microdot]

Compared to standard treatment, how does the NLP version stack up?

Before I answer I'll just refresh something I said earlier in this thread:-

Remember that I'm expessing _my opinions_ based on the materials I've been studying for the past 12 months or so.

I'm not formally trained in any of these disciplines so what I post here is essentially my common sense thoughts on the subject.

And I've only read one book on CBT.

With that out of the way I'll attempt to answer your question as best I am able.


In a nutshell I think that the fast phobia cure sets out to achieve the same objective as the standard treatment using similar principles but in different ways.

Phobias are generally described as an anxiety disorder characterized by extreme and irrational fear of simple things or social situations

Note the key words extreme and irrational.

I've never suffered from a phobia myself but I'm inclined to believe that extreme fear would arouse the sympathetic nervous system and invoke a fight or flight type response leading the phobic person to respond by getting away from the source of their fear as quickly as possible rather than sitting and considering why this phobic response 'happens' to them.

Equally I'm inclined to believe that many, if not all phobics realise that both the level of fear that they experience _and_ their response to it is irrational and _still_ they feel powerless to do anything about it. They are at the effect side of the cause/effect equation and the only way they have to move themselves to the cause side of the equation (or gain 'control' if you prefer) is to avoid the stimulus of their phobia.

Therefore any phobia 'cure' most likely needs to focus on dealing with the person's response to the stimulus and possibly also their perception of that stimulus.

I googled amygdala fight flight to try to understand some of the 'brain processes' involved in the fight/flight response and found this page pretty useful - http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-nature/emotions/other/fear1.htm

It seems to suggest two 'pathways' that information can take in the brain in the process of 'creating fear' and that the pathway which involves the sensory cortex leads to more reasoned, controlled responses (Maia - please point me in the right direction if I've gone wrong here).

I'm not the most eloquent person in the world so I'm going to resort to a metaphor here for the phobic response, of a record (or an audio CD for those of you too tender in years to remember vinyl).

In my metaphor putting the needle on the record (why do the words when the drum beat goes like this pop into my head?) or pressing the Play button on the CD player is equivalent to the stimulus/trigger of the phobic response, the spider or the idea of swimming or blue baked beans or whatever.

Once the process has begun, because the brain processes involved are largely outside conscious control (Maia - please correct me if I'm wrong there) just like the stylus following the groove on the record and playing the music in exactly the same way every time, the outcome will always be the same.

If the phobic person can somehow scratch the record / CD it can never be played in the same way again and I think that's what any phobia 'cure' sets out to achieve.

CBT type treatments, as far as I'm aware in my admittedly limited experience, seek to 'scratch the record' by providing the phobic person with experiences which contradict their experiences to date i.e. where they are exposed to the stimulus and 'nothing bad' happens. Exposure levels start off at low levels and are gradually increased in a controlled manner to reinforce the idea that the stimulus need not be a direct cause for the phobic response and to improve confidence levels that this is something over which this person can gain/regain control.

The fast phobia cure (fpc) also sets out to scratch the record but does so in different ways.

Rather than directly exposing the phobic person to the stimulus which triggers their response, fpc is done entirely in the imagination i.e. you are completely safe because all you're doing is sitting comfortably and imagining this.

Another key element to the fast phobia cure is double dissociation (or disassociation - the spellings seem to be used interchangeably). This is usually effected by getting the phobic person to imagine themselves sitting safely in a movie theatre watching an old, scratchy, black-and-white movie of themselves having the experience which would normally trigger the phobic response. The intention behind this is, like the CBT type treatments, to provide some reference experience where the fear response is either much reduced or, ideally, does not arise at all.

If the experience of 'watching themselves' on the screen is still difficult in that it arouses the negative emotions which ultimately become the fear response, the phobic person can disassociate one level further by imagining themselves all the way back in the projector room watching themselves sitting in the movie theatre watching themselves on the screen.

(If you're getting slightly confused at this point I would firstly apologise for my poor writing and secondly say that this is why people might find it difficult to carry out this process entirely by themselves, at least the first time, and might find it easier for another person to guide them in the process).

The logic, IMHO, behind the black-and-white movie and the double disassociation is to do with the idea that our emotional responses to small, dark, distant images is less than to images which are big, brightly coloured and close up.

In the second part of the fpc the phobic person is usally asked to re-experience the movie but this time from the inside (associated i.e. through their own eyes rather than as an observer), and in full colour but to do this quickly and in reverse to 'scratch the record' further still. Quite commonly the person is asked to incorporate a silly sound track as another means of scratching the record.

As JFrankA put it:-

So the idea is to give the stimulus another emotional response, and not only an emotional response but a very vivid image, sound, feel "memory" in the mind. Instead of making that person have the fear stimulus/emotion connection, that person is "distracted" with this other stimulus/emotion connection. The person keeps replaying that new stimulus/emotion connection. That takes away the power of the phobia.

Hope I've managed to deliver some of what you were looking for and not simply added to your confusion

Any questions?

ETA - in a earlier posts MikeSun5 and Lothario linked to a website article which said this:-

STEP ZERO: Calibrate to phobic response. You need the client to be able to have a phobic response there and then.

Personally I think this is completely wrong and also avoidance of this is one of the reasons why the fast phobia cure is designed how it is.

One of the principles behind that design is that the process begin and end at places of safety with the specific intention of NOT triggering the phobic response, so that the person can focus on what they DO want i.e. remaining calm while studying the trigger experience from a 'safe' distance , rather than focusing on what they DON'T want i.e. Don't be scared!, don't be scared!, don't be scared! .

NLP postulates that positive motivation (focusing on what we do want and moving toward it) leads to better results than negative motivation (focusing on what we don't want and moving away from it).

 

[fuelair]

Sorry, I don't quite understand - which of your objections specifically is it that the salesman "destroys" when you halt listening and leave?

Doesn't matter: they have, in the past, included "costs too much for the benefits", "doesn't have (s,y,z) features that I need", "no, that is not what I said" etc. As soon as the salesman tries to argue against my reasons for
not buying the product - when they are of that type - I am gone. I really only wish to deal with data presenters who can answer questions.

 

[Maia]

Before I answer I'll just refresh something I said earlier in this thread:-



I'm not formally trained in any of these disciplines so what I post here is essentially my common sense thoughts on the subject.

And I've only read one book on CBT.

I think you're better off that way.

With that out of the way I'll attempt to answer your question as best I am able.


In a nutshell I think that the fast phobia cure sets out to achieve the same objective as the standard treatment using similar principles but in different ways.

Phobias are generally described as an anxiety disorder characterized by extreme and irrational fear of simple things or social situations

Note the key words extreme and irrational.

Pretty good summary, actually, except that you're kinda telescoping phobias and social anxiety disorder together.

I've never suffered from a phobia myself but I'm inclined to believe that extreme fear would arouse the sympathetic nervous system and invoke a fight or flight type response leading the phobic person to respond by getting away from the source of their fear as quickly as possible rather than sitting and considering why this phobic response 'happens' to them.

Yes and no. The second half of your idea actually does a good job of describing something which people with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) might indeed spend a great deal of time doing, and OCD is certainly related to simple phobias. The difference is that OCD folks perform compulsions in response to the fear (which is produced by the obsessions.) One of the compulsions can be sitting around and endlessly trying to "get it all figured out."

Equally I'm inclined to believe that many, if not all phobics realise that both the level of fear that they experience _and_ their response to it is irrational and _still_ they feel powerless to do anything about it.

Yes!

They are at the effect side of the cause/effect equation and the only way they have to move themselves to the cause side of the equation (or gain 'control' if you prefer) is to avoid the stimulus of their phobia.

Therefore any phobia 'cure' most likely needs to focus on dealing with the person's response to the stimulus and possibly also their perception of that stimulus.

Very good!

I googled amygdala fight flight to try to understand some of the 'brain processes' involved in the fight/flight response and found this page pretty useful - http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-nature/emotions/other/fear1.htm

It seems to suggest two 'pathways' that information can take in the brain in the process of 'creating fear' and that the pathway which involves the sensory cortex leads to more reasoned, controlled responses (Maia - please point me in the right direction if I've gone wrong here).

I'm not the most eloquent person in the world so I'm going to resort to a metaphor here for the phobic response, of a record (or an audio CD for those of you too tender in years to remember vinyl).

In my metaphor putting the needle on the record (why do the words when the drum beat goes like this pop into my head?) or pressing the Play button on the CD player is equivalent to the stimulus/trigger of the phobic response, the spider or the idea of swimming or blue baked beans or whatever.

Once the process has begun, because the brain processes involved are largely outside conscious control (Maia - please correct me if I'm wrong there) just like the stylus following the groove on the record and playing the music in exactly the same way every time, the outcome will always be the same.

If the phobic person can somehow scratch the record / CD it can never be played in the same way again and I think that's what any phobia 'cure' sets out to achieve.

CBT type treatments, as far as I'm aware in my admittedly limited experience, seek to 'scratch the record' by providing the phobic person with experiences which contradict their experiences to date i.e. where they are exposed to the stimulus and 'nothing bad' happens. Exposure levels start off at low levels and are gradually increased in a controlled manner to reinforce the idea that the stimulus need not be a direct cause for the phobic response and to improve confidence levels that this is something over which this person can gain/regain control.

Yes, this is a good summary too... you're doing very well for only having ever read one CBT book, but the truth about CBT is that it honestly isn't all that complex, either. (We're not exactly talking about Freud or Pierre Janet or Onno van der Hart here...) Exposure techniques aren't straight CBT techniques, but they are derived from them.

The fast phobia cure (fpc) also sets out to scratch the record but does so in different ways.

Rather than directly exposing the phobic person to the stimulus which triggers their response, fpc is done entirely in the imagination i.e. you are completely safe because all you're doing is sitting comfortably and imagining this.

From the POV of exposure therapy, though, this is where it would fall apart. If the person is convinced that they're "completely safe", then they will never be forced to truly confront their anxiety and to learn that it's groundless.

Another key element to the fast phobia cure is double dissociation (or disassociation - the spellings seem to be used interchangeably). This is usually effected by getting the phobic person to imagine themselves sitting safely in a movie theatre watching an old, scratchy, black-and-white movie of themselves having the experience which would normally trigger the phobic response. The intention behind this is, like the CBT type treatments, to provide some reference experience where the fear response is either much reduced or, ideally, does not arise at all.

Nope, that's the central difference between the NLP concept and the exposure/CBT concept-- the fear response is actually increased with exposure therapy at first, because the client is going to be exposed to what causes them the greatest anxiety.

If the experience of 'watching themselves' on the screen is still difficult in that it arouses the negative emotions which ultimately become the fear response, the phobic person can disassociate one level further by imagining themselves all the way back in the projector room watching themselves sitting in the movie theatre watching themselves on the screen.

Same problem. In exposure therapy-- whether it's used for phobias or for OCD-- the fear, anxiety, and negative emotional response must be heightened initially, not reduced.

NLP postulates that positive motivation (focusing on what we do want and moving toward it) leads to better results than negative motivation (focusing on what we don't want and moving away from it).

The CBT response would be: this may very well be true for people who don't have phobias or OCD, but exposure therapy isn't meant for the general population. Actually, exposure therapy relies on a third type of motivation: focusing on what you're convinced you don't want and moving towards it, because your life has become a living hell of phobias, obsessions, and compulsions, and there is no other way out. Nobody would do this if they had a more pleasant choice.

Now, that having been said, I am not the world's biggest fan of CBT or anything derived from it, even though I try very hard to be fair to it as a theoretical school, because it does help some people. However, it cannot be applied to everyone. The simpler the problem which the client has, the better, but there's more to the story than that. A lot of people with simple phobias or OCD or even social anxiety disorder do so well with exposure therapy (if they can be persuaded to do it), because the entire point is to show them that there's really nothing behind their anxiety, as hard as it is to believe. Nobody knows why they have these anxiety disorders, and brain chemistry is probably at the bottom of it. There's really not a lot more to it. A significant percentage, however, have phobias and OCD because their primary issue is posttraumatic stress disorder and/or one of the dissociative disorders. Straight exposure therapy is a complete disaster in these cases, which is something that mental health professionals are only now starting to deal with in clinical practice (several excellent larger studies have recently backed it up, too.) Now, treatment for PTSD/DD... IMHO, it makes exposure therapy look like winning Powerball by comparison.

So could the NLP-type technique really be more helpful for comorbid OCD/PTSD? Better treatments are desperately needed, and certain aspects of it actually could be. Anything which uses the word "dissociation" is something which sounds a little iffy for PTSD/DD folks... However, the theater/film image is remarkably similar to a technique used for clients with dissociative identity disorder. I can see how there might be something valuable to be taken from it, overall. The only problem is that this could hardly be further from the way that the original authors meant it.

 

[microdot]

I've never suffered from a phobia myself but I'm inclined to believe that extreme fear would arouse the sympathetic nervous system and invoke a fight or flight type response leading the phobic person to respond by getting away from the source of their fear as quickly as possible rather than sitting and considering why this phobic response 'happens' to them.

Yes and no. The second half of your idea actually does a good job of describing something which people with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) might indeed spend a great deal of time doing, and OCD is certainly related to simple phobias. The difference is that OCD folks perform compulsions in response to the fear (which is produced by the obsessions.) One of the compulsions can be sitting around and endlessly trying to "get it all figured out."

Yes, I see your point.

What I was trying to point out with this one is the idea that those suffering from phobias probably _avoid_ or are unable to consider their phobia from a meta position (or from another person's view-point if you prefer) because this in itself could well trigger the fear/fight/flight response.

From the POV of exposure therapy, though, this is where it would fall apart. If the person is convinced that they're "completely safe", then they will never be forced to truly confront their anxiety and to learn that it's groundless.

Again I can see your point and again I tend to think that the FPC is intended as a mechanism to 'unstick' the person and 'get the ball rolling' so to speak. In the event that the phobic person 'cannot' think about the phobic experience at all without that in itself forming a trigger I think the FPC affords them that opportunity at least. Yes, the FPC does not force them to confront their anxiety directly, rather it allows them to take a third person perspective on a _memory_ of that experience which hopefully, leads to some desensitzation and some useful learnings that they would not normally have access to.

In my youth I dated a girl who had a phobia of clowns. She only had to see a photograph of a Pierrot doll to turn pale and cold and burst into tears, and even trying to talk about this phobia in an environment completely devoid of anything to do with clowns seemed to trigger the same phobic response.

Ergo she was unable to condsider _why_ she had this phobia.

Perhaps the FPC would have afforded her that option without scaring the pants off her.

Nope, that's the central difference between the NLP concept and the exposure/CBT concept-- the fear response is actually increased with exposure therapy at first, because the client is going to be exposed to what causes them the greatest anxiety.

Good point well made

While I imagine the FPC can do the job by itself for some people, I have seen it used as a pre-cursor to exposure therapy.

In this context NLP would view the FPC as 'shaking / loosening the client's model of the world'.

However, the theater/film image is remarkably similar to a technique used for clients with dissociative identity disorder. I can see how there might be something valuable to be taken from it, overall. The only problem is that this could hardly be further from the way that the original authors meant it.

I am intrigued by your last sentence in the above quote.

Can I respectfully ask you to expand on that and perhaps share what _you_ think the authors meant by it?

ETA - are you saying that the potential use of an FPC-like treatment specifically for DID is far from the way the original authors meant it?

 

[Maia]

Yes, I see your point.


Again I can see your point and again I tend to think that the FPC is intended as a mechanism to 'unstick' the person and 'get the ball rolling' so to speak. In the event that the phobic person 'cannot' think about the phobic experience at all without that in itself forming a trigger I think the FPC affords them that opportunity at least. Yes, the FPC does not force them to confront their anxiety directly, rather it allows them to take a third person perspective on a _memory_ of that experience which hopefully, leads to some desensitzation and some useful learnings that they would not normally have access to.

In my youth I dated a girl who had a phobia of clowns. She only had to see a photograph of a Pierrot doll to turn pale and cold and burst into tears, and even trying to talk about this phobia in an environment completely devoid of anything to do with clowns seemed to trigger the same phobic response.

Ergo she was unable to condsider _why_ she had this phobia.

Perhaps the FPC would have afforded her that option without scaring the pants off her.

Well, I can tell you what a lot of strict cognitive-behavioral theorists would say... some variation on "suck it up." Any kind of reassurance only perpetuates obsessive behaviors, and blah, blah, blah. Exposure therapy involves a huge increase in fear and anxiety at the beginning, but clearly, you do sit down with a therapist and work out a controlled exposure hierarchy and so forth. However, I'm not the biggest CBT fan on the planet, either. I think it's been overused and overapplied for clients who really don't respond to the techniques all that well.

I highly doubt that anybody who writes about NLP tecniques was thinking about treatments for the dissociative disorders, mostly because that's a very cutting-edge subject in the psychiatric community and it really hasn't filtered down much yet. But there is no standard evidence-based treatment yet (as exposure therapy is for phobias and OCD, or straight CBT is for mild to moderate depression). We need all the ideas we can get!

 

[microdot]

Well, I can tell you what a lot of strict cognitive-behavioral theorists would say... some variation on "suck it up." Any kind of reassurance only perpetuates obsessive behaviors, and blah, blah, blah. Exposure therapy involves a huge increase in fear and anxiety at the beginning, but clearly, you do sit down with a therapist and work out a controlled exposure hierarchy and so forth.

So it's essentially a case of face your fear and do it anyway then?

 

[JFrankA]

So it's essentially a case of face your fear and do it anyway then?

It's really the only way to beat any fear. Especially the irrational ones....

 

[JFrankA]

Coincidentally, the most recent issue of Playboy mentions Mystery in their advisor section. So I thought I'd post it here.

Q: A Friend suggests I increase my success rate by pursuing less-attractive women than the gorgeous ones I chase now. He also says success will boost my confidence so I can return to hitting on babes. Yet the pick up artist Mystery says you must have standards. He says a woman "expects that a guy with potential will be selective". So who's right?

A: Based on the research we've seen, (and written about-see "The Look of Love," March 2008), a person generally ends up with someone with about the same level of attractiveness, intelligence, wealth and social status. Mystery and other PUAs rely on the fact that hot women aren't used to being gently ignored, so the average guy creates a sense of mystery about what he has to offer. But there is more to a relationship than having a woman on your arm who turns every head in the room. You want to find a partner you find attractive from several angles. That doesn't mean you can't pursue someone who is universally hot, only that you should also be open to finding beauty in unexpected places. Bottom line: There are millions of women we'd love to sleep with but far fewer we'd like to sleep with a lot.