The High Status Male

Little Bobby is 2 years old.  He likes to run around the house naked — laughing and screaming with joy as his parents chase him from room to room with the camcorder.  They tell him to “quit showing everybody that silly poo-poo bottom….”, but they think it’s hysterical and do nothing to stop it.  Why should they?  Dashing around butt naked is appropriate, healthy behavior for a 2 year old who’s just discovered the most delightful means of coordinating the rapid movement of his legs in such a way that he can now run!… (an absolutely transcendent advancement over mere walking, which was last month’s big achievement).  Being without clothing is no big deal either, of course — as long as it’s not too cold in the house.  Life is good.  Life is magical.

A year later Bobby is 3, and grandma is visiting.  Bobby decides to run out of the bathroom after his bath and surprise grandma… make her laugh and be silly.  But today it’s Bobby who’s in for the surprise, because when grandma sees him running towards her au naturel with his ding dong happily bouncing around, she gets an angry look on her face which stops him cold.  She scolds him, “Shame on you Bobby, go put some clothes on!”.  Bobby is confused.  Mom and dad never said anything like that to him.  They never yelled at Bobby for being a silly poo-poo head.  As far as he was concerned, there was no real difference between wearing clothes and not wearing them anyway, right?

So what’s wrong with grandma anyway?  Why is she making Bobby feel so bad about being naked all of a sudden?  “You shouldn’t run around like that, it’s not right…” grandma scolds.  Bobby looks to his parents, moving around in the kitchen getting dinner ready, for some support.  “Mom?” he asks quizzically.  But now both his parents have funny looks on their faces too, adding to Bobby’s dismay.  Mom quickly grabs Bobby by the hand and takes him upstairs and gets him into his PJ’s.  Now when he comes back, grandma is happy again.  But why?  What was the big deal about being naked?

Soon, anytime Bobby thinks about running around the house naked, he gets a funny, uncomfortable feeling inside of him that he doesn’t like.  This strange bad feeling goes away if he puts his clothes back on.  And he would never, ever dream of running around the house naked in front of grandma again… that’s for sure!

Soon, he won’t be comfortable doing it in front of his parents either, and they seem to be okay with that.  They never want to play ‘chase my poo-poo bottom with the camcorder’ any more anyway.  Oh well…

Welcome to Behavioral Modification 101.

This is of course a very common story that every parent has faced at some point in their children’s development, seemingly straightforward… but do you see what really just happened here?  Little Bobby has just learned to associate the emotion of SHAME with the act of being naked in front of others.  In the coming years, he will also learn that it’s shameful to touch himself “down there” in public, nor to let anyone look at him when he’s in the bathroom on the toilet, and then even in the bathtub.  Things are sure becoming different around here.

Now, Bobby’s new sense of modesty certainly may not be considered anything close to being toxic, but he’ll have plenty of opportunity for that to happen as the years roll by.  The development of a sense of shame is normal and healthy when it serves to set appropriate boundaries for our actions at various stages in our evolution from toddler to adult.  Shame endows our flowering sense of ego-dominated identity with a certain humility that guides our interactions with other individuals.  It helps us learn to take on more and more responsibility for our actions by slowly becoming aware of how they affect everyone else around us.  We discover empathy in this way.

It’s important to understand that the mechanism of shame is mainly one of association, that is, we learn to associate the unpleasant sensation of being ashamed with behaviors that society wishes for us to control or suppress in some way.  Shame is commonly wielded by parents to control the behavior of adolescents, but it is most certainly used against adults as well.  Morals and values and the boundaries of acceptable public and private behavior are all “taught” to us by way of inducing shameful experiences at some point in our lives in order to make them “sink in”.

To a certain extent this is okay, but the deadly vise-grip of deeply internalized shame can become stifling over time and fully degenerate into a form known as toxic. Toxic shame occurs when we are exposed – either physically or emotionally – in a way that repeatedly diminishes us in the presence of others, and especially in situations where we are not prepared to experience such an exposure.

How pervasive are the effects of toxic shame?

Well, humiliation is an extreme form of toxic shame that is so awful, men will put their lives in jeopardy in order to avoid experiencing it or to avenge it.  Physical violence and murders routinely are committed due to violations of shame boundaries.  Emotionally rigid cultures like the Japanese partake in a form of ritual suicide called hara-kiri to absolve themselves of toxic shame or the so-called “loss of face”… choosing the extreme action killing oneself to restore honor to themselves and their family name — rather than continuing to live a “faceless” existence.  And most devastating of all, almost every form of addictive behavior has its roots in the desperate need of the afflicted individual to escape from an overwhelming sense of shame that he or she feels has completely consumed them.

You see, it’s when shame begins to exceed its normal function within our minds, i.e. to provide us with a sense of humility that grounds our identity somewhere between God and the lower beasts, that it begins to create problems.  Usually this happens either through some unrelenting source (i.e., constant harassment by parent or peers), or by way of an isolated or even continuous traumatic event.  Such repeated shaming events re-enforce themselves over and over and can continue to haunt us for a lifetime.

The most powerful counter force to toxic shame is Self-Compassion and Self-Awareness. Part of the dysfunction of shame is manifested in a tendency for us to be way too hard on ourselves — continuing the desire for self-punishment… taking up the mantle of past tormentors.  Just knowing about the effects of shame and becoming aware of how it might be pervasive in out lives is a powerful tool for its’ eventual destruction.  That’s because one of the great strengths of an over-inflated sense of shame has to do with it’s stealth.  The fact that you don’t comprehend how deeply it’s affecting you allows it to continue to operate unchecked within your mind, silently creating shyness or rage or depression or all manner of other emotionally addictive-type behaviors that could be ruining your life.

This is why we always seek the safe harbor self-awareness: because simply being aware of these hidden subconscious monsters and what they are doing to us drags them out into the bright light of our logical and rational consciousness… where they will often burn up under the heat of reason like vampires in the sunlight.  You can begin your own journey to freedom by doing the self-examination and inner work that will lead you to this elevated state of self-awareness.  Once you are able to “step outside yourself” and see yourself and your deepest motivations from a larger and more objective viewpoint, you will be firmly on the road to self-discovery and permanent inner healing.

Most of us men know all too well that horrible moment of quiet terror when we’re steeling ourselves to “spring the question” on some girl at work or school and ask her out on a date! Our heart races and our throat tightens as the moment approaches — and we begin desperately trying to talk ourselves out of it: “she won’t say yes, it’s impossible… she’s got a boyfriend… she’s got exams coming up, she’s way too busy, she’s out of my league…”. Sort of comical I suppose, but disturbing nonetheless.

This anxious reaction in guys facing this sort of situation is more common than you might imagine.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any easier to live through for some of us.  After all, you are preparing yourself to stand psychologically “naked” before some girl and expose your (possibly shame-bound) desires to her.  So some level of fear must be normal, you would think, right?  But THIS intense?  So terrifying that I can’t speak or even MOVE?!

So the real question is this: how do you distinguish between the common and quite rational fear of being rejected by a woman, and the more complex issue of chronic love shyness?

Here’s a little test: do you find it’s impossible to engage a woman with romantic intent even when she’s sending you “GO” signals all over the place with obvious body language cues, or unmistakable flirtatious behavior?  If she’s making it so perfectly clear that she’s NOT going to reject you, then what’s there to be afraid of?

Well, what you could be afraid of is revealing to her your very secretly shamed need for affection.  See, at some point in your life you were made to feel ashamed whenever you expressed a desire for love and affection, and it caused this very basic (and normal) human desire to become shame-bound, i.e., linked to the sensation of shame so that you could not experience one without feeling the other along with it. A shamed emotion is perceived as painful, alien and strange — and therefore must always be kept hidden from view of others!

Shame like this can become so overwhelming that it becomes known as toxic.

Now sometimes the misery of shame-induced love shyness can be temporarily suppressed with the use of drugs, food or alcohol.  This is the reason people become deeply addicted: because focus on the addictive behavior allows them distraction from the underlying pain, as well as creating some degree of freedom to experience the emotion shamelessly for awhile.  Think of how YOU act when you get too drunk or high.  Pawing every girl in sight at the bar?  That’s because the emotion we most often seek to express when uninhibited by drugs is the one which is the most tightly bound by shame when sober.

The first thing that you need to understand insofar as turning this situation around for yourself is that knowledge is power. Simply having your eyes opened to the mechanics of love shyness and how it has been adversely affecting your life can become a powerful tool for dismantling it.  Knowing and understanding that your shame-bound emotions are something that was done TO you, and is not really YOU (i.e. an permanent aspect of your personality) is an enormous revelation in itself… one that holds vast potential for jump-starting your personal growth almost immediately.

A second weapon you should have in your arsenal against love shyness is what psychologists call desensitization.  This idea makes use of the natural tenancy of the mind to adapt to anything after a while and become bored with it.  What bores us becomes psychologically invisible and eventually gets taken for granted, and when that happens the emotion in question loses its potential to generate any kind of strong response within us, either good or bad.  I mean, an event or experience that provokes no emotion is the very definition of boring, right?

So how do we turn an intense fear of rejection into something that actually bores us?  Try this experiment in personal growth (and mind-over-matter) for yourself: next time you have an opportunity to talk to an attractive woman, even in some non-romantic situation (like work or school), begin to think about asking her out on a date. Really try to do this seriously and not just as a joke in your own mind.  You’re REALLY going to ask her out in five more seconds and reveal to her your shameful need for affection by blushing like a five year old.  Yikes!

If you can do this mental exercise with the sort of intense focus that makes it real within your consciousness, you should begin to feel that familiar fear begin to swell in your chest and choke your throat closed.  Now you’re getting it!

Now here’s the important part: try to HOLD yourself in this uncomfortable state for as long as you can before you excuse yourself and slip away.  Make your retreat calm and sociable and with good humor… don’t just bolt away in panic to the nearest john and start puking! Relax, no one knows what’s going on inside your head except you.  This is the important ‘inner work’ of self-change and personal growth that you are now undertaking.

The trick now becomes to repeat these “near-shame approaches” as often as you can find the opportunity to do so in order for the desensitization to really begin to take effect.  You should push yourself a little closer to opening your mouth and actually speaking the terrifying words “…would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow night?…” in order to provoke those feelings of intense fear and “shy guy” paralysis that normally haunt you.  By raising the psychological bar like this one small but significant notch at a time, you are slowly making it more and more difficult for the love shyness to take over and set off all those humiliating physical anxiety reactions that you hate so much… things like sweating, nervousness, the squeaky little-kid voice, etc.

Keep this self-restructuring process up for several weeks at least — just whenever you can manage to run a mentally-simulated “approach”.  In essence what you’re doing is toying with your love shyness now… poking and teasing it by deliberately getting close to performing the frightening activity that draws the shameful feelings up out of where they hide deep within your unconscious mind, and forcing them to run their routine for you on demand.

What will happen is that the feelings of shyness will begin to exhaust themselves after a while — especially if you stay determined and keep “false-alarming” them regularly whenever possible.  Each time there will be some degree of mental discomfort to suffer through, and that’s good!  The amazing magic starts to become apparent when after a while, you find that you have to keep getting closer and closer to the edge of actually speaking the words before you can get the fear to bubble up inside your gut.

Now you’re beginning to cripple your love shyness!

Each time that you drag the fearful feelings up it’s like using mental sandpaper to scratch them down to a smaller and smaller nub.  With such frequent and repeated “sanding” your despised veneer of shyness will soon become thinner and less powerful in its grip over you.  One day you’ll find that you can actually go right through the entire routine FOR REAL and ask a girl out on a real date… and without hardly feeling any nervousness about it in the least!

I know that caught in the grip of your fears right now this may all seem impossible to conceive of even as you are reading this… but the techniques of desensitization DO work wonders.  They are commonly used by psychotherapists everywhere to cure seriously anxious people of some very strong phobias, such as a pathological fear of flying, leaving the safety of their home, driving across tall bridges, etc.  So you can surely do this with a “lightweight” phobia such as fear of rejection without much help beyond your own determination and by using the techniques that I just showed you.

Your defeated love shyness will simply give up and go away before long… too exhausted to torment you any longer.

–

Copyright 2010 by Mike Pilinski

This is a question and answer exchange that I just had with one of my readers. It began as a question about traveling alone and turned into a screed on the topic of self-hatred, which I have come to believe over the years to be a much bigger issue with guys seeking solutions for things like shyness and social dysfunction than many of us realize. To wit:

Hey Mike,

I’ve had some stuff twirling around in my head lately that I wanted to bounce off of you, having recently just turned 40. I’m single again, having just broke up with my girlfriend (my decision). Not easy to do as she was a great girl, but I just seem to get bored in relationships like you. Also like you, I got a late start in life on bedding women. Anyway. my question is a lifestyle type query.

I’m interested in your take on how a single guy should go about traveling and vacationing on his own.

This is becoming a real dilemma for me, being single at my age. Not a lot of unmarried, single friends left to hang around with anymore. Last year I went by myself to the Dominican Republic — not to a resort but to a town where all the girls are “pros” if you know what I mean. It was amazing what an ego boost it was… you’d of thunk that I was Brad Pitt or something! LOL…

Don’t get me wrong, I realize that I’m only desirable in that type of situation because I’m perceived as having some sort of relative wealth — a form of being an HSM I suppose. However, I seem to have a little bit of an issue with feeling like a loser doing this sort of thing… like a guy who can’t get an ordinary American woman and so ultimately has to pay for it. I know that some guys swear by this lifestyle and insist that some of these foreign women are much more sensuous and feminine than their spoiled American counterparts. I don’t know…

Are these guys on to something, or are we all just acting like misogynistic LSM’s who can’t score American chicks?

I’ve thought about learning Spanish and maybe moving to Buenos Aires. Those Argentine women are hot! Sounds adventurous I know, but I guess when I get to the bottom of it, I wonder if this isn’t me just running away from my problems of low status and my inability to score lots of women here in the good ole U.S. of A?

Do you think I should I stick it out and try to achieve what ever status I can here at home, or is it okay to try and be a bigger fish in a smaller pond? I’d love to hear your take on this idea, I know it’s not your specialty per se but I do value your perspective. Thanks again for your time!

Sincerely,
Mark

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Hey Mark,

Good to hear from you again. About 3 years ago I went to Las Vegas for 5 days by myself and I didn’t find that NOT having a companion with me was any sort of big detriment — except maybe for going to certain sit-down type of restaurants where you might feel odd dining alone. You know how it is, certain activities you can do by yourself and others are “couple” things that will make you feel uncomfortable. That’s your only practical restriction really, and there are plenty of fast food joints where you can dine alone with a newspaper. Other than that I was fine seeing the sights, gambling, etc… all by myself.

Then again… certain activities are better done alone, WITHOUT the ‘ole girlfriend tagging along. Things such as…

Well, I visited one of the nearby legal cathouses just outside Vegas on this trip because I always wanted to see what they were like. The experience was pretty surrealistic in fact… however, a fun (but WAY too expensive…) time was had by all, especially me! And so what? Did I break some kind of sacrosanct “HSM code” by paying for sex? And who cares if I did anyway?

This is the EXACT sort of attitude shift that you too will need to achieve in order to ultimately address your own internal doubts about this issue.

I believe that we accumulate an unwieldy library of these stupid, self-created “internal rules” over the course of a lifetime that eventually bind us up in a kind of mental strait jacket. Soon we can’t even conceive of doing anything the simple way anymore without feeling guilty about it. Why?… because we “broke the rules”! The precious rules… the rules that exist only within our own thick skulls.

Well I’ve found this network of rules to actually be a form of very subtle and sly self-hatred. Don’t ask me why we do this to ourselves — but the sooner you can recognize and chuck all this crap from your head the sooner you will become free to just let go and follow your heart wherever it may want to take you. And that’s the real goal that you want to always be pursuing relentless in life, the goal of mental freedom.

Case in point about your desire to seek out women who might be vastly more easier to relate to than the typical ball-busting, judgmental American bitch… the delightful product of 50 years of feminism. Certainly not like the girls dear old dad used to marry, that’s for sure… fresh out of high school with all that good home-ec training (cooking, baking, cleaning, housework). That right, they used to TRAIN women in high school how to be good supportive wives who graded their own self-worth by how well they treated their husbands! Even suggesting that this sort of thing might be anything less than total domestic-slavery-brainwashing will get you a swift kick in the balls nowadays, you MFn’ pig!

You now desire to chuck this nasty USA scene and go looking for more “agreeable” women elsewhere, but your self-hating side quickly steps in and says: “hey forget it, that’s cheating…. you have to try and meet women in the toughest environment possible or it doesn’t count.”

See, that’s the central tenet and mode of operation of self-hatred: you must do everything the hardest way possible or it doesn’t count. Note that other (lesser human) people can choose to take the easy way out and that’s okay… but not YOU — you have to take the hardest route because you’re special… you’re superhuman. That’s the Disabled Ego at work…

…Special tough rules define the special “tough” guy.

There’s a great book to read that dives deep into this psychological phenomenon, it’s called Compassion and Self-Hate: An Alternative to Despair by Theodore I. Rubin. What we call “cheating” is in fact what a therapist knowledgeable in the mechanics of self hatred would call compassion.

Compassion?

For a moment, just consider that entire galaxy of nasty internal rules that hold you back — would you ever force them upon someone else? Someone you loved, like a son perhaps? No way! See how with others we feel free to express our compassion? But don’t go looking for any such free passes inside your own head for yourself. Cheater!

Another example: I grew up Catholic, but my own self-hatred forced me to become an atheist for awhile because (I now understand) that faith is a form of compassion for oneself — and of course such a thing is flat-out cheating because it violates The Big Mike Self-Hate Rule: that you can only believe what’s demonstrable scientifically no matter how much it brings you down emotionally.

Logic is king, emotions are irrelevant (only superhuman rules apply to me, remember), and bending logic to assuage emotions is a crime against nature. Only overgrown babies (SUB-human’s) run around expressing their faith you see, because they aren’t strong enough mentally (like super me!) to face the scary facts of random existence and postmortem non-existence without anything to comfort them. It doesn’t matter how you feel (emotions are irrelevant), you are a prisoner of the facts of the Universe as they reveal themselves, and trying to escape them via delusional thinking is weakness and therefore pathetic.

Cheating!

Now, this may be the sort of nonsense that we like to tell ourselves, but would we ever actually burden someone else with this same set of cold, inviolate rules — perhaps even on their death bed? Or would we instead say: “let the guy find comfort in his faith, so what if none of it’s actually proven? Who cares?” Of course this solution is never valid for you, just the other guy. We go easy on him but never on ourselves.

All this madness forms the nuts-and-bolts of self-hatred – and it manifests itself in zillions of complicated and difficult to understand ways. It’s just the way that “we are” (or so we think). But there is a hidden kernel of compassion locked away in everyone’s heart and you need to find yours. Depression, disillusionment… these are all cries from deep within to be free of the self-hating monster that we created. Read that book if you can. The entire human race should read it!

Anyway, this was a long-winded way of recommending that you dig out your own self-hating internal rules from under the mental rock where they hide and spray some compassion on them. Stop being so hard on yourself by worrying about hypothetical HSM-LSM issues etc. I recommend that you seek out your own happiness by whatever route you must take.

No one will ever ask how you got there or judge whether or not you “cheated” by failing to take the hardest road possible. Are you gonna get a medal for remaining true to your self hated? Where do they hand those baby’s out? (I would look like one of those old Soviet generals if they did

Want to know the saddest part? In the end, I discovered that self-hatred is a complete a waste of time… because when you finally DO break the grip of those murderous rules YOU WON’T CARE IN THE LEAST! You’ll see that nobody gives a damn about the exact trajectory of your life, but you. And if you won’t even give yourself a break then there’s no hope at all — because everyone else is too tied-up wrestling with their own demons to worry about “saving you”. You’re sitting in the middle of the desert waiting for that ship to come in.

And man, this is the best wisdom that I can ever pass along to you. Take care buddy.

Lately I’ve been peeking at some of the search terms that guys have been using to find this blog, and I’ve noticed the term “male virgin” comes up somewhat frequently in various different forms.  I don’t really have anything amazing to say about this topic at the moment, but I researched around a bit and found some posts on other blogs that I thought you might like to have a look at:

The Modern Savage — The Dilemmas of Male Virgins

This is actually a very interesting blog in general, not just this particular post about male virgins.  The writer gets into statistics and charts quite a bit but keeps everything very intriguing and avoids getting dry and technical.  There’s also a ton of good links on this blog, enough to keep you busy poking around for a while.

Tre’s Sugar — Dating a Male Virgin

The key question posed by the male virgin himself is short and straight to the point, but you should really find the thread of follow-up comments by women to be very interesting indeed. Take a look.

Health Central — Male Virgin at 29 and never dated

This one is a bit more clinical and has to do with coping with the anxiety that’s created by being a male virgin. Some good links showing you where to get help if you feel that you need it.

Again, not all of you will be interested in this particular topic, but I know this hits a note with some of you and so there it is.  My own rule on this issue is that you should NEVER reveal your virgin status to any woman that you are interested in dating, and you should try not to let it affect you at all — although I know this becomes a heavier lift as you get older.  The problem isn’t so much the status itself as the obsessive focus on it, which tends to corrode away at your confidence.

Two things you need to pound into your head about this subject as it affects you personally: NO mentioning it to the girl EVER, and NO fear!

Keep you focus on charming her and off yourself as much as possible… just assume that your animal instincts will get you through the cherry-popping okay.  If it really freaks you out then use a hooker if you have to (a time-honored de-flowering method for men throughout the ages…).  Just do whatever it takes to put your virginity behind you and move on.  Don’t make it into anything more than the non-issue it really is.  You will always be miserable to the degree that you allow your negative thoughts and emotions to guide your behaviors and actions.

I’m interested in your comments and thoughts.  Let’s kick this around some more.

More Topic-Relevant Information:

Mike,

While I don’t necessarily agree with every single thing in your books, I did take away quite a bit of good stuff — and I kind of tailored a few of your ideas and techniques to my own liking.

I want to be in the game of women and sex, but I’ve kept myself away from women romantically for my entire 25 year life up to this point.  I am talking about having no kisses, no girlfriends… not even girls that are “just friends”.

Masochism, I know!

It was a combination of different things such as my twisted view on religion and the personality that people expected of me.  Anyway, I was quite successful in other areas of life and have been seeking knowledge to improve myself even further in all areas… this was my impetus to seek out and buy your books.

Now I actually outwardly project the type of person that I always have been.  I am a suave, quick-witted engineer and Renaissance Man.  I dabble in a lot of interesting things, and that gives me a ton of conversation starters with the ladies. Recently, one cutey said she was going to “make me” meet her again (said that in a flirty way, not in a crazy way).  How cool is that?

This life change is like going from black/white TV to HD… stunning!

Ryan

Hi Ryan.

Great to see that you’ve made a breakthrough in your life when it comes to women.  Here’s an insight for you and since you are a self-described and fellow Renaissance Man (we should start a club …  I expect you to investigate it further.  What you call masochism I’ve come to understand as self-hatred — and a lot of us harbor this demon in us at all various levels, many of them far below out consious radar.  And these are the most dangerous types.

Why?  Because if we don’t know they’re there, and therefore never take any action to cure them. That’s because we’re never quite enough of a mess to think that we really need any serious help.  But we do.  We may understand when someone is being and acting obviously self-destructive — drinking themselves to death, a big time drug addict, a self-mutilator that needs a stint in a mental hospital, and so on.  But our own self-destructive, self-hating behaviors are subtle and they don’t interfere with our ability to live 80-90% successful lives in many ways, and therefore we never really think of ourselves as self-hating. That’s for the crazies who pull out their hair or cut themselves with razors, right?  Not so.

In some ways these people are lucky because they are so bad that they attract enough attention that someone intevenes and gets them help.  But what about the rest of us, the “stealth” self-haters?  Is something as silly as shyness a manifestation of scary-ass self-harted?

It is.

The problem all begins when we make these Faustian bargins within our own heads where we allow ourselves success in one area of life (acedemic notariety, good health, lots of money, etc.) but then feel the perverse (self-hating) need to compensate for all of it somehow by frustrating some other area of our lives, or thwarting a great personal desire.  And if this “frustration/compensation” zone happens to land on top of your ability to create personal relationships with women, love them, have social success or even real live sex… then you end up becoming that sort of puzzling personality who seems to have tremendous success in some areas of life but is a miserable failure in others.

I was this guy for many years!

So I know all about the shame and embarrassment attached to it.  The knowledge that you have failed to match up to even the most rudimentary of expections by friends and family.  What’s going on?… this is the self-hatred mechanism at work in your deep unconsious mind, that’s what!  Don’t ask me why this shit happens, but a ton of people wrestle with their self-hating selves and have no idea of what’s going on inside their heads to cause it.

They are as much a puzzle to themselves as they are to others who care about them.

I think it basically has to do with being driven too hard by parents or peers or something else early on in our lives, until we end up taking on some of their “motivational disdain” that they developed to steer us straight (or into some other kind of mold that they had in their minds of how we “should” be)… and then reflecting this poison back on ourselves.  We’re are all victims in some way of this “Stockholm Syndrome” thing where we take up the cause of our own oppressors, and then continue to torment ourselves long after they are gone from our lives.

the way out of this trap is what I call the Double C’s: Consciousness and Compassion. First you must become self-aware of what is happening to you, what you are doing to yourself.  This is the Consciousness, or self-awareness part of the equation.  Only when you have discovered the true nature of the problem and have dragged it out into the sunlight can you begin to change it.  Then you have to learn how to exhibit the same sort of Compassion towards yourself (quit being so hard on yourself!) that you most likely extend towards most everyone else in your life.

Are you as hard on your aging parents, co-workers, casual friends, nieces and nephews as you are on YOU?  Probably not (in fact you may even over-compensate and become “too nice”, which also ruins your HSM vibe with women).  This can be a tough nut to crack and “unlearn”, but herein lies the answer.  Once you have practiced the art of self-compassion and broken the back of your own insideous self-hatred, THEN you will be able to lower the wall and accept those things into your life that haven’t been denied to you, but rtaher that you have been denying yourself all along.

If you want to read more about this subject, check out the book “Compassion and Self Hate” by Theodore Rubin.  It’s the top (Amazon) listing on this PUA Resources page.

Hey Mike,

At 40 years of age I think I may have finally found the missing piece of my own personal puzzle thanks to you: toxic shame.   Damn… who would have thought!   I need to tell you my story in order to have my question answered so bear with me.

I am an above average looking man and have a higher than average IQ.  This made my shitty track record with women even more frustrating to me.   I finally decided when I was thirty that I would overcome my fear of rejection and start getting laid.   I studied speed seduction….NOT FOR ME!   Eventually I just starting approaching and flirting with women and knocked a huge dent in my problem, but still couldn’t get past the flirting stage of seduction.   It wasn’t until after I came across your material that I figured it out.

Growing up, my father was a good provider but many times he was a regular Asshole.  Note the capital A!   Yes, I made mistakes as we all do, but he would totally blow things out of proportion with a slap upside the head or a belt across the ass.  I could handle this, but the yelling, screaming, and cursing are what really hurt the most… YOU ACT SO FUCKIN STUPID, or WHY YOU GOTTA FUCK UP SO GODDAMNED MUCH!!!!   He never spoke to my sister or mother in this way, only to me.

My mother was a sweet woman and I will always cherish her memory, but she did have a shaming trick or two herself.   Her thing was to start crying and say things like “one day I’ll be dead and then maybe you’ll be happy” or “just go ahead and hurt your mother” or “I’m so embarrassed by you.”   Naturally this ain’t too good for the old self esteem!

My mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1999 and the old man changed on a dime.  She fought the disease for 4 years with a courage uncommon… never complaining and always optimistic.   I felt badly for anything I had ever done wrong to her.   She passed away with my father and myself at her bedside crying like babies.

The night after her funeral, my father and I buried the hatchet.   He told me that he couldn’t believe the stupid bullshit that he got so bent out of shape about.   He apologized for all he had done to me, and I did as well.   We are on great terms now — he re-married and I am happy for him.

These are my questions:

Do I have to confront my father about my toxic shame in order to heal it?   Mike, if we were still at odds with each other I wouldn’t mind, but I hate to re-open those old wounds now.   John Bradshaw recommends twelve step groups like AA, but I don’t want to get into anything like that.   How did you handle it?   I am dead certain that this is the source of all my issues with women, not making enough money, etc.  Thanks for your time.

Ken

Hi Ken,

Thanks for writing, that was a very touching and heartfelt story, my belated condolences to you and your dad for the loss of your mom.   I lost my own dad back in ‘78 from bone cancer and I still wish I could talk to him every now and then.   Part of the progression of life is the collection of these sufferings along the way.

For me, it was my mom who did most of the shaming of my affection needs, which I now realize did me great damage but was clueless about while it was happening.  To this day however, I have never confronted her directly with these “charges”.   At this point I don’t believe it would do any good, and so I try to love her as best I can regardless.   I believe that just KNOWING about these hidden shame issues in your own mind robs them of most of their power without having to make a big show of it for everyone else. The important thing is that YOU can finally understand what’s been shaping your behaviors for so long, and so you can change course whenever you see the same patterns beginning to happen again.   It’s this AWARENESS that’s the key to destroying your shame by dragging it out into the light to burn up like some old vampire.   If you’ve made peace with your dad, then I would just drop it and move on.

You have to remember that our parents were from a different era where children weren’t coddled psychologically as they are today.   My parents were born in the 1920’s, which was the depression era in the USA.   Back then if you fed and put a roof over your kids’ heads you were being a fantastic parent!   Words were just bullshit — and their power to hurt and do lasting damage was mostly unrecognized.  People were just parenting the way that they themselves had been parented.   No one had access to very much training in the world outside of their own direct experience which was gleaned from the people in their families and the local community where they grew up, and that “training” could vary wildly from one person to the next.   Remember there was no TV or internet or all the other 1000-and-1 different avenues of alternative information and psycho-babble that exist today and which many of us now take completely for granted.   If you were messed up in the head, you simply suffered in silence — and you often passed all that crap on to your kids without a second thought.

Hell, my uncle was turned into a dysfunctional alcoholic from the effects of WW II.   Nowadays he would be diagnosed with “delayed stress syndrome” from his combat experiences and treated somehow.   Back then he was just shoved aside as a drunken bum and rejected and isolated and mocked.   This is how he lived out his sad and lonely life.

But now you and I know differently.   Now you can recognize where your problems have taken root and simply refuse to honor them whenever they try to mess you up again in the future.   And you can resolve NOT to pass their effects along to the next generation, to your own sons and daughters. In some ways ours is a transitional generation born of a responsibility that is presented to us by having access to this sea of information that we swim in — and it’s our job to break the chain of family misery by NOT passing on our own shame-based issues and illnesses.   That’s why I say that clubbing your dad over the head with all this shit won’t do you any good now – just go forward as best you can and resolve yourself never to BE him.

You don’t need 12 steps, just one step… self-awareness. Refuse to let your shame speak for you anymore — keep cutting it off at the knees and eventually it will lose it’s hold on you.

Dear Mike,

Being a downtrodden LSM my whole life has adversely affected my social life, finances and even my health.  I’m 36 years old and need a complete do-over in life.  The problem is that when I get down to it I really don’t believe that I can change anything about myself.  Positive thinking isn’t going to change my underlying crummy beliefs.  I’m stuck.   Do you think this LSM stuff is genetic?   My father is a “nice guy” LSM and my mother a domineering over-protective verbal abuser.   Lucky me! What about nature vs. nurture from your point of view on this subject?   Nature already screwed me over by making me 5′5″!

My question is, how can an LSM make the transformation to HSM if you don’t BELIEVE it to be possible for you?   Can one make anything happen without belief?  Isn’t that the most important component to change?   Just knowing what to do doesn’t seem like it’s enough.

Mark

Hi Mark,

About the only aspect of being an LSM that I can imagine might be genetic is the tendency towards being introverted, as this generally ties in with shyness and tends to hold you back socially somewhat.  Your parents sound like they’ve achieved a dominance-submissive balance that both of them can live with somehow.  Your dad modeled this kind of behavior for you, and you naturally picked it up… but it doesn’t have to be a life sentence.   One cannot do anything without belief as you have correctly analyzed — but it’s not your conscious mind that really needs to be doing all this believing, it’s your unconscious mind.

Your unconscious mind (UC) has a deeply imprinted image of yourself which includes an assumption of established boundaries around what it “knows” that is personally possible for you… from how much money you can make to how many women you can bed.   The only way to change this “thermostat of possibility” for yourself is by gradually exposing your UC to different REAL LIFE experiences and situations that will slowly retrain it to regard “you” in a different way.   This takes time, but (like bodybuilding) you can really make it happen for yourself if you get motivated and stick with it for awhile.   Maybe you can find a buddy to act as a wingman and you two can push each other to get motivated to go out, or whatever.   Any method that initially works to trick yourself into doing something you’ve written off as impossible can be effective.  You don’t need to create all this incredible positive belief first before attempting something — the belief will come later as your UC processes the results from reality.  It’s a chicken-and-egg thing.*

The worse place to find yourself in life is a point mentally where you feel you’ve gone as far as you can at some aspect, have hit the wall and can’t go any further.   DO NOT let yourself fall into this end-game trap, it’s all bullshit.   Your brain remains plastic enough all throughout your life to be able to change basic aspects of your nature, you just have to fight through the inertia of the old conditioning.   I like to think of these as dry-rotted neurons that need recharging.

Reality is the key — the UC learns from the reality that you present to it, not through book learning.  Use “book learning” to show your conscious mind how to create those real life situations (physical action / activity) that will eventually train your UC to have a different “opinion” of yourself.  The UC schools itself in the world of action and experience, that’s why positive thinking can only take you so far.   It’s strictly an internal process that, while useful for it’s effects on the conscious mind, doesn’t dig in deep enough into the UC to challenge and change those stubborn negative, disempowering beliefs that are currently messing you up.

So despite the fact that it “knows” everything’s all bullshit (and I used to think this way too… it might be the 5′5″ thing, otherwise known as the “little man’s disease”, use your conscious mind to place yourself into situations where reality has an opportunity to slap your unconscious mind upside it’s neurons and re-arrange it’s deep belief system and assumptions about life, love and your role in the entire scheme of things.   That’s how you make dramatic sea changes in your life.   Get busy.

* I realize that some of you guys reading this are young and maybe haven’t heard the old saw about “which came first, the chicken or the egg?”    A philosophical puzzle my dad used to like to hammer me with whenever he thought I was being too much of a smart ass know-it-all.  If you’re a believer in Creation then the answer is the chicken I suppose.  If you understand evolution however, then you know that all species of life appear gradually over enormous spans of time (which is why the process is invisible) by morphing from simpler creatures that came before them in a long, constant continuum.   Rewinding this process it takes you back to the very first animated particle of life at the dawn of Earth.   So the correct answer in this case (if you want to impress someone as a know-it-all smart ass) is “neither… what came first was an initial ‘genesis’ molecule of RNA that self-replicated a copy of itself, thus crossing the line from inanimate to animate matter”.   Now you know why I kept getting sent to my room.   But that’s okay, because that’s where this little wise guy had all his dirty magazines stashed anyway…

Hi Mike

My new girlfriend told me something the other day that just kinda pisses me off.   It’s about her ex-boyfriend — which she stayed with for a couple years — who was basically a piece of crap the way I see it.   All these stories of drama and how he made her balloon up to a huge weight and everything (she’s lost it all since then, and looks great now!).

I realize I have my faults too, but why is this abusive shit so common?  My girl is really pretty, and I ask myself how the fuck this could’ve happened?  I know her father was not a big part of her life, and her home life is kinda bananas as well sometimes.   What’s going on here do you think?

Dave

Hey Dave,

If you end up marrying this girl and ever have daughters with her, remember this …

…a girl’s FATHER becomes the working model for all her future lovers.

These girls with bum-ass dads who ignored them or are drunks or were just never there for them mess these chicks up more than you might imagine.  Women like this develop a kind of radar that allows them to spot the EXACT same kind of loser their dad was, so they can they latch right onto him.  Why?  Who knows… maybe they want a second chance to “fix” daddy and make it all better this time around?   It never works of course.  Half these parents out there don’t seem to understand that the goal of raising kids is to produce well-balanced adults twenty years in the future, not little well-behaved machines designed to fix mom and dad’s own fucked-up head problems.

Shit, there’s an idea that will fly along with the pigs once they get around to sprouting wings.

If you have a great, loving dad who builds esteem in his little girl — she becomes a rational adult who knows enough to naturally avoid these kind of jerks.  Those who catch the bad treatment spend the rest of their lives chasing ghosts.   Judging from the success that all the pricks and losers of the world have scoring hot women, there’s a great deal of damaged goods walking around just looking to be hurt again.   Sad but true.

Hey Mike,

I got some chick in Florida on the hook now using your techniques.   Simply getting rid of all that negative attitude really made a big difference… it IS a stench that everybody (but yourself) is keenly aware of.   It’s true that nobody cares about your hardships (10% of Life is what happens to us, and 90% is how we deal with it), but when you take the focus off of yourself for a change, all that mental energy is suddenly freed up.   Then we finally get what we want… women to desire us!   And it’s all because we finally have something to offer them besides worthless sniveling bullshit.

I used to wonder why I only merited disdain and indifference from people in the past. It seemed they saw some basis in reality that supported my perceived worthlessness.   No, they were just mirroring back what I SHOWED them.   I was my own worst enemy — and people would happily join in on whatever social embargo that I created for myself ( I got that from you, it’s not my original phrase ) and help stomp me into the ground.   What do women think of men with low self-esteem anyway?…

“Hmmm… seems like he knows his place. Let him stay there!”

You do yourself a grave injustice when you look down on yourself and seek validation from others.   It’s so empowering knowing that I don’t have to do that anymore.

John

Hey John,

Looks like you’ve figured out what I’m trying to teach in my book, which is very gratifying to see.   Everything about being a man has to do with the “vibe of accomplishment” he gives off through his attitude… which speaks to your working-world competency, apparent social adeptness, and what size “piece of action” (economically) that you’ve probably claimed from the world at large.   Acquiring this elevated air of male status isn’t just about gaining success with women either — this is just a side benefit really.   Once you can attract women naturally with your vibe, 90% of the seduction job is complete and it takes only a rudimentary social skill set to close the deal. No.  The real HSM (High Status Male) payoff comes from the respect you begin to gather from other men, and the amazing opportunities that often come along with it.

Ever wonder why certain guys seem to get all the breaks when it comes to career advancement?… or business opportunities that seem to fall into their lap from out of the sky?   What’s going on?   The self-hating loser never gets these kind of breaks, does he?   The rich get richer because others are always right there willing to help them float their boat, hoping that some of their magic will rub off. People gravitate to and want to somehow get involved with guys they sense are powerful in some way and are on the move either socially or economically.   And I’m not talking about being a big shot TV star or some super-rich guy like Trump… you only need to become something of a “star” in your own everyday little world to reap the benefits of being a Man and make a 1000% improvement in your life — especially if you’ve spent most of it as a downtrodden LSM (Low Status Male).

Hi Mike-

I have to say I was really struck by your idea of toxic shame.  I mean, wow… you described me exactly!  I don’t know where it came from, but I feel like a fool “chasing” a girl because it makes me feel weak.  It’s like admitting you need someone else in your life to make it better.  I guess I took the loner’s oath a long time ago 

Anyway, I’m ready to get over it now, and I’m glad to have found your book. Thanks for your work…it’s good to know others have “recovered” from this type of thing!

Ben

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your kind words.  Get that book by John Bradshaw that I talk about –”Healing the Shame that Binds You“.  Check Amazon.com.  This book saved my life!  At the age of 40, I finally figured it out with the help of this book.  Toxically shamed affection needs made it impossible for me to approach a woman without feeling like a fool.  Loners are powerful people, only weaklings need others… sound familiar?

It IS possible to change these messed up thinking patterns — but the first step has to be complete knowledge of what the hell is wrong with you in the first place. It’s damn hard to objectively evaluate yourself, because we each have a lot of time invested in convincing ourselves that we are right about the way we feel about everything, and that everyone else is wrong.  Do it now before your attitudes get locked in concrete (like all the miserable old bastards you know!)  You can’t repair something until you troubleshoot it first, right?

Hello Mike,

I haven’t read your book, but it doesn’t matter because whatever you wrote or whatever anybody else has written regarding meeting women is totally lost on me.  You see, I couldn’t approach a woman if my life depended on it.   If I were given a choice of walking up to a woman or going back to Vietnam, I would take my chances in the foxhole.   No matter what you or any of the other author’s have to say, it’s not going to put any words in my mouth.   Unless someone is actually standing behind me telling me what to say, it’s an incredibly hopeless situation.

And since I don’t look like Brad Pitt or George Clooney the women aren’t going to approach me either.   If by some miracle a woman did approach me I would come off looking like a fool anyway, because I would be standing there completely mute and she would think (correctly so) that I was an idiot.   She would then tell her friends about the moron she’d just talked to and they would laugh.

By the way, I was married once… jumped at the first woman that paid any attention to me.   But I didn’t know she was a confirmed alcoholic so we finally split.   That was over 16 years ago, and in that time I haven’t so much as had a cup of coffee with a woman let alone go on a date.   No pickup method is going to work when you are so nervous that you can’t even speak.

Thanks anyway,
Geraldo

Dude there was a time when I could have written the EXACT letter that you just wrote me — your low self-respect rings a frightening bell.   These thoughts will fuck you up because they go around in a circle like a broken record.   You’re not ready for books on meeting women yet anyway, you need to learn how to break out of your mental prison first.

I’ll give you the name of a book that helped me with a lot of this self-destructive internal chatter.   It’s called “Self Defeating Behaviors” by Milton Cudney & Robert Hardy. It’s an older book from about 1990 and a bit clinical in it’s approach (not my writing style certainly), but it’ll give you a terrific insight into how SDB’s are formed from faulty conclusions that we developed in the past, and how the circuitous methods we use to keep them perpetuated work.

You have to dig out the bullshit, disempowering conclusions that are stuck in your head in order to see any radical changes in your behavior.   Give it a shot, try it as an experiment.   Unscrew your lid and stir the contents around a little, know what I mean? Have some fun with that 3 pounds of mush.   Take care buddy, and thanks for your past service.