Integration plans; or, more notes on Models (2/N)

I recently reread large chunks of Models (previously), and what struck me is that (A) there are a lot of ideas worth trying, and (B) to make effective use of all that, I need some way to resurface those ideas over time. Realistically, there's no way to incorporate everything in this book all at the same time. Skimming it every day for a new idea would be a pain in the ass to execute, would make it absolutely impossible to track progress, and I wouldn't do it. I constructed a reverse outline of the book in terms that make sense to me and even that seems onerous to work from. I wouldn't do that either.

To incorporate all that material, I need to choose what to practice and choose a schedule. I could choose every day but as just discussed I won't, so I want to instead choose practices and a schedule in advance and make it as easy as possible to check off my practice every day or week I'm scheduled to practice. I want to set my goals low so I can easily get myself moving and succeed.

I already know what I want to practice: By the numbers, it's the "honest action" part of the book. That's the part of the book about overcoming "internal resistance to change" and unhelpful stories. This comes up a lot and means I don't meet very many women (I see them, smile, and pass by), so it's clearly the answer to what to practice.

But there are challenges to practicing it. For one thing, it doesn't always present as anxiety. The hard part about addressing this is that "internal resistance to change" changes shape. Some days, it looks like anxiety. On those days, I know it's crazy, and I might be able to sit with the anxiety or act despite it. I feel familiar enough with how to handle it. Now, I could schedule it out under the exposure therapy approach. That could definitely work. I don't like having to do this for every new context, though, because a "new" context doesn't have to be all that new.

I have a story about both such challenges. I do partner dancing — ballroom, swing, a little Latin. The dance studio I attend also hosts line dancing classes and nights. I had been to line dancing a few times before but felt like an outsider and didn't enjoy the line dancing nights enough to keep attending until powering through a few parties in April/May. I still feel like an outsider — I know few of the people there and don't approach the ones I don't know out of a sort of circular anxiety about feeling like an outsider — but now I feel OK enough at the dancing part to muddle through that part.

So, I went to a packed line dancing night recently at my dance studio. Among all the people there, I spied two or three groups of cute ladies I was interested in. Two ladies in particular caught my eye. While I was sitting down waiting for the class to start, I felt anxiety about the idea of talking to any of them and made up all kinds of excuses, chief among them that I can't just talk to them because they're cute, that would make me the kind of loser who treats dancing as a singles club, that's no good, that shows disrespect for the activity and the other people here and that's not right. But after that, when the party started, I somehow confused myself into thinking it wasn't anxiety at all, that while I thought they were cute and looked interesting and friendly, I was just not interested in talking to ladies that night.

This seems kind of silly in retrospect. I found myself doing line dances I knew well and messing up every third section because I was glancing around the floor to keep tabs on what was going on with the ladies. (The other line dancers, too, but mainly the two ladies of interest and their friends.) Actually, I was laughing in the moment and afterward at how absurd the story was — obviously I was interested or I wouldn't have been so distracted that I was messing up so much.

The honest thing to do would have been to approach one or both of them and express my interest. Hey, you're cute, I like your cowgirl boots, I bet those were expensive, you must be a line dancing nut. Hey, you're cute, I like the fringe purse, you must be wild underneath the polo, bun and glasses. But I didn't approach either — not even when the cowgirl stayed chatting with her friends in a huddle literal feet away from me with only the teacher and a few die-hard regulars left at the party. Oops. Lol.

This reminds me of a meditation story about wanting to change and failing. The story's worth reading, but in short, the student expresses that they're frustrated to be able to notice they are overreacting to something, yet the overreaction happens anyway. The lamas respond that in some sense we want it both ways, so we "go through the whole little dance anyway." They add:

Lamas: ... As to the point where it stops—it does not stop by trying to stop it. It can only stop through clarity. To have clarity, or to have clarity develop, we need humour. The ‘whole little dance’ has to be seen for what it is. We have to accept that we are both dance partners, the died-in-the-wool [sic] neurotic and the practitioner who is trying to let neuroses go. That is comical and we have to be fairly light-hearted about it. With sufficient humour, we can simply be the space that lets these two lunatics dance.

Notice this isn't an answer to the question of how to resolve this crazy situation. It's not any kind of an answer at all. If anything they accept the complaint as valid and reject the question. This is frustrating. If they have answered at all, it's to say: laugh at the situation as much as you can. This isn't very satisfying from the perspective of being the lunatic who "wish[es] to be free of our neuroses." It sounds like an indulgence of the other lunatic who "wish[es] to ride them into the sunset crying 'Yee-HA'!" My conscious mind clearly has a bias toward one of these lunatics while my unconscious has a bias to the other, or I wouldn't be writing this post.

I'm reminded of a meditation Q&A about patterns. The answer there amounts to: Yes, do the pattern again — and see if you can find space around that experience to notice what it is you're getting out of doing the pattern. In this case: Show up, see the women I want to approach, don't go talk to them, and find the space around that experience to notice what I'm getting out of avoiding them. Don't assume that knowing conceptually what I'm getting out of it is good enough. I need to experience the payoff clearly to recognize that "A schlimazel would be ashamed to take [it]."

And thinking about it — I think it goes back to the beginning, to a "positive" story that I am someone who Respects The Activity, The Space, The People, as someone who is Not Treating This As A Singles Club. I find myself attracted to whatever supports that identity. In this case, it's not talking to those ladies I very clearly want to talk to. I want to talk to the cute ladies and I also want to be a sexless Respectable Member of the Community because that's a 'safer' identity. Oops. Lol.

I don't know what to conclude from all this. Should I build an exposure therapy plan? Feels like a complex waste of time. Feels like the right thing to do is to just observe what's going on next time. But also, it feels foolish to throw away the exposure therapy idea entirely. A good compromise could be to come up with one small action in the exposure therapy vein that represents a "minimum viable approach" — say, just introducing myself, say nice to meet you and then I can walk away. Weak! But far better than never approaching her at all. I can practice this even in contexts that I'm less comfortable in.

So, I think that's the integration plan for now. Find the space around experience when cute ladies are around and pay attention to what I'm getting from my patterned choice to not approach. In parallel, practice doing "minimum viable approaches" to get used to the idea of approaching at all in new contexts.

This doesn't account for the rest of the material, but the communication skills and humor are a lot less impactful and harder to practice if I'm not approaching women in the first place.