Dealing with nerves?

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Does anyone have any advice on how to calm one's nerves and not get flustered when talking to someone you're interested in?

If I'm seriously attracted to someone, I seem to be incapable of disguising it. I'm too shy to express how I feel in normal/appropriate ways (by such terrifying stunts as saying "I really like you," for example), so my stupid body seems to think it needs to take over and make the point quite explicitly. I turn bright red, start shaking, stutter, talk too much, laugh too much; I can't stop any of it, and the more I realize how silly I'm acting, the more nervous I become.

It feels pathetic, frankly. As a woman, I've always been taught (and I'm fully aware how sexist and outdated this is, but I can't help having it stuck in my head) that I have to play hard to get if I want potential partners to be interested, but I'm incapable of doing so because I'm so transparent-- all my cards are on the table right away. After such a conversation, I feel shaken and exposed, and I spend hours replaying the whole thing and beating myself up for everything I did wrong. Then I often avoid the person because I'm worried what they think of me.

If anyone can relate to this or has some kind of secret solution, please share!!

I'm a guy, but I can definitely relate! Happens everytime I talk to someone I like. Usually any methods I had to try and cover it up were futile (I learned this the hard way). Since they would have picked up on it faster than I thought they would, I just keep with the transparency and figure if the person is turned off by it, perhaps it was for the better we didn't date. If you really want ot know how to keep calm, though I try to play a song in my head that gets me there while at the same time doesn't give me thoughts of the person I'm with. Hope this helped!

Try to treat the experience as a positive one. If you're focused on making mistakes, there is a higher chance this will happen. Maybe what you could do is carry a card that says things like "I can stay focused", or "I am in control"...look at it and repeat the words shortly before your date, and take some deep breaths.

Another trick is to pretend that the person you are talking to is a familiar riend or someone you know, rather than someone you're attracted to. It will allow you to focus on the conversation at hand and less on what you are going to say or do next.

If you find yourself getting overwhelmed, it's okay to take a break. It's fine to excuse yourself to go to the washroom and take a few breaths.

You need to develop assertiveness in social situations and keep using positive self talk to keep yourself calm. It will take practice and it's not going to happen overnight so I really insist that you don't feel too critical towards yourself over it.

Well, there's two options you have. Caffeine, or alcohol. Alcohol is liquid courage, but has the side effect of making you dumber. Caffeine on the other hand, just mildly improves confidence, and speeds the mental processing, so you're just you...but better! But then too much caffeine can basically make you into a paranoid schizophrenic.

Unfortunately, I can't recommend too much else, and both are detrimental to your health.

I know if there is someone I find attractive, the first time I see them, I do tend to look, giggle or hyperventilate, usually alternating between all three, and then I run away to recover for a bit.

I have noticed, that apart from me looking, they don't notice the rest of it. Afterwards, if I have to speak to them, though I feel extremely nervous, I always get told I come off quite calm and not nervous at all, especially during any interactions that follow - in fact most of them have said that I don't appear all that interested in them (probably due to lack of eye contact).

Are you absolutely sure it's noticeable from the guys point of view? Or are you just hyper-aware of it and it's making you feel even more nervous than normal?

yes, i can relate. i get a lot of nerves in similar situations. in a way, it makes no sense to me to try to remain calm when my objective is to possibly get close to the other person in a romantic or sexual way. so i don't really fight it or try to counteract it.

usually i will tell them partway through the time we are spending together as to how i am feeling about them. they will either agree and feel comforted in knowing they can share their own nervous feelings, or they will at least be more understanding of why i am shaky or blushing or something. i don't say something like, "i think i am falling in love with you" or "i wish we could have sex under the table right now" (ok, maybe i might have said one of those once), but i do try to simply state something like, "hey i'm nervous. i think you're cool and i am feeling chemistry so it' throwing me a little off balance. bear with me!! !"

people tend to misread my signals, so it helps to verbalise stuff. in one of my few real "dates", the guy commented that i seemed fascinated with the salad as i talked to it for the whole date!! ! (as opposed to facing him). it was because my hormones and nerves were too much to handle so eye contact was NOT going to happen. it helped to talk to him so he understood why i was acting that way.

Thank you for the advice so far, and to those who said they can relate. At least I'm not alone in this madness. It sounds like in certain situations, learning to minimize my reaction with positive thinking and coping strategies like those mentioned could be helpful, while in others (a date, basically) going with it and verbalizing is better.

The worst thing is, I wouldn't mind as much if this happened on a date since at least then it's assumed that we might be attracted to one another; it's when it happens in normal life that it's the most embarrassing. I'm thinking particularly of instances in the past where it's been inappropriate for me to express those kinds of feelings, either because we were definitely just friends or because the person was off-limits due to being in a relationship or other factors. This also means that even if I wanted to rely on alcohol, it's not really an option, because if it comes up in certain situations it would mean I'd have to be drunk all day

I used to wear my heart on my sleeve and this lead to a great deal of humiliation when I was in my teens. I was still pretty obvious in my twenties but over time I became calmer and I was able to control much of my behavior. Certainly when I was younger, it was obvious enough as I was teased quite a bit about it. From the perspective of being 47 looking back on how I behaved at 15 through 30, I wish I could have advised myself to be less concerned about making a fool of myself and to be more open to simply being confident enough to say what I really thought.

I guess, for me, I tended to behave awkwardly because I assumed, if I knew what I was doing, I could control the situation. I could make a girl love me or I could impress someone. Now that I'm older, I know that I have little control. If a woman is going to fall in love with me, she will. If she won't, she won't. My trying to influence the situation isn't really going to change things. Because I have little expectation of influencing her emotions, I don't worry so much about it. I am more comfortable with the idea that things will happen one way or another and I'll just deal with it the way that seems best at the moment.

But I'm 47 and I suspect a lot of why it's so much easier now is simply the hormones have eased off. It doesn't really help you in your situation.

I think it is the hope that a relationship could come of the situation that makes you behave awkwardly. It is the uncertainty of the potential relationship that makes you not know how to behave. It was always easier for me to interact with women who were in relationships because I knew nothing could happen between us. If you just assumed no relationship would come of it, you could relate to the person with only that outcome in mind and thus would not be as self conscious about your own behavior. But if you interact with a person with the idea that maybe something could happen between you two, then you will be hyper aware of every thing you say, every move you make etc. If you are thinking about all the possible interpretations he might have over what you say and do, you will not be able to simply "be in the moment" Instead of responding naturally to the flow of a conversation, you will be distracted by your own second guessing of what you are doing and how you think he might be responding.

With that in mind, it seems to me that that way to suppress the stuttering, shaking, laughing etc, is to work hard to NOT pay attention to yourself. If you can find something else to focus on; the topic of the conversation, for example then you might be able to behave naturally. I understand that this is no easy task and I can't say that I was ever successful at behaving naturally when I was younger, but, from my point of view, this really does seem to be the core of the problem.

It might be helpful to do some thinking before you are with a person to whom you are attracted about what you want out of the situation. If you have an agenda that you don't want to divulge to the person, you will have to be careful about everything you say making it much harder to say anything naturally. It's sort of like telling a lie and then having to watch everything you say to keep it consistent with that lie. In the end, it's a lot easier to just tell the truth from the start. If you try to limit yourself to only hoping for things that are within reason, then you might be able to keep better control over your behavior.

For example, the last woman I had a crush on, I decided that if she wanted nothing more than to be friends, I would accept that and not try to push things further. When she seemed reluctant to do anything that seemed too much like a "date" I scaled back my expectations. As a result we remain friends and while I might not have everything I might have wanted, I haven't lost her friendship.

Honestly I don't know how much help this is. I don't think it would have been much help to me if I had read this twenty years ago. I wish it could be easier for you.

Good luck.

Thank you for the thoughtful post jagatai You make a lot of great points, especially about thinking you can make someone feel something by acting a certain way, and about hoping for the possibility of a relationship.

Perhaps now that I've dealt with the fixation on getting into a committed relationship that I felt when I was younger, it will be easier for me to establish realistic expectations. I think I do have a problem, though, with analyzing my behavior too much in the assumption that doing the "right" things will make people like me-- not only in a romantic sense, but overall-- which is more difficult for me to work on.

I think I have a bit of an irrational assumption that NT's, or more socially capable people in general, must get everything they want with other people because they can interact more effectively. It is hard to learn to accept that it isn't as simple as learning the rules and thus having people respond better.

ETA: nice sig by the way. <3 Leonard Cohen songs.