.. But that\u2019s very different from making this your opening gambit. Launching into a stream of negativity in the first few minutes is exhausting, even alarming, for the other person. It makes it impossible to take any pleasure out of the situation. It will probably make them want to escape pretty sharpish.<\/p>\n
And, worst of all, it makes you even more convinced that all this misery is justified, because It makes you even surer that you\u2019re unlovable.<\/p>\n
Excessive self-deprecation is largely about diminishing yourself before anyone has a chance to do it for you, so when someone seems to agree with your poor-self image, that only encourages you to keep jumping the gun.<\/p>\n
And that makes you even more likely to keep building up your negativity wall.<\/p>\n
Take a recent date of Jennifer\u2019s. She met up with a guy with similar interests. Who she\u2019d been chatting to through a dating site for a while, and seemed really keen. He was witty and interesting and good-looking, and he clearly thought she was, too.<\/p>\n
Jesus. Who hurt you?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
They met for a drink. The conversation was flowing and Jennifer thought it was going fine. She didn\u2019t even realise how unrelentingly negative she was being until the guy looked at her in bewilderment and said \u201cJesus. Who hurt you?\u201d<\/p>\n
Needless to say, the relationship did not progress.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t stop yourself from building up your negativity tower, pretty sure you\u2019ll find yourself stuck Inside. You won\u2019t remember how to actually get out of it. You might forget that you\u2019re even in it.<\/p>\n
Like Jennifer, you\u2019ll stop noticing that you\u2019re being miserable about everything. You might have stopped noticing the effect this has on other people.<\/p>\n
And then, from a relationship perspective, you\u2019re really in trouble.<\/p>\n
So where do you start if you\u2019re a Rapunzel? How do you learn to let down your long hair?<\/p>\n
Not all about you<\/h3>\n
The easiest way to begin is to stop making everything about YOU.<\/p>\n
If your bad feelings are dominating the conversation, stop talking about yourself so much. Ask the other person lots of questions. Get them talking about what they\u2019re excited about and interested in. Do your best to be excited about and interested in it, too. Bounce off their enthusiasm. Notice how it feels to be talking to someone who is passionate and positive about something. Notice how it puts you at ease.<\/p>\n
And then, when the conversation comes back around to you, work on mirroring this mood.<\/p>\n
(As a side note \u2013 there\u2019s loads of evidence that mirroring another person\u2019s behaviour and body language actually builds rapport and helps people warm to you, too!).<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t fake passion for things you hate, but rather focus on the things you really like and why they make you tick, rather than ways in which they might be lacking. Allow yourself the pleasure of being upbeat as you talk about things that make you happy. Pay attention to how pushing yourself to focus on the positives actually changes the way you feel.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to talk yourself up, but that doesn\u2019t mean you have to put yourself down.<\/p>\n
Plus, if you can\u2019t refer to your achievements without feeling sick to your stomach (and if you\u2019re British, you\u2019re probably familiar with this phenomenon), talk about what you enjoy about your work instead. Talk about what you loved about that last book you read or that last film you saw. Talk about something really fascinating or exciting thing that you heard or read about today.<\/p>\n
So Rapunzel, go ahead and let your hair down. You will enjoy yourself much, much more \u2013 and, of course, so will your date.<\/p>\n
Know a Rapunzel who needs a dose of real talk? Send this blog post to them!<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the second part of a two-part series. To read the first part, click here. In my last post, I talked about one kind of eternally single friend that we all seem to have: the type who we know is awesome, isn\u2019t shy about meeting people and always seems to have the next hot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1030],"tags":[24,20,23],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18067"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18067"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nakedrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19153,"href":"https:\/\/nakedrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18067\/revisions\/19153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nakedrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nakedrecovery.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}