Inner Defense Mechanisms The Hidden Reason Why You Don’t Change

[NilsFlair]

What's up guys! Today I want to give you an insight into your mind, and why changing can be such a ridiculously demanding endeavor. This one will be about Inner Defense Mechanism, basically the tricks your mind play on you, why it does this, and what to do about it.
So without further ado:

Inner Defense Mechanisms is a function inside the mind that works to protect a certain self-image, a specific worldview or perception that is static. It’s like the anti virus system in your computer, only that instead of removing viruses, it’s removing the updates to the operation system, which eventually leaves the operation system very out of date, and this is what happens with a lot of aspects in your self-image.

The job of this function is homeostasis, to keep your worldview as intact and absolute as possible. Anything that’s challenging you to open your mind and find new and more evolved ways of perceiving the world is a direct threat to the pre-existing self-image/worldview, just like when a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, the caterpillar is dead, it doesn’t exist anymore. Of course we know that it still does in the form of a butterfly, but your inner defense mechanisms doesn’t, their sole purpose is to keep you stable in your current worldview. To them evolving out of that seems like destruction. This explains why changing can be so extremely hard.

Since this is such a fundamental part of our minds, how come we don’t see it easily?

Because of our minds ability to rationalize. This is where our mind plays against us, an opponent with the same IQ, understanding, and experience as we ourselves have. As fast as you can think, you can rationalize, and just like you can alter your memories, you can also backwards rationalize.

This is the reason why these inner defense mechanisms seem so hidden. Whenever they become active they create rationalizations for their existence.

Example: Even though you see that hot girl, she is the one you want to talk to, and you know that it shouldn’t even be that hard to do, your mind creates all these rationalizations.

“It’s not the right moment”, “Her friends will fuck it up for me”, “I will get rejected anyway” etc.

Another form of rationalizing could be that you don’t even see the hot girls, they are there but they are not in your conscious awareness, so you perceive it like they’re not there at all. Or maybe you see her but you only see all the problems that could arise if you actually would approach her.

These Inner Defense Mechanisms play a BIG role. Every single time that you try to change anything in your life, these defenses will light up and start protecting the status quo. Everything that deviates from the patterns of your normal routine will be met with inner resistance.

And this is why most people simply don’t change that much in their life, unless something drastic happens and they have no choice but to adapt to the situation.

When you’re in the field, most of what you’re struggling against are these defenses, that are constantly trying to pull you in the opposite direction. This is why there are many people in the community that have been going out for years and years, but not making any significant progress, because they were never aware of the fact that there was always a force pulling them away from what they want.

So if you’re not aware of this, trying to change can be an incredible time consuming and strenuous process. Because the more you push forward, the more the defenses push you back. And change really only happens at the extremes, where you push so hard that you break your old perception, you break your old self.

This idea has been romanticized in the pickup community for a long time, but it can have some really nasty side effects. The most obvious of them is that you actually disowned the part of you that created the old perception, and even though you broke out of the perception, the part that created it is still there and it affects you whether you like it or not.

A lot of successful players can become quite disillusioned after having a lot of success in the game over the span of many years, they broke out of their chodes ways, they became socially savvy, slept with 100s of women, but this part of themselves is still running in the background and no external situation can really resolve it. So many of them become jaded or depressed.

Now, if you are aware of this the story can turn out quite different. Cold approach is no longer a chase of the external, but really a pursuit of the mind. The whole environment and every conversation you have can promote growth, you’re gaining awareness all the time and you start to seriously question your current worldviews and begin to process your insecurities.

As your worldview changes your perception changes too, what was once a girl making you feel anxious is now a girl you feel drawn to talk to, to connect with, and share your sexual self with.

As you let go of more and more of your insecurities, you start seeing her insecurities, and instead of trying to game her based on them, you help her to let go of them. Seeing interactions with girls this way simplifies the whole process of sleeping with a girl tremendously, and every girls potential becomes revealed to you.

The illusion that girls are boring, stupid, or bitches gets shattered. You can start to see how much depth every girl actually has and this depth becomes accessible to you, if you want it.

So how do you actually let go of these defenses?

The first step is to become aware of them, you have to know the problem in order to be able to solve it. And there’s more than one way that these defenses manifest, it’s not only emotional resistance but thoughts and behaviors as well. Becoming aware of the defenses is an ongoing process.

Second step is to realize that these defenses are not who you are, they are simply a function of the mind protecting a belief about yourself. So it’s not your destiny to remain they way you are now, you can definitely change and it becomes easier with time as you become aware of more and more defenses.

Third step is more exclusive to cold approach (and that’s one of the reasons why I love it). This is to express them, and expose the defenses. Why this works so well is because when you express yourself to a girl her reaction becomes feedback of what you’re subconsciously communicating, and with awareness you can rapidly start noticing your subconscious defenses with your conscious mind.
One last part I wanted to remind you of is that all of these defenses existed to serve you, they were created by your mind for a good purpose, so do not beat yourself up for having defenses or resistance pulling you away from what you want.

The mind is not evil, it just needs and update!

- Nils Flair from Social Prime.