Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: With the new year just beginning, I’d like to really push through the chest beating and knee shaking that comes with approaching women. I’ve become FAR better at it but now I’m trying to graduate from “being good at conversation and connecting” to “actually flirting and being sexual.”

Progress has been slow. It’s that damned approach anxiety, mainly in new spaces or semi-public ones like bars, conventions, events etc. Don’t get me wrong, I think I’ve become rather good at connecting with people and can genuinely charm people when I’m putting all my effort into it.

BUT…. Now I need to advance beyond “cool stranger” and into “I wanna f--k/date this guy.”

I did some practice at a party and bumbled my way into making some chick think I pee’d in her pool. I was the first one in, so I jokingly said I “christened it” completely oblivious to the implications. After seeing the reactions of “uhhh, what did he just say” on their faces I ran away, not wanting to correct myself or clarify out of sheer embarrassment. This was after forcing myself to change walking direction towards her and another girl without any plan of action. I was feeling the chest beats and knee shakes and thought “alright time to work through it.”

I guess my question is if there is any easier way to fight through those chest beating and knee shaky feelings on the approach. And if I should just keep doing it until the feeling goes away or I can deal with it better. I’m gonna feel this at every step of the dating/sex process, so I want some help with better navigating it.

Panic Attack! At The Disco!

DEAR PANIC ATTACK! AT THE DISCO!: One of the issues that people often misunderstand or don’t fully get is how much of approach anxiety and fear of flirting or talking to people is that it’s not actually fear, so much as unfamiliarity. It’s the discomfort of doing something different or unusual and the worry of social opprobrium and inherent embarrassment for making a mistake out of ignorance.  

If you get right down to it, it’s honestly the same feeling of not knowing the proper etiquette at a fancy party and that you’re going to mark yourself off as an ignorant, classless boor because you don’t know which fork to use or brought the wrong gift to the host and hostess and now you can expect to be in exile for the rest of the social season.

This is part of why your heart pounds and your knees get weak; you are painfully aware of what you don’t know, and the anxiety is more about the feeling of shame that could result. Intellectually, you know that you can survive embarrassment… but emotionally, the potential of it can be terrifying. You’re ultimately afraid of how you might feel.

The problem is that this feeling gets in the way of the very thing that makes the feeling go away. The cure to unfamiliarity is experience – doing the thing, risking making mistakes, learning from those mistakes and gaining a deeper understanding of how it all works. This is true for everything from being the new kid in school to approaching that sexy somebody at the party: the more you do it, the more confident you become, in no small part because you’ve been here before and you know the territory.

But those physical symptoms – the sweaty palms, the dry mouth, the racing heartbeat and adrenaline dumped into your system – are so incredibly uncomfortable that we often end up avoiding anything that might make us feel that way. And if we let that avoidance continue, it grows; soon we start to avoid things that make us even think of the things that cause those feelings. Do this for long enough and the world you allow yourself to live in gets smaller and smaller.

Now, there’re a lot of ways to try to manage those feelings; controlling your breathing, for example, forces your heart rate to slow, which calms you down. But at the end of the day, the only true cure for that feeling is experience, and that means that everything comes down to the mantra of “be afraid… but do it anyway.”

Now here’s the thing: we’re bad at understanding how we feel or why. We feel the physical sensations and then decide what they mean based on context clues around us. So when we feel physical sensations of excitement – and fear is a form of excitement – our brain casts around for reasons. This is why, for example, we talk about the Three Second Rule – you have three seconds after seeing someone before you have to go over and start talking to them. The point is to push past the physical sensations and not give your brain time to decide that you’re afraid; by the time it’s had the chance to say “oh no, you’re anxious”, you’re already in the mix and saying hello. So now your brain has to decide whether you’re afraid… or excited. This, in turn, builds up familiarity and experience and makes the entire process far less terrifying.

The same goes for making mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone, at some point, shoves their foot so deeply in their mouth that their shoelaces start tickling their intestines. The key isn’t to not make mistakes but to be able to recover from them. This, too, is a matter of practice and experience. Comedians like Conan O’Brian and others famously would go out and deliberately bomb on stage, precisely so that they could learn how to recover from it. Without experience, dying on stage can feel a lot like, well, actually dying. But when you know you can pull out of that particular nose-dive and have, in fact, done so, that feeling loses its power over you. Yeah, it can still suck… but you know damn good and well that not only is recovery possible, but you’ve done it.

I mean, I’ve had times where I have literally choked – as in, I aspirated on my own saliva – when trying to approach some attractive women. The key is that when this happened, instead of panicking, I took a second, said “hold on, let me do that again”, backed up and then approached them again like I hadn’t just sputtered and hacked like a cat with a hairball in front of them. And it worked. But this wouldn’t have been as possible if I hadn’t forced myself to not run away when I’d made other mistakes previously. Knowing through experience that I could do this, that mistakes weren’t fatal, and that embarrassment is temporary at best, meant that I knew I could manage things here too.

This is why the ultimate answer is to just push past the panic, to resist the urge to flee and proceed. Let your knees shake. Let your heart race. But keep at it. In time, with experience, you’ll learn that even some of the most incredibly awkward or embarrassing moments can become things that are funny or even endearing, becoming stories you tell about yourself instead of things you try to shove down a memory hole that end up haunting you at 4 AM.

And as a sidenote: many times the answer to “they think I’ve done this incredibly embarrassing thing” is agree-and-amplify, turning it into something absurd that nobody would seriously believe. “I’m sorry, in my culture, being the first one to urinate in the pool is a great honor, one that people fight for the right to do…” If you can get a laugh, then that moment ceases to be awkward and becomes one where you’re all laughing at the ridiculousness of thinking that’s what you meant… and they’ll be laughing with you, rather than at you. 

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I don’t know if this is a question as much as my not knowing how to feel or what to do but here goes: 

I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel motivated to date or meet people or do anything right now. On TV, I’m watching the fires in Los Angeles and hearing from friends of mine who’ve had to evacuate and won’t know if they have a place to live when they get back or how they’ll pay for anything if they have to replace it. I live in a medium-sized city that’s a blue-ish dot in a big red state and my LGBTQIA2S+ are fleeing for safer places to live. It’s hard to feel like there’s a point to anything when it seems like the worst people are in charge and all the good people are getting ground under the boot. Jobs are hard to find and the ones that exist are all app gig crap that pay nothing and offer no security or benefits, nobody can afford medical care or find a place to live that’s even halfway affordable.

To make matters worse, I’m actually doing well. I just got a promotion at work that came with a nice raise that means I may actually pay off my college loans a lot sooner than I thought, my side hustle seems to be on the verge of taking off and I’m in the best shape of my life. 2025 honestly looks like it’s going to be one of my best years ever. But if I stop and think about it for a minute, I feel bad because I feel good? It feels like I’m doing something wrong when my life is OK, even doing well, while everyone else is suffering. 

I feel guilty about my good luck, like it comes from other people having to be miserable and I don’t know what to do with this. Now I feel like there’s no point to trying to meet someone because the world’s ending but also like I’m in a better position to meet my future spouse but it’s wrong for me to be happy at the expense for everyone else so my being happy makes me a bad person. 

I don’t know what to do here. And before you ask, yes, I’m in therapy. 

What do I do?

Best of Times, Worst of Times

DEAR BEST OF TIMES, WORST OF TIMES: You’re not the only person who feels this way, BTWT. In fact, there’re a lot of folks �– not just chuds and Nazi-wannabes that think they’re in ascendence, but everyday normal people – who feel conflicted because… well, life’s a little better for them than they expected. Not that they don’t face the same challenges everyone is experiencing, but in general their life is doing ok despite it all. And that’s an important distinction: despite it, not because of it. The cognitive dissonance of it all means that they’re honestly unsure how to feel and many of them are feeling guilty because they’re not suffering.

And honestly, this isn’t exactly surprising. People often discover, even in the depths of grief and mourning, that they feel… ok. In fact, there’re days where they feel surprisingly good, even while they’re grieving the loss of someone they loved. It’s incredibly common and incredibly human; we simply don’t have the capacity to be miserable forever. But we often feel weird when this happens, like it means that our grief isn’t real enough or that our not being sad means that we don’t care as much as we should. In reality, it’s simply a matter of how humans are almost infinitely adaptable to circumstance.

Life stubbornly insists on continuing, regardless of what else is going on. I’m reminded of a quote from Leverage creator John Rogers: “Yet another evening I close my eyes, pinch the bridge of my nose, take two short sharp breaths and remind myself millions of people led satisfying, meaningful lives during the fall of the Roman Empire.” It may not be comfortable, it may not be the life we hoped for but life, as it always does, finds a way.

I have a personal theory that a lot of this ties back to the fundamentally Calvinist beliefs that the US was founded on; the idea that suffering is inherently noble, and joy is an indulgent luxury when it’s not an actual sin and turning away from or trying to mitigate misery is somehow weakness and a betrayal. In fact, as I write this, I’ve been seeing a member of The Lincoln Project excoriating progressives who’ve chosen to ignore Trump’s inauguration as cowards and that “bearing witness to history” is a requirement because… reasons. It’s not exactly clear.

Neither, for that matter, how this sort of performative self-flagellation is supposed to help or make a meaningful difference to the people who are going to be harmed by the policies the incoming administration has been pushing. At best, it feels like a way of dismissing feelings of responsibility to do something by making “I feel bad about it” equivalent to political organizing or volunteering to help the people who are currently under threat. And this ultimately does nothing to help anyone. It’s misery for misery’s sake. 

There’re two things that I think will be important for you and folks who feel the way you do.

The first is simple: the cure for feeling helpless and despair is action. Despair holds you in place. It leaves you paralyzed, unable to move or take decisive action because what’s the point? It’s all over before it began and any attempt to do anything about it has all the efficacy of spitting into a hurricane or yelling at the tides to stop. Action is the antithesis of despair; it is staring despair directly in the face and spitting in its eye. It may be an act of futile defiance but it’s still an act. It says that everything may be hopeless, and the best you can do is hold back the dark for a little bit longer… but sometimes holding back the dark just a little longer is precisely what makes a difference. Sometimes it really is a matter of resisting the siege until the dawn – not when forces come riding over the hill to our rescue, but simply holding back the tide until we all regroup and push the dark back again.

It may feel like a Sisyphean task, but sometimes the act of rolling that rock up the hill is more important than debating whether you’ll ever reach the top. Even if you know the result is failure, there’s value in staring those forces down, bruised, bloody and broken and declaring “I can do this all day”.

If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.

This is also part of the cure for the guilt you’re feeling. Think of this as the Tao of Peter Parker: with great power comes great responsibility. If life is going well for you and you’re in a better position than you expected, then one of the best things you can do is use your fortune to help others who are less fortunate. Rather than lamenting your success and feeling like it comes at the expense of others, reach out and put some of that largess into pulling others out of the depths. You know how Mr. Rogers famously said “look for the helpers?” He was talking about people like you: you’re the helper and your time is now.

There’s always a way to help and to take action, in ways both large and small, directly and indirectly. Make a recurring monthly donation to the aid agencies on the ground who are helping the people who are being hurt. Pick a cause and volunteer your time and resources. There are almost certainly organizations in your area helping immigrants under threat of deportation, LGBTQ people who need support or aid, reproductive health care, feeding and sheltering the homeless, taking care of the pets that’ve been abandoned or separated from their owners by the LA wildfires.

You can also find political organizations and causes too. We tend to get so hyper focused on state and national political races that we forget just how important city, county and municipal races can be. Join your local schoolboard and resist the forces demanding censorship and terrorizing queer, trans and gender non-conforming children. Volunteer at your local library and help keep those invaluable resources up and running. Hell, coaching Little League or kids’ sports teams and being a mentor to kids – especially ones who are under threat – can mean the world.

You can help individuals as well; if you have contacts in the states where your queer and trans friends are going who can help them find jobs or housing, give them a heads up and share that information with your friends. If you’ve got cash to spare, helping them defray the inevitable costs and emergencies can be a godsend. Even if all you manage is to help one person, you’ve made a much bigger difference. There’s a reason why the Talmud states “whomever saves one life, saves the world entire”.

And the act of helping, where you can and how you can, helps others find the strength to help as well. It’s like the sage said: “There’s some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”

But the other thing you have to realize is that joy isn’t a luxury, it’s part of what gives us the strength to keep going. There is always a need for the things that lift our spirits, that bring even a moment of relief or eases our burdens for a short period of time. Finding those little nuggets of joy give us things to live for and reminds us that there is light, even in the worst days. Even at the height of the Nazis’ power, people found community and happiness, celebrated together, danced and sang and reminded themselves that there was still good in the world. Even under the worst oppression of the Khmer Rogue, the Stasi or any force you care to think of, there were still songs, there was still music, there were still stories and love.

These may be very small things, but the biggest things are made of small ones. Even a blade of grass in the wasteland can give hope; a flower in the rubble reminds us that life finds a way and goes on. Every person who find the strength to keep going is helping to keep the darkness from engulfing everything.

Similarly, harming yourself or making yourself feel miserable for misery’s sake doesn’t benefit anyone; it only saps your strength and resolve and makes it that much harder to get back up when you’ve been knocked down.

If reading about people’s misery on social media becomes too much, you can take a break. You can give yourself permission to stop doomscrolling or to not pay constant attention to the news; perpetually sandpapering your soul only serves to leave you exhausted and weak. You are allowed – some would say required – to not waste your strength and well-being on pointless misery, especially performative misery.

We’re entering an incredibly turbulent period of history, and it’s impossible to know how it’s going to shake out. We know it’s going to be rough and it’s going to be roughest on the most vulnerable among us. That makes that that much more important to not give into despair, to reach out with aid and shelter and to not just find joy but to share it so that others can find strength and solace in it as well.

When we’re facing the darkest night, that’s the time for us to remember that hope shines bright.

All will be well.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m 20F, almost 21, a junior in college and I’ve been working my first job as a barista for about three months. Before I started this job, I didn’t think I was bad looking, not a 10 but at least a 6. But all my other young and youngish female coworkers get hit on and flirted with constantly by male customers, and I have literally not had this happen once. It’s not because I’m shy or unfriendly — A, I’m not, and B, shy pretty girls still get this. And it’s not that I can’t tell when a guy is flirting, because I see when it happens to them. The only other female employee under 50 who does not experience this is both overweight and unattractive, while I’m a good weight with a good figure, I just don’t have the best face or hair. Even the overweight girls with pretty faces get flirted with, not as much as thin pretty girls but not never, like me. It’s making me feel so ugly and depressed that I hate going to work, even though the environment is pleasant, the work itself is not too hard, and the pay and benefits are good.

The worst is when my coworkers complain about all the guys who want them and how much they hate it. They don’t seem like they feel scared or traumatized or anything, just competing to see who can humblebrag the hardest. I feel like a dirt-poor person listening to a bunch of rich people complain about how annoying it is to have more money than they know what to do with all day. 

I have never dated or even had a guy seem interested in me, which before this I figured would happen eventually. But now I’m worried that I’m completely undesirable, or that guys care so much more about faces than bodies that I will need cosmetic surgery to ever attract anyone. For the sake of my mental health, I want to try to find a job that does not involve interaction with the general public. But those kinds of part-time office jobs are harder to find, typically more hours, less flexible around my class schedule and don’t pay as much. And I really need the money — especially if I’m going to be saving for surgery. What advice would you give me?

Beauty Pageant Drop Out

DEAR BEAUTY PAGAENT DROP OUT: OK, I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m not inherently against cosmetic surgery. As a general rule, I think of bodies like cars or homes; if you want to make it truly fit you and make it uniquely yours, go for it. This is why I despise “these changes affect the resale value of your home”; if I buy a house, I’m buying it for me. I’m going to be the person there. I’m not buying it to hold onto it for the next person. So paint the walls, throw on some aftermarket mods, correct structural issues, do what you like to make it truly fit you. I would only suggest that you a) understand the risks that are inherent to all surgeries, b) make sure that you’re going to someone who can do the job properly and c) recognize that the results you get now may look different as time goes by and age and gravity work their will.

(A lot of procedures that get done don’t necessarily take the way that skin tone and elasticity change, the way fat redistributes, muscle changes etc. into account.)

But most importantly: you want to make sure that you’re doing them for the right reasons. I don’t mean “it’s ok to get cosmetic surgery to straighten your teeth, correct for a birth defect, or traumatic injury but nothing else”, I mean “cosmetic surgery is often an attempt at an external solution for an internal problem”. A lot of incels, for example, have spent new luxury car levels of money on cosmetic surgery, only to discover that while their faces changed, their circumstances hadn’t; they were still the same people they were before they went to the doctor, and they still have the same problems. The problems were never about their brow-to-jaw ratio or their lack of “hunters’ eyes” or whatever, it was about how they feel about themselves.

All of that is a long-winded preface to my saying that in your case, BPDO, I don’t think cosmetic surgery is the answer, because I don’t think that’s the problem… in as much that there is a problem.

Now, I’m not there, so I can’t tell you what the difference is between you and your co-workers. Nor, for that matter, am I a mind-reader, so I can’t tell you what’s going on in these guys’ heads that’s determining who they flirt with and who they don’t. What I can tell you, though, is that it’s really easy to get locked into a narrative that makes sense to us, even if it’s not necessarily true. Each and every one of us is prone to confirmation bias– a cognitive bias that causes us to give greater credence and importance to things that align with what we already believe and to dismiss, ignore or simply not notice the things that contradict those beliefs. And this is true, even when those beliefs hurt us.

And part of the hell of it is that it’s a self-sustaining cycle. Our beliefs and attitudes shape the world as we see it and as we interact with it, for good or for ill. If we believe something to be true, we behave accordingly, and it becomes the filter through which we see the world. If we believe that, say, someone’s a bad person, we tend to see everything they do through that lens. Did they say “good morning” to us? They were snickering at us behind that smile. Did they just charge into a burning building and rescue two children and a basket of abandoned puppies? Probably did it to throw off suspicion and make people think they’re good.

The same is true with how we feel about ourselves. If we believe we’re ugly, then we’re going to find ample evidence that we are. Not because it’s actually there, but because it’s what we expect to see, and we’ll adjust our interpretations of it accordingly. Look in the mirror and we zoom in on all the things we think are flaws – any asymmetries in our facial features, any blemishes in our skin, folds and curves and lines that say “no, this person is not an Adonis or Venus carved from marble”. If someone acts one way to a co-worker and a different way to us, we’ll assume it’s because we’re ugly and our co-worker isn’t. Even if the person is perfectly kind and friendly or even flirty, there’s a natural tendency to either disbelieve it, discount it, assume that it’s a trick or a joke or that we’re just mistaken.

(And that’s before we take into account that people are bad at knowing when folks are flirting with them. Not men, not women, not non-binary folks, not pretty folks, not ugly folks, people. We’re great at telling when other people are flirting and being flirted with, but not when it’s directed at us.)

Here’s the thing tough: the fact that we feel that way is legitimate. Those feelings are real, we’re definitely feeling them. But the fact that the feelings we feel are real doesn’t mean that we’re correct about what’s going on or why. And that’s something that’s important to keep in mind, because, as I said, our brains are very prone to creating narratives that make sense to us but don’t necessarily reflect reality.

In your situation, there’re a lot of things that could be going on. One possibility is simply taste and aesthetics; what’s appealing to one person isn’t necessarily going to be appealing to everyone. Nobody – no celebrity, no influencer, no model, nobody – is going to appeal to 100% of the people, 100% of the time. What makes one person morph into a howling cartoon wolf can leave another person cold, and they’re both correct.

Some people love the All-American-Girl-Next-Door look. Others go hard for the alt-rocker or goth aesthetic. Still others like the “I have no pores, always perfectly contoured and shiny” Instagram beauty influencer look. That doesn’t mean that the other looks aren’t appealing or inherently ugly, it just means that some people prefer one look over another. People not hitting on you doesn’t mean that you’re ugly, it just means that you may not be their particular flavor, any more than you find every guy who comes through your door to be your favorite salty goodness. That doesn’t mean that all those dudes are like the love child of Quasimodo and the Toxic Avenger; it just means that they don’t rev your engine the way other folks do.

So, it could just be that where you work, more people are into one aesthetic over another. That’s not a flaw in you, that’s just circumstance.

Some of it could be behavior. Not that you aren’t being friendly or giving good customer service, but you may not be giving off a flirty vibe or inviting people to flirt. You may well be giving off a perfectly friendly vibe but still give the sense that you’re at work and you’re here to do your job, period. This can be especially true as time has gone on and you’ve been feeling like the odd woman out; the feeling of “nobody likes me” can bleed into your behavior and body language and discourage people from wanting to get flirty with you.

There’s also the fact that there are a lot of people who are just flirty. They’re not flirting with intent so much as flirting because that’s what they do. They flirt with folks, especially folks who will flirt back, because it’s fun and they enjoy it… but they don’t mean anything more than that. In fact, it’s even possible that the people who are most likely to be into you are the people who are the least likely to flirt – whether from shyness, from disbelief that their interest would be welcome or because they don’t want to flirt with someone who’s on the job because that’s often rude. Hell, they may even believe that you’re someone who gets hit on regularly and so they don’t want to be Yet Another Asshole hitting on you while you’re trying to just get through your day.

This, incidentally, is also part of why your co-workers are complaining. Something doesn’t need to be scary or traumatic to be inconvenient, annoying or upsetting. Someone who behaves as though you’re a thing to be consumed instead of a person may not be scary, but it sure as hell can get on your nerves, especially when it happens a lot. As I’m telling guys all the time: not all attention is wanted or welcome attention, even if you’re starving for it. Would you feel validated and attractive if, say, Grima Wormtongue were hitting on you? Or if someone you knew to be an unmitigated asshole wouldn’t stop trying to flirt with you every time he saw you? Or would you be annoyed by it?

Now, we’ve been talking about the why of it all, but let’s take a moment to talk about the what – specifically, what you should do about this? Ultimately, I think the best course is going to be what would be best for your overall well-being. You like this job, the pay and the benefits, but not how it makes you feel. That’s legitimate. The question then, is, would it be better in the short or medium term to adjust to the job and work on how you feel, or to find a job that – while not as ideal – doesn’t sandpaper your self-esteem?

I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, I think it might – and I stress might– not be a bad idea to see if you can adjust how you feel – about yourself, about your job and about your co-workers – before looking for another gig. It may be worth your time to do some self-exploration about what you would want to be different and why. Are you more interested in being flirted with and being seen as similarly attractive as your co-workers for the validation? In hopes of finding someone to date? Would you feel better if you could change your expectations, or if you had different areas of your life that would provide the feeling that you’re not getting here? Perhaps having a stronger divide between who you are at work and who you are at other times might help, especially if you find your people elsewhere.

You mention that you feel like you have issues with your face and hair; are there things you could do differently with your style and presentation? Would working on finding a skin, makeup and hair routine help make a difference? If your workplace has some flexibility in its dress code, could you lean more into an aesthetic that feels true and authentic to who you are as a person?  

On the other hand, sometimes if you want to heal, you’ve gotta stop hurting first. Having a job where you don’t feel like you’re getting things rubbed in your face might free up the emotional bandwidth to work on how you feel about yourself, even if it’s not as lucrative or as convenient for a college student. It would mean sacrificing that flexibility and pay, but not feeling like you’re being punched in the soul every time you clock in for your shift is no small thing.

Alternately, have you looked into other jobs that might offer similar flexibility but are less front-of-house, or different hours and responsibilities? Working in a bakery – to pull a random example – might mean getting up at o-f--k-hundred and a lot of physical labor, but if you’re doing more baking and kitchen prep than sales, you might feel better about yourself and life in general. Plus: so many delicious, delicious carbs.

In my personal opinion, I think starting from a position on working how you feel about yourself would be the better decision. But that’s strictly my opinion; it’s yours that matters. You are the top expert in you, in how you feel and what would be best for you. If you feel like getting away from this environment be better for you, that’s absolutely what you should do. But it doesn’t need to be a binary decision, nor does it need to be a permanent one. You could, for example, sign up with a temp agency and do a string of short-term gigs, until you either decide you’re ready to go back to being a barista or you find a better option. You might even see if you can do both – cut back on your hours at the coffee shop while doing other gigs or even finding some side-hustle that works.

What I wouldn’t suggest is cosmetic surgery; not yet, and not until you’ve put a lot more thought and research into it. I don’t think it’ll give you the results you hope for or in the way that you hope, and I think that’d be a bigger drawback than anything else. Start with looking at internal and less intense or invasive options. Because if I’m being honest? I think this is far more about how you’re feeling about yourself than it is about some quality you lack or some defect in you. And if you can deal with that, I think you’ll find the rest will fall into place and you’ll be much happier and satisfied overall.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com