A definitive pattern I have encountered during my 35 + years of clinical experience with sufferers of social anxiety and a multiplicity of social challenges, has been unrealistic expectations regarding the learning curve of intimacy skills!

For example, a 33 year old attractive male accountant, who had never had a girlfriend, and who had never “made out” with a female told me in a treatment session that “when he had his first sexual experience he needed to be perfect”.

This unrealistic expectation was the essence of his obsessive driven problem. I called this unrealistic quest for perfectionism “James Bond Syndrome,” unrealistic expectations; driven by ones excessive internal critical script (see Mind State Graph)  creates anger at different levels of consciousness,  inhibits skills acquisition, and creates self-esteem challenges and possible depression.

“Andy” was  a 25 year old who graduated college with a 4.0 average. He had very limited experience with the opposite sex. While walking his dog daily he saw an attractive woman who was also walking her dog. He wanted to initiate a conversation with her. He told me that he needed “to have the perfect thing to say to her”. He analyzed and analyzed what was the “perfect” thing. He never took action. He was the victim of “analysis paralysis”. His concept of “perfection” was not in reality. This created tremendous emotional pain which worsened over time. Eventually the pain was so great that he committed suicide. His family created the training program “Social Anxiety: The Untold Story,” which is a training program for professionals and is available to the public as a community service. His father’s words regarding the production of this program were “We can’t bring Andy back, but we don’t want this to happen to another family”.