The Customer Is Always Frightened

I'm a 36-year-old single woman. I've noticed that the more I like a guy the more nervous I get and the louder, more irreverent, and more inappropriate I become. I'm actually a really sweet girl. How can I stop doing this?

--Unintentionally Brash

Your cocktail party conversation shouldn't translate to "I mean, come on...do I really seem like a danger to myself and society?!" To calm down so you can talk like a person instead of a scary person, it helps to understand -- as I explain in my new "science-help" book, "Unf*ckology" -- that "emotions aren't just thinky things." They have a basis in the body. For example, in the case of fear, your heart pounds, you breathe faster, and adrenaline surges -- whether what you're afraid of is physical death or just, say, dying onstage while giving a talk -- as you watch 43 people simultaneously yawn and pull out their phone. The human brain is a marvel, but we can take advantage of how it's also about as easily tricked as my dog. Take that bodily reaction of fear -- pounding heart and all -- which also happens to be the bodily reaction of being excited. Research by Harvard Business School's Alison Wood Brooks finds that you can "reappraise" your fear as excitement -- by repeatedly saying aloud to yourself, "I am excited" (to talk with some guy, for example) -- and actually shift yourself from a "'threat' mind-set" to an "'opportunity' mind-set." Also, assuming the current weather isn't "nuclear holocaust with a chance of rain," some dude you're flirting with probably isn't the last man on the continent. Keeping that in mind, reframe your interaction as a mere opportunity for something to happen with him -- and an opportunity to figure out whether it's a good idea. You do that not by selling yourself like it's 4:56 p.m. on Sunday at a yard sale but by asking him about himself. Counterintuitively, you'll probably be at your most attractive by leaving a man guessing about you -- as opposed to leaping to conclusions, like that you were the little girl who beheaded all the other little girls' Barbies.