My guy friend said my problem with men is that I keep forgetting who I am. According to him, I'm smart, beautiful, accomplished, funny, and super-cool but the moment I like a guy, I act weirdly needy and turn guys off. How do I change this?

--Clingy

In presenting yourself to others, you're like the world's worst used-car salesman: "Fantastic deathtrap for the price! Just the thing to strand you on a desert highway and leave you crawling on your hands and knees over rocky, snake-infested terrain!"

Unfortunately, self-loathing is only stylish for about 20 minutes -- and only if you are a newly-Goth 13-year-old. Also unfortunate is a big long-standing error in psychology, overvaluing talking and undervaluing action as the way to change our default behavior -- meaning the way we typically (and pretty much automatically) react. Granted, recognizing where you're going wrong and how you could behave less counterproductively isn't unimportant or useless. But research by clinical psychologist Stefan G. Hofmann and his colleagues suggests that taking action alone -- without talk therapy -- leads to dramatic shifts in thinking, including significantly diminishing "negative self-perception" and other counterproductive beliefs.

As for your tendency to go all needypants around a guy you like, ask yourself why you do this. Not the underlying reason but why you let your emotions drive your behavior. People don't think to ask themselves that, but as I write in "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence" -- my science-based book on how action is the key to emotional and behavioral transformation -- "your feelings are not the boss of you." In short, it isn't how you feel that matters; it's what you do.

When you're around a guy you like, act in a way that serves your interests -- like a person with self-respect, which is to say, one who has no problem walking away. (Be whiny to your friends, if necessary.) After all, deep down, you know you could get a man to stay with you forever -- that's what basement wall chains and bucket toilets are for.