3 ms·
This happens to me as well. I sometimes avoid speaking in meetings because the act of drawing the attention of the whole room on me tends to compromise my abili
by nilkn 8y ago
This happens to me as well. I sometimes avoid speaking in meetings because the act of drawing the attention of the whole room on me tends to compromise my ability to think and speak clearly. So I can start with a completely coherent set of points I want to make, but when I start actually talking I can no longer “remember” them, which in the worst case could make me seem incompetent. I use quotes because I don’t believe it’s a legitimate lapse of memory so much as it is a sort of social overload that shuts part of me down.
This doesn’t always happen and I’ve found the exact conditions that trigger it to be complex. A huge factor is definitely whether I know everyone in the meeting in advance and feel comfortable with them. This is partly why I choose to stay at a job for years instead of job hopping — once I feel comfortable and stable with coworkers, suddenly I’m not only able to speak coherently in meetings but in fact I can even enjoy running large meetings with no issues.
- retsibsi 8y agoI have a similar experience -- I was going to say that my intelligence seems to vary inversely with my level of social anxiety, but I don't think it's quite that consistent. Sometimes my intellect really seems to shut down for no particularly good reason. If I may lapse into bullshit evo-psych for a moment: I guess my brain sometimes decides that I'm in a social emergency (perhaps if I say one more embarrassing thing I'll be ostracised from the tribe and left for dead!) and it needs to devote 90% of its cognitive resources to that problem.
- bitcoinmoney 8y agoI have similar experience? Am I autistic?
- hnick 8y agoSeconding that. It sometimes happens to me even in one on one situations, I find eye contact extremely distracting and over-stimulating and I often have to look away to focus on what someone is saying or I get lost. Apparently this is weird.
- retsibsi 8y ago> Am I autistic? I wouldn't assume so, unless you have other reasons to think so. I'm not diagnosed autistic, and I wouldn't self-diagnose either, though I do think I'm on the autistic side of 'normal' for some traits.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]