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Noticing is the first step! A therapist can really help you as it sounds like a part of you is experiencing anxiety. Essentially you have developed a learned

by sjg007 5y ago

Noticing is the first step! A therapist can really help you as it sounds like a part of you is experiencing anxiety. Essentially you have developed a learned behavior and you have to unlearn it by replacing your habit with a new one. Part of that is say exposure therapy (meaning, just go out and meet people). It also helps to develop a framework and set of scripts for what to do which is where a therapist can come in handy (also for how you process the situation). We teach these things to kids with autism all the time. If you need a script the easiest thing to do and understand is that people love to talk about themselves. 1. introduce yourself 2. ask their name 3. ask how they are or how their day is going 4 .... 5. continue to ask them questions as they appropriately come up. Question 4 can be context dependent.. are you at a party of a mutual friend? Are you at a meetup? Basically use the shared environment to bootstrap the conversation. So a question could be like, "how do you know so and so" etc... When I feel shy, I always seek out someone else seemingly shy and strike up a conversation that way. It doesn't have to be perfect. And maybe take a friend with you who has more social awareness to help you. Tell them what your goal is. Also if someone notices you are blushing and feeling flustered etc.. and asks you what's wrong, just take a breath and say that social situations are difficult for you but you are learning to work through them. Lots of people will be understanding. I say this as an adult. Sometimes you can be around immature folks who do not help the situation but those are people you don't really want to be around anyway.

ethbr0 5y ago
If OP is making the effort to ask, I'd also toss out the option of finding a life coach. In my personal experience and opinion, therapists seem to be... less aggressive / more tolerant of neurodivergent behavior, in a way that I didn't find as productive. I was looking for someone who I could tell "I want to X" and would help me make that happen, less "I feel bad about my inability to X".
chousuke 5y ago
That "and" of the "Just go out and meet people" is the part that my brain struggles with. I can walk out of the door just fine, but my brain stops functioning when I try to think of things to do from there. I can likewise handle meeting new people if I somehow end up in a situation where that happens. It's just doing that intentionally that I have so far been unable to accomplish.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  The "doing that intentionally" bit is something I think you sort of have to roll with; some days are good, some days are bad. I've all sorts of strategies, but if I have no explicit purpose at some event I struggle with getting out of the house, and I'm just not enough of a dog person to get a dog. But if you go out on the good days -- which is all really anyone does! -- then people will remember you if you only pop in to some event briefly on your bad days.
- sjg007 5y ago
  I would pick things that align with your interests. Go to a museum, go to a play that has an intermission, go skiing, pick up a club sport, meetups, cooking classes, book signing, improv class, music class, fishing class, board game nights... Lots of things to try.
  - chousuke 5y ago
    Everything I can get my brain interested in is a solo activity. I feel like whenever I try to even think about doing something that requires me to initiate contact with people, some unconscious part of me "resets" my thoughts and they just get stuck in a useless loop. On the rare occasion that I manage to override that and go somewhere, I am unable to engage with people even though I want to. I don't hate interacting with people; quite the opposite in fact. I just for some unknown reason am seemingly completely incapable of initiating interaction with unfamiliar people (and even initiating anything with people I know is rare for me to do).
    - wpietri 5y ago
      I would encourage you to spend time in those spaces with no intention to interact. Just go and spend time observing your thoughts and feelings. If you feel like you don't have much vocabulary for your emotions, two book I really recommend are Brene Brown's "Atlas of the Heart" [1], where a researcher names, describes, and compares the various emotions, and "The Emotion Thesaurus" [2], a writer's guide that includes a lot of description that can help with pattern-matching. Once you have a handle on the feelings and what triggers them, I think you'll get some insight into the currently unknown reasons. I'd be you'll also have theories on how to work around it, but if not, a good therapist can help. [1] https://brenebrown.com/book/atlas-of-the-heart/ https://brenebrown.com/book/atlas-of-the-heart/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Thesaurus-Writers-Character-Expression/dp/0999296345/ https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Thesaurus-Writers-Character-E...

by sjg007 5y ago

ethbr0 5y ago

If OP is making the effort to ask, I'd also toss out the option of finding a life coach. In my personal experience and opinion, therapists seem to be... less aggressive / more tolerant of neurodivergent behavior, in a way that I didn't find as productive. I was looking for someone who I could tell "I want to X" and would help me make that happen, less "I feel bad about my inability to X".

chousuke 5y ago

That "and" of the "Just go out and meet people" is the part that my brain struggles with. I can walk out of the door just fine, but my brain stops functioning when I try to think of things to do from there. I can likewise handle meeting new people if I somehow end up in a situation where that happens. It's just doing that intentionally that I have so far been unable to accomplish.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
The "doing that intentionally" bit is something I think you sort of have to roll with; some days are good, some days are bad. I've all sorts of strategies, but if I have no explicit purpose at some event I struggle with getting out of the house, and I'm just not enough of a dog person to get a dog. But if you go out on the good days -- which is all really anyone does! -- then people will remember you if you only pop in to some event briefly on your bad days.
sjg007 5y ago
I would pick things that align with your interests. Go to a museum, go to a play that has an intermission, go skiing, pick up a club sport, meetups, cooking classes, book signing, improv class, music class, fishing class, board game nights... Lots of things to try.
- chousuke 5y ago
  Everything I can get my brain interested in is a solo activity. I feel like whenever I try to even think about doing something that requires me to initiate contact with people, some unconscious part of me "resets" my thoughts and they just get stuck in a useless loop. On the rare occasion that I manage to override that and go somewhere, I am unable to engage with people even though I want to. I don't hate interacting with people; quite the opposite in fact. I just for some unknown reason am seemingly completely incapable of initiating interaction with unfamiliar people (and even initiating anything with people I know is rare for me to do).
  - wpietri 5y ago
    I would encourage you to spend time in those spaces with no intention to interact. Just go and spend time observing your thoughts and feelings. If you feel like you don't have much vocabulary for your emotions, two book I really recommend are Brene Brown's "Atlas of the Heart" [1], where a researcher names, describes, and compares the various emotions, and "The Emotion Thesaurus" [2], a writer's guide that includes a lot of description that can help with pattern-matching. Once you have a handle on the feelings and what triggers them, I think you'll get some insight into the currently unknown reasons. I'd be you'll also have theories on how to work around it, but if not, a good therapist can help. [1] https://brenebrown.com/book/atlas-of-the-heart/ https://brenebrown.com/book/atlas-of-the-heart/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Thesaurus-Writers-Character-Expression/dp/0999296345/ https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Thesaurus-Writers-Character-E...