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If any one single interaction makes you have such a response, that might be a reason to see someone. I wish for everyone to be able to move through the social w

If any one single interaction makes you have such a response, that might be a reason to see someone. I wish for everyone to be able to move through the social world with grace and ease. Put less kindly: there’s nothing so special about you that being yourself around a new person should cause such a panic. Even if they take an instant dislike to you, that should be something you can take in stride

arowthway 6mo ago
What does "being yourself" even mean? Obviously not "acting the exact same way you act when alone", since this would be impossible/weird/rude/illegal but also not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.
- justonceokay 6mo ago
  I don’t mean like being “authentic” or whatever that means. In this conversation “being yourself” means literally you existing in that moment in your body. I can’t tell you specifically what being “yourself“ means. But I can absolutely tell you that if you panic when you meet a stranger that you are not centered in your own experience. Your mind is elsewhere. You don’t know this new person, so all of the panic in the situation is panic that you brought with you from the past and is not relevant to the current scenario For whatever reason your body believes that the stakes are very high. They might be, but even if they were, wouldn’t it be more adaptive to face the situation with the level head? Most people can do this 100% of the time and I bet that you could get there too
  - nmcfarl 6mo ago
    I don’t think most people can do this 100% of the time. I actually think if you can do this 100% of the time you’re probably a zen master. I think most people over the age of 25 can do this maybe 80% of the time. And most of them can keep it under control enough that they only look a little dysfunctional, the other 20% of the time. (although I definitely know a few extroverts who don’t look dysfunctional, they look like the life of the party – but that’s them being dysfunctional and stressing out and trying to make everyone love them. That’s their 20%.)
    - shimman 6mo ago
      This is baffling to hear dude, I literally canvas with 1000s of people before. All these people have no issues interacting with complete strangers in hostile areas withe ease. The amount of people doing this is in the tens of millions, from all walks of life too. Definitely check out a therapist because this type of thinking isn't only toxic to yourself but it's not how the world really works.
  - svnt 6mo ago
    Panic -> response distribution shrinks -> freeze/be angry/make social mistake, but hey it’s fast You: wouldn’t it be more adaptive if you didn’t do this? Millions of years of mammalian evolution, unevenly distributed in homo sapiens: No
    - justonceokay 6mo ago
      You can blame million years of evolution for your bad life or you can change it right now living in the present moment. It’s fine if you don’t do it right now because later at a future present moment you can still make the choice to be happy. It might take some work but it will never be because of something that happened in the past. It will be something that you do right now. There are no exceptions or escape hatches
      - SkyeCA 6mo ago
        These cliches are just annoying to read at this point, everyone has heard this stuff a million times and yet...millions still suffer. If I'm being honest it just comes across as yet another form of bullying when socially well adjusted people say stuff like this to people worse off than them.
        hackable_sand 6mo ago
        What they are saying is true. It just might take a lot of work to get the ball moving.
        dogleash 6mo ago
        I can agree with you while still agreeing with parent poster that it's basically "git gud"-tier bullying. Very very few orators can successfully pull off "just fix your problems bro" as anything beyond a generic kick in the pants for the people presently predispositioned to be motivated by one.
        justonceokay 6mo ago
  - cindyllm 6mo ago
    [dead]
- quirkot 6mo ago
  "being yourself" means choosing to believe that the you that is true is competent and capable of growth while the awkwardness is a temporary barrier between that is not reflective of your true nature.
- yetihehe 6mo ago
  That phrase is simply inaccurate. Your "self" needs to care less about opinions of others, and it should not be scared of making mistakes. "Be yourself" is typically parsed as "do not try to be someone other, do not try to be like movie actor". > not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away. Yes, it is exactly that, but instead of focusing on "acting intuitively", focus on that "without overthinking". Overthinking is the problem to be solved. "thinking just enough" is the optimal target.
- duskdozer 6mo ago
  >Be yourself (well, as long as you aren't like that, IYKYK)
  - jgbmlg 6mo ago
    Know thyself. The first step in being your better self. This pithy piece of advice has been repeatedly given throughout history no doubt predating its being chiseled onto the Temple of Apollo around 2500 years ago. Humanity probably has no better advice. Although "Never trust a fart" is a close second.
- finnthehuman 6mo ago
  You know the meme that goes: "Be yourself. No, not like that." It is possible for someone to have a goal of changing themselves into a person who can fit in socially, and be effortlessly comfortable while doing so. After building the underlying skills, they know how to navigate social situations well enough to intuit how much honesty and revealing is appropriate for a given situation, and can roll back "fake it until you make it". They can accept surmountable social penalties for the comfort of less self-filtering and chance to have more meaningful connections. "Be yourself" means to change yourself, and then stick the landing.
danparsonson 6mo ago
The kind of reaction described by the GP is probably trained by a lifetime of bad experiences. One can end up going into every interaction thinking about which parts of oneself to dial down in order to have some semblance of a normal conversation, and inevitably that over-thinking just makes it worse. Ask leading questions, smile, listen careful, don't interrupt - you know, all that sort of thing that comes more naturally to some than to others.
- dragochat 6mo ago
  > going into every interaction thinking about which parts of oneself to dial down what if (a) I hate leading questions, (b) by default only smile when bad/tragic things happen (eg "train crash leaves 100 dead and maimed"), (c) I'm quite bad at listening bc if you don't say interesting things often/densely enough my mind adhd-s away, and (d) interrupting is second-nature to me? ...advice may be good, but for some of us it's like 99% of ourselves that we need to dial down in order to carry on a successful interaction - it works, but takes a hell lot of energy
  - danparsonson 6mo ago
    Yes, you and I are making the same point :-) There's lots of useful advice out there about how to be a better conversationalist but it's exhausting for those of us who have to constantly think about it, and disheartening when we get it wrong despite all the effort.
  - justonceokay 6mo ago
    You seem to have a lot of limiting thoughts about yourself. Other people do those kinds of things but just don’t mind and don’t think that they are a bother to others. You’re allowed to be weird. Weird people make the best conversation because you don’t know where they’re gonna go
nickburns 6mo ago
Matching your latter register: and what, in your mind, will 'seeing someone' do to change somebody's lack of social 'grace and ease'?
- criddell 6mo ago
  It depends on the type of help you seek, but generally you are given tools and techniques to deploy in those situations that can help.
- justonceokay 6mo ago
  Going to therapy can help you create a more positive and staple self image.The more you like yourself the more you would want to share that with other people and the easier it becomes. To put a finer point on it, it kind of seems like the person I was responding to has an extreme anxiety problem. I feel bad because I’ve gone through that and I feel like I wasted a large portion of my life because I was so scared that I couldn’t live it. Nobody has to live in fear all the time
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - nickburns 6mo ago
    Your comments feel like projection, which lead you to make an extreme (and, in my opinion, unfounded) assumption about GP. GP says nothing about self-confidence nor 'liking' onself. One can have a social interaction like GP comically describes—and still be mostly socially 'at ease and graceful', possess a positive and stable self-image, be otherwise antisocial, and not need therapy.
FuckButtons 6mo ago
Single interaction? Buddy that’s my entire life.
dragochat 6mo ago
one interaction? some of us spent half our lives having 99% of interactions be like that - we've grown out it one way or another, but for many ppl "doing people" is HAAAAAARD ...just as for some differential equations are. we're just build veeeery differently. for many "the social world" is a hostile jungle, and we ca face it all right, but with a strong suit of mechanized armour and fully loaded weapons strapped to it.
- justonceokay 6mo ago
  I get that. I spent my entire childhood and the majority of my 20s as a closeted gay man. Every interaction was high stakes because if one person figured out you’re gay, then the cat is out of the bag. I had to do a hell of a lot of accepting myself before I could actually hang with people in the moment. Realistically it took six years to be “normal “in my own eyes
svnt 6mo ago
Your response assumes a lot about the homogeneity of subjective human experience that the data don’t seem to support. There is a diversity of physical attractiveness, innate and learned social grace, social environment, and phenotypic variability in psychosocial capacity that makes your comment sound extremely out of touch to some people. I can do what you describe because I am fortunate that many of my social interactions are positive. For people I work with this is not the case and they are extremely socially isolated, and the tragedy is that every mistake they make compounds this. They are more sensitive interpersonally than I am and more socially aware in the moment, while less equipped to deal with social conventions and unattractive, becoming dramatically moreso in social situations due to their intrinsic reactions. The points in the article can help all of us.
- SkyeCA 6mo ago
  > and the tragedy is that every mistake they make compounds this This is correct and I'm convinced there comes a point where there's no way out. The vast majority of social experiences in my life have been negative and it gets worse every time I have another, making it less likely the next will be positive. Rather than continue to get hurt I have nearly 100% socially isolated myself, save for the internet. I work remote in a rural area and I only leave the house for essentials. There's no place for me socially and I've accepted that.
  - legacynl 6mo ago
    > This is correct and I'm convinced there comes a point where there's no way out. My friend, things can always improve. Having mental health problems is hard, because you're ultimately using your own 'impaired' brain to analyze your own situation. Talking to a therapist is effective in breaking this, because it forces you to organize your thoughts into something coherent to explain it to your therapist. Only at this point will flaws in this reasoning become apparent. If you cannot talk to a therapist (or otherwise a neutral person who doesn't judge you for what you say), you can try writing it down. Try to write down why you feel what you feel, what you feel when you talk to another person, what you think that others think and feel about you, how those feelings developed, how other people have been influential in your feelings, everything. Read it as if someone else wrote it down. What would you do in their situation? Do you agree with what you wrote down. If you come across holes in what you've written, try to revise that part, rewrite it to incoorporate for the criticisms. > making it less likely the next will be positive. Why do you think that's the case? If you throw a dice and it comes up on 1 three times in a row, that doesn't make it more likely that the next time it will be a 1 again. There's so many different people, it's as good as random what kind of interaction you will have.
renewiltord 6mo ago
I mean, obviously all the behaviors in the article are undesirable. The joke is in proposing other ones. Surely people are being amusingly self deprecating not precisely honest.
Chance-Device 6mo ago
Have you considered that your advice might be akin to telling a diabetic to do talk therapy so they can start producing insulin again? There are lots of things people can’t just talk themselves out of.
- justonceokay 6mo ago
  Well that would be silly. I would hope the diabetic would go to a nutritionist for their physical and medical problem. But a social problem is something that should probably be fixed with a social solution There’s a lot of energy in this thread mixing up introversion and autism for an inability to relate to others. That’s not true you just have a different perspective and will relate in a different way. Autism might be a proximal cause for anxiety but anxiety is not a feature of autism and it can be overcome.
stronglikedan 6mo ago
No one can stop the replay, so there's no use in seeing anyone about it. We eventually just learn to cope, and try not to lie in bed at night replaying all the day's awkward social situations.
bsoles 6mo ago
My favorite Jane Austen quote on this subject: Perhaps,' said Darcy, 'I should have judged better, had I sought an introduction, but I am ill qualified to recommend myself to strangers.' 'Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?' said Elizabeth, still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. 'Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?' 'I can answer your question,' said Fitzwilliam, 'without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.' 'I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,' said Darcy, 'of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.' 'My fingers,' said Elizabeth, 'do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault -- because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution.'
- justonceokay 6mo ago
  As a self identified autistic person, I regularly think of spooky situations as “socialization”. I went to a wedding where I only knew five people. Goddamn did I have some bad conversation. But I also made one new friend, and that’s cool! When I fuck up it’s just a chance for me to learn why I fucked up and how to be better in the future. And not everyone has to like me. I only really enjoy about 10% of others, why should I expect a greater return? It seems like most people in this thread are more like Mr. Darcy, just assuming that they are destined to be bad at something that they’ve never practiced
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- dalmo3 6mo ago
  That's a poor analogy because practicing an instrument is a single-player game. Unless you mean you can practice socialisation at the mirror, or that you're willing to practice scales or solfege in public.

arowthway 6mo ago

What does "being yourself" even mean? Obviously not "acting the exact same way you act when alone", since this would be impossible/weird/rude/illegal but also not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.

justonceokay 6mo ago
I don’t mean like being “authentic” or whatever that means. In this conversation “being yourself” means literally you existing in that moment in your body. I can’t tell you specifically what being “yourself“ means. But I can absolutely tell you that if you panic when you meet a stranger that you are not centered in your own experience. Your mind is elsewhere. You don’t know this new person, so all of the panic in the situation is panic that you brought with you from the past and is not relevant to the current scenario For whatever reason your body believes that the stakes are very high. They might be, but even if they were, wouldn’t it be more adaptive to face the situation with the level head? Most people can do this 100% of the time and I bet that you could get there too
- nmcfarl 6mo ago
  I don’t think most people can do this 100% of the time. I actually think if you can do this 100% of the time you’re probably a zen master. I think most people over the age of 25 can do this maybe 80% of the time. And most of them can keep it under control enough that they only look a little dysfunctional, the other 20% of the time. (although I definitely know a few extroverts who don’t look dysfunctional, they look like the life of the party – but that’s them being dysfunctional and stressing out and trying to make everyone love them. That’s their 20%.)
  - shimman 6mo ago
    This is baffling to hear dude, I literally canvas with 1000s of people before. All these people have no issues interacting with complete strangers in hostile areas withe ease. The amount of people doing this is in the tens of millions, from all walks of life too. Definitely check out a therapist because this type of thinking isn't only toxic to yourself but it's not how the world really works.
- svnt 6mo ago
  Panic -> response distribution shrinks -> freeze/be angry/make social mistake, but hey it’s fast You: wouldn’t it be more adaptive if you didn’t do this? Millions of years of mammalian evolution, unevenly distributed in homo sapiens: No
  - justonceokay 6mo ago
    You can blame million years of evolution for your bad life or you can change it right now living in the present moment. It’s fine if you don’t do it right now because later at a future present moment you can still make the choice to be happy. It might take some work but it will never be because of something that happened in the past. It will be something that you do right now. There are no exceptions or escape hatches
    - SkyeCA 6mo ago
      These cliches are just annoying to read at this point, everyone has heard this stuff a million times and yet...millions still suffer. If I'm being honest it just comes across as yet another form of bullying when socially well adjusted people say stuff like this to people worse off than them.
      - hackable_sand 6mo ago
        What they are saying is true. It just might take a lot of work to get the ball moving.
        dogleash 6mo ago
        I can agree with you while still agreeing with parent poster that it's basically "git gud"-tier bullying. Very very few orators can successfully pull off "just fix your problems bro" as anything beyond a generic kick in the pants for the people presently predispositioned to be motivated by one.
        justonceokay 6mo ago
- cindyllm 6mo ago
  [dead]
quirkot 6mo ago
"being yourself" means choosing to believe that the you that is true is competent and capable of growth while the awkwardness is a temporary barrier between that is not reflective of your true nature.
yetihehe 6mo ago
That phrase is simply inaccurate. Your "self" needs to care less about opinions of others, and it should not be scared of making mistakes. "Be yourself" is typically parsed as "do not try to be someone other, do not try to be like movie actor". > not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away. Yes, it is exactly that, but instead of focusing on "acting intuitively", focus on that "without overthinking". Overthinking is the problem to be solved. "thinking just enough" is the optimal target.
duskdozer 6mo ago
>Be yourself (well, as long as you aren't like that, IYKYK)
- jgbmlg 6mo ago
  Know thyself. The first step in being your better self. This pithy piece of advice has been repeatedly given throughout history no doubt predating its being chiseled onto the Temple of Apollo around 2500 years ago. Humanity probably has no better advice. Although "Never trust a fart" is a close second.
finnthehuman 6mo ago
You know the meme that goes: "Be yourself. No, not like that." It is possible for someone to have a goal of changing themselves into a person who can fit in socially, and be effortlessly comfortable while doing so. After building the underlying skills, they know how to navigate social situations well enough to intuit how much honesty and revealing is appropriate for a given situation, and can roll back "fake it until you make it". They can accept surmountable social penalties for the comfort of less self-filtering and chance to have more meaningful connections. "Be yourself" means to change yourself, and then stick the landing.

danparsonson 6mo ago

The kind of reaction described by the GP is probably trained by a lifetime of bad experiences. One can end up going into every interaction thinking about which parts of oneself to dial down in order to have some semblance of a normal conversation, and inevitably that over-thinking just makes it worse. Ask leading questions, smile, listen careful, don't interrupt - you know, all that sort of thing that comes more naturally to some than to others.

dragochat 6mo ago
> going into every interaction thinking about which parts of oneself to dial down what if (a) I hate leading questions, (b) by default only smile when bad/tragic things happen (eg "train crash leaves 100 dead and maimed"), (c) I'm quite bad at listening bc if you don't say interesting things often/densely enough my mind adhd-s away, and (d) interrupting is second-nature to me? ...advice may be good, but for some of us it's like 99% of ourselves that we need to dial down in order to carry on a successful interaction - it works, but takes a hell lot of energy
- danparsonson 6mo ago
  Yes, you and I are making the same point :-) There's lots of useful advice out there about how to be a better conversationalist but it's exhausting for those of us who have to constantly think about it, and disheartening when we get it wrong despite all the effort.
- justonceokay 6mo ago
  You seem to have a lot of limiting thoughts about yourself. Other people do those kinds of things but just don’t mind and don’t think that they are a bother to others. You’re allowed to be weird. Weird people make the best conversation because you don’t know where they’re gonna go

nickburns 6mo ago

Matching your latter register: and what, in your mind, will 'seeing someone' do to change somebody's lack of social 'grace and ease'?

criddell 6mo ago
It depends on the type of help you seek, but generally you are given tools and techniques to deploy in those situations that can help.
justonceokay 6mo ago
Going to therapy can help you create a more positive and staple self image.The more you like yourself the more you would want to share that with other people and the easier it becomes. To put a finer point on it, it kind of seems like the person I was responding to has an extreme anxiety problem. I feel bad because I’ve gone through that and I feel like I wasted a large portion of my life because I was so scared that I couldn’t live it. Nobody has to live in fear all the time
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- nickburns 6mo ago
  Your comments feel like projection, which lead you to make an extreme (and, in my opinion, unfounded) assumption about GP. GP says nothing about self-confidence nor 'liking' onself. One can have a social interaction like GP comically describes—and still be mostly socially 'at ease and graceful', possess a positive and stable self-image, be otherwise antisocial, and not need therapy.

FuckButtons 6mo ago

Single interaction? Buddy that’s my entire life.

dragochat 6mo ago

one interaction? some of us spent half our lives having 99% of interactions be like that - we've grown out it one way or another, but for many ppl "doing people" is HAAAAAARD ...just as for some differential equations are. we're just build veeeery differently. for many "the social world" is a hostile jungle, and we ca face it all right, but with a strong suit of mechanized armour and fully loaded weapons strapped to it.

justonceokay 6mo ago
I get that. I spent my entire childhood and the majority of my 20s as a closeted gay man. Every interaction was high stakes because if one person figured out you’re gay, then the cat is out of the bag. I had to do a hell of a lot of accepting myself before I could actually hang with people in the moment. Realistically it took six years to be “normal “in my own eyes

svnt 6mo ago

Your response assumes a lot about the homogeneity of subjective human experience that the data don’t seem to support. There is a diversity of physical attractiveness, innate and learned social grace, social environment, and phenotypic variability in psychosocial capacity that makes your comment sound extremely out of touch to some people. I can do what you describe because I am fortunate that many of my social interactions are positive. For people I work with this is not the case and they are extremely socially isolated, and the tragedy is that every mistake they make compounds this. They are more sensitive interpersonally than I am and more socially aware in the moment, while less equipped to deal with social conventions and unattractive, becoming dramatically moreso in social situations due to their intrinsic reactions. The points in the article can help all of us.

SkyeCA 6mo ago
> and the tragedy is that every mistake they make compounds this This is correct and I'm convinced there comes a point where there's no way out. The vast majority of social experiences in my life have been negative and it gets worse every time I have another, making it less likely the next will be positive. Rather than continue to get hurt I have nearly 100% socially isolated myself, save for the internet. I work remote in a rural area and I only leave the house for essentials. There's no place for me socially and I've accepted that.
- legacynl 6mo ago
  > This is correct and I'm convinced there comes a point where there's no way out. My friend, things can always improve. Having mental health problems is hard, because you're ultimately using your own 'impaired' brain to analyze your own situation. Talking to a therapist is effective in breaking this, because it forces you to organize your thoughts into something coherent to explain it to your therapist. Only at this point will flaws in this reasoning become apparent. If you cannot talk to a therapist (or otherwise a neutral person who doesn't judge you for what you say), you can try writing it down. Try to write down why you feel what you feel, what you feel when you talk to another person, what you think that others think and feel about you, how those feelings developed, how other people have been influential in your feelings, everything. Read it as if someone else wrote it down. What would you do in their situation? Do you agree with what you wrote down. If you come across holes in what you've written, try to revise that part, rewrite it to incoorporate for the criticisms. > making it less likely the next will be positive. Why do you think that's the case? If you throw a dice and it comes up on 1 three times in a row, that doesn't make it more likely that the next time it will be a 1 again. There's so many different people, it's as good as random what kind of interaction you will have.

renewiltord 6mo ago

I mean, obviously all the behaviors in the article are undesirable. The joke is in proposing other ones. Surely people are being amusingly self deprecating not precisely honest.

Chance-Device 6mo ago

Have you considered that your advice might be akin to telling a diabetic to do talk therapy so they can start producing insulin again? There are lots of things people can’t just talk themselves out of.

justonceokay 6mo ago
Well that would be silly. I would hope the diabetic would go to a nutritionist for their physical and medical problem. But a social problem is something that should probably be fixed with a social solution There’s a lot of energy in this thread mixing up introversion and autism for an inability to relate to others. That’s not true you just have a different perspective and will relate in a different way. Autism might be a proximal cause for anxiety but anxiety is not a feature of autism and it can be overcome.

stronglikedan 6mo ago

No one can stop the replay, so there's no use in seeing anyone about it. We eventually just learn to cope, and try not to lie in bed at night replaying all the day's awkward social situations.

bsoles 6mo ago

My favorite Jane Austen quote on this subject: Perhaps,' said Darcy, 'I should have judged better, had I sought an introduction, but I am ill qualified to recommend myself to strangers.' 'Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?' said Elizabeth, still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. 'Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?' 'I can answer your question,' said Fitzwilliam, 'without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.' 'I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,' said Darcy, 'of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.' 'My fingers,' said Elizabeth, 'do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault -- because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution.'

justonceokay 6mo ago
As a self identified autistic person, I regularly think of spooky situations as “socialization”. I went to a wedding where I only knew five people. Goddamn did I have some bad conversation. But I also made one new friend, and that’s cool! When I fuck up it’s just a chance for me to learn why I fucked up and how to be better in the future. And not everyone has to like me. I only really enjoy about 10% of others, why should I expect a greater return? It seems like most people in this thread are more like Mr. Darcy, just assuming that they are destined to be bad at something that they’ve never practiced
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
dalmo3 6mo ago
That's a poor analogy because practicing an instrument is a single-player game. Unless you mean you can practice socialisation at the mirror, or that you're willing to practice scales or solfege in public.