I have struggled with social anxiety my entire life and I've recently begun a medication for it, but I've also developed a very self-aware train of thought.
for example, when i'm talking to someone, i spend the time considering how i should/will react over forming a genuine thought. and i can't even focus on forming a genuine thought if i wanted because i honestly don't really have an opinion or know how to bounce off a comment. and when i do come up with a good response, its very obvious its been thought out or there was no thought at all. i often can't get past the 'thats cool!' because i do think its cool but i dont really know what else to say. 'ask more about it' but when i do it kinda seems like *they* find it annoying like im pestering them.
i've almost forgotten how to act socially and how i react or feel about things and it makes every social interaction draining and stressful, like a play i never got the script to. also why is everyone so good at banter except me? i said something i thought was clever once and my friend didn't believe that i came up on it on my own, thought I used ai. kinda stuck with me that i'm not deemed to be clever.
anyways, has anyone else gone through this? what can i do to get past it? its quite tiring.
5 comments
I believe you’ve mistaken overly self-aware for what might actually be SFA (self focused attention) or a form of conversational spectatoring.
Number one relax. Number two go query those terms. Optional : Number three fuck right off from the people who accused you of using AI but do it silently.
Yes I experience this! Particularly with new people/small talk. With my well established friendships there’s balanced conversations, room for story times and comfortable silence. When meeting someone new, I struggle to find the words and when I can walk away from convo or end it naturally.
I understand so much now why weather is the default conversation because it is a shared experience. I have 3 suggestions of and you can use each one or go through each of them to figure out how to connect.
1. See if you can identify a shared interest. For example if you are meeting someone at a sporting event – ask which team they support and why, how long and if they like other teams. This is an easy to and fro convo because you will both have different experiences about the same topic.
2. Ask them something about themselves that you may know a little bit, using the same topic above – if they have a family member who plays the sport, or wearing the team colours you can mention that as an intro and then continue to encourage them to talk about themselves. People love to talk about themselves. When they get over that they’ll turn it over to you or you’ll be able to run away safely knowing you participated in the world and got out unscathed.
3. If you are concerned about asking them about themselves, invite them into a conversation by sharing something about a safe topic you have, again you can start with “I have supported this team since I was x, my grandfather used to put it on tv every Saturday and we’d do this”. Or select another safe topic about you. For me i rely on food/cafe/cooking/restaurants and tv shows/movies. It could be a hobby of yours or a niche experience. Inquisitive people will want to know more and you’ll be confident because you know what you’re talking about, just make sure to also ask open ended questions in return so as not to appear one sided when actually you’re dying inside.
First thing is to become comfortable with a bit of discomfort. No-one has smooth, frictionless conversations all the time and most people are in their own heads sometimes. So try not to sweat it. So long as you’re both being friendly there doesn’t have to be much more to it.
Second, what would you like to get out of your social interactions? Do you have any examples? Or do you just wish things would “go smoother”, or that people would “like you more”. These aren’t neccessarily bad things to want, but they’re quite vague and if you don’t know why you’re in a conversation, it’s not going to be easy to respond in an engaged way. If you’re talking to a co-worker, for example, and they’re telling you about their new fishing rod – do you care? Are they giving you anything in this conversation or are they just wanting social validation? If the latter, you can pretty safely fall back on a polite, friendly “that’s cool!”, because what’s going to happen if you don’t? Oh no! You might miss out on more *fascinating* fishing tales! People often don’t need more than a “that’s cool” to maintain polite conversation and small talk.
But if you do have solid reasons for wanting to engage your conversational partner, I’d say from the sounds of things you need to learn some stock phrases and mental shortcuts, and practise using them until you don’t have to think so hard about them. One tip here is to repeat a few words they just said, with a question mark at the end.
A: I got a new fishing rod this weekend, she’s a real beauty!
B: A new fishing rod?
A: Yeah, the Catchertron XXIII, top of the line.
B: It’s top of the line?
A: Yep, it came out this week and I got the first one.
Etc… Obviously you can’t do this ad infinitum, but it can give your brain time to warm up to the conversation, and come up with another question “are you planning to take it anywhere in particular?”, “what’s the biggest fish you ever caught?”, “what do you think about catch and release?”, etc… just something basic and straightforward.
Basically, repeat words they’ve said back to them, and ask the most obvious, bland, basic question you can think of, with a spirit of goodwill towards them, and that will make most people happy.
Also, take more time to answer. Take regular beats after they’ve finished a sentence to process what they’ve said – pauses are fine, even if they feel they’re going on for a while. Having someone pause to absorb what you’re saying can be very flattering.
And if you’re feeling a bit slow in the brain department that day, you can tell your conversational partner and they should (if they’re a worthwhile person) cut you some slack. Everyone’s been there.
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I don’t have much on banter. Everyone steals material from everyone else. 99% of the jokes people tell are either lifted from somewhere else, or just bad puns said with confidence, in my experience.
One banter tip I would give though, if you’re not confident or 100% certain of your audience, avoid insulting or edgy jokes. It’s easy to get wrong, and there’s not a great deal of benefit to being good at it.
If you really want to get good at banter, I would say look into books that teach comedy and improvisation. One of the first things you learn is “be obvious”, which means don’t try to be clever because you’ll fail 90% of the time, and people will clock that you’re trying too hard. Try to be straight-forward, and say the most obvious thing that comes to mind, because then you’ll be unnoticed 90% of the time, and 10% of the time you’ll accidentally say something clever or unexpected and make people laugh.
I thought that was just how autism works tbh
That sounds less like being ‘self-aware’ and more like constantly monitoring yourself while you talk. It kinda blocks real thoughts from forming because all your attention is on how you’re coming across