A
female
age
22-25,
anonymous
writes:Hi guys,Just wondering if anyone could give some advice on an issue that I have been dealing with for sometime. Basically, I am quite an anxious person and find meeting and speaking to new people face to face pretty awkward. I have been dating my boyfriend for two years and he is the exact opposite of me. He can speak to a brick wall and chat to everyone and anyone. Now, because of this, I find that he can be quite dominant in conversations and he talks over me sometimes. We have sat down and discussed this issue and he agreed that he can be quite over bearing in conversations. We are working on it together. However, he has mentioned a few times that he would like me to be more sociable and I would love to be as I used to be super chatty, confident and happy to meet everyone and anyone. Due to some mental health issues in school, I became more reserved and have never managed to get back to my normal self. I am trying to get back into the swing of things again and now that we have discussed us both needing to work on some stuff together regarding conversations, I think this would be the perfect time to get out of my shell. I do go in and make as much of an effort as possible when I am meeting his friends, but I feel that if they are not super chatty with me in the first place, I panic almost and become quite quiet and hesitate to speak. I was wondering if you guys have any tips and tricks to get me back into the conversation with new people as I don't want this to be the reason our relationship ends.I do try and find out about the people I am meeting so I can converse with them and find out more. Basically showing an interest in what they do and let them speak about themselves.Any help would be greatly appreciated and I would truly be grateful for any advice. Thank you. Reply to this Question
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (14 April 2022): I'm similarly a bit socially awkward and shy but I've learnt two useful tricks over the years - 1) ask open questions (i.e. not questions they can simply give a yes or no answer to). This helps keep the conversation flowing. And 2) before meeting people have a few questions/conversation topics already prepared. It could be something as simple as 'what are your holiday plans this year?' Or 'what have you been watching on tv lately?'. This means that when conversation does dry up, you have something to get it going again. And another thing I've learnt is that silence is ok. You can have pauses in the conversation especially if you are talking for a long time.
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (13 April 2022): Give yourself time. read about social anxiety (SA) and cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques. They are really helpful and can be practiced even without the supervision of a shrink. One of the basic ideas is to set smaller goals and achieve them in a situation you feel comfortable with, until you get used to the unpleasant feelings. It is normal to feel stress before a job interview, but it's not normal not to be able to breathe or being sick all the time. This means that we are mixing signals. Treating something normal like a life-threatening situation. Here's an example. A guy having problems starting conversation with girls fears rejection. But rejection is a normal part of life! Not everyone could/should like us, so he had to put the fear into the right context - being politely or rudely rejected by a girl IS NOT The end of the world.He went into a bar where nobody knew him and started talking to girls. Not the girls he was interested in, just any girls. And of course he was rejected 100% of the time and he saw that nothing bad happened :) So next time he started approaching women he liked (again in a place where nobody knew him) and slowly he stopped caring about what other people thought. He faced his fear in a controlled surroundings and saw that there was nothing there. Just his projections of what might other people think.It's different for everyone!My husband suffers from SA because he was bullied and ignored as a kid. I remember a situation that really triggered him. We were having dinner at our friends' place. One of the guests got drank and started talking BS. I don't know what he actually said to my husband, he made fun of him and my husband handled it, but he was not only in a bad mood that evening, he spiraled into depression and couldn't stop talking about it! He can't think about meeting that man ever again! He knows how stupid that is, but there you go. SA is not rational. So we need to get ourselves used to unpleasantness and stop reacting to it as if it were a life threatening issue. You can be just who you are. Listening to others is great but when it's your turn to speak just be who you are. You can't play a role just to please your partner or his friends. If he really loves you, his friends are going to accept you because they will see how important you are to him.
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