Being social

Most people that know me somewhat will realise that I rather lack social experience or skills. This seems to stem from an inherent shyness and inability to interact with strangers. These also lead to a damped ability to interact with people on a sociable level. Namely, I can't initiate and struggle to continue small talk. This leads to some interesting paradoxes.

It is trivial to state that I enjoy spending time alone. Which comes in handy as it is what I do most of the time. However, there is a small group of people that I would willingly be around for extended periods of time and risk potential epic social burnout. A subset of this group don't seem to wear me out. (After all, the Jung test says I'm roughly 20% extroverted)

There are also certain times (now appears to be one of them) when I actually would prefer to be with people in this group than alone. This longing to be in a social setting is something I don't understand at all. Usually I couldn't care less about spending days at a time a lone in my room.

Too make things worse, a side effect of enjoying something social is to want to go out and be social again. That doesn't happen. Instead I spend the next two weeks painfully away of how pathetic my life is, hoping to get invited somewhere.

During those two weeks, I am more aware of the amount of socialising that my siblings are involved in. This usually invokes feelings that I find harder to suppress than normal, mainly because I want to get out of my room and interact with people, but can't. Thus these feelings, all of which are negative, build up until they get let out. Twice this has resulted in me snapping.

I believe that these built up emotions are also one of the main sources of my depression. The more I'm stuck inside my room while others get out and be with people, the more I analyse how pitiful my life is and the more depressed I end up getting. This leads to a nasty cycle of be getting depressed at how much my life sucks, so I go and muse over it and end up getting more depressed.

Do I want to change this? Yes. Do I know or have any idea how to? Nope. As far as I can tell, due to me not understanding social interactions, the changes are going to have to be started by others.

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Comments

  • You should have come walking today!

    In general though, I have the same problem sometimes. One thing that you should do to help yourself is to start organising events. It can be a bit of work, and disappointing when people do not turn up, but start simple and keep at it and I think you will find it worthwhile. Think of things you would like to do with other people, invite lots of people to come and do it with you with enough notice, and maybe 10% might come. Do it often enough, and you will have some fun times eventually.

    Posted by qwandor, 03/04/2010 10:52pm (2 years ago)

  • People are rather forgiving if you're a social dweeb. Well, the PIRAW anyway. It's one of those catch 22 situations. To get better at it, you need to do it.

    And nobody understand social interactions. Well, some people are better at pretending than others.

    Posted by Michael Welsh, 03/04/2010 5:20pm (2 years ago)

  • Give it time, you'll get there. I used to hide in my room all day long, now I'm hanging out with friends almost everyday and wouldn't change it for anything!

    Posted by Sean, 03/04/2010 12:20pm (2 years ago)

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