For those of you who have poor social skills (dating, how to, younger)

[crisan]

This is going to be difficult to read as it was difficult for me to explore. I started a thread about introverts in which I was trying to place blame on my lack of friends on something out of my control. I was wrong. I had it all in my control. I had poor social skills. I always felt like I was on the fringes of friendships, a person you meet as long as there is a group around. I had zero confidence in my social abilities. This is what I did to end it:

1. Always meet people in public settings or places
2. If an opportunity arises for you to be alone with somebody, turn it down.

Why? When you are out with a group of people and you say or do something that gets a reaction from people that makes you insecure, makes you feel judged, offends you, makes you feel uneasy, you have to stop what ever it is you are doing. If you are talking, be quiet. If you are too close to somebody, move away. If you feel like you would rather be alone at that moment, walk away and find a place where nobody can see or hear you.

When you get to that place, say to yourself, "I messed up." Now cry, be angry, be sad or whatever negative feelings you normally have. Now stop and remember this:

This is you being unhappy with yourself. This is you hating yourself. This is what you are actually trying to conceal from people. But don't be fooled, you will eventually show this side to a person you persuaded to be alone with you. You are still trying to conceal your negative feelings from the world but now you have a friend who is very unfortunate to be alone with you. (This is even worse when you have children who have to be around you.)

If your reaction is to feel sorry for yourself, you will talk about all of your problems and probably not give your friend a chance to talk. If they do and it is not what you want to hear, your sadness may turn into anger. Again, this is why a person should not be alone with you.

If your reaction is anger, (e.g. what a b**ch!), you will eventually reveal this ugly side to your friend. You will make your new friend very uncomfortable, unsafe in fact. If she decides to never see you again after that, you will convince yourself that she was a b**ch. That is why you should not be alone with somebody until you have your true feelings about yourself under control. So how did I do that?

When I was alone and had my cry or fit of anger, I had to stop and think for a moment, what am I neglecting right now? Chances were I was neglecting something in order to have my pity party. That was what I needed to take care of at that moment. It could be your studies, your housekeeping, meal preparation, a call to your parents, whatever. If it involves another human, make sure you are calm before you call them.

This calmed me down and then I was able to think more rationally about why somebody put me at unease. Was it something in my control, e.g. my comments or my proximity? That I can fix. These are your social skills.

Was it something out of my control, e.g. the way I danced, my skin color, my intelligence? That is not my problem and I don't need to do anything about it. This last part will be very obvious so if nobody raised an eyebrow to your bad dancing or mentioned any physical attribute, chances are you made a social mistake.

This is not about being thin skinned or weak or not able to "take it." If you already feel like your importance is low in that group of friends, they do not know you well enough or care enough or respect you enough to feel free to tease you about things that are out of your control. You owe it to your mental health to get away from people like this.

Once you can detect these people (you have been ignoring your intuition up till this point) and successfully stay away from them, you will find yourself having your social skills corrected by rude people. You are on the right track. These are the people you want to learn from. They are rude to you because they are telling you, don't bring your mental problems to me.

Okay, so now I will discuss how to start working on those negative feelings in public. These are the ones that you try so very hard to hide from people but people are good at detecting. Well, at least the ones who did not end up alone with you.

Intuition - listen to it. Your mind tells you when you have made a social mistake. What does it sound or feel like? "That was rude. Don't judge me. I feel little." Again stop what ever it is you are doing. If you can get over your negative feelings without have to be alone, start trying to correct your behavior so that you can rejoin the group. You may have lost the trust of that specific person but all they ask, by being "rude", is that you keep your distance. Don't retreat from other people. Try again.

If you are starting to feel like you would rather be alone, go and be alone. Rinse and repeat.

The day you can shake the hands of a "rude" person is the day they are no longer rude. I would hope by this point you now have learned how to detect and protect yourself from the very person you were trying to hide. Now you will know what it means to be confident.

[Osito]

Interesting post, thanks for your thoughts. I agree with quite a bit of it (in almost every interview I've had for example I can afterward think of what I did wrong). I have a tendency to do jack-ass things when I'm in a social or professional situation with a group of people (or even just one person who makes me extremely uncomfortable).

A good way to learn what you might be doing wrong is from other people who are willing to tell you/show you. I guess the only down-side to this sort of thing is that what is "wrong" socially is going to be different for everybody. In particular, in this multicultural society we're living in, acting one way might be considered right for some people while others would look down on it. So that's one thing to keep in mind I guess.

Me, I have horrible social anxiety which makes me do stupid things like completely ignore people rather than talk to them or inviting them to talk to me. Occasionally I'll even ignore someone greeting me because I'm just not comfortable enough to say anything back and then I'll think "why did I do that???" Thank god nobody seems to hold it against me.

Then there's my job; it's geared toward sociable people and I'm just not that way. I also work with and go to school with a lot of people around 4 to 8 years younger than me. And while I might do okay talking with the occasional person one on one, get me in a group and they start talking to each other and then I end up feeling left out and feeling like like the kid sister or the fugly aunt, I'm not sure which. You're right, people like that aren't worth any time whatsoever. Ayway I'm really, really on people overload. I need a darn break. Thanks for the advice.

[Mr. Humble]

Just read the above posts and had a thought or two. First, I think I want to say that even though I can feel the almost belly-knotted pain in both, the feelings you both have in social situations is not something that I, generally I'd say an extrovert, couldn't at all relate to. I believe that I have felt similar discomfort though not as severely, but I think the difference is that I don't take it as BIG as you do. And I am a person who tends to see things bigger than most people do, but I think maybe I've trained myself, without being aware of it, to understand that those feelings are common in everyday life, with all of us to one extent or another, and so I should treat them that way; not see them as singular or something that makes me unique, or in a special kind of pain. Maybe if you can manage to understand that we have all of us felt this anxiety, and can chalk it up to just being human it may minimize the "on-stage", spotlighted feeling..

Another thing that kind of broke my heart and this was in the second post, had to do with the feelings of inadequacy the poster feels while being "interviewed" I assume for dating sites. I only want to say that unless you have two heads, literally have two heads, I would have to take a very sober look at whether or not you should put yourself through it. People are cruel, and counter intuitively, people that have been trampled upon in life are usually the cruelest. I heard the other day that something like one out of five current relationships (not sure how they were defined) began with a dating service. So it's nothing if not common these days. But I have a hunch that these are the kinds of people that you can often meet in these places. I'm sure many of those who post here have done, but it just seems like you'd have to have a pretty healthy ego goin' in to even resemble yourself coming out, and there isn't much sadder or more tragic than the loss of self..

[crisan]

Thank you for your responses. I wrote that post for one reason and it is not the reason you have suspected. ETA: This was the person I was, giving unsolicited advice.

Originally Posted by Osito

Interesting post, thanks for your thoughts. I agree with quite a bit of it (in almost every interview I've had for example I can afterward think of what I did wrong). I have a tendency to do jack-ass things when I'm in a social or professional situation with a group of people (or even just one person who makes me extremely uncomfortable).

A good way to learn what you might be doing wrong is from other people who are willing to tell you/show you. I guess the only down-side to this sort of thing is that what is "wrong" socially is going to be different for everybody. In particular, in this multicultural society we're living in, acting one way might be considered right for some people while others would look down on it. So that's one thing to keep in mind I guess.

Me, I have horrible social anxiety which makes me do stupid things like completely ignore people rather than talk to them or inviting them to talk to me. Occasionally I'll even ignore someone greeting me because I'm just not comfortable enough to say anything back and then I'll think "why did I do that???" Thank god nobody seems to hold it against me.

Then there's my job; it's geared toward sociable people and I'm just not that way. I also work with and go to school with a lot of people around 4 to 8 years younger than me. And while I might do okay talking with the occasional person one on one, get me in a group and they start talking to each other and then I end up feeling left out and feeling like like the kid sister or the fugly aunt, I'm not sure which. You're right, people like that aren't worth any time whatsoever. Ayway I'm really, really on people overload. I need a darn break. Thanks for the advice.

It is good that you got something out of my post but there are problems with it.

1. It was advice, "help", etc..

• Try to question the person giving the advice. It doesn't matter if you choose to read it or listen to it. There are problems in my post. One, I only told you how to protect yourself physically from a person who make you feel uncomfortable. That can only result in one thing for a person who is vulnerable, staying away from almost all people. This by itself reveals only one thing about me, the "adviser", that I have no idea what I am talking about.
• I did not tell you how to protect yourself mentally and verbally, which allows you to interact with people and enjoy life.

• I made you feel comfortable enough for you to reveal a lot of negative information about yourself. Chances are you attract the very people who cannot help you. What you have done was tell me that you are vulnerable and that your defenses are down. The person who you suddenly feel like you can trust is the person you have to scrutinize even more. But now it sounds like you can't trust anybody, right? No. There is an easy way to test the person. These are some examples of mental and verbal ways of protecting yourself.

1. If somebody gives you unsolicited advice or help and you don't want it, tell them clearly you don't want their advice or help. If they are offended, too bad. Ex. Thank you but I don't need your help.

If you want the advice or help, you have to feel comfortable asking questions or making comments that seem "rude." For example, a good comment to make about my post is that it sounds manipulative, or that it sounds like I haven't figured things out like I claimed to because of the problem I pointed out in the first bullet point. Mr. Humble, the next poster below, saw right through my post.

How that person reacts to your rude comments is very important. How you react to their reaction is very important.

The other thing is that you are trying to gain my trust by revealing all this information. That is okay and it doesn't mean I am going to run away scared. I will make comments about your post and see how you react. This is the start of interaction.

Originally Posted by Mr. Humble

Just read the above posts and had a thought or two. First, I think I want to say that even though I can feel the almost belly-knotted pain in both, the feelings you both have in social situations is not something that I, generally I'd say an extrovert, couldn't at all relate to. I believe that I have felt similar discomfort though not as severely, but I think the difference is that I don't take it as BIG as you do. And I am a person who tends to see things bigger than most people do, but I think maybe I've trained myself, without being aware of it, to understand that those feelings are common in everyday life, with all of us to one extent or another, and so I should treat them that way; not see them as singular or something that makes me unique, or in a special kind of pain. Maybe if you can manage to understand that we have all of us felt this anxiety, and can chalk it up to just being human it may minimize the "on-stage", spotlighted feeling..

Another thing that kind of broke my heart and this was in the second post, had to do with the feelings of inadequacy the poster feels while being "interviewed" I assume for dating sites. I only want to say that unless you have two heads, literally have two heads, I would have to take a very sober look at whether or not you should put yourself through it. People are cruel, and counter intuitively, people that have been trampled upon in life are usually the cruelest. I heard the other day that something like one out of five current relationships (not sure how they were defined) began with a dating service. So it's nothing if not common these days. But I have a hunch that these are the kinds of people that you can often meet in these places. I'm sure many of those who post here have done, but it just seems like you'd have to have a pretty healthy ego goin' in to even resemble yourself coming out, and there isn't much sadder or more tragic than the loss of self..

Mr. Humble, thank you for responding and for your kind words. You obviously saw right through my post. Unfortunately, the things you know are very difficult to teach a person like me. It is because you were taught the fundamentals.

These were the fundamentals I was taught:

"No" means yes.
Be nice and do nice things for people you don't like or who are mean to you.