I was getting a haircut. ” so, what’s it going to be?” said the barber. ” its going to be a three at the sides and back, nice and short on the top, spiked,tossed, more tossed than spiked, gel, to about this length” I said whilst grabbing a strand of hair to show the length I wanted. There was what I deduced was a socially awkward middleaged man in the next chair beside me. There are subtle differences between a man and a boy. One difference being the ability to socialize comfortably. If one does not become highly socialized one will end up like this person beside me. His socially awkward energy was affecting the entire barbershop, ” That your car outside, the prius?” I said to my barber. ” Yeah” said the barber. ” I had one, it got nicked, no immobolizer” I said. ” It got nicked?” said the barber who was cutting the hair of the socially awkward guy beside me and was only too happy to join in the conversation. ” yeah, the prius is a good car, but too easy to rob” I said.” My insurance said that last time I got renewed” said my barber and the conversation between the three of us continued naturally with the socially awkward guy excluded. There was a time up until about the age of 28 that the word and act of socializing terrified me. I simply had not suffered enough. Once I truly started suffering I just didn’t give a fuck and went from being socially awkward like our friend in the chair beside me to highly socialized. It was that simple. I lost count of the number of times I was out with a chick, it could have been getting a carvery of a Sunday afternoon, I would strike up a conversation with a fellow customer and her reaction was always the same namely” You’re so confident” and then she would start playing footsie under the table.
11 comments
Why writing it here?
‘Why write it here?’ – Would be the correct English. Not ur first language obviously. To show you my foreign friend how socially awkward you are, now prove me wrong, go out there and make me proud of you!
Coming on a site like this and boasting about superior social skills, you have real low standards for feeling good.
You’re a little bit slow, just a little so don’t get too worried. The English you employ has improved so thank your teacher on my behalf. I don’t boast about my social skills I simply explain how I went from socially awkward to highly socialized and you can too. Now get out there and use your newly acquired social skills to succeed with women, maybe lose the foreign accent when doing it, women can be picky!
Yeah the post shows how much time you spent explaining and how much boasting. Your first reply only cleared it more.
Cheap, in all honesty.
Interesting. What kind of suffering did you have to endure that led you to no longer care? And was it worth it?
Very good question. That is what is so hard to explain. To attempt to explain I would say a consortium of extreme problems pressing down on me all at once. The pressure those problems exerted made me highly socialized, I literally went from fearing and hating socializing to loving it.
I can kind of imagine certain extreme types of situation having that impact on some people – experiencing war or other life or death events, for example. I could see that shocking someone’s nervous system so much that mere social anxiety faded away in comparison.
I don’t know whether you’d prescribe extreme suffering as a solution?
The problems because of their severity got my mind off my self consciousness when interacting with others, I then became very comfortable dealing with others where as before I would say the bare minimum and absolutely NEVER take the iniative. I wish I could say in my case it did not take extreme suffering to get me there but unfortunately it did.
Yeah, that’s interesting. I’d generally say I have some major problems, but they seem pretty insoluble and aren’t pressing/urgent. Nothing disastrous is going to happen in the short term, my life is just kind of fucked long term. So they don’t really occupy my mind in a way that disrupts from self-consciousness and anxiety at what’s going on around you.
Maybe it takes having really urgent/disastrous shit really pressing on you 24/7 to get you to that point where there’s no room to sweat the little stuff. I think I might’ve experienced small short-term instances of that recently when I was in significant physical pain and had to seek treatment to get it resolved. Suddenly interacting with people felt so much easier, as all that was in my mind was gratitude that the pain was going to end. Unfortunately that didn’t last more than a few days.
You’ve got it. Its the ’24/7′ shit pressing down on you. You no longer care when interacting with others and where once it was a pain now its a pleasure. You mention you broke free for a few days and became more at ease with people then it dried up, my story is a little different it became permanent thankfully and thats the only difference.