Shame Around Being Socially Awkward Part 1: Why Do I Think I'm Awkward So I'm going to be journaling and exploring why I am ashamed of any amount of social awkwardness. I'm going to start off with what I perceive as awkward on my end in the first place.  The first 3 things have to do with my basic sense of shyness.  Nervous about my interests: Did a whole post on how I'm self conscious about talking about spirituality and self development. I guess I could add that I have been spending a lot of time on myself to work through the issues in my life but that's typically not something that you could talk about with someone you aren't close to. I'm nervous about oversharing and making myself look mentally unhinged. As a result, I tend to under share about myself irl and I cope by getting the other person to talk about their interests and experiences so that I won't have to reveal anything about myself. I do reveal things eventually but only after I feel that the person can handle it depending on what I know about them.   Being nervous around guys who I know are interested in me: I'm probably going to a whole post about this afterwards to delve in my perceptions of men. But I guess one of the big things is that I'm not used to male attention. I didn't catch anyone's eye through high school and middle school and then suddenly when I got to college I got guys hitting on me. And it wasn't just people in my college, a large portion of them were just people in public. It's just that, because I didn't encounter many situations like this growing up, I don't know what to do or how to react when something like this does happen. I just resort to saying thank you if a guy tells me I'm pretty followed by giggling nervously and trying to play off my awkwardness as me being shy and flattered so that it comes off as cute instead of weird. Most of this is lack of experience coming off as nervousness rather than nervousness tbh.  Running out of things to say: I know silences are normal in a conversation but I'm nervous when I simply run out of things to say to the other person and I'm nervous that one of those awkward silences will last too long. I feel like it would make me seem uninteresting, as though if I don't have anything to talk about, people will think I probably don't have a life, I don't have interests, and I'm not doing anything with my life. I think the pandemic REALLY emphasized this because I definitely don't have a life now and as a result, I have even less things to talk about. This one thing gives me so much social anxiety.  The next 3 things have to do with symptoms of my ADHD. I manage my ADHD well and I don't have a problem with functioning because I have really good coping skills but I don't like it when it slips out in social circumstances. Rambling: Contradictory to me feeling self conscious about running out of things to say, I'm also nervous about rambling. Hell, I found myself being hesitant to write long posts in my journal because of this. I'm afraid of things being one sided, the other person being bored or confused with all that I have to say. I don't want to lecture to someone because I think it would be unempathetic, rude, and not conducive to bonding with someone. I've also been constantly told as a kid by my peers and the adults around me that I talk too much and that no one cares about what I have to say and I'm pretty sure that has caused me to retreat and be shy for a chunk of my life.  Interrupting: This doesn't happen that often but I cringe at myself every time I get too excited about a topic or contributing to a conversation to where I interrupt someone. I feel like I'm being unempathetic to the other person and that I'm revealing myself to be a hyper active person with no impulse control. But at the same time, sometimes I feel the need to do this or else the other person will keep talking and I won't get a chance to express my point of view (this is rare though but I still feel bad when this happens).  Talking too fast, stuttering, filler words and not making sense: My mind goes a million miles per hour sometimes. I can have 20 different ideas in a matter of a second. But it takes time to articulate all that and sometimes I feel like my mind moves faster than my ability to express myself. It's the reason why I can't write in journals. I have to type because or else I can't keep up with myself. The thing with writing is that I can organize my thoughts and rearrange them to where they would make sense. With  speaking on the other hand... well there is no backspace for my mouth. I'm scared of being seen as confusing, crazy, and not pleasant to be around because of this.  This last one doesn't fall in any category, it's just kind of there tbh.  Coming off as too positive: I have been told that I come off as positive and really confident by the way I carry myself and that I look like I have my life together. I have a weird relationship with coming off as positive. For a large chunk of my life I was angsty, depressed, and always ranting about something because being annoyed was basically my sense of humor. I had a group of friends but I thought that maybe I'd be more well liked if I was happy and bubbly. I don't know if I watched too much Charisma on Command the summer before college in order to reinvent myself or I read too many self help books talking about how people don't like being around negative people and how to be liked you have to be positive and upbeat. But when I eventually did get to a happier place in my life and I naturally came off as bubbly, I noticed that people still didn't like me and probably thought I was annoying for being a happy person. I'm afraid of coming off as a Tony Robbins sales person type of personality. I don't know how to describe it but it's like the the snake oil sales man type who acts happy and confident but it also looks really fake as if they are trying to craft this charismatic persona instead of being their normal self.  I know positivity can be toxic and cold when it's not backed up with empathy but I am still pretty empathetic (though I might not be as warm....?idk man). I know people have told me that they found me intimidating when they talk to me.  I feel like I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. Me being negative would be me being a downer no one likes but me being positive would be me being a deluded idiot who is happy all the time because there is this assumption that I'm not aware of the awful stuff in the world or someone who is on a different plane of existence because I have my life together. As a kid I got bullied for being happy, bubbly, and nice, and as a teenager I got criticized for being angsty. I don't know what I'm supposed to do to be socially normal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And honestly, I don't know how much is me being hyper critical of myself because I went through a phase where I was weird and socially awkward in my early teen to preteen years (like many people) and this is me overcompensating, or how much of this is me cringing at myself because of my sense of self awareness and then how much of that self awareness is valid at the moment. I have talked about this with friends before and all of them tell me that I'm not awkward at all and if anything I come off as really socially competent. I think part of me still caries the self image of me from when I was 11-13 and socially awkward followed by when I was shy and quiet from 14-16.