The plan for March was to try and socialise in new circles, think of topics to discuss with people and generally do some stuff which I can then later talk about with people.
As I am sure most of you are aware the advice across many countries is now to reduce social interaction to slow the spread of COVID19. Well isolation and working from home has cut my social interaction down from low to zero and meant most plans are now cancelled or postponed. Unlikely to see or speak to anyone face to face for several weeks, let’s see how it goes.
This will be the longest time I have been at home, or even in one place in the past two years, suddenly being stationary for so long after so much time away will take a bit of adjustment
To keep motivated at home I am replacing what would normally be my commute to work with a work out. This means twice a day I am committing to doing something active to get the body and brain cells moving. It will also help to plant some routine into my day and also define the start and end of the working day and transition into personal time. I know this is not conversation related but does help my mental well-being. Plus there is very little subject this month regarding progress with conversations.
Linking back to my last article about social anxiety I have also realised that this is not just relating to face to face speaking but also extends to messages, chats, texts etc. although there is still the same level of panic when someone contacts me by message I recover quicker as I can choose when to read it, when to respond to it and also prepare several drafts of what I want to say before committing to a response. This is good for my overly analytical brain to formulate a response, worry about how it might come across, delete it, rewrite it… you get the picture. This does however create the same outcome as if in person, in a very disjointed and anxious conversation which takes longer than it should. This in turn annoys people or means they no longer continue with the conversation as they feel it does not matter to me as I take so long to response. This is on the contrary – usually the longer I take to respond means one of two things either I genuinely was busy and did not read your message or two the response meant a lot and I did not know how to phrase it so had to take the time to think about it.
Equally when there is no response to a question I have posed, my immediate concern is I have annoyed the person, said something stupid or generally don’t matter. Hence another reason why I try not to communicate too much as I am not sure which I worry about more; no response or a bad response.
The problem I have with both face to face but more so with messages is context. I can never figure out if someone is being funny, light hearted or serious. I seemed to always get it wrong which leads to further embarrassment and reinforces the reason why I don’t enjoy talking to people. Equally I have not figured out how to convey my messages to people with the right context. Receiving messages you only get half the story, you do not know what frame of mind the other person is in, where they are, what is going on in their world. Are they super busy and respond to be courteous or do they want a chat? Is the topic you have just asked got nothing to do with what they are doing or thinking. The mind set we are in when we receive a message or email can dramatically change how we read the context of the message and equally how we are going to respond to it. An out of the blue question pops up on your phone or inbox and you are in the middle of something else, you have just dropped your last egg on the floor. It is probably not the best time to respond as it will be an emotional reaction rather than a considered reply. Hence another reason to delay the response.
What I think I am rambling on about is that a conversation is more than just the expression of thoughts of two people but is also the context, mind set and intention of those two people in that moment.
I have also come to the realisation that I do not hate conversations or social interactions it is more fear of them. Fear of the unknown and unpredictable, fear of embarrassment or saying the wrong thing. This I see as a good thing, as fear can be rationalised and overcome ( I hope)
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