Growing up, I used to be very socially awkward. And not the type socially awkward that you see sometimes in media with nerdier women that comes across as being appealing to some. I was socially awkward in the “Wow, we want to actively avoid this person” way that led to a lot of self-doubt and angst until I was well into my 20s.
It’s been a years-long process to get to where I am now socially. I would not call myself charismatic nor a social butterfly, but I’m now at a point where I feel like I can talk to both strangers and friends and carry a conversation, while when I was younger I could not manage either. The process I’m outlining below took close to a decade to successfully implement, though I’m sure many people could execute in a much faster manner than myself with some careful planning and avoiding the obvious pitfalls I stepped straight into.
Fake It Until You Make It
Feeling socially anxious has been the biggest barrier that held me back. I’ll admit that I still haven’t conquered my social anxiety and that it haunts me from time to time. But what previously used to be a constant companion blaring in my face is now akin to an annoying pop up ad that usually gets caught by uBlock Origin.
So I’m sure you’re thinking, “Great, so how do you propose I alleviate my social anxiety?” Well, a method to approach it is through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy principles, which teaches you to do the scary socializing thing despite feeling scared. Also known as exposure therapy, this certainly isn’t the advice many people want to hear to get past anxiety. However, assuming that your social anxiety isn’t tied to a major trauma (in which case a trauma-oriented therapy would benefit you more), making yourself do the thing you’re scared of repeatedly works.
For example, I used to have anxiety about meeting up with guys and going on dates with them. This led to a nonexistent romantic life, given that I let fear get in the way of anything even happening. In grad school, I decided I needed to make a change in this regard. I started going on lots of dates. Many of them went quite poorly, and no relationships came out of the 20ish dates I ended up going on. (Only a couple of times did I even make it to date two.) In terms of trying to find romance, it was an objective failure.
But you know what? I now don’t have anxiety about going on dates anymore, and meeting new people doesn’t scare the crap out of me. I’ve had enough of the worst-case scenarios happen to me that my brain’s attempts to spook me no longer hold any weight. I learned that even if I strike out and a date goes horribly, it can make a funny story. It does not need to define my social status. It’s for that reason that doing the scary thing repeatedly works, and why I recommend it as a technique.
Know How to Have a Basic Conversation
So social anxiety isn’t holding you back like it used to. You have actually gotten into a conversation with another human being! So what now? You need to actually engage with them and know what to say to keep them listening. Websites such as Succeed Socially are a great initial resource to start with, but I’d like to share my ultimate hack to making sure another person likes talking with you:
People love to talk about themselves - take advantage of it.
Now if you only follow this advice you’re going to end up surrounded with people who use you for emotional labor and chuck you to the wayside when you try to talk about your own problems. However, if you want to make a good first impression, doing what you can to make the other person feel heard will get you far.
The default method I’ve adopted is asking follow-up questions that require a more thoughtful response than just a yes or a no. For example, don’t ask “Did you travel to Europe recently?” but rather “Why did you travel to Europe in particular?” You’d be surprised just how much this little change makes, but it’s a lot. The former question generally kills a conversation, but the latter encourages the conversation to carry onwards.
Also be aware of the inverse scenario, where you are asked a question and only give a yes/no response. This will make continuing a conversation a lot harder if you don’t elaborate on that yes/no further.
Understanding Your Emotional Landscape
You need to know what you’re feeling in order to express yourself properly and to better understand others. This is a skill I wished I understood earlier on in building my social capacity.
For the longest time I kept myself detached from my emotions when interacting with other people. This led to a lot of people thinking that I was distant and aloof. And I’ll be the first to admit that when life gets challenging to navigate, I’m more likely than not to pull away from other people and disconnect from other people. Old habits die hard like that.
I could write a whole blog post (and probably will) about my experiences with recognizing and understanding my emotions. But the main way I came into touch with my emotions was through creative outlets. My main outlets have consisted of writing, meditating, and playing tabletop games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Others may find emotional outlets through music, art, or gardening. Experiment to find what works best for you.
Reading Books
Learning through other expert’s experience has always been a powerful way for me to develop my skillset, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer some further reading materials for you all to check out. Some books I would suggest include:
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
This one is a classic for developing social skills and offers a lot of timeless advice. If you’re still struggling with a lot of sour social interactions, I’d suggest starting here. This is one of the first places I started when I was younger, and it’s a good starting point for understanding the underlying dynamics of social interactions.
How to Be Yourself by Ellen Hendriksen
This is one to read in more detail if you’re interested in using CBT to conquer your social anxiety or awkwardness. It’s a book I wish had much earlier in developing my social skills.
The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox-Cabane
This book targets the idea that people are naturally charismatic and tears it to shreds. For some people, just knowing that charisma can be taught can make it easier to learn the skills necessary to come across as more likable. I would not categorize myself as an extremely charismatic individual, but I think that if I wanted to be considered charismatic, if I put in a lot of effort it would be possible.
Conclusion
Overall, developing social skills is a constant work in progress. You won’t magically wake up one day and think “wow, I have social skills!” or something. The progress is incremental, and you may not even notice improvements if you aren’t actively tracking your progress in some way. But it’s a worthwhile endeavor that will yield benefits equal to the amount of effort you put in.
Social Simulation Games
So let’s say you’ve done some research into socializing but you’re still struggling to hit the right beats when you try to meet new people. This was where I was in my early 20s, and you know what unexpected thing helped me to get better? Video games. And I’m not talking about online multiplayer games where you’re forced to communicate with someone in order to mutually reach some goal. (I’m sure for some people this type of interaction is helpful in developing social skills, but it never benefitted me.) I’m talking about games where there’s a primary emphasis on social interaction.
The main series I have in mind for this is Persona. Persona is a story-heavy games series where you spend half your time in a social simulator, and the other half has you play a more traditional RPG where you clear out dungeons. The social simulator part allows you to create social links with certain characters and build up friendships with them. In these social links, you have the ability to choose responses to various prompts, and when you choose correctly you get obvious reactions in-game to tell you that you’ve chosen a good response.
Of course, in real life building friendships is more complex than pre-scripted interactions with fictional characters where you have set prompts to offer others. But even these more simplistic takes on social interaction can offer up a new perspective on how to interact with other people, especially with social links that are different than people you have generally.