Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2017-12-20 02:33 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2017-12-20 02:33 pm
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The "Social Anxiety" model of introvert energy drain
There's a hypothesis about introversion and the energy drain we introverts feel around others, which claims that this drain comes from social anxiety. It also posits that in order to stop feeling drained, introverts ought to "just" gain more confidence, and with that, they'll be able to sail through everything and stop feeling drained!
First, fuck you.
Second, the world that I live in is like this: I will be spending time with people I like, who seem to like me, who I have had a lot of fun with. I will let my guard down around them. I will say or do something that seems in line with what the rest of the crowd has been saying, or that I have done before with the same crowd.
Suddenly, I am scolded or otherwise rebuked, because I have managed to violate some subtle rule of conduct. It's never stuff like, oh, say, installing a "security" lock on my office door and using it to demand that someone bang me. Perhaps it's the Barrayar-esque rule that we don't make that salty a reference in mixed company, despite the fact that the ladies present get that salty in my presence, and the gentlemen present also get that salty in my presence (my gender is a chameleon, apparently). Perhaps it's roleplaying etiquette. Perhaps it's that I didn't think of one specific person when writing in 140 characters to an audience of hundreds.
Are the rules necessary? Possibly! Would I have violated them if I'd been hypervigilant about everything? Possibly not! Sometimes it's things that I should have seen if I'd thought things through fully. Sometimes it's stuff you don't know about until you run into it. But in any case, you're much less likely to run into such things if you're watching your every move. And you've upset people, and that's terrible.
So that's how you learn: in order to make sure your horrible and socially malfunctioning ass doesn't spread its horrible social violations where the nice people will be horrified by them (and you), you watch yourself. Carefully. Keeping track of what's said, and who's said it, reading the room, and erring on the side of quietness.
There are respites. There are the friends where you have such a stock of built-up goodwill that it doesn't matter if you fuck up in little ways, because they trust you to fix it when you hurt them, and you trust them likewise. So you do your best to never screw up that way a second time, and you move on. Those are the friends who don't expect you to be People. It's still work, but worth it, and it's much less likely that you'll do something that will make them stop talking to you altogether.
Sometimes I wonder what life would been like if I hadn't been raised in a cabin in the woods without television.
First, fuck you.
Second, the world that I live in is like this: I will be spending time with people I like, who seem to like me, who I have had a lot of fun with. I will let my guard down around them. I will say or do something that seems in line with what the rest of the crowd has been saying, or that I have done before with the same crowd.
Suddenly, I am scolded or otherwise rebuked, because I have managed to violate some subtle rule of conduct. It's never stuff like, oh, say, installing a "security" lock on my office door and using it to demand that someone bang me. Perhaps it's the Barrayar-esque rule that we don't make that salty a reference in mixed company, despite the fact that the ladies present get that salty in my presence, and the gentlemen present also get that salty in my presence (my gender is a chameleon, apparently). Perhaps it's roleplaying etiquette. Perhaps it's that I didn't think of one specific person when writing in 140 characters to an audience of hundreds.
Are the rules necessary? Possibly! Would I have violated them if I'd been hypervigilant about everything? Possibly not! Sometimes it's things that I should have seen if I'd thought things through fully. Sometimes it's stuff you don't know about until you run into it. But in any case, you're much less likely to run into such things if you're watching your every move. And you've upset people, and that's terrible.
So that's how you learn: in order to make sure your horrible and socially malfunctioning ass doesn't spread its horrible social violations where the nice people will be horrified by them (and you), you watch yourself. Carefully. Keeping track of what's said, and who's said it, reading the room, and erring on the side of quietness.
There are respites. There are the friends where you have such a stock of built-up goodwill that it doesn't matter if you fuck up in little ways, because they trust you to fix it when you hurt them, and you trust them likewise. So you do your best to never screw up that way a second time, and you move on. Those are the friends who don't expect you to be People. It's still work, but worth it, and it's much less likely that you'll do something that will make them stop talking to you altogether.
Sometimes I wonder what life would been like if I hadn't been raised in a cabin in the woods without television.
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I actually learned to bake as a coping mechanism. My theory was that if I bring a cake or biscuits, then a) this shows goodwill, and so people are more likely to assume that if you say something stupid, it wasn't with intent, b) it gives you a safe topic of conversation (what is small talk? I do not understand small talk!), and c) if you are lucky, it gives you a reason to hide in the kitchen with the other food-inclined introverts. Or to leave one group of people (with your plate of cake) and move to another group without offending anyone.
This has not fixed my social anxiety, but it has made me an excellent and somewhat obsessive baker. And knowing that I have an actual strategy does make parties a bit less stressful.
I have not yet come up with a cake equivalent for online interactions.
Wishing you the very, very best. This time of year sucks for people who don't understand small talk (really, what is small talk?) and unspoken social rules.
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I expect to discover new and exciting types of small talk with my partner's Catholic family on Friday.
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Also, sympathies on the saying the wrong thing. I sometimes say things meaning to be funny and it comes out wrong and it makes me cringe.
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One reason among many why I will never let an SSRI near my brain again is not that it didn't work on my anxiety, but that it worked too well.
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I'm an introvert, and I don't have social anxiety.
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Like, it's not that I can't read people and like at least 90% of the time identify rules and not somehow fuck up and overstep somehow! It's just that it is extremely significant WORK for me to do. It's not that I can't handle loud noises and lots of people! It's just that it is extremely significant WORK for me to do so. And, ASTONISHINGLY, when I'm running at my cognitive limits for a couple hours at a go, I am then exhausted. ASTONISHINGLY, all the confidence in the fucking world doesn't change that?! (Seriously, I am actually at this point really confident about my people skills in certain limited situations. Doesn't make it less exhausting to use them.)
So, yeah. Just. No, for so many of us it is NOT "just" social anxiety at work. Even when it maybe sortakinda is, so often it's not true anxiety headweasels so much as Headferrets Of Legitimate Concern that are very worried with objectively good reason, because very real social consequences have occurred from NOT being extremely fucking careful. Because we are, as a species, pretty fucking crap at accommodating neurodivergence. (It's not even actually that rare! It's just... we're crap at accommodating it. *wry* Some of this is that it's not the majority, and some of this is rooted in generational trauma shit but that's probably another ramble entirely.)
In summary: see my icon.
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Sometimes it's things that I should have seen if I'd thought things through fully.
*nod* And sometimes there isn't time to think it through fully, and "do nothing" is also a socially unacceptable choice. And sometimes one is busily monitoring the wrong thing. Or one of the right things, but there are too many to monitor them all.
So that's how you learn: in order to make sure your horrible and socially malfunctioning ass doesn't spread its horrible social violations where the nice people will be horrified by them (and you), you watch yourself. Carefully. Keeping track of what's said, and who's said it, reading the room, and erring on the side of quietness.
Yeah. :/
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*questionable fistbump of solidarity???*
(and then of course there's the very complicated dance of finding/keeping Friends that are close enough to grant privs to. because how to know if safe to let down walls without...letting down walls)
And echoing earlier commenters: the anxiety wouldn't have such fucking vicious teeth if it weren't right *just enough* to set up patterns...
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Personally, my biggest problem with large numbers of people is that they tend to be loud and give me a headache. (Or even worse, they wear perfume and make it hard for me to breathe in addition to giving me a headache.) I'm plenty confident and being more confident wouldn't stop me from getting a headache nor would it stop the headache and/or sinus problems from draining my energy.
I'm really sorry that you've had such bad experiences with the supposed rules of conduct. I'm pretty sure that no one actually follows all of them all the time because they change too much from one situation to another and from one person to another.
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And if I would "just" gain a few more inches on height I'd be able to reach things on the top shelves. Seems equally likely to me.
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