• Tim Martin
    7
    Okay so this is my attempt to push boundaries and meet people who have a philosophical passion such as myself. I never post anything on any social media and I am naturally very introverted and what some would call a "loner" which is a title that I am proud to accept. Now days I am confident and can hold my own in a conversation with people even though I struggle at times, which I have gotten to from over five years of practice and hard work. However, most of my life I have had very powerful social anxieties control my life by blanking out my usual thought process and keeping me socially paralyzed and unable to speak or function properly.

    Now that I have gotten more personal insight on my anxieties, I believe that one of the great reasons for my social anxiety is because I overthink everything. naturally overthink the meaning behind everything, and especially the meaning behind each word and how we say these words in our English language. Which always gets me going, for one reason because every word has basically infinite meanings behind each word, at least with how my head processes words I have a mental "image" or understanding that defines each word for me to use which have originated from my past experiences and or "coincidences" that somehow just stuck with my thought process and how I define words and things.

    And this leads to me having a discussion with someone where even though they are using the same words as I am to describe the situation, and we are even speaking about the same situation, I feel like they don't understand what I feel and what kind of ride I am having with this situation, and to me it is this deep mental ride that describes the entire situation and is what I am trying to socialize with people about. But no matter how many times I try to re-explain this to people, it always comes out sounding like the same simple sentence construct that everyone around me repetitively speaks and doesn't really explain anything to me.

    It's not only the words, but it's the way the words are said and what sentence they are used in. Sometimes the words themselves aren't even heard or tried to be heard when I speak them, but it's just because of how my mouth ended up making the sentence or "expression" sound that the person that I am speaking to completely misheard me, and if I try to explain how I may have misspoke then I don't end up explaining that well enough and I get stuck in a loop of feeling like the person is not understanding me while they say that they do understand and then I get anxiety and hide in my mind and in a way run away from the conversation.

    And this is how I literally how all of my conversations with anyone goes, and even though I have learned to control my social anxiety more, this still drives me crazy. I hope I explained that well enough to make some of the sense that I am going for, and I thought I'd see if anyone here understands what I'm talking about.
  • Pantagruel
    3.2k
    I had horrible social anxiety until I was about twenty. I recall having to give a short introductory presentation to my grade 9 english class (everyone did) and nearly passing out at the front. I think having the hyper-analytical mind only exacerbates the problem.

    For the social anxiety, I took martial arts, which removed a lot of my anxiety about physical contact and gave me a lot more confidence. For the hyper-analytical mind, I think you need to work towards developing a "functional public persona". You can develop new mental habits of NOT overthinking, contextual awareness I guess you'd say. Like being at work. You discipline yourself to really limit your responses to what is appropriate to the context. Learning to accurately assess a context is actually quite a valuable skill. Initially, 'don't overanalyze' is probably good enough!
  • Shawn
    12.6k
    Try Nardil dude.
  • Alan
    62
    It's not only the words, but it's the way the words are said and what sentence they are used in. Sometimes the words themselves aren't even heard or tried to be heard when I speak them, but it's just because of how my mouth ended up making the sentence or "expression" sound that the person that I am speaking to completely misheard me, and if I try to explain how I may have misspoke then I don't end up explaining that well enough and I get stuck in a loop of feeling like the person is not understanding me while they say that they do understand and then I get anxiety and hide in my mind and in a way run away from the conversation.Tim Martin

    How are you so sure people misunderstand you to that point? Aren't they answering anything?
  • praxis
    6.2k
    The universe doesn’t take me seriously, why should I take it seriously.
    — Alan Watts
  • bert1
    1.8k
    NardilWallows

    I don't see how Aragorn's fictional broken sword is going to help Tim.
  • Tim Martin
    7
    Well because our language is so repetitive in the symbolism that the words represent. It seems like most people have fallen into habit in giving the most common symbolism for the words that they are using and forget to use the actual meaning of the word behind the words. And so I usually know what people around me are going to say. And I have welcomed the idea that they don't know how to express what they feel and it just comes out the same most times, because that happens to me.
  • creativesoul
    11.4k
    Perhaps you're worrying too much about whether or not someone else understands you because you've not quite been able to come to acceptable terms in your own mind?

    Usually people pretty much understand each others words... in everyday life. Here... on this forum... well that's another matter altogether.
  • Alan
    62


    Common language can't be as precise as we wisht it were, mathematics and logic get that job done instead. Also, most people (myself included) won't dive into dictionaries to grasp the official meaning of things, rather, we stick to the popular version. When I'm talking to someone I can only make sure things are as clear as if I were talking to myself, no loose ends on my part, if the person I'm talking to just doesn't get it and this person does not ask me to clarify it is not my problem. Same applies the other way around. This doesn't mean we both share the same meanings to our messages but most times, although our common undestanding is not perfect it's enough .
  • Tim Martin
    7
    I'd say that's a good assumption because I don't know what acceptable terms would be in my own mind.
  • Tim Martin
    7
    To me it doesn't feel like enough. If I can't properly communicate with this person for them to get the inner message that I am trying to speak and they didn't hear the message that I was trying to verbalize at all, then I don't know the point of trying to talk to this person or hanging around them. If it was just a couple of people that I know then I could probably get over it, but it happens with almost everybody I know and especially all of my family. However, I do wonder if I have had strange luck and just haven't found the right environment or kinds of people more meant for me to be around.
  • Alan
    62


    I agree that there's no point in talking if people don't get the meaning of your message, it's their role to let you know if they did not get the message. They may also have misunderstood you without them knowing it and there's little you can do about this. However, I'm sure must words map to very similar meanings, I think there's little deviation on that from person to person and I put my faith on that. I think you could just lift the weight of being perfectly clear off your shoulders and give the benefit of the doubt to the people you talk to.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    Are you making any attempt to simplify things in these situations? Stick with short sentences. Don't type or say more than a handful of sentences at a time. Avoid specialized, obscure or idiosyncratic vocabulary. Focus on one idea at a time.
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