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Jessi Moore's avatar

A quirk I have a ton of unnecessary shame around is how I react when it's time to leave someone's house. Doesn’t matter how amazing of a time we just had or how long I've known them...when it's time to say goodbye, I start to spiral over:

- feeling like I've missed a bunch of social cues that they wanted me out of their house hours ago

- are there still dishes in the sink?! Omg I didn't help clean up, I'm a horrible guest.

- are they a hugger? Did that hangout constitute a hug? If I leave without hugging am I an asshole?

- wanting to tell them I'd like to do that again, but if I say it as I'm leaving (especially if they don't feel the same...after all, look at how I just left their kitchen) is that desperate? Maybe I should wait a day to text them? Wait, why am I am treating my years long friendship like a first date?

I'm getting better at recognizing the absurdity of it and trying to have more compassion for the inevitable awkwardness I know I'll experience every time I say yes to an invitation, but it's a work in progress for sure!

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Ann Bennington's avatar

My social anxiety doesn't come in the form of dreading restaurant hosts, but boy can I relate to immediately second-guessing after social interactions, worrying people don't want to hear from me (including in this situation 😄), and anxiety around working with tradespeople. I felt like I needed something to do instead of the using fear and control because just trying to not fear or control things is pretty useless. I decided that the opposite of control is trust, so when I'm starting to worry about something I look for the things in the situation that I trust, such as in my real-time judgements of people's social reactions, in why I like my friends and what they've said to me and what that probably means about them wanting to connect with me, and in the professionalism of the professional I'm calling and also the knowledge of how I want to work with people (if they can't explain things I don't know or understand without condescending, I'm outta there)

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