I used to be horribly shy and awkward. I didn't have a girlfriend in high-school, ever; I was (and am) clumsy as hell; I didn't (don't) get people. I had basically every common social nerd-failing. However, my problems with social awkwardness have been solved for some time now.
My secret? Not caring.
Well, that's the result, but I guess there are a couple reasons as to why I stopped caring. Easier said than done, I know, but hopefully the following monologue will spur similar realizations in others. (And if it's too long, control-F "robot".)
For one, I began to step back and look at these problems in a larger context: they don't really matter. I make a joke and no one laughs? No one will even remember this occurred five minutes from now, let alone a day or week or year. Even if they did, why would it matter - am I hurt by it? Unless the person who I'm trying to get a chuckle out of is my boss, who refuses raises to unfunny employees, then no - not at all, in any way.
For two, I realized other people don't really care either. They are rarely paying so much attention to you as you think, and rarely so judgmental as you fear. More interestingly, they often take their lead over...
I agree fully with Hul-Gil. The main thing hindering the socially awkward is caring. Stop caring about your image and your social awkwardness goes away. When you truly reach a point of total apathy regarding how others see you—then nothing you do will be awkward. The difference between a person who's random without caring how they're perceived and the person who tries to be random but ends up being awkward is this: The latter really does care, but acts like he / she doesn't. It shows.
Here's my, perhaps slightly sadistic, bit of info: After that, if other people think what you're doing is awkward (you won't, because you won't care), it becomes a means for your own entertainment.
I've come to the point where I take a strange, humorous pleasure in making others around me feel awkward. People who I don't know, of course, feel strange. People who I do know think it's hilarious.
Although one thing I still kind of struggle with is feelings about the opposite sex. I'm hoping to read more comments regarding it.
"Why is it that when a person of the opposite gender so much as pays attention to you, you think you have a crush on them?"
That's just something I can't seem to get over. I think to myself, "I know I don't have a crush on her," etc., etc., etc.—but it's like a perpetual loneliness whispers unwanted daydreams of being with someone, regardless of how little a connection there is.
You are making the people around you feel uncomfortable. Not caring if the people around you are uncomfortable isn't just cool, admirable detachment, it's borderline sociopathic.
One thing that helped raise my confidence level and made many of these problems magically disappear is resistance training.
I'll just quote RAW on that:
Whenever you meet a young male or female, ask yourself consciously, 'If it came to hand-to-hand combat, could I beat him/her?' Then try to determine how much of your behavior is based on unconsciously asking and answering that question via pre-verbal 'body language'.
It didn't take much to get good results. After I put on 10kg (75->85 at 185cm) and got strong enough to actually do some push-ups, most people didn't feel threatening anymore.
(Well, and probably knowing that almost everybody will avoid fights at all costs, so you could do lots of damage even if you're a skinny nerd, but just are willing to actually attack. But only knowing this alone didn't do it, I actually had to gain some strength. I don't intend to ever actually get into a fight, but I run on hardware that cares about this crap.)
A little bit of reflectivity helped me a lot. When I say something stupid (it could be something socially awkward, or in the same way something obviously factually incorrect), I now see it as my brain failing me, without identifying with the error (I am a more long-term reflective process running on the brain, not its individual responses; I'm the one who noticed the error and will correct it, not the one who made it, if it's not the error of not training my brain better). I then look at the error and its causes, figure out a better decision, and try to train my brain the skill of noticing that situation and recognizing the better way of understanding it faster. This both reduces the negative emotional impact of making an error (less identification with its cause), and benefits the learning dynamic (more time is spent on solving the puzzle of how to do better, and not on blaming myself).
(There is of course a danger of falling into "not my responsibility, I don't care" mode. But your brain is still your responsibility, even if it's not the same thing as you. And teaching it important skills, such as generating more optimal thoughts immediately and not only on reflection, and not generating some wrong thoughts without needing to notice their wrongness on reflection, makes you stronger.)
This is not my original observation but I haven't seen it mentioned yet in this discussion:
The reason a middle school or high school student feels awkward, disconnected and asocial may not be that he/she has anything at all wrong with them. In fact, the problem may just be that middle school and high school are horrible places which encourage human beings' worst tendencies and stifle any opportunities for positive interaction and self-actualization.
If you feel awkward in the cafeteria at lunch time and you don't know or like anyone around you, that's beca...
The ur-rule for social interaction is pretty simple, actually (in form at least):
Do whatever will raise your status. Avoid that which will lower your status.
(Edit: See wedrified's more nuanced explanation below)
Confidence is simply a proxy for a certain class of high-status behaviors. PART of that is not displaying concern at how your behavior is interpreted (because if you're worrying about your status, you're obviously low-status), but if your behavior isn't in the ballpark of "proper" already this will backfire (unless you're so high status th...
Try this: revel in moments that are awkward for everyone. Crave them. Love them. Seek them out, and bask in them when they arrive.
Becoming generally comfortable with others' palpable discomfort is something I've worked on recently, and I've found it useful. There are still a few situations that make me feel uncomfortable, but they're becoming fewer and rarer.
Suggested venues for finding universally awkward situations: introductions, elevators, first dates, locker rooms, job interviews, crowded transit, sales pitches.
Might not help you to understand social ...
Overcoming social awkwardness is difficult to communicate - it's like trying to communicate how to prove theorems to someone who's bad at proving theorems. Do you say "Think of more ideas," like it will help?
The beginning and end of it all is practice. There are two sorts - reading proofs someone else has done, and doing proofs yourself. Or rather, observing other people (both real and fictional, though fictional has obvious problems) and getting into social situations yourself. Practice:
1) Get used to using the basic forms (induction, proof ...
Use the chaotic inversion principle: instead of saying that something's intrinsically difficult to communicate, say that most people suck at communicating it.
There's a big difference between a teacher who says "the beginning and end of it all is practice" and a teacher who says "okay class, hold on to the edge of the pool and make this exact motion with your legs. cousin_it, turn your heel inward a little more." If someone can't be the latter kind of teacher, I'd rather they avoided teaching entirely.
If you don't know how good you are at teaching, ask yourself this: do you empathize with the student? Do you understand exactly what problem the student is facing right now, and did you have to overcome the same problem yourself? Naturally skilled people mostly suck at teaching because they stubbornly believe that the student can "just do" something non-trivial.
Imagine you're teaching someone to ride a bike, but for some mysterious reason they can't even go two meters without losing balance and falling. Would you know how to debug the problem, or would you exhort them to "try again" and "keep your balance", then leave disappointed after they fail 10 times in a row? The latter is what happens when naturally social people try to teach awkward people to be social.
A technique: I defuse awkwardness by smiling and (humorously) describing the situation. In other words, I recognize when an uncomfortable silence is about to happen, and break it immediately by talking. Using the examples from the SAP video:
I find that when I feel awkward, other people can tell. Unless they're remarkably understanding and poised, this tends to make other people feel uneasy enough that they too become awkward.
This tells very little about how to actually become less awkward, which seems to me to be mostly a matter of practice so that you know what to do, and somehow making yourself feel less self-conscious so that you don't start feeling awkward.
Well, here's an idea: how about this: let's ALL post examples of socially awkward interactions and post them all to a common website (maybe you have some examples that are highly upvoted on reddit's archives). Most of the people I talk to are socially awkward themselves, and they've gone through some pretty intensely interesting experiences. It sometimes alleviates social anxiety since you get an idea of what people tolerate and what they don't, so that you feel somewhat more confident about how people will receive you in real life.
Here's a facebook group ...
There seems to be a real mix of the Socially Awkward Penguins. Some of them seem sort of funny and minor, while others seem demonstrative of actual mental illness. For example, multiple of those linked includes people "starving" because they are going out of their way to avoid social interaction.
Your "Socially Awkward Penguin" link goes to lesswrong.com/submit, perhaps you intended http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/socially-awkward-penguin?
(Lookie what I found here)[http://lesswrong.com/lw/298/more_art_less_stink_taking_the_pu_out_of_pua/2leh]
Huh, I just realized that Socially Awkward Penguin has an unexpected benefit. I can remember instances of when I totally didn't understand why people would act a certain way, then remember a point at which I'd either explicitly or intuitively grokked it. For, example: "Make joke, no one laughs. Friend repeats joke--greatest joke ever told in the history of comedy." (One of my close friends was the future homecoming king at a big high school.) It's weird to think that I didn't understand why that would be the default expectation until I was almost 17.
So I was there being my rationalist-with-akrasia-issues, nerdy, awkward self who studies acting, singing, rhetorics, PUA, TV Tropes, Machiavelli, The Art of War, the 48 Laws of Power, the Art of Seduction, the Seven Habits... in the hopes of escaping his chronic fear of his neighbor (with some success, shall I add, but it comes slowly). And then I sumble upon this nice little harmless meme:
Socially Awkward Penguin
I was absolutely stunned. This behavior. I thought it was strange and unique. It's incredibly common. This gave me great hope. If it is common, it means it isn't due to noise: there's a pattern there, there's something to unravel. The misjudgements of power, of what it's right to do, of when to fear and when to be bold, when to speak and when to be silent... What *is* the right thing to do when you're with a coworker on an elevator? What do you say when someone remembers you, but you don't remember them, and they have noticed that? What do you do when you're hit by a paper ball in class? What do you do when the only people you seem to be able to make friends with are older, younger, or of the opposite gender, and you're utterly intimidated by people of your same age and gender, the friendship of whom you know would profit you most? Why do you automatically recalculate trajectories to avoid acquaintances in the hall, at the super, on the bus? Why is it that when a person of the opposite gender so much as pays attention to you, you think you have a crush on them?
There are clues to some of these questions in the books and works I linked back there. But, more often than not, we expect those problems to solve themselves, with one magical word, "confidence".
I am confused at that notion. I find it unsatisfactory. I want to understand social awkwardness. The rules thereof. And how to vanquish it. And I want the keys in a way that can be taught. So that, when I have kids, they don't have to go through the same stupid struggles and can actually feel good about themselves and focus on getting stuff done.
So, I hereby summon the powers of the Lesswrong community: let us pick apart this problem as we know so well, and let us unbury the roots of this evil that is social awkwardness, so that we nerds and geeks may defeat it at last, and live free of its funk.