Social Freeze
Do you dread having to make small talk? Not just because it's tedious or boring to have to chit-chat about nothing, solely to bounce the conversational ball back and forth, but because you really feel that awful sick dread in the pit of your stomach when you're faced with having to "sit and visit" with someone?
It turns out that a lot of this social anxiety is the result of a misperception of the stakes of this sort of social interaction. That is, thinking that even a trivial misstep, an infelicity of phrasing, will reveal some terrible flaw in one's character that leads to everyone recoiling in disgust. As a result, such a person begins to obsess over everything they say, leading to a spiral of anxiety.
Of course, telling people to just relax and be natural often is counterproductive -- the harder people try to relax, the more tense they become. And having people prepare ahead of time runs the risk of freezing when the interaction goes off script.
But sometimes knowing that you're not the only person with the problem can be helpful in itself. If nothing else, it lets you know that you're not some kind of disgusting freak.
It turns out that a lot of this social anxiety is the result of a misperception of the stakes of this sort of social interaction. That is, thinking that even a trivial misstep, an infelicity of phrasing, will reveal some terrible flaw in one's character that leads to everyone recoiling in disgust. As a result, such a person begins to obsess over everything they say, leading to a spiral of anxiety.
Of course, telling people to just relax and be natural often is counterproductive -- the harder people try to relax, the more tense they become. And having people prepare ahead of time runs the risk of freezing when the interaction goes off script.
But sometimes knowing that you're not the only person with the problem can be helpful in itself. If nothing else, it lets you know that you're not some kind of disgusting freak.