There was a time in my life that I was convinced I’d never be able to attract, let alone date, a woman – any woman. I suppose a lot of that had to do with the actual effort I was putting forth, but the few times I did try to get to know someone romantically, I failed miserably. In fact, I expected to fail – I was setup for it. Read the rest of this entry »
College was a tough time for me. Though I was sure that I’d be leaving all my troubles behind once my high school days were over, I was just kidding myself. Things didn’t improve much except for the fact that we were treated as adults now. Other than that, I was utterly alone. The only good thing was that the juvenile, school-yard bully tactics were now a thing of the past. Read the rest of this entry »
Creating opportunity in the dating world has been challenging for me – obviously, my social anxiety problem doesn’t help. However, I have managed some success by approaching the situation on my own terms. In other words, I’ve given up trying the same methods most other guys use, and tried a little “outside the box” thinking.
It’s obvious that social anxiety and dating don’t mix for me. However, as a social anxiety sufferer, I can’t beat myself up for feeling awkward and inadequate when it comes to romance. After all, dating is pretty high up there when it comes to the degree of social difficulty.
Because of the fact that social anxiety has run the show for the past thirty years, I find myself at the point where I am lacking in some of the most basic life skills. I won’t go into detail about this (I have in previous posts), but, suffice it to say, I am still a novice when it comes to many areas of social interaction – Particularly when it comes to dating.
An obvious way to meet other singles is the bar scene. Well, unless you suffer from social anxiety, that is. Personally, I shy away from singles bars because my anxiety completely overwhelms me. And I’m not talking about just a little here – its full-fledged panic.
Dating and social anxiety don’t mix. Personally speaking, my anxiety was bad enough under the best of circumstances. By introducing the element of dating, my fear grew exponentially – it was enough to turn my world completely upside-down.
Deep down, I’m not really any different than the average person. It’s taken me a long time to be able to see this. After spending most of my life feeling like no one could ever be as strange, quiet, and anxious as I was, I now realize that I’m not so far off the mark when it comes to having an average personality.
We all have our idiosyncrasies – that’s part of being human, I suppose. In fact, I consider myself lucky sometimes – it could be worse. Really, it could be. Read the rest of this entry »
I hate making eye contact.
There, now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to talk about ways to get around this absolutely critical part of non-verbal communication.
It’s said that non-verbal communication such as eye contact, body language, and facial expressions pave the way for conversation to take place. In other words, before a word is spoken, there is a whole lot of non-verbal communication going on below the surface. Most of us don’t even think about it. Read the rest of this entry »
Social anxiety disorder has left me with a complete lack of social life (talk about stating the obvious).
Ok, that is an understatement. I only mention it because it’s really something that I regret ever experiencing. Even though I have suffered through SA my entire life, I’ve always, secretly, wished for a decent circle of friends and some sort of social life. Read the rest of this entry »
