I was in my mid-20s before I was properly diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder, but I was anxious and awkward long before then.
I was the kid in high school that would spend her lunch break reading in an out-of-the-way stairwell, and who became really interested in photography once she realized her teacher would let her spend the 40-minute class period alone in the dark room.
On one hand, avoiding the social side of high school allowed me to make it through without incident and with top grades.
On the other hand, I was not prepared for the real world, when merit wasn’t a letter grade and job interviews were basically multiple choice quizzes where you aren’t provided with a list of said choices.
Even now, I still ace all the pre-interview stuff, only to fall flat on my face when forced to talk myself up to a room of strangers.
The weird ambiguity of an interview is what trips me up. They say they want honesty, but they really don’t. If they did, it would be okay for me to say, “I know I’m really awkward right now, but that’s because strangers scare me. Here is why you should hire me for my technical skills and experience instead of my clearly awkward social skills.
“If you do that, I guarantee that a year from now you’ll have forgotten how awkward I was when we met.”
The thing is that even though mine is an extreme case of social anxiety and awkwardness, we all feel that way sometimes.
Because what I’ve learned from experience and counselling is that everyone feels socially awkward sometimes.
It’s just that for some reason our culture has collectively decided that something so common isn’t “normal” and rewards the people who are either on the lowest end of the awkward spectrum or just really damn good at faking it.
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Then others see those people being rewarded and learn to fake it better too, perpetuating the cycle.
So maybe we could all just be a bit more honest about our insecurities? If more people would be willing to just admit when they are feeling confused or uncertain or just plain awkward, we wouldn’t all be stuck smiling stupidly while the restaurant servers sing us a non-copyrighted birthday jingle.
No one knows how to be on the receiving end of that. The servers hate it. The rest of the customers are annoyed. Just give me my free dessert and we can all be happier for it!
