We’ll never be perfect. There’s always room for learning, which means emulating new behaviors to adapt to a changing environment. It’s probably a good idea to look back at how you’ve changed over time and appreciate the habits that work well for you that you don’t have to think about anymore. I’m probably a little over the line of assuming much about a stranger on the internet, if not past the point of starting to project aspects that are unique to my own experience. Still, I hope there’s enough commonality among us all for this comment to be encouraging if not technically helpful in some way.
Yep. You can find some research about it in sociology/psychology. I think sociology calls these unspoken rules mores, if you want to look it up. The most famous example is when an entire group of people is in a new setting, like the first class of the first day as freshmen in high school, 6th graders in middle school (or whenever your local school board decides middle school starts), and college freshmen. The entire group usually sits quietly and nervously until they start taking cues from the teacher. Once they learn the basics expectations and test the boundaries, behavior falls somewhere between how they used to act and what they think is expected from the entire group. We are hugely social animals, and there’s a reason that exile used to be a major punishment.
People don’t seem to really grasp how much of our behavior is ‘scripted’ like a movie or play, and, amusingly enough, how much we follow the scripts of said movies/plays/other-observed-scenes when we’re in a new or stressful situation. Remember your first time in an amorous situation with a date, say in a car or closet or back yard at a party? If you hadn’t been listening to your friends and what they did (or told you they did / what to do), you might find yourself awkwardly stumbling through the actions of some movie’s clip, whether that’s casablanca, sixteen candles, or easy a. Hopefully it won’t be anything from when harry met sally.
No, it is not normal, at all. From what I gathered reading hundreds of thousands of reddit and lemmy posts, it’s a young person thing.
We GenX kids had zero problems discussing our deepest fears among each other. Can’t think of a single instance of anyone worrying about how to act in simple public situations.
I’m probably biased as old reddit and lemmy aren’t representative of society in whole. I have several friends I’ve known since their late teens, early 20s now, and none of them talk about social anxiety.
That is the normal human experience, I think.
Phew. Good. For a moment I thought I might be on the spectrum.
This. Almost everyone I know has said, “Fake it 'til you make it” and “When in Rome…”
Yeah but at what point is one supposed to have “made it”? I’ve been faking it for years, still waiting.
We’ll never be perfect. There’s always room for learning, which means emulating new behaviors to adapt to a changing environment. It’s probably a good idea to look back at how you’ve changed over time and appreciate the habits that work well for you that you don’t have to think about anymore. I’m probably a little over the line of assuming much about a stranger on the internet, if not past the point of starting to project aspects that are unique to my own experience. Still, I hope there’s enough commonality among us all for this comment to be encouraging if not technically helpful in some way.
Yep. You can find some research about it in sociology/psychology. I think sociology calls these unspoken rules mores, if you want to look it up. The most famous example is when an entire group of people is in a new setting, like the first class of the first day as freshmen in high school, 6th graders in middle school (or whenever your local school board decides middle school starts), and college freshmen. The entire group usually sits quietly and nervously until they start taking cues from the teacher. Once they learn the basics expectations and test the boundaries, behavior falls somewhere between how they used to act and what they think is expected from the entire group. We are hugely social animals, and there’s a reason that exile used to be a major punishment.
People don’t seem to really grasp how much of our behavior is ‘scripted’ like a movie or play, and, amusingly enough, how much we follow the scripts of said movies/plays/other-observed-scenes when we’re in a new or stressful situation. Remember your first time in an amorous situation with a date, say in a car or closet or back yard at a party? If you hadn’t been listening to your friends and what they did (or told you they did / what to do), you might find yourself awkwardly stumbling through the actions of some movie’s clip, whether that’s casablanca, sixteen candles, or easy a. Hopefully it won’t be anything from when harry met sally.
Please don’t make me tell you about the first time I had fondue…
Ooh I love Asterix! Haven’t seen that image in years! Thanks for the burst of nostalgia.
Yes the hard part is when you either struggle too much to do that social mimicking.
Or In my case it’s anxiety, and it’s overwhelming dread about failing to mimick.
No, it is not normal, at all. From what I gathered reading hundreds of thousands of reddit and lemmy posts, it’s a young person thing.
We GenX kids had zero problems discussing our deepest fears among each other. Can’t think of a single instance of anyone worrying about how to act in simple public situations.
I’m probably biased as old reddit and lemmy aren’t representative of society in whole. I have several friends I’ve known since their late teens, early 20s now, and none of them talk about social anxiety.