How to Deal with Social Anxiety
Pandemic lockdowns have made us all a bit socially awkward. Learning how to push past it is important if we want to reconnect. But it doesn’t have to be complicated – here’s how you can do it from your couch:
Choose an awkward show.
Try one that is viscerally, shoulder tensingly, toe curlingly cringey (I highly recommend Love is Blind on Netflix).
Notice your emotions.
As you watch, turn your attention to the physical component of your emotions as they course through you.
Be specific with your observations.
Where exactly is the feeling of awkwardness in your body? It it in your stomach? Your throat? Think about it like old medical pain subjectivity tests. How awkward is it from 1-10? Ask questions like - is the feeling of awkwardness tingly? Is it steady? Does it move or striate outwards? Does it change moment-to-moment? Notice any involuntary tensing.
Keep going.
Practice until you can cooly and distantly feel the tiny physical sensations wash over and through you. Each mental moment will have a clear arising and ending - try to find those moments.
Tips: If you need more help, you can use a simple system - is the awkwardness rising, diminishing, or staying the same? Repeat this out loud or inside your head in a calm, detached manner - “more” “more” “less” “same”, etc. Don’t worry about catching every single sensation. Try to stay consistent. Start slow, with about a 1 second pause, and then increase in speed. When you get better, you’ll naturally drop the subvocalization.
This technique is called “noting” and it’s a classic in meditation. Think of it as though an alien scientist is temporarily stuck in a human body, experiencing awkwardness for the first time. Your observations should be cool and clinical, yet detailed.
Post Quarantine Awkwardness
In college, whenever things got socially weird, a few of us would nonchalantly stack our hands on top of each other and use our thumbs to mimic swimming. Gradually, other people caught on and began doing it as well. We called it the “awkward turtle” (apparently other people did too!).
While it was exclusionary and kind’ve mean, pointing out the situation in a ludicrous way distanced us from it and made it oddly bearable.
Unfortunately, the quarantine has made us all awkward. In this BBC article, Manyu Jang delves into why Zoom video chats make us so fatigued. Processing delays, awkward silences, changes in non-verbal cues like body language, tone, and facial expressions takes energy. I would add that the slight difference between looking at a camera vs looking at an image’s eyes might contribute – those subtle changes just make an interaction feel “off”.
And yet, connecting in such a time, where everyone feels isolated, is incredibly important.
A few years ago I was traveling intensely, moving countries every few months and staying in isolated areas. It lasted about two years, and the first time I attended a gathering all my social skills were uncalibrated. As another traveler friend puts it, the atrophying of interpersonal skills makes you feel “troll-ey”.
If socializing really is like a muscle, I wonder how well we’re all going to deal with real people face to face in our post pandemic life.
Enduring Awkwardness Is Important
Covid nonwithstanding, some of the most cathartic, life-affirming conversations I’ve ever had occurred in moments of extreme discomfort. And I would argue that building the capacity to swim sedately through uncomfortable waters is of huge benefit to all your relationships.
Few people know that as intimately as David Schnarch. As a marriage counselor, he’s presided over some spectacularly difficult discussions. In fact, his “Crucible Method” depends on it. In the process, he encourages partners to differentiate – to grow personally rather than as a fused pair. It’s a situation that often makes couples angry and passive aggressive, unable to honestly describe what’s wrong with their relationship.
To do this, clients are asked to learn and embody 4 different capacities. The fourth - meaningful endurance - is the capacity to “tolerate discomfort for growth”.
We mostly react to awkwardness with squirmy avoidance. Yet, resisting the urge to run away has personally helped me powerfully strengthen and sometimes completely reforge old connections.
Applied Mindfulness
But if you don’t have a marriage counselor on hand, how do you surmount the natural reactions to such situations? I’d like to offer up an unlikely solution.
In an article I wrote for Tricycle Magazine, I described how I countered my phobias through watching horror movies and practicing mindfulness through them. This type of practice inoculated me against other, more real forms of fear - like my fear of heights and rollercoasters.
Author and retired Navy Seal commander Richard Marcinko always wrote about how the elite military forces train as close to combat conditions as possible. Unfortunately we rarely do this in any endeavor.
Meditation practices mostly take place in calm rooms, sometimes set to peaceful background music. But training closer to real life better enables you to deal with emotions as they are forced upon you.
Luckily, sometimes the problem comes hand-in-hand with the solution.
While stuck at home, watch Love is Blind.
According to my girlfriend, a secret connoisseur of dating shows, Love is Blind is perhaps the most awkward, cringe-inducing reality program of all time. In it, contestants are not allowed to see each other while dating. They then propose, meet each other in real life, and go on a romantic getaway with the other couples. Adding further fuel to the fire, they reenter their normal life, meet each others’ friends and family, and then actually get married.
My shoulders are tensing just thinking of it.
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As you watch the show (or others like it), shoot for longer and longer times. Eventually you’ll shift from being amidst the feeling of discomfort to the pure observation of it. As you get better, you’ll feel like you’re surfing across waves of unpleasantness, and the tension will personally effect you less and less.
And if it gets overwhelming, you can always turn off the TV.
Try extending the practice to real life, like during the weird pauses and clipped off audio of your next Zoom meeting. Use this tool as an opportunity for meaningful growth.
The pandemic has made trolls and awkward turtles of us all. Perhaps awkwardness can also help us socialize again.