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Virtual communication anxiety

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  • #157602
    tidalwave
    Participant

    I was always a silent shy kid. In my preetens i didnt see an issue in it, because i had friends that accepted me for who i was.

    So when the dark teens crawled in, anxiety came in too. And the main problem was that i didnt see a purpose in talking.  Talking to much, always saying your opinion made me feel really uncomfortable and insecure. Because i did overthink and analyse everything. I tried to see things from others perspective, to have this objective point of view of the world and all the things happening. And I think this kind of thinking made me very passive, introverted.  With time i lost all my friends. And there was one special person.Most of the time we texted and skyped. So we became really close. But in real life i was always to shy to talk, to express my thoughts and thats how i lost a friend, who i thought was the closest to me. Once he tried to talk to me, to start a conversation , and i just couldnt say a word. He became mad and said :”wow, you are so different in real life…” . I felt how much dissapointed and bored he is, and how stupid and boring i seem. I knew that i am not empty, i have what to say, but anxiety didnt let me…

    Time went by, i became more grown, more confident. I didnt become a big talker, but i came out the shell . I fought my fears every day, so i could meet new people, communicate, make friends. One thing that i refused to do was to start any kind of relationships online. Because i had a fear that if i will become attached to a person in a virtual relationship it will go as it went with that person in my past. And because that situation really hurt me i tried to avoid those kind of people, who really liked to talk in social media, but not in real life.

    But recently the same pattern happened to me with another guy, to whom  i was really attracted. We texted each other for few months. He was the one who started writing me. My mistake was that , dispite of having a bad feeling about starting a conversation in this way, i didnt stop it. My intuition or anxiety, i dont know, was telling me “It can end like with that guy. Stop it. ” When we first met after 3 months of writing it happened just like it was. I couldnt talk. The anxiety was so overwhelming that i just remained silent all the freaking time. I thought that i already won the game, that ive changed. But what i fear always gets to me.

    And now i think, maybe nothing really changed at all. Maybe the anxiety didnt go away.

    Did you experience something like that? How do you fight this problem?

    ps. i wrote a post before. actually these thoughts are on influence of my previous post. Im still mind f[cked. Trying to understand my behaviour and all the things that could go wrong that time too…

    #157636
    greenshade
    Participant

    Hi Tidea!

    Congratulations on the strides you have made so far in gaining confidence in talking to people in IRL. The beginning of a romantic/intimate relationship, or meeting someone you are romantically interested in for the first time is an emotionally charged situation, and can very easily becoming overwhelming, and cause a fall back into old habits/ways of interacting with the world. What I have found has helped me in similar situations is paying attention to my breathing, intentionally slowing it down, paying attention to the color of the table, or ground or things around me . This helps calm me a little, so I can at least attempt at carrying out a conversation. If you have a meditation habit, or if you practice how to control your breathing in non stressful situations, it will become easier for you to utilize these tools in stressful situations.

    Maybe you can also consider bringing this up with your new friend. Let him know that you like him, and were interested in talking with him but your anxiety in the situation got the better of you. Its your truth, so sharing it with someone you are interested in is a good way of gauging whether they are a good partner for you.

    Best,

    m

    #157694
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Tidea Janamori:

    I didn’t experience your exact situation. My suggestion anyway, is that for the purpose of avoiding a guy disappointed with your lack of talking once he meets you in-person, let the person know online, ahead of time, and early on that you have a problem talking in-person, that you have been unable to speak in the past, when meeting an online friend in person. Ask him what he thinks about this problem (so to make sure he “heard” you, that what you shared with him registered with him, and to check to see if he is willing to experience this silence once he meets you).

    Letting the person know of this can in itself lower your anxiety when meeting him in person.

    anita

    #158140
    tidalwave
    Participant

    Hi greenshade!
    Thank you for your advice.
    The one about looking at the color of the table is really interesting. And even seems fun to try !
    But the thing was , that i wasn’t shaking, i wasn’t nervous. I just couldn’t talk. I mean, I could say few words, but I guess I just gained this habbit not express what I feel and when things like meeting a person whom I reeeally like just brings me back to my old fears to not be understood… Anxiety

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by tidalwave.
    #158144
    tidalwave
    Participant

    Thanks for the answer, anita

    I actually did it, and the guy was really accepting.
    But I just question the fact, why i behave like that, not how others will react.

     

    #158230
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Tidea Janamori:

    Regarding your trouble with talking, I think it is a combination of two things: anxiety and habit. The anxiety part, the ongoing fear, may have originated with someone early in your life misunderstanding what you said, or your intent in saying what you said, disapproving of what you said, using what you said to attack you in some way. So you learned that talking is dangerous, therefore, you stopped talking.

    The other part is habit. It became a habit to not talk. Habits are hard to break no matter what they are.

    Your sentence in the post before last includes these two parts:

    “I just gained this habit not express what I feel and when things like meeting a person whom I reeeally like just brings me back to my old fears to not be understood… Anxiety”

    anita

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