I’m a little confused, does embracing this new found abandonment of the compulsion to manage your appearance to others require or manifest, just like in the First Day Exercise, speaking your mind truthfully rather than manufacturing statements based on your assumption of what people want to hear?
I’m not sure how applicable that is, because I am certain that if I spoke what was on my mind more frequently, that the chief reaction would be bewildered silence, or nonsequiter replies borne out of fundamental misunderstanding of what I meant[1]
If I may write without filter or fear of how other Lesswronger’s may perceive me: At any given time I some pretty good candidates for what’s on my mine is me an obscure Simpsons gag, or a scene from a Parajanov/Varda/Ilyenko/Fassbinder film. So to speak frankly about what’s on my mind IRL is quite simply operationally impossible because not everyone has encyclopedia Simpsons or Film knowledge and may have no reference or handle for what particular gag or film scene I’m thinking about.
So I’m more inclined to default to silence since I have no interest in having a monologue. That silence, however, can be interpreted as rudeness, received as intimidating, or even a sign of arrogance: but if I understand you correctly the courage to remain silent, and not feel the need to speak for fear of any of the above is the lesson you’ve learned?
Or is the lesson just about accepting and learning not to micromanage impressions and feel responsible for the comfort and feelings of your conversation partners?
TVTropes calls it “One Dialogue, Two Conversations” imagine something like this: ”The pastry is a bit dry” ″I agree, strange hot weather we’ve been having”
Except now scale up the verbiage from a misunderstanding of ‘dry’ to, oh I don’t know, a half-remembered reference to Roland Barthes said about Greta Garbo
Ultimately the reason so much of this post is autobiographical is that while I suspect the mechanism of social anxiety that I posit is generally correct, the method by which I am resolving it is probably somewhat specific to me.
I have different challenges than other people, and so different kinds of explicit goals might work for me than you, in terms of threading the needle between “resolves anxiety by giving me explicit internal standards by which I can judge my behavior” versus “enables me to function happily as a social being without an unacceptable probability of unpleasant blowback.”
I think the important thing is to have standards of behavior for yourself that are fundamentally objective (ish) and totally under your control. I don’t necessarily know what that looks like in your case, though.
I’m a little confused, does embracing this new found abandonment of the compulsion to manage your appearance to others require or manifest, just like in the First Day Exercise, speaking your mind truthfully rather than manufacturing statements based on your assumption of what people want to hear?
I’m not sure how applicable that is, because I am certain that if I spoke what was on my mind more frequently, that the chief reaction would be bewildered silence, or nonsequiter replies borne out of fundamental misunderstanding of what I meant[1]
If I may write without filter or fear of how other Lesswronger’s may perceive me: At any given time I some pretty good candidates for what’s on my mine is me an obscure Simpsons gag, or a scene from a Parajanov/Varda/Ilyenko/Fassbinder film. So to speak frankly about what’s on my mind IRL is quite simply operationally impossible because not everyone has encyclopedia Simpsons or Film knowledge and may have no reference or handle for what particular gag or film scene I’m thinking about.
So I’m more inclined to default to silence since I have no interest in having a monologue. That silence, however, can be interpreted as rudeness, received as intimidating, or even a sign of arrogance: but if I understand you correctly the courage to remain silent, and not feel the need to speak for fear of any of the above is the lesson you’ve learned?
Or is the lesson just about accepting and learning not to micromanage impressions and feel responsible for the comfort and feelings of your conversation partners?
TVTropes calls it “One Dialogue, Two Conversations” imagine something like this:
”The pastry is a bit dry”
″I agree, strange hot weather we’ve been having”
Except now scale up the verbiage from a misunderstanding of ‘dry’ to, oh I don’t know, a half-remembered reference to Roland Barthes said about Greta Garbo
Ultimately the reason so much of this post is autobiographical is that while I suspect the mechanism of social anxiety that I posit is generally correct, the method by which I am resolving it is probably somewhat specific to me.
I have different challenges than other people, and so different kinds of explicit goals might work for me than you, in terms of threading the needle between “resolves anxiety by giving me explicit internal standards by which I can judge my behavior” versus “enables me to function happily as a social being without an unacceptable probability of unpleasant blowback.”
I think the important thing is to have standards of behavior for yourself that are fundamentally objective (ish) and totally under your control. I don’t necessarily know what that looks like in your case, though.