On Socializing: Remember to Forget Yourself

We decide to go out. To socialize, be with people. Enjoy ourselves through enjoying them.

Then, we spend the whole night drowning inside ourselves.

This is social anxiety.

Sometimes we’re pulled so deeply into self awareness and analysis that we get stuck there.

Even, and especially, when we’re trying to be with other people. Commune with, socialize with, have fun with, connect with, other people.

We’re trying to get it right. For others and for ourselves.

We’re trying to stay out of trouble. Don’t step on anyone’s toes. Don’t offend.

We’re trying to relax - by working harder to force relaxation, as if that somehow works.

We’re trying to change our patterns.

We’re suddenly aware of all of these things about ourselves we weren’t aware of before, and we’re trying to make sense of - and manage - them.

We’re more aware of how we impact other people and we’re trying to, again, manage that.

Some of it is just plain self consciousness. What will they think of me?

But we’re taking it further now. Why do I care? Why do I need this validation?

How can I validate myself? What reparenting can I do here?

We pull out the coping skills to regulate on the spot.

We get lost in all of this analysis and management of ourselves. We lose ourselves and we lose the moment.

We miss out on presence.

We forget we’re doing the work of therapists. Not people. And we came to do the work of people, which ironically doesn’t involve much work at all.

All it takes to be a person with people is the practice of being.

Letting work go.

We forget that we didn’t come here to work. We’re socializing. Socializing involves others.

We came here to forget ourselves.

But then we get anxious, and we forget to forget ourselves.

We magnify ourselves instead. Panicking at every flaw imaginable. Flailing to fix it all come up with cover stories and polite redirections for the stuff we can’t. Hoping no one notices, but certain they do.

When I was a small child I didn’t have a lot of interest in friendships. I was a typical autistic kid. I wasn’t asocial, per se. I enjoyed socializing, I just didn’t focus on socializing. I wasn’t fixated on it.

I had special interests to fill space. I was active. And I was focused on the task at hand.

I showed much more interest in activities than anything else. As a kid I was into animals and basketball and soccer and piano and video games. I had a special, love hate relationship with the monkey bars and swing sets.

Whoever wanted to do the activities with me was cool with me and I would happily socialize with them as we did the activities together.

It wasn’t until I got into middle school that I started to “develop” socially. I was clumsy, but then again, kids are clumsy.

I’d blurt out things inappropriately. I couldn’t attune. I didn’t really know how to socialize yet, but I did make some friends who liked me well enough for me to not feel too lonely.

By the time I entered my 20’s, not only did I not have a problem socializing and connecting - I thrived in it. Which is interesting to say as an autist and as someone with a socially isolating intersection of identity.

I’m a black (but “not black enough”), gay, American Buddhist from a Christian family, masculine presenting/gender bendy woman being. With tattoos and dreadlocks. My family’s from the south but I grew up in the (extremely diverse compared to most of the rest of my country) DC Metro area before moving to the midwest.

My family did 22 years in the army, mostly without me. My siblings and I are several years apart so I often functioned like an only child even though I’m far from it.

The elder half of my family traveled the world. I traveled a bit of a part of the world before middle school, which meant I went to several different elementary schools before finally getting a chance to make some long-term friendships.

And all as an undiagnosed neurodivergent, kind of nerdy and “quirky” person.

I’ve always existed some layer apart from other people.

I grew up an island.

I didn’t fit in anywhere. So I had to learn to belong everywhere.

I had to get comfortable with being different very early. I had to learn to embrace “weird” as a compliment.

But I was also always supported in certain ways. I was always connected and close to a small group, and able to get along well and be respected well enough by the larger communities my inner circle operated within.

The people I connect well with are usually other islanders. We know how to bond through differences because we never had the privilege of bonding through likeness. We were outliers.

This is traumatic, but it’s the trauma that taught me that trauma comes with gifts. It can give you strengths if you let it.

As outliers, we know how to be curious about, considerate of, and receptive of different people. Different cultures. Different groups. Because we couldn’t fall back on the default of likeness.

I have no regrets about growing up an island because it gave me this. And this is one of my favorite things about myself.

Other people seem to appreciate it too. Because regardless of others’ identities, I got along with people from all walks well enough, and was always able to find “my people”, out of those people.

This wasn’t because I had developed some special social skills.

It’s not about learning the right ice breakers or the right outfits or the right mannerisms or body language or the usual coping go-tos for social anxiety and self consciousness.

And I certainly wasn’t a shoe-in on identity alone.

It was because I‘d learned to do something else that, frankly, is much simpler than all of that shit.

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