# Absolutely terrified of small talk



## Liability (Jan 11, 2013)

It's so crazy...I'm so scared of small talk that i will avoid photocopying and hide in my office waiting to hear if the coast is clear to run and get a copy in before anyone interacts with me. I am terrified of not knowing what to say and having an awkward silence so much that the fear helps create this mental block of conversational nothingness.

I've been working with this company for 1-2 days a week for 8 months so it was easy for them to not notice my shyness. Now I have signed on with them full time and now i am about to be exposed as that painfully awkward guy that people avoid....

I have a work lunch tomorrow and I need help!


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## monotonous (Feb 1, 2013)

are they hiring more accountants


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## Liability (Jan 11, 2013)

1 more is expected but more of a senior position. It's a tiny company and everyone knows each other basically. I am at the moment the youngest and newest hire.


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## Terranaut (Jul 11, 2013)

Have you considered social anxiety medication? There is no shame and I see it as a strength to explore every alternative to overcome that. i used to blush really bad. I tried all the non-medical techniques like always trying to go first in a meeting so I don't obsess and stuff like that. But you can't always choose that. And often in some round-table the proctor will pick the person next to you and the circle goes the opposite way so you know you'll be last. By then it used to be enough to make me want to run to a bar. But my medicine for low-level depression had the amazing effect of relieving my social anxiety. I started becoming gregarious and having an identity that was accessible. That doesn't mean everyone will like you--I even had a situation where one person just broke out with "because i don't like you" to which i responded with expletives and anger which ran him out of the room. But you can't let an exception negate the general rule that people can be friendly. You can tell though who has chips on their shoulders. They act like hey hate being there, wear hats on sideways, put their heads down as if sleeping. Then you have to learn how to disarm them with your charm and savoir faire.


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## hmweasley (Sep 12, 2013)

I've never been in that exact situation, but I've done similar things at times. I go through phases where I'm braver and able to talk to people a lot easier. Then, I have times where I will go crazily out of my way to avoid any sort of small talk or communication. I wish I had a way to help you, but I usually just have to fight my way through it. If I have to talk to people, then I have to talk to people, even if it's really hard on me.


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## NicoShy (Jun 11, 2009)

Terranaut said:


> Have you considered social anxiety medication? There is no shame and I see it as a strength to explore every alternative to overcome that. i used to blush really bad. I tried all the non-medical techniques like always trying to go first in a meeting so I don't obsess and stuff like that. But you can't always choose that. And often in some round-table the proctor will pick the person next to you and the circle goes the opposite way so you know you'll be last. By then it used to be enough to make me want to run to a bar. But my medicine for low-level depression had the amazing effect of relieving my social anxiety. I started becoming gregarious and having an identity that was accessible. That doesn't mean everyone will like you--I even had a situation where one person just broke out with "because i don't like you" to which i responded with expletives and anger which ran him out of the room. But you can't let an exception negate the general rule that people can be friendly. You can tell though who has chips on their shoulders. They act like hey hate being there, wear hats on sideways, put their heads down as if sleeping. Then you have to learn how to disarm them with your charm and savoir faire.


What medicine is this you speak of?


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## ineverwipe (Jun 16, 2013)

I fear the same. I have a knack for saying the wrong thing and i know if i engage in small talk, I'll end up saying something stupid and hating myself for the next month at least. I always act like im reading something or looking out the window or something so noone will try and speak to me lol. Sorry i have no advice for ya. I'm just as shy as you


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## Terranaut (Jul 11, 2013)

NicoShy said:


> What medicine is this you speak of?


Hi NicoShy. The medicine that dramatically worked for me is called Prozac (fluoxetine). But I started when it came out in 1990 when I was 35 years of age. There are other medicines now of the same nature but more advanced and geared more for the social anxiety market. Please be aware that before the class of medications of which I speak (the SSRIs) which work way upstream in the brain where you don't notice them in your feelings or manner, the older approaches were to work way "downstream" in your central nervous system where you did feel them working either with a sedating effect or a stimulant. There is a lot of urban mythology and residual bias and misinformation passed on by people who don't know what they are talking about who consider all mediacines just "drugs" or "pills"--and there are even paranoid dullards who will tell you that the big pharmaceutical companies are inventing diseases or maladies so they can sell medicines for them.

That is absolute nonsense. We are talking only about US FDA approved medications which identify a physiological shortfall in the chemistry of the brain which is not a "flaw in genetics" or an "flaw in character"--just something that you can not will away or out-reason with some old Freudian ca-ca. My experience as I said was that after a while I felt like I had a pair of eye glasses on my mind that helped me start understanding my own feelings and how what I think triggers what I feel and how much. Other people rarely have such discipline and I for one found that EVERYONE is concerned with how THEY are perceived--they can't feel their own worries and critique or concern themselves with me. I built and built on that confidence as time went by and deeply internalized my new understanding so that it was effortless to be comfortable with any kind of public speaking or speaking to strangers. In short time I went from being just a Wall Street Bank employee to training program developer, to assistant Chief Technology officer and then left to work as a United Nations representative liason accredited to the UN Department of Public Information. My expertise and services were in demand for interpretation of communications technology trends, presentations, journalism, newsletter design and publishing for multiple committees all in the few years before the Internet started changing things in 1995. Before I had the confidence and blushed a lot people in the corporate culture pigeon-holed me as only so capable. After the medication and my personal self discovery, it was as if the waters of fortune opened up and I could see the promised land. I won money for innovation that saved my bank millions and trust from executives well above the plug-heads who thought so small of me. They paid for my education which included video production at School of Visual Arts in NY and I took voice-over lessons to learn how to speak "real American English" instead of the "New Yawkuh" I had spoken awl my life befaw. Haha. I read radio commercials in front of audiences and took their criticisms, I broke them up with character voices I created, and I put that skill to use in industrial narrations of corporate training videos. I promise you this is all true and I am not at all BSing you. I'm not sure anything like that would have happened if I remained socially anxious and just looked for intellectual work I could do in a cubicle where no one would "bother" me. Social connection is not "being bothered". It's the only way to really start being someone to be proud of.

I'd be happy to give you any specific advice on how to approach therapy and know what to look for both in it, and in yourself. And that goes for anyone here who is uncertain about what therapy and modern medicine can do for you.

I have time on my hand because I broke my back in an accident in three places and am going to be going under the knife soon. I don't have any children or the encumbrances young family people do. So, I'm here and happy to share and maybe I can help someone.


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## NicoShy (Jun 11, 2009)

Terranaut said:


> Hi NicoShy. The medicine that dramatically worked for me is called Prozac (fluoxetine). But I started when it came out in 1990 when I was 35 years of age. There are other medicines now of the same nature but more advanced and geared more for the social anxiety market. Please be aware that before the class of medications of which I speak (the SSRIs) which work way upstream in the brain where you don't notice them in your feelings or manner, the older approaches were to work way "downstream" in your central nervous system where you did feel them working either with a sedating effect or a stimulant. There is a lot of urban mythology and residual bias and misinformation passed on by people who don't know what they are talking about who consider all mediacines just "drugs" or "pills"--and there are even paranoid dullards who will tell you that the big pharmaceutical companies are inventing diseases or maladies so they can sell medicines for them.
> 
> That is absolute nonsense. We are talking only about US FDA approved medications which identify a physiological shortfall in the chemistry of the brain which is not a "flaw in genetics" or an "flaw in character"--just something that you can not will away or out-reason with some old Freudian ca-ca. My experience as I said was that after a while I felt like I had a pair of eye glasses on my mind that helped me start understanding my own feelings and how what I think triggers what I feel and how much. Other people rarely have such discipline and I for one found that EVERYONE is concerned with how THEY are perceived--they can't feel their own worries and critique or concern themselves with me. I built and built on that confidence as time went by and deeply internalized my new understanding so that it was effortless to be comfortable with any kind of public speaking or speaking to strangers. In short time I went from being just a Wall Street Bank employee to training program developer, to assistant Chief Technology officer and then left to work as a United Nations representative liason accredited to the UN Department of Public Information. My expertise and services were in demand for interpretation of communications technology trends, presentations, journalism, newsletter design and publishing for multiple committees all in the few years before the Internet started changing things in 1995. Before I had the confidence and blushed a lot people in the corporate culture pigeon-holed me as only so capable. After the medication and my personal self discovery, it was as if the waters of fortune opened up and I could see the promised land. I won money for innovation that saved my bank millions and trust from executives well above the plug-heads who thought so small of me. They paid for my education which included video production at School of Visual Arts in NY and I took voice-over lessons to learn how to speak "real American English" instead of the "New Yawkuh" I had spoken awl my life befaw. Haha. I read radio commercials in front of audiences and took their criticisms, I broke them up with character voices I created, and I put that skill to use in industrial narrations of corporate training videos. I promise you this is all true and I am not at all BSing you. I'm not sure anything like that would have happened if I remained socially anxious and just looked for intellectual work I could do in a cubicle where no one would "bother" me. Social connection is not "being bothered". It's the only way to really start being someone to be proud of.
> 
> ...


I have been in therapy several times and really can't afford it, plus all they do is ask you to talk about problems then tell you your copayment. I was on all the ssri's all ready. Currently all I have for relief is klonipin :roll


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## Reclus (Jan 11, 2012)

OP, before you head up the medication garden path because you are a bit nervous about making small talk, here is my more practical solution.

Every day, when you go to work, have 3 topics ready for chatting about. it could be weather (an old standard), it could be sport (ditto), it could be some topical event (but stay away from religion and politics).

When that awkward silence pops up, toss a topic in there.

You'll find this option is cheaper than going on medication, and doesn't involve side-effects.

Best wishes


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## Liability (Jan 11, 2013)

Thanks Terranaut and Reclus, I will definitely consider my options. It was a tough day today I had a company lunch for an hour and I literally sat there wanting to start small talk so badly but theres something inside me that always holds me back and keeps me drawing blanks in convos. I find work so physically draining and stressful apart from the actual work itself.


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## Terranaut (Jul 11, 2013)

NicoShy said:


> I have been in therapy several times and really can't afford it, plus all they do is ask you to talk about problems then tell you your co payment. I was on all the ssri's all ready. Currently all I have for relief is klonipin :roll


Sorry to hear that. Klonopin dulls the senses and acts like a Martini in a pill. I found the SSRI's subtle. At first the Prozac seemed to wind me up like a spring. In the first week I was so tense I went upstaris from the subway platform and sprung for a taxi all the wat from midtown NYC to Brooklyn. Then I started having the "sexual side effect" they mention on commericials but don't say what it is and every assumes it's limpness. On the contrary. It's no shortage in the wood department but it just very hard to climax. I started taking the medicine every other day rather than every day and that help with the side effects. It also flared up a skin rash from sun damage called seborrhea and I had to get a steroid cream for it. But you see I was bound and determined to see if that was just a threshold through which I had to pass to get the real benefits. And I was right. My body and brain adjusted and I became a "renaissance man". It wasn't an artificial booster like a pep pill, it was a feeling of wellness and capacity. For a long time I had been doing top notch work that no one else could touch, and then I started to realizze I had so much more potential than I thought and a hell of a lot more than the character assassins did that I worked for.

I took advantage of a human resources program where if you submit an idea and implement it for a year and it proves its worth, you get %10 of that. Well my idea was the biggest in that company's history and they felt embarrassed to only give me the previous maximum of $10,000. So they changed it to @%,00 because of me. And it stunned everyone who thought so little of me because I didn't exude confidence in myself. I went over my boss's head to the high up corporate execs and sold them on putting me on their A-team. My boss thought I had a nerve and that I would be slapped down. But low and behold my story was in the company magazine with me on stage getting a plaque and check. I could then afford to dress GQ and I could feel the poitive attention. Then everything else positive happened and it was because I persevered through the threshold of acclimation to the medicine.

You are right about "talk therapy". It's load of wasted money and time more of then than not. The ultimate result of my transformation was exposure to knowledge which inspired ideas worth billions. That is a whole different chapter of the story but I learned to keep telling myself that until I find good reason to think otherwise, I consider myself the smartest man alive.

Being a human being is a special thing and when one battles their way through walls in their own mind, you find that there is no reason to think you're made of lesser stuff than and great person male or female. And all of them we nervous about ex[osure, performance and failure too. Klonopin will make you feel good, but it won't unlock the superstar in anyone.


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## NicoShy (Jun 11, 2009)

Terranaut said:


> Sorry to hear that. Klonopin dulls the senses and acts like a Martini in a pill. I found the SSRI's subtle. At first the Prozac seemed to wind me up like a spring. In the first week I was so tense I went upstaris from the subway platform and sprung for a taxi all the wat from midtown NYC to Brooklyn. Then I started having the "sexual side effect" they mention on commericials but don't say what it is and every assumes it's limpness. On the contrary. It's no shortage in the wood department but it just very hard to climax. I started taking the medicine every other day rather than every day and that help with the side effects. It also flared up a skin rash from sun damage called seborrhea and I had to get a steroid cream for it. But you see I was bound and determined to see if that was just a threshold through which I had to pass to get the real benefits. And I was right. My body and brain adjusted and I became a "renaissance man". It wasn't an artificial booster like a pep pill, it was a feeling of wellness and capacity. For a long time I had been doing top notch work that no one else could touch, and then I started to realizze I had so much more potential than I thought and a hell of a lot more than the character assassins did that I worked for.
> 
> I took advantage of a human resources program where if you submit an idea and implement it for a year and it proves its worth, you get %10 of that. Well my idea was the biggest in that company's history and they felt embarrassed to only give me the previous maximum of $10,000. So they changed it to @%,00 because of me. And it stunned everyone who thought so little of me because I didn't exude confidence in myself. I went over my boss's head to the high up corporate execs and sold them on putting me on their A-team. My boss thought I had a nerve and that I would be slapped down. But low and behold my story was in the company magazine with me on stage getting a plaque and check. I could then afford to dress GQ and I could feel the poitive attention. Then everything else positive happened and it was because I persevered through the threshold of acclimation to the medicine.
> 
> ...


I wanna be a superstar just need the right tools to manifest. :clap


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## Terranaut (Jul 11, 2013)

NicoShy said:


> I wanna be a superstar just need the right tools to manifest. :clap


I hope you haven't taken the Klonopin long enough to become dependent. That causes anxiety--with drawal symptoms where taking the medicine feels very satisfying. I pray you're not there yet. That is a deal-breaker for any kind of breakthrough to learning yourself with the clarity the other type of medication that helped me. No one and no medicane can fix you. It all an effort by you about you. Everyone else is worried about themselves. And that's natural. Nut that also means most of the therapy still performed is hit and miss--by far mostly miss. I believe in "hit, no miss" mythologies in everything. My main life's interst is an educational model that is "no miss". And for over a hundred and fifty years it has been hit or miss completely accepting of writing off misses. With technology and knowledge all we need is design, will and a way to make it a business and no one will ever choose anything but "no miss". Sorry I digressed a little. But in psychotherapy/psychiatry, a prescription of klonopin or Xanax or w/e is like a surrender in school that it's hopless and you're an "F". They will do that to you. You're the one who must catch fire and say "I do not accept that of myself". And "I will never succumb to resignation"--that's what makes one a "loser"--a person who can do no better than stay sedated to cope with a mundane life. (No offense. I' hope to motivate you and i know this to be true because I've been through it all--including even methadone and people giving up on me thinking "just take another ten milligrams everything will be ok" for me to be a comfortable zero.

So, I don't know your level of involvement with konopin, but it is very seductive but very constraining. It will keep you on a leash and enslave you to worry that you're supply is always filled and ready. If you have to kick that, SSRIs can help. But they have thresholds of acclimationtion. One doctor gave me a tyroid drug to give my thyroid a kick--a slight boost in the microgram level--and after a week, it did wonders. I lost al my tastes for pleasure foods, when i felt the methadone I started feeling like why would anyone want his kind of thing in their way? Not only did it help me get off rugs and lose weight--which are very tough--I went back to schol yet again at 45 and earned a certificate in achechectctural CAD and began a new chapter as a structural steel detailer using 3-D software. That's where you bulding virtual buildings inside cyberspace aout of lines that represent steel colums, beams, angle irones, plate, ete and shape and create hles and specs and you pressa buton and shop drawings are automatically generated where guys take bug oices of steel and cut them and drill them accroding to what i siad, and the take the steel out on trucks and build the skeleton of a big building. I leaerned computer art in School of Visla Arts and was able to us Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw but I never learned some of the critical theory that going to school for CAD drafting taught me. I wa albe to compete with snobby Brits who think they are the smartest men alive. And go through all the politics of doubt and expectations that i would flop. I didn't flop. On the contrary I learned faster than anyone they ever had try this new kind of modeling and built many big steel buildings all by myself.

I went solo because I hate jobs where you think, think, think and never meet anyone. I took my SSRI the whole time. Sedatives would have bogged me down in just getting the job done. And that is a drag. As difficult as people are, just meeting one right one can change everything and open up excitement and hope, and even offer the chance for love like you didn't think possible. Good night. You're gonna need some support to change and find that best self somewhere inside. Stay in touch.


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