Can you "shock out" social awkwardness??

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I don't mean electroconvulsis "therapy" like in the old days of cooping up people with psychiatric conditions...heh...but rather, pushing the envelope or continually shocking your comfort zone, as it were, to the point where your social awkwardness noticeably diminishes.

Like if you set yourself a target to talk to say 100 strangers in a month, just start a conversation about anything, observe their reactions, go to a mall or someplace to do this...and see results. To be more challenging, speak with people of the opposite gender more often.

Think of it like an analogy of shocking your muscles as you go to the gym, and progressively lift more weight.

I think this is the challenge we face(d), for so long, we've been stigmatized and excluded from interacting with others like in a controlled setting i.e. school, and didn't garner the experience we needed - so that contributes to a large degree to our awkwardness. We end up with a lower station in life on the average and that drastically impacts confidence and projects awkwardness, b/c we approach interactions as if "this person's life is probably great, and meanwhile mine's passed me by." Whereas you compare us with dyslexics, who have also had a rough go in life - but they at least didn't need the book's permission to interact with it, while we required people our age to want to interact with us to build that experience. So dyslexics can still turn out more confident later on. What this means is, we have to keep practicing, more so in an uncontrolled environment where most people don't know each other and can't collectively ostracize us, so that we can follow a similar trajectory as the dyslexic (i.e. tackle it early on in life too!)

However, some devils advocates may point out that we've been walking for a long, long time w/o anyone posing obstacles to us doing so, but we still may be seen as "walking awkwardly" when we wouldn't intuitively know the difference. So, I dunno - arguments on both sides.

I feel as if I have something like a split personality. There's something that kicks in when I have to be smooth in an awkward situation and usually gets me through, even getting a few laughs. Then I go home and try to analyse everything my glib side did before I can get a good sleep again. I have to admit, he's done pretty well, but I've gotten blindsided too often to relax. Some of the toughest transitions went smoothly because it was my (new) job.

I certainly think you can develop a side to deal with it. I don't know personally I am not sure I can ever get rid of my natural thought processes when in conversation, like the fact I can't concentrate on a conversation makes me often feel awkward and stressed in any kind of social situation. I think that our issues with social interaction arn't so much with social interaction itself, but because it requires so many skills we are often lacking, thus making us stressed and less likely to want to engage in it.

I don't think many people would describe me as that awkward, and at parties etc, I can carry a smooth conversation and do fine, so it is possible to at the very least not show the awkwardness ahahah. However it does exhaust me and I honestly can't do it for too long before I go and hide in a corner wishing everyone would go away. Social stuff is like a skill, you can learn it

I'm not sure if that's the right way to go. Practicing social encounters is definitely a good thing to do, but I don't know about the "shock"-part.
It's been suggested to me that I should put myself in situations that triggers my anxiety more often, in order to get rid of it. I've heard about this working for plenty of people. Afraid to go to the mall? Just spend every day in the mall until you're not afraid anymore.
That didn't quite work for me. I pushed myself really hard to go to those places (the mall, the metro, the town center) as often as I could, and it only made my anxiety worse. Every time I went I got more and more exhausted, and closer and closer to a public meltdown.
Turns out I needed to recharge a lot more in between my "anxiety-trips". Once I started taking it easy, and only went to those places on days I felt good and had enough energy to handle it, it suddenly got a lot easier. Now I go to the mall once every other week to eat an icecream and look at people for a while, and I'm actually starting to enjoy it. Even if I'm having a bad day, I can now sit on the metro without hyperventilating the whole ride.
Going in my own baby-step-tempo has proven a lot more effective to get rid of anxiety than to "shock" myself out of it.

Obviously, practicing getting rid of social awkwardness and getting rid of social anxiety are two different things, but I somehow felt like this applied. Sorry if it was all useless nonsense to you

^^ Good stuff. Shock has gotten me through impossible seeming things, where I just say the words like an actor and the others play along. Taking baby steps is what builds a comfortable extension of my core identity I don't mind relying on.

I think in some situations, if the person is willing. My social skills improved a lot when I got my first job at a clothing store and my manager told me to go out and sell, and that she'd be watching. I needed that job, so I pushed through it and used every bit of effort I could. It actually went really well, and after a short time my social skills had drastically improved.

I can safely say yes: I got "shocked out" of social awkwardness on my first cruise 6 years ago, where I went by myself. I was expecting it to be a lonely experience at best, and to be bullied by other passengers at worst. I even made contingency plans, like debarking early and flying home. As well as bringing books to read, to occupy myself during the lonely days. Much to my surprise, I was socializing like the best of NTs . I made friends within less than a day on the ship, I got complimented for my Latin dancing skills, and I even got a girl interested in me. All in just 4 days. It was truly a life-changing trip for me; after the cruise, I became more social than ever before. While I was still getting abused on the job I had at the time, my life outside of work improved significantly.

The year after, I went on another cruise. Bolstered by the previous experience, I had even more fun than the last time. Today, I can easily do things like start conversations with a group of strangers on a train. Provided that I'm "in the zone", of course, as opposed to simply wanting to get to my destination uneventfully.

Travellers are often easier to approach. They have time available, and are having to deal with lots of novelty anyway. Best of all, they can take chances without risking more than a few hours or days of involvement. The same goes for you. I was once on a days-long train ride where everyone sat in silence until the last few hours. Then a guitar came out, and we had a fine time. Also, fellow countrymen in a foreign land will be very drawn to each other, even if they would never say hello at home.

Most people on the cruise were Americans, like me, although one couple I sat at lunch with was from Ireland. And the people who showed the most interest in hanging out with me were in early 20's; not exactly a demographic reputed for kindness toward the quirky types. (I was 29 at the time.) It might have been the alcohol, but I've attended drunken college parties, and there were times when I was treated with hostility there. Then why the difference on the cruise? At least for reasons other than my own improvement in social skills since then, the improvement I never knew I made.

There was no guitar, but there was a lot of dancing, and most women I asked to dance with me said yes. One girl, who turned me down, even complimented me on the dancing she saw me doing with another girl. Basically, that cruise really did shock the social awkwardness out of me, like the OP pointed out.

Jayo

Your proposal sounds like it could make you less socially awkward

(Fine)

However, it is different from the weight lifting analogy, in that you do not know how difficult a specific person will be, to interact with. Some of them have explosive tempers. If they had labels about their difficulty, that would be different

The other thing is , it feels like I, personally, am socially awkward, by nature or second nature. At this point.

So it's like Sisyphus

Pushing a rock up a hill

Even if you could do it, you would have to maintain the outcome

While neurotypicals are like, pushing a rock on level ground

If "shock therapy" were the solution for me, it would have worked already a long time ago! When I was younger, I forced myself to try to socialise like my peers did a lot, and it just led to lots of exhaustion, anxiety and shut-downs. That doesn't mean that I can't improve my social skills with practice, as I surely have over the last few decades. However, I find that regulating the amount of socialising that I do is necessary to avoid burning out from it, and that no amount of practice makes it any more instinctive and automatic.

uncle sam's army was about as shocky a shock therapy as has been invented, and it did not "shock" me into anything resembling normal social functioning. if anything, it pushed me further towards hermithood.

Jayo

you mentioned lifting weights at the gym.

but imagine those weights were not labelled. and there was no method of knowing how much each one weighed.

that's kind of like your proposal to "shock out" social awkwardness.

you can only lift progressively more weight, if you know how much each barbell weighs.

same as social interaction. you won't know which are the difficult or heavy interactions until you have tried and failed to lift it.

^ Very well put, shortfatbalduglyman, that's an excellent analogy.