People invade my physical and emotional space
oldsk00l90
Tufted Titmouse
Joined: 6 Mar 2012
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Posts: 29
Location: North Carolina, USA
It seems that as I get older, the prospect of someone stopping to make small talk with me causes a certain sense of violation within me. I don't exactly like small talk or being smiled at, unless it is someone that I have known for a while. When I go into work, I often dread that fact that many people will ask me how I'm doing or make another similar comment to me. I answer them, although it often takes a great deal of effort.
I have always hated having attention drawn to me and it is not uncommon of me to even go out of my way to avoid running into people I know just to evade being stopped. Is there any way that I can overcome this or can it bring it up to those around me without sounding rude and calloused?
I don't think there's much you can do to stop it. Small talk is a form of social preening that people do - I'm not sure why, but they do. And it seems to be important. I feel violation too - like they want me to put on some sort of act. I wish they'd just leave me to my job. If I have something to say, I'll say it.
In the meantime, I usually have stock small talk in mind before I go into work. Like the weather, a holiday, or something someone mentioned they would be doing. It all just seems so artificial. I feel like I'm losing myself sometimes.
The more I don't want someone to do small talk with me, the more it aggravates me when it occurs. If I stop hoping that they will not talk with me, and just accept that they are more likely to talk with me than not (especially here where I live where "southern hospitality" is still the norm), then the more prepared I am to deal with it nicely in the moment. I just grin and bare it, and I've learned how to nicely end the communication if it just seems to be going and going because the other person is a chatty-cathy.
This used to happen more to me when I was younger, and I got a lot of ridicule from the other kids because of it. I would have thought since the people who teased me had really good non-verbal skills, they'd be able to read me and recognize when things got too much for me, but apparently not The funny about it, though, was that when the scenario was ever in the reverse (probably in an instance where I was lashing out at the scenario above), I got mocked for missing the cues. Confusing, really
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