Does anybody else have this problem? Whenever I try to reach out to someone and ask how they are doing or something I always feel disingenuous and fake. Like I know that inside I really don’t care and I just want to improve my social skills for my own benefits, wich makes me feel bad and I get stuck in my head which makes the conversation even much worse.Idk this just might be me.Are there any ways I can look at this differently? Any advice is appreciated.
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I can personally relate to this a lot!
*Before I continue, I do want to say that this isn’t really advice, just me kinda speaking my thoughts.
My personal situation is that I’ve been working on myself in general over the last 6 months before uni starts next year, stuff like hygiene, hobbies, and ofc socializing. My strategy for that being like yours, just talking to people in my classes, not really caring about them as much as I do getting better at talking.
I had a couple of ways to justify this. One was, “Well, it’s not like me, and this person will talk to each other after this,” (Mid excuse ngl) another was, “I’m doing this for self improvement and it’s not really harming anyone.” It’s not really like you’re doing anything out of malice. You’re just trying to improve yourself. Of course, you would want to improve your social skills for your own benefit! What other reason would their be? That’s just human, no reason to feel bad 🙂
At the same time, for both me and you (unless I’ve misunderstood and it’s just me – then sorry about everything after this), I think there is fundamentally a flaw in our thinking. I think it’s that we think we can improve our socializing by just talking, which is exactly why we’re having the trouble we’re having. To truly improve our social skills, the mindset needs to be slightly shifted. I think to socialize with others, you need to care about what they’re saying (or rather how they feel through what they say), because I believe that’s what incites meaningful conversation, even if its just small talk. Sure, maybe with our methods, presentations, interviews, and all that formal stuff is easy. But socializing is completely different from that. It requires you to understand the other person, SO you can talk to them.
Don’t know if any of this made sense, or if it even applies to you 😛
Sorry about how big and potentially useless this was. I just felt like I should write this out.