Ok so I am a high school senior and over the past couple of years I have gotten over pretty bad social anxiety. I went from not being able to look at a person 15 feet away to now I really don’t care about much.
I never really got this though: How do people come up with things to talk about so quickly? At lunch I sit with this girl I really like, and I don’t want to seem like someone with no social skills because I can’t think of anything to say. I can hold eye contact forever, I can do anything else except small talk/think of things to say on the fly.
How do y’all do it? Any tricks or will this come with time?
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One trick I use is to pick up smaller details from the other person’s speech and go on with that. People love to talk about themselves.
I’m still learning myself but something that has helped is realizing not every conversation needs to be life changing, I started paying attention to what other people talk about and what I got from that is that I was expecting too much of conversations that can just be simple and silly, you can try to ask about what kind of movies/music people like and ask for recommendations, you can ask if the person has siblings and if they like it, what series they’re currently watching and so on.
I now just try to ask a few questions here and there while they tell me things so I can extend it a bit more but I feel like if you try to get comfortable asking things it becomes more natural as you go and don’t be afraid to try to make conversation by telling them you disagree or don’t really like some things they do like, a gentle debate is really good for keeping a conversation going without being rude or judgemental.