I’ve been trying to improve my social skills lately after experiencing mild social isolation for the past 2 years. Part of this has been being more mindful of how I interact with people. Naturally, this leads to thoughts about bad interactions. Note that when I refer to bad interactions, I am talking about times when *I* did something that decreased the quality of the interaction OR did not take an opportunity to further interaction positively/create a positive interaction/etc.
I am the type of person to beat myself up over things like this, and for a while, I have tended to relive bad interactions/missed opportunities, sometimes repeatedly, up to days after they have happened. So, I’ve been thinking that I should adopt the mindset of acknowledging a bad interaction after it happened, identifying why it went wrong and what I can learn from it, and moving on.
That being said, part of me worries that if I do this and don’t relive bad interactions from time to time I will regress. I’ve even seen writing things like this down as a strategy in a book about social anxiety.
If anyone has any advice or can share resources that deal with this sort of thing, I would appreciate it.
1 comment
The plan of mentally acknowledging the negative interaction and how to learn from it is great! If it helps, sometimes a personal debrief in a journal can help, especially to track your progress! If you are making those steps, don’t worry about regression, you don’t need to subject yourself to every mistake you’ve ever made just to stay socially adept! Negative interactions happen to everyone, and the fact that you strive to learn from them already shows initiative towards improvement.
Learn from your mistakes and move past them, you can do this!