5 laws for excruciating social situations
Remember these next time you're invited somewhere
These days even recipes have to have a massive heap of word salad before you get to the list of ingredients… but you’ll find no such preamble here. Let’s get to the laws.
1. “Don’t let your mate carry the weight”
If you’ve gone to a gathering with someone who’s a social animal, it can be tempting to let them do all the legwork. This is a trap you do not want to fall into, because let me ask you this: what happens when your friend needs to take a leak and they leave you with someone you’ve been studiously ignoring?
Here’s a high-profile example you can probably recall. During an interview to publicise Batman v Superman, back in 2016, Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill were quizzed about the negative reviews of the film. As Henry dug for a diplomatic answer, Ben lapsed into silence and retreated behind his eyes. He probably thought he could temporarily switch off, believing 'Henry has this'. His resting facial expression, though, screamed ‘existential crisis’. A video meme of ‘Sad Affleck’ went viral. The footage was switched to black and white, and the memelord slowly zoomed in on Ben’s face, adding the soundtrack ‘The Sound of Silence’ by Simon and Garfunkel. (Art Garfunkel has said of this pensive song that it’s about ‘the inability of people to communicate with each other’.)
Ben Affleck could be YOU, except in your case you’re more likely to stare at the TV in the corner of the pub while your friend does the diplomacy stuff. So my take is, if your friend or partner is a social animal, it’s important not to become a passenger. Enter the room first; take the front-row centre seat; be active at the beginning of a conversation. If your battery starts to drain, at least you’ve done your bit.
Which leads me to….
2. “Show up, fuck off early” (or “SUFOE”)
I know my limits, and a party really pushes them. When I arrive at a gathering I tend to announce my departure in the same breath as my greeting. “Hi! I brought some wine, where do you want it? Just letting you know I can only stay an hour because I start work really early on Sunday mornings.” Then I might throw in a little yawn and stretch.
The other thing I do which is far less lame is SUFOE: show up, fuck off early. Here, you arrive at the exact time on the invite that the party starts, which gives you one-to-one time with the host and also establishes you in your surroundings so that you’re relatively comfortable as each new guest shows up. SUFOE ought to work well for the person who invited you too, because anyone throwing is always nervous that people won’t show up. Now there’s you.
3. “It’s not me, it’s my egocentric bias”
For a spell in my teens, I was convinced that I had toilet paper trailing from my shoe, to the point that habitually looking over my shoulder as I walked was like some kind of tic. To the best of my knowledge, I have never actually had toilet paper attached to my shoe. But just imagine.
Social anxiety can be caused by having an ‘egocentric bias’, which is the tendency to draw heavily on our own perspective when we interpret situations, rather than integrate other people’s views or acknowledge a bigger picture.
There are a number of these egocentric biases, one of which is the spotlight effect. Here, we exaggerate our own significance to those around us, and see ourselves as both the trigger and the target of other people’s behaviour. Metaphorically, we feel as though a spotlight is on us and we are the subject of great scrutiny.
If that’s you, it might help to realise that this is A Thing and not just limited to you. If it’s A Thing, it actually happens to a lot of people.
4. “It’s not conflict, it’s conversation”
People with social anxiety have legitimate concerns about getting into conflict. They’re worried they will get too defensive, escalate things, lose control, go nuclear – or, alternatively, go blank, exploding into an impotent and inarticulate rage. In part, it’s our physiology that betrays us. When the body senses conflict, our cortisol and adrenaline levels spike. Our throats may tighten when there’s something we don’t want to say, literally trying to silence us.
But is it possible that we’re sometimes relegating ‘spirited conversation’ into the category of ‘conflict’? I know personally that my brain can’t differentiate between excitement and aggression. The roar of a footy crowd, the bellowing of an Oasis song by lads on the Tube, someone raising their voice to make an impassioned point... it all sounds like conflict to me.
So it’s been quite a revelation watching my boyfriend Frank in action. Frank LOVES pushing for a late check out, or trolling someone right back on Facebook Marketplace. He relishes jostling for pole position in any heated conversation. And whaddaya know - if you’re not an arsehole about it, it actually gets positive results.
5. “Everyone has my best interests at heart”
In my book The Introvert’s Guide to Leaving the House there’s a chapter about the power of solo travel, in which I interview Kate McMahon, a journalist who has extensively travelled solo around South America. She had plenty of advice on turning fleeting meetings into meaningful connections, but one thing she said struck me as a great way to go about communicating with strangers in general – whether you’re travelling overseas or just to the local shop.
“I try to think that every single human has my best interests at heart,” she said. “That’s what I tell myself, because that affects how you interact with people and vice versa, and it also affects my enjoyment and my experience.”
It’s simple, but the best advice often is. If you go into a conversation with a certain energy, the other person is likely to meet that energy. So if you go into it telling yourself that they have your best interests at heart, you’re creating a positive feedback loop.
If you connected with this post, you might like these articles I wrote for other publications: 10 Rules All Introverts Should Follow and Tips for Introverts to Become More Socially Confident.
Header photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash
