I just got back from two days at a giant conference. Every year I go, and my dream is to join in the community that it is a part of, and every year I come back, having talked to no one at all.
I can plan things to say, and then just shut down when the opportunity comes. I can also plan too far and figure that I won’t have anything more to say after the initial contact, so why bother?
I’ve read various books on social anxiety and the old “How to win friends”, but I just don’t feel like they’re helpful. Does anyone know of any resources that take autism and selective mutism into consideration?
Maybe it would be useful to think of learning the skill of socializing while anxious as a little like learning the skill of ice skating.
Can you teach yourself ice skating from scratch? Maybe, it’s possible to just use pure trial and error and figure it out for yourself with no guidance or feedback. It might become frustrating and the temptation might be to give up because it seems impossible, and takes forever to even get the basics down, if that ever happens at all.
But what if you had an ice skating manual and youtube videos? Probably better than purely figuring it out on your own. But what if you have a question in the moment as you are, for example, trying to skate backwards? How should your left leg move if you have a soar right knee, or what happens if you keep spinning to the left whenever you try to turn right, or your ankles are soar after every practice and you aren’t sure if the type of skates you bought are really the best for your own body, experience, and needs?
If these questions arise, you could read the manual, go on youtube, ask the community. But then there are different opinions, bias, misinformation. Who to trust? How many hours do you want to spend researching a question when an expert could tell you there in the moment in like 2 seconds? What if you have 25 questions? How many days and weeks of research is that? Or could an expert answer all of them in like half an hour?
So skating coaches are not mandatory, but very strongly encouraged ;)
