Socially Awkward

I have always been socially awkward.  In fact, I believe this has recently got a lot worse. 

I believe that I picked up my social awkwardness and my self-consciousness somewhere along the way, possibly in my early teens.

I've never been the opposite of socially awkward ever - I have never been or felt shameless.  Shamelessness has to come naturally, and I sense that my social awkwardness has always got in its way.

Looking back to when I was 13/14 years old, I can see that my responses to people around me happened like a bodily reflex, without conscious thought.  I know for certain that my body-feeling of my social awkwardness has a multitude of layers.  Social awkwardness is the fear of being vulnerable in the face of unmasked intimacy.  

Thinking back to virtually every encounter during my teens, I know and can play back in my mind that I was overwhelmed, some things were just way too intense for me.  I ended up feeling completely exposed.   I can recall memories, some of these were very intense.  I can recall multiple times straight away in my younger years, were clumsy attempts to express my strong feelings, or to express myself in general, were usually disregarded at best or met with scorn at worst, being true and open, I was lead to believe from my primary school days was bad.  

In my twenties, I know that I opened up a little more. 

Like everything else in my life, I know I need to work on this.  

I have found that if I interact in a curious way with the real-time feeling of social awkwardness, I can learn fresh information.

I have learnt that it is the quality of interaction with my feeling, one coming from a position of not-knowing and wanting to discover more, that allows the feeling to change.

I know after talking to others that these kinds of internal interactions are crucial to everyone of us laboring with social awkwardness and self-consciousness because these feelings happen in the context of human interactions, and I believe that the very first of these human interactions is with ourselves.

 When I am able to be open and honest with myself fully (which is a less risky option than being open with others which I really struggle with), I can then regain the capacity to open up with others.

Awkward people like me have an unusual perspective,  I overlook minor social expectations and I cannot navigate routine social situations.  I remember reading something, I believe it was in Time magazine by Simon Baron-Cohen from Oxford University.  Simon found that 'awkward' individuals have an unusually intense focus, which gravitates toward interests governed by rules, such as those of logic or math. 

This is me, my mind focuses intensely on Logic.  In my life, no matter what it is, I have to have a logical reason.  This logic of mine struggles with the mess is social situations.  I see the world differently, I have to exert more effort to master social situations.

Being awkward makes me unique and I like it.