I Find It Difficult To Talk To Acquaintances But Not With Strangers.
Do you feel like you can’t relate to people you know as yourself, but you can relate to strangers? Find out why in the following post.
I have spoken to you at other times about the social skills: but today I am going to talk to you about a somewhat less common difficulty related to the fear of negative evaluation: the difficulty in relating to known people.
In therapy I have heard comments from patients who say that they cannot shower in the gym when they go with a friend while when they go alone they have no problem. They experience a terrible shame that leads them to feel bad if they show their physique in front of their friend, but nevertheless they do not care if strangers see them, and this happens even if they have a good self-concept of their physique.
Something similar happens with nudism or toplessness when your neighbor or a client at your work sees you but you don’t care if the rest of the people on the beach see you. Why do you think this happens? The answer is: fear of evaluation, both positive and negative.
So, in the same way that it can give you shame or fear What they think about your body, you may be ashamed or afraid that they will think well or badly about how you are.
Recently in the community, a girl commented that she is an extroverted person, that it is not difficult for her to interact with strangers and that she usually makes public presentations for work without difficulty, but she gets tremendously nervous when the person in front of her is someone she knows.
Why can you be shy with someone you know and not with someone you don’t know?
When we interact with strangers we usually talk about routine conversations, elevator or waiting room conversations as I say. They are topics that practically follow a script and we all do more or less the same thing or we can even play a role, that is, show ourselves how we want or what we want to appear, it will only be a few minutes and we will no longer interact. The supermarket cashier who is friendly to customers and feels at ease knows that the conversation will be trivial while when she talks to her colleagues the conversation can take on a more private air, in which she has to show something more and therefore the fear of what they think of her, of judging her or simply of showing herself and being known may appear. further.
Many people think that they don’t care what strangers think of him or her, after all they don’t know who those people are and they will probably never meet them again. However, what someone you know and care about thinks about you can make you feel bad.
What happens in these cases?
What happens on many occasions is that you may be afraid that they will get to know you a little more, that they will see your flaws or that you may make an impression on them that you don’t want to make.
What can you do if this happens to you?
Every time you get nervous when interacting with an acquaintance or friend, think, what are you afraid of happening?
If the fear is that he will see something about you that you don’t like, think that we can’t wear a mask and please everyone. We have to be ourselves and that often means that they reject us in the same way that we reject ourselves. There are things we like about people and things we don’t and that will happen with you too. You just have to accept that it has to happen.
If the fear is of showing yourself more and being known more in depth, what do you have to hide? What happens if they know you more? Many times it is thought that the more they know you, the easier it is for them to hurt you. And it is true, but we cannot always go with armor. We have to detect who to trust and who not to, develop that skill, but that will not protect us from possible offenses or disappointments. We also have to accept that this may be a price to pay, but if we don’t show ourselves, we will rarely have an open, sincere and honest relationship.
If the fear is that your flaws will be recognized, what’s wrong with that? We all have flaws and it is normal for them to be seen. If you don’t like them, try to correct them but don’t hide from having them.
Whatever your fear is, the point is that you detect it and try dedramatize it Surely that way you will be able to show yourself as you are and you will not experience those symptoms of anxiety and tension.
