Courage and Social Interactions

Courage does not mean being fearless, but being able to face your fears. This may sound familiar to you, but for me it didn't mean much until I began to have experiences that backed the idea up.

There are a few mild examples from when I was younger, such as overcoming arachnophobia. First, I stopped being mindlessly afraid and tried to analyse why. I convinced myself that I wasn't really afraid of spiders, I just didn't want to hurt them. Whether this was the real reason or not, the change in my thought pattern did wonders.

Now I'm intrigued by spiders and the information I read about them. When I find one inside, I'll usually try to capture it. I'm still nervous doing this and don't want them to get too close, so I only have about a 70% success rate. But hey, better than calling for my dad to deal it. For the most part, however, growing up I was...well...a wimp. Whenever I was afraid of something, I would figure out every possible way of avoiding the situation.

Again, I want to talk about social situations with strangers, one of my biggest fears. Growing up, if I started talking to someone and I said something really stupid or careless, I would do the only thing I could think of to avoid ever being that embarrassed again; talk as little as possible. As a result, I rarely saw others as sources of light hearted conversation, but instead as potential witnesses to my own idiocy if I didn't carefully construct every statement.

I wasn't aware of my own tactics at the time because I didn't realize the full extent of my fear. After all, I had effectively avoided the situations that caused the fear. My new fear is of not being able to say anything at all when I'm trying to talk with someone. So why didn't I have that second fear before, the one about not being able to communicate? Because social situations with strangers were rare for me. I had managed to avoid most of those to begin with by not having any real interest in initiating contact with new people (unless they made me feel completely safe first).

A few years ago, when I began consciously seeking out new acquaintances, I was at a loss as to why I was still having trouble with conversations. It's because I have to go a level deeper; I stopped avoiding social situations (somewhat), but I haven't stopped censoring myself. It's a very ingrained habit that will take time to change. But I know my next step will be to face my fear of saying something idiotic.

Perhaps the way to do this would be to go ahead and let stupid things slip out every once in a while, and learn not to care so much. I doubt I'll turn into someone who has no filter between my brain and my mouth, but I think it's high time I changed the type of filter.