Social Awkwardness and Childhood Trauma - 6 Tips

have you ever found yourself overt talking in a social situation where you kind of took the thing over and then afterward when you leave you have this intense Shame about kind of taking it over have you ever blurted things out where you had no idea where they came from and you kind of shocked yourself and maybe shocked the person across from you or have you over shared really intimate details about yourself without gauging who the person is or their newness to you I've done all these things and I think that the awkwardness that comes from childhood trauma socially isn't good for us it actually takes away from how we want to be in the world how we want to be with other people and also awkwardness is just such a human thing it's not always such a bad thing but feeling like we're not in control of ourselves doesn't feel good at all isn't a good thing so I'm going to talk about how we actually become socially awkward because of our childhood trauma and offer what to do and instead and just FYI if you're neurode Divergent some of these may not apply to you just give you a heads up and through these examples let's think about these social situations in a hypothetical let's call it like you're at a new job and people are new to you and you're new there or you're going to a party and you know like everyone is sort of you might know a couple people but most of the people are new to you and in those situations childhood trauma survivors tend to feel really really anxious our inner child pops up and because of those things because of our history we can become a little bit social awkward in those situations so and this video is focused on you the people in this hypothetical um they're not perpetrators they're nice they're neutral they're chill so we're really focusing on what we bring into these situations and this video is to focus on you not so much them these people aren't perpetrators so let's get into it so number one is overly reading and predicting our inner child or trauma brain if you like usually projects and misreads and other person's affect their emotions their body language due to some of our own shame and due to our own hypervigilance and we can overly look for things like them being disinterested or disgusted with us when we meet somebody for the first time in our it's like our inner child quickly decides they hate us and they looked away they don't care about what we're saying they changed the subject or quickly went back to their computer or whatever this decision that we make can make us react it can make us withdraw or feel highly negative or try to chase them a little bit we can feel highly negative about ourselves when the situation doesn't exactly call for that and a prevalent factor in over reading is predicting a specific reaction in the other person and looking for that and often wrongfully looking for that like maybe they're in a time crunch maybe they're not super extroverted maybe they just had to fight with their partner over text maybe they're awkward as well and overly reading I think usually comes from us as children having to watch out for how the adults treat us and unfortunately we get stuck into that and if you're looking for reasons in people's affect you'll often find them unless the person is super enthusiastic about you and brings really confirming energy in which might lead to other triggers to be honest but it's unrealistic to seek that kind of big energy from people but a lot of our inner children kind of want that from people here's what to do instead of overly reading and predicting number one is be mindful that your inner child is looking for evidence to confirm that people don't like them maybe some do some journaling about that maybe our inner children anticipate reactions from people and it becomes self-fulfilling are there any patterns there that you can Journal about what are you looking for actually um are you looking for the disinterest or the disgust create a list in what triggers you about people's affect maybe their low energy maybe their indifference not fully acknowledging of you this might tell you that the person isn't your kind of person but it doesn't have to be about you not being likable the second thing of what to do instead is from your inner adult not the inner child which is like our prefrontal cortex this takes time to build up as we do more healing work is check your own agenda what do you specifically expect expecting from people not so much what you're looking for but what kind of reactions are you expecting we're often looking for big confirming energy which might be unrealistic and that big energy that I kind of mentioned this usually leads us to go like what's their problem kind of a thing that expectation and number three is from your inner adult again practice in your mind how it might not be about you maybe they're busy maybe they're preoccupied maybe they're stressed maybe they're not a very social person so there's that and number two in how we can become social awkward is what I'm calling Secrets running in the background Secrets can unconsciously run in our background for childhood trauma Sur virs and they can cause anxiety and shame which we might not be fully aware of or might not be fully aware of how those things make us behave a deeply shaming part of our abuse history from our family of origin can unconsciously be in the room when we're being social with others um examples of that kind of abuse can range from everything from being sexually abused to being raised and sub substance abuse raised in sort of chaos and our inner child can unconsciously assume that everyone knows that there is something off about us or dirty about us or something about ourselves and we can become awkward in that assumption we can be we might look sketchy because we kind of feel sketchy what to do instead of this one so do some inner child reparenting or journaling about something called mental boundaries we can we can believe that people can see right through us and that we're porous but that's totally not true our inner child needs some reparenting help about understanding that they have autonomy that they have privacy people can't read their thoughts I know that sounds goofy but that's like an unconscious shame thing that we have going on the second one of what to do instead here is something called practice separating your goodness from your story if you grew up in in a shameful chaotic home for example which is something you wouldn't have chosen if you had given the choice but you can practice going into social things as just you not what happened to you and the third thing about what we can do instead is if we process the trauma secrets with safe people like a therapist or a safe fellow child a trauma Survivor those Secrets won't feel so big they won't feel so charged and that charge comes from you're the only person aware of those things and there's a lot to carrying around that these don't have to be running in the background and making us socially awkward uh or get into social awkward situations and the third way we can become socially awkward and incidentally I'm not judging anyone for that done these so many times myself we would have not have chosen these things they just are they're they're just normal symptoms Okay the third one is overt talking uh due to anxiety I think dissociation and shame childhood trauma survivors may not have as much control over reciprocal conversations as they would like we can be ke up about interacting bringing some frenetic energy into our interactions and unintentional kind of dominate conversations um and then what's worse is feel bad about them like I mentioned earlier possible reasons range from our inner child feeling anxious about keeping a person's interest uh to trying to present ourselves in a certain way due to shame such as trying to appear as normal as possible I just remember I was doing that so much early on especially in high school early 20s um as trying to appear normal as possible and creating overt talking within that which often results in not feeling good about ourselves after with the interaction and it's like trying to overly prove something due to having some impostor syndrome here's what to do instead start to do some journaling and start to figure out what is your inner child trying to accomplish by overt talking and again no judgment but are they trying to appear something like are they trying to appear normal due to shame um like over talking about your prior jobs to show your functionality when you feel like an impostor really think about might there be a trauma based agenda underneath all that the second thing of what you can do instead is set yourself up before going into these situations to be more Mindful and practice pausing really practice asking questions of other people to prevent yourself from overt talking like in the job thing when I know that this stuff seems fake but how long have you been here and what did you do before instead of taking the whole conversation over the third thing of what you can do instead is try practicing active listening where we are thinking about what the person is saying more than than crafting a response in our head this is a good way to really slow things down and prevent ourselves from overt talking and include the person more in some reciprocity in the conversation and the fourth way we can become socially awkward is assuming the person knows and it's it's kind of funny here but maybe that's not a good example maybe a lot of people know what Mordor is but unlike Secrets this one is about Not Giving enough context to what our thoughts are and assuming the person is on the same page with us this one is tricky and deep assuming they know is when we struggle to give background context we assume the person is just like us which I know is Goofy and our inner child can assume we are on the same page with others or assume deeper connections that aren't actually there due to those assumptions we can often confuse the other person and create some awkwardness in the situation such as like they don't know the book the movie or the thing that you're referencing especially if it's really super specific they don't have enough background on what you're discussing enough to respond to you and they might just be blinking they weren't there at the event that you're referencing or or to form an opinion about it or they don't get like mental health recovery stuff when you're all about it and you're assuming that they are on the same page assuming the other person knows can actually be a developmental issue left over from childhood a symptom of childhood trauma is being stuck in some developmental stages in assuming the other person knows is kind of one of them it's like a late stage toddler or a prek child if any of you are parents out there they might assume that you know exactly what happened at daycare with the thing and they just jump into that conversation so again I'm not trying to be judgmental here as so many of us are kind of stuck in that it's like almost a symptom of not being socialized or not being parented or not having a it's like almost like an attachment issue really when you think about it here's what to do instead of assuming the person knows a good trick is to actually be real with them and say upfront that you're trying to get better at being more concise and giving more context the second thing you can do is start a practice of asking if the person knows about the thing before saying oh it's just like episode 147 of Star Trek and leaving it at that I know that that sounds silly but that's what I mean in those situations and the third thing you can do is start to do some journaling with the inner child about how people are different from each other they're separate we all have our own internal world going on but I think our inner child is looking for connections that we would have with a parent in those early years so this is kind of a grief oriented Journal prom to discuss how people are actually kind of different and to also talk about there was an absence of that connection now moving on to number five and the ways we become socially awkward is oversharing I know you're probably would identify with this one while similar to over talking oversharing is really about the content of what we're sharing with the other person oversharing is like a social boundary issue where we usually give too many intimate details about our lives or trauma in new relationships such as with a new co-worker or a new job or even sort of strangers or even on a first date and unconsciously we can put pressure on the relationship and newness by inserting too many intimate details too soon I think that this mostly comes from mostly comes up in dating and seeking out a partner I find is you know usually or or seeking out a friend um a childhood trauma Survivor usually struggles with deficits in being seen being heard telling the truth and need like-minded connections most of us are kind of malnourished for that connection so it's not always bad you know but when we overshare our inner child runs us on the hope that the other person can also somewhat rescue us from that disconnection and loneliness that we feel at Baseline here's what to do instead journal with your inner child about why they might want people to know really big things about them upfront and quickly are they seeking like an immediate connection or closeness without a process you might not aware of a big belief running you you're oversharing like almost like wanting the person to either take it or leave it and just you know so you you prevent getting kind of hurt that could be another way we do it the second thing of what you can start doing instead is start tracking about the consequences to oversharing when was the last time you did it is there a pattern there and what could have been done instead how did you feel after could you have slown things down and recognized the newness of the relationships we often you know two people can do this at the same time overshare together which sabotages kind of like safety the third thing you can do is to practice keeping yourself safe by starting to have a process of getting to know people and slowing things down and determining if you actually can share with them if they're safe um that gives us more power that we have some choice and as a side note there's a video idea that I have on my list about what not to overshare when dating um and how to slow things down to have more of a successful relationship or at least kind of keep yourself safe without speeding things up and kind of sealing deals and lastly number six of how we can become socially awkward is blurting things out like I mentioned in the beginning blurting things out is exactly as it sounds where you're in a conversation and it's like a big slip up comes out of nowhere yeah I love that episode so my father never loved me or yeah vacations are nice but you know assaults happen more on vacation and you you can become intense so you can kind of freak the other person out and freak yourself out in the process the sad part about blurred out is um we can look at them as simply as the the truth that about our trauma that our inner child is sitting on and it just pops up at the wrong time as childhood trauma survivors we're sitting on so much and we need good treatment and we need Community to get those things addressed and we can view blur outs as our inner child just simply trying to tell the truth or that it's that's what's on their unconscious mind a lot and that's where that stuff kind of pops up I believe here's what to do instead try not to bring your inner child with you into new situations like a new job or a party because the nervousness really fuels this this blurt out thing the second thing you can do is like with Secrets find some fellow survivors or if you can find a good therapist or a group to have someone you know safe in your life and start sharing or have a place to put it instead of It kind of taking over or blurting out with you when you're not prepared and the third thing you can do is check how you're actually feeling before you go into new social situations if you're not feeling good if you're feeling tired if you're feeling triggered about something else to be mindful of that as almost like kind of like a danger zone that you might blurt things out or over talk or whatever so just that mindfulness to know about how you're actually doing it's almost like if you were in early sobriety as an alcoholic that you're having a bad day to be aware of that instead of just being on finding yourself you know at a bar or something like that I know that that's kind of a wacky analogy so some final thoughts humans are awkward um we just are if you've ever gone to the airport and bought yourself a cup of coffee and the person's like have a good trip and you're like you too and but they they work at the airport we're just awkward beings but the awkwardness doesn't have to have so much power over us but for childhood trauma survivors where things get really amped up to 11 that awkwardness can really make us go into a shame place so be gentle with yourself um like with the awkwardness of seeing like say a cooworker at a a supermarket and you wave at them but they don't see you and then everyone around you Witnesses you fail in connecting with them but when we struggle with unresolved childhood trauma like say being the scapegoat or being severely neglected or it never being okay that you're just you were a shy kid and you're a shy person there's nothing wrong with that this stuff really like in social situations can really get amped up um and using the recommendations earlier the what to do instead can really help with those things um lastly if we can know about these things ahead of time we can be more chill in the moment so I hope that this video was helpful to you I would love to hear from you in the comments about how this stuff comes up for you any questions that you have about those suggestions and if you're looking for more resources on childhood trauma recovery you can just follow this bubble up here and as always may you be filled with loving kindness may you be well may you be peaceful entities and may you be joyous and I will see you next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: Patrick Teahan

Views: 117,960

Keywords: psychology, health and wellness, childhood, family, ptsd, childhood trauma, emotional abuse, abusive parents, childhood ptsd, narcissistic mother, narcissistic father, narcissistic parents, repressed memories, emotionally abusive parents, abuse

Id: KnhETbR80lo

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2024