I’m an awkward and anxious person, but I never realized I was that socially awkward and anxious until I got sweaty hands before I met someone new and laughed during a serious situation. To a certain extent everyone is somewhat socially awkward, not one person can fully waltz into any social interaction perfectly. Here are my personal 10 moments of socially anxiety:
1. Uncontrollable Laughter
When someone makes a hilarious jokes, it is basically an instinct and a norm to burst out in laughter. Laughter is meant to stroke that persons ego and at the same time bring joy to yourself for enjoying the moment. However, you enjoy it too much or you don’t know when to stop laughing so you continue laughing to the point where you laugh at your own laugh…. Then someone blurts “it’s not that funny. Calm down” and you just want to die so you continue laughing. The worst part about laughter is when you laugh in a serious situation. You think of something in the past in your head and you just want to laugh. Then you spiffle a laughter in a quiet moment and everyone thinks you're an asshole.
2. Stuttering
Someone asks you an important question during a presentation. You feel the sweat dripping down your back and you want to personally murder the person for having the audacity to ask such a complex question. He couldn’t save it for later? He’s out to get me. He wants me to fail. As you feel the anxiety and distress rising, you go “oh..ye-ye-yeah okay so basically uh you uh” and then bam you just gave it away… you don’t know the question.
3. Awkward Dancing
You don’t mean to embarrass yourself. Heck, that’s the last thing you want to do. But dang that new Taylor Swift song really hit you in the soul, so you kind of start humming and without thinking your hip starts to sway… next thing you know your awkwardly humping the air in the coffee line at 9 am. Keep in mind, you have headphones on, but people around you don’t so let that sink in.
4. Tripping and Falling
Yeah not just the mental tripping, but you physical trip over everything. You see your crush and you want to look smooth right? Wrong. You go “oh hey Bria-” and you crumble onto the floor. Nice going…
5. Accidental Eye contact
You don’t mean to keep making eye contact with that guy across the corner. He’s not even that cute, but why do we keep making eye contact. Does he think I cute? Oh I bet. It’s literally every other minute because you want to see if he is still staring. However, the whole time he’s thinking “Why does she keep looking over at me? Weirdo.
6. RBF
The resting bitch face. The ultimate social repellent that invites glares from other people and girls to hate you for no reason. I’m sorry I was born not smiling! Every time I try to smile it looks like I’m cringing, which immediately makes other people cringe as well.
7. Heavy Breathing
Sometimes you eat too much or you rushed late into a class and you slam into your seat right when the class starts. Next thing you know you feel the sweat start to build up and your lungs slowly collapsing on you. The heavy breathing intensifies and starts to become louder anything else in the room. Someone next to you looks over and you realize how fat you feel at that moment.
8. Bad Timing Compliments
You know how you should never assume someone is pregnant because you are never too sure if they are actually pregnant or just fat… well there are moments like those where you want to be a nice human and compliment someone, but it ends up just being outright rude and awkward. Now you are sitting there wanting to dig yourself a grave to hide in.
9. Soft Farts
So you’re really gassy, but you’re in the car with the man of your dreams, do you a) fart softly and try to smoothly roll down the window with a “omg it’s so stuffy in here” comment or do you b) try to hold it in and then let it accidentally slip? Ding ding ding you choose option b, the socially stupid choice to do, but now you are sitting in the car praying to god he doesn’t notice the awful smell in the car.
10. Confidently the Wrong Lyrics
So you’re in the car with a group of your closest homies and a song that you confidently feel like you know comes on. You go “ohh! That’s my song” and go right into the lyrics. Everyone else listens to you waiting to see if it really is your song. But then your heart drops, oh my god I just know the lyrics. The verse 2 enters and now you just silently drop out of the song and now look like an absolute idiot.
Well guys, these are only 10 moments of socially anxiety, but there are so much more. These are just my personal top tens that I go through almost daily.
