THE CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL AWKWARDNESS
So let's get started on shyness, social anxiety and the problems you face as someone who has a hard time with social awkwardness! Maybe you find it extremely difficult to work up the courage to talk to people. Maybe you are confused about social norms and the unwritten, unspoken rules of social behaviour. Maybe you are shy because, deep down, you feel inferior and unworthy of being in the company of others. Perhaps you just missed out on the socialization process that often happens in your teen years and want to catch up. There are lots of different reasons to be shy, anxious and awkward in social situations.
I am no different in that respect. Despite being a Certified Life Coach and having a good understanding of Personal Development, plus having studied Counselling, Coaching, Mentoring and Spiritual Care at degree level, I still struggle mightily every day with social awkwardness.
You might think that a Life Coach ought to "have it made" by now and be totally free of these issues. However, that is not the case. A Life Coach can be fully committed to helping others with their lives and have an excellent understanding of what needs to be done, yet still struggle with actually getting out there and doing it. Indeed, it is that acute awareness of the struggle that makes the Life Coach able to understand the client, empathize and provide appropriate solutions.
So let me brief you on my situation at the moment: I am living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I'm British, 45 years old, married, with one son, aged 13. During the day, I work as a teacher at an English Center run by a national university. However, I struggle with social issues all the time.
At birth, I was normal but when I was 3 days old, I developed epilepsy. Until the age of 6, I was physically, emotionally and mentally abused by my father. I was also teased and bullied at school until I was 16. At the age of 11, I lost all my male friends for a reason I couldn't fully understand either then or now. It seemed like I didn't fit in for whatever reason. For the next 3 years I felt isolated and alone, even though I was living a normal life at home with my family. At the age of 14, I began having sexual feelings but it seemed at first that I was gay, since my mind filled with images of hunky guys with six-pack abs. This went on for 4 months before an interest in women started to kick in. 2 months of thinking I was bisexual went by before the images of men disappeared. Since then, I have considered myself straight.
With no boys to return to, I became interested in girls and so attempted to become friends with them. Nothing much happened until I was 19, when I kissed my first woman. She turned out to be a lesbian (how? Long story - I'll have to tell it to you maybe another time!)
By this time, I was suffering from stress and would regularly feel nervous and anxious, dropping things and having a hard time controlling my emotions.
Then I discovered I was good at massage. In particular, although I was happy to massage anyone, I found that touching women was a great way to remove the stress. I wasn't interested in doing anything sexy. If I had been, I would have been kicked out by the client, so it was important to be professional. I felt a lot better and my anxiety improved.
Later I travelled to Vietnam and got my first girlfriend, who is now my wife. Here in Vietnam, massage has something of a sexy image, so my wife asked me to give up that job when we got married. I thought that was reasonable, so I did. I then became a teacher and starting teaching English at a high school.
A combination of a language barrier and taking care of a young baby meant that I chose to stay at home. I didn't go out with other foreign teachers, feeling that this wasn't fair on my wife. I didn't want to leave her at home alone, while I went out socializing with a bunch of casual work colleagues.
In this situation, the only people who were able to speak my language well enough were the teens and students I taught. So I began to ask them questions about puzzling behaviour that my wife sometimes did on a socio-cultural level. They helped me out a great deal and after a while, they told me about their problems, too.
Fast forward 10 years and my students now indulge in a range of activities their parents wouldn't approve of. Having spent all this time being friends, I find it relatively easy to accept the changes but this puts me into conflict with other teachers, who never bothered to make friends with any of the students. They began to criticize my choices, mainly because they had not spent enough time to understand teen issues and the generation gap that exists between parents and teens in Vietnam today.
Meanwhile, my wife contracted lung cancer in 2012. At that time, she declared that she was bored in our marriage. I realized that, despite being a good guy and staying a virgin until my wedding day, I had not really learned how to look after her and make her happy in our shared life together.
In the last 2 years, I have begun trying to socialize with adults and have not done too well so far. I now realize that I have practically no understanding of how adults think, having spent most of my career hanging out with teens. In particular, I can identify some reasons why -
1/ As a teenager, while everyone else was learning social skills, I was isolated
2/ When every other teenager had a boyfriend or girlfriend, I was friendzoned
3/ In their early twenties, they were having sexual relationships with each other, while I was hanging out with lesbians
4/ When they were becoming proficient at adult conversations, I was silently massaging women - learning lots about women but not developing conversational skills
5/ After I got married, they were hanging out in bars and restaurants, while I was at home with my wife and son
6/ While they could speak English to each other in their free time, I could only speak with my teens at work
7/ Now, when I want to hold conversations, they know how to do that and I don't
How about you? Can you relate? Do you feel like you missed out somewhere? Sometimes I think I made a mistake but I don't want to feel too bad about what has happened in my life - I'm proud of my wife and son and I am glad I have a family that supports me and I am grateful for everything in my life. However, that doesn't mean that I shouldn't improve and get to where I need to be to be able to have the marriage with my wife I want and the lifestyle that I want to achieve. Let's hope I can do that!
I am no different in that respect. Despite being a Certified Life Coach and having a good understanding of Personal Development, plus having studied Counselling, Coaching, Mentoring and Spiritual Care at degree level, I still struggle mightily every day with social awkwardness.
You might think that a Life Coach ought to "have it made" by now and be totally free of these issues. However, that is not the case. A Life Coach can be fully committed to helping others with their lives and have an excellent understanding of what needs to be done, yet still struggle with actually getting out there and doing it. Indeed, it is that acute awareness of the struggle that makes the Life Coach able to understand the client, empathize and provide appropriate solutions.
So let me brief you on my situation at the moment: I am living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I'm British, 45 years old, married, with one son, aged 13. During the day, I work as a teacher at an English Center run by a national university. However, I struggle with social issues all the time.
At birth, I was normal but when I was 3 days old, I developed epilepsy. Until the age of 6, I was physically, emotionally and mentally abused by my father. I was also teased and bullied at school until I was 16. At the age of 11, I lost all my male friends for a reason I couldn't fully understand either then or now. It seemed like I didn't fit in for whatever reason. For the next 3 years I felt isolated and alone, even though I was living a normal life at home with my family. At the age of 14, I began having sexual feelings but it seemed at first that I was gay, since my mind filled with images of hunky guys with six-pack abs. This went on for 4 months before an interest in women started to kick in. 2 months of thinking I was bisexual went by before the images of men disappeared. Since then, I have considered myself straight.
With no boys to return to, I became interested in girls and so attempted to become friends with them. Nothing much happened until I was 19, when I kissed my first woman. She turned out to be a lesbian (how? Long story - I'll have to tell it to you maybe another time!)
By this time, I was suffering from stress and would regularly feel nervous and anxious, dropping things and having a hard time controlling my emotions.
Then I discovered I was good at massage. In particular, although I was happy to massage anyone, I found that touching women was a great way to remove the stress. I wasn't interested in doing anything sexy. If I had been, I would have been kicked out by the client, so it was important to be professional. I felt a lot better and my anxiety improved.
Later I travelled to Vietnam and got my first girlfriend, who is now my wife. Here in Vietnam, massage has something of a sexy image, so my wife asked me to give up that job when we got married. I thought that was reasonable, so I did. I then became a teacher and starting teaching English at a high school.
A combination of a language barrier and taking care of a young baby meant that I chose to stay at home. I didn't go out with other foreign teachers, feeling that this wasn't fair on my wife. I didn't want to leave her at home alone, while I went out socializing with a bunch of casual work colleagues.
In this situation, the only people who were able to speak my language well enough were the teens and students I taught. So I began to ask them questions about puzzling behaviour that my wife sometimes did on a socio-cultural level. They helped me out a great deal and after a while, they told me about their problems, too.
Fast forward 10 years and my students now indulge in a range of activities their parents wouldn't approve of. Having spent all this time being friends, I find it relatively easy to accept the changes but this puts me into conflict with other teachers, who never bothered to make friends with any of the students. They began to criticize my choices, mainly because they had not spent enough time to understand teen issues and the generation gap that exists between parents and teens in Vietnam today.
Meanwhile, my wife contracted lung cancer in 2012. At that time, she declared that she was bored in our marriage. I realized that, despite being a good guy and staying a virgin until my wedding day, I had not really learned how to look after her and make her happy in our shared life together.
In the last 2 years, I have begun trying to socialize with adults and have not done too well so far. I now realize that I have practically no understanding of how adults think, having spent most of my career hanging out with teens. In particular, I can identify some reasons why -
1/ As a teenager, while everyone else was learning social skills, I was isolated
2/ When every other teenager had a boyfriend or girlfriend, I was friendzoned
3/ In their early twenties, they were having sexual relationships with each other, while I was hanging out with lesbians
4/ When they were becoming proficient at adult conversations, I was silently massaging women - learning lots about women but not developing conversational skills
5/ After I got married, they were hanging out in bars and restaurants, while I was at home with my wife and son
6/ While they could speak English to each other in their free time, I could only speak with my teens at work
7/ Now, when I want to hold conversations, they know how to do that and I don't
How about you? Can you relate? Do you feel like you missed out somewhere? Sometimes I think I made a mistake but I don't want to feel too bad about what has happened in my life - I'm proud of my wife and son and I am glad I have a family that supports me and I am grateful for everything in my life. However, that doesn't mean that I shouldn't improve and get to where I need to be to be able to have the marriage with my wife I want and the lifestyle that I want to achieve. Let's hope I can do that!
WHAT I WOULD TELL MY BULLIES TODAY
I am writing this as a victim and survivor of bullying, which I
suffered from the age of three to 16. I was also physically, verbally
and emotionally abused from birth to six years old.
My father was the worst. His violent temper, constant lies and
evasion of responsibility, his yelling and accusations, were the
beginning. He would pick me up and shake me, hit me and hit me until
I cried. I remember the tense atmosphere. I can recall running up the
stairs, him chasing me. “Nooooo!” I cried, but then his hands
were on me and I felt blow after blow rain down. Another time he
picked me up and threw me across the room. Then there was the time he
threw me against the wall, slamming me against it. He even tried to
throw me out of the window. I was in constant worry of something
setting him off. I wanted to reach out, to emotionally connect but
time and time again, I was ferociously rebuffed. I wanted to cry
because I felt sad but that made him angry, too. So I kept my
feelings to myself. I was terrified of receiving another round of
hitting. When would it come? So I was fearful of sharing with others
in case I got hurt – not just physically but emotionally, too. I
began to dream that this was possible. I dreamed of a life where
everyone surrounded me, everybody loved me and I could be safe. Every
time I got hurt, I would zoom off to this dreamworld to escape. I
thought I must be a terrible person to get this punishment. So I
developed Avoidant Personality Disorder. Daddy did that.
Then there was the school bully at elementary school. He was stocky,
slightly overweight, mean and threatening. One day I had to go
outside the classroom because I left something in my bag in the
cloakroom. While I was there, the bully showed up. Maybe he skipped
his class. He saw me and an opportunity. He came up to me and asked
me what I was doing. After I replied, he told me he thought I was
stupid because of the way I used to pretend to drive a car around the playground (I had a vivid
imagination – you know, thanks to my father – see above). He told
me only crazy people do that and began to rough me up. He pushed and
shoved me around, grabbed my bag and kicked it away. Then he pushed
me down and tussled with my clothes. I was very frightened, since I
was still extremely shy. Then he got up and threatened me with dire
consequences if I told anyone. So I told no one.
There were also the twins from another class at Camborne School
(1984-1988) who saw me in the school library when I was 15. “It's
interrogation time,” they began, ominously, sitting down next to
me. “Are you mature yet? How many times a week do you masturbate?
So, how do you make babies? Have you ever kissed a girl? Are you
still a virgin? Why haven't you lost your virginity yet? Do you want
a girlfriend? If you were in bed with a girl, what would you do
first? Can you ejaculate? Do you have 'wet dreams'?” I'm using all
the polite vocabulary for this article but actually, they used the
slangy, rude stuff, so just use your imagination as to how it really
sounded. This went on for about 45 minutes. After they left, I felt
extremely upset, tearful and with that kind of gasping,
lump-in-your-throat type of feeling. I decided I had had enough. I
kept silent and serious for the rest of the day, then went home. I
finally poured it all out in front of my parents. My third dad
carefully wrote down everything in a notebook and telephoned the
school to make an appointment. He was great. There was a meeting with
the headmaster and some top people and their parents came to speak to
my parents. The twins were punished and there was a dramatic
reduction in the teasing I received from them and others. I was left
alone from then on and my final 6 months at school passed pleasantly
and without incident.
Now, of course, I am a Certified Life Coach, able to use my knowledge
of adverse early life experiences to advise clients on how to get out
of these negative childhood backgrounds and into a new life, where
they feel confident to make the decisions they need to make to
achieve the dream life they've always wanted in a way that is
meaningful for them and brings them peace.
If I met my bullies today, I would offer forgiveness. Not only
because forgiveness is powerful and not just because I think I'm a
“nice guy”. Rather because I now have some of the insight I
lacked at that time.
To my father, who is now dead, I would say: “I know why you did
what you did. Your anger and selfishness and constant lying was the
result of your bossy, self-opinionated, “couldn't
take-no-for-an-answer” mother, who, when you were a kid, badgered
you and bossed you around and, when something bad happened, would
interrogate you mercilessly until you told the truth. Then she would
give you such a hard time about what you did when you told her that
you learned it was easier to tell a lie to keep the peace. You felt
unheard and your own opinion was dismissed in favour of hers. I can
understand how this made you angry, made you feel like you should put
your own needs first and made you tell lies. I can forgive you for
that. However, you chose to take it out on my mum and me and couldn't
handle being married. Instead of turning to the light and searching
for the truth, you chose to exert yourself by being even worse than
your mother in some attempt to make your own mark. In so doing, you
lost Mum and your children and never saw me again for the last 24
years of your life.”
To the elementary school bully, I would say: “I don't know where
you are or what you are doing now but I now understand that you
behaved the way you did probably because you had a bad family
background. You hadn't been taught how to share uncomfortable and
negative feelings and saw in me everything you hated – the
weakness, shyness and insecurity that you yourself were trying to
cover up. Is that right?”
To the twins, I would say: “You shouldn't have done what you did. I
know it must have been frustrating to see me living in a dreamworld,
talking to imaginary people and being shy and awkward and saying
silly things. You couldn't understand what I was doing and I couldn't
explain it either. I can forgive you for getting impatient with me.
However, you chose to treat me like an idiot and assumed a negative
cause and the questions you asked me were designed to make me feel
small and stupid. I hope the punishment you received will make you
think twice before you treat anyone like that again in the future.”
I would then invite all four of them to learn what I have learned and
embrace the life and light that I have found and work with them as
their Life Coach to achieve their dreams, confident that, in my
experiencing them at their worst, they will be inspired by their
former victim to uncover their deepest insecurities and find the
means to leverage that into a life that's something better.
Here's something to inspire you -
LEVERAGING YOUR PAST EXPERIENCES
So you were badly treated when you were a kid and now that's overshadowing your life and affecting the present and future of your existence.
Well, I want you to know that your bad treatment doesn't make YOU bad, it makes THEM bad - the people who treated you badly. I covered this in more detail in the blog post immediately before this one - "Believing in Yourself" - so go ahead and read that first to get the background because this article kind of follows on from that.
O.K., so now you're back! Now that you know that thinking there must be something wrong with you to be treated that way is a false belief that serves no useful purpose, what are you going to do with the past experiences you have had? Are they always going to be something you have to drag around with you through your life, like an unwanted piece of baggage?
That's what I thought for many years. My father's treatment of me when I was a kid cast a huge shadow over my life and I wondered whether I would have to carry it for the rest of my life.
However, when I hit 40, my life was transformed when I realized my experiences could help me to understand and assist my high school students with their personal problems and self-esteem issues. I was able to understand their feelings much better than any other teacher. Now this understanding is extremely valuable, and it helps my life and helps my students. Writing this article and giving out advice like this to others are additional ways to help them and to reach out to people like YOU. So I suppose I should say, "Thanks, Dad, for beating me up when I was a kid - now I can make the world a better place."
If all this seems a little far-fetched to you, well, it isn't. This transformation has happened to me, and I am a very average and ordinary person. It can happen to you, too!
An important consideration in building your dream life is that it should incorporate many, if not all, the aspects of your life - both good and bad. Some people try to create a dream life in an attempt to run away from the past and build a better life for the future. However, I have to tell you that any realistic plan to create a truly meaningful dream life that will make you happy must incorporate the negative things you have experienced, since it is the healing and transformation of these things in life that brings happiness and peace. So now in my life, what I thought was worthless garbage has turned out to be one of the most important things - "That which the builders thought was worthless has become the capstone", as the good book says. People say, "one man's trash is another man's treasure", but why can't your trash become your treasure, too?
So don't forget your past experiences, good or bad, in your plans to build the life of your dreams. Instead of running away from them, start thinking about trying to incorporate them into your vision. I think you will find that this will bring greater meaning and fulfillment into your life, and give you the peace and contentment that you seek.
LIFE IS NOT AN ACCIDENT
It is not good for you to believe that your life just happened by chance; that your life just took place at this time and in this place for no purpose; that you are just an accident of D.N.A. that only came together because of the X or Y chromosomes of your parents; that this life, on this planet, has no meaning, and that "stuff" just happens and everything is a coincidence. What I don't like about this attitude is the way it subtly suggests that I am nothing; that my life is unimportant and that whatever I do has little impact on the world. It is the small-mindedness of other people and their lack of love for neighbour that allows this idea to pervade our culture.
It is a matter of faith to me, as a Roman Catholic, that I believe that, from all eternity, God willed that I live at this time, in this place, and that I was put on this earth for a purpose. In this faith, I gain much meaningfulness concerning the ultimate purpose of my life.
However, you don't have to be religious to believe this. Many people who profess no religious faith at all still believe in a personal philosophy that has meaning for them, and part of this philosophy of life is the fact that they believe that their lives have a reason for their existence and that they were put on this earth for a purpose.
I invite you to entertain this vision in your quest towards personal excellence and self-mastery. It is, I believe, an absolute essential if you want to live the life of your dreams, since it is the mainstay of that life, the foundation of your vision. Before you can start working towards your dream life, you must first have the understanding that there is a point in having a dream. If you don't believe life has a meaning, then why bother having a dream for it?
Some people might argue that we make a dream because it creates meaning; it brings purpose into an otherwise meaningless life. However, I don't agree - we should start by believing that our life has a purpose - we just don't know what it is yet, rather than believe it has no purpose, so we have to create one. If you believe that your life has no purpose, then you are starting your dream life from a hole to begin with, plus it reveals a "lack mentality", which is one of the worst things for personal development.
So believe that your life has a purpose! If that's hard for you, then start small and consider all the things you have - your parents, brothers and sisters, friends and other people. Think of the time when you were only 4 years old, lost in the crowd at the fun fair for a short time and you couldn't find your mother - how that nice lady showed you the way to find her and found your mother for you. Start by entertaining the possibility that life has purpose and meaning, then events will start happening and memories will pop out of the woodwork to prove it!
I hope you find your purpose in life and gain all happiness from living it!
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