Dealing With Social Anxiety and Starting A Conversation

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How do you guys deal with social anxiety? Do you have problems being able to start a conversation or keep a conversation going? I don't have very many friends and I believe that not being able to keep a conversation going has a lot to do with that. How can I manage my social anxiety? I know this is common in individuals with AS.

All I have to say it keep practicing, it gets easier over time.

As Ganondox said, it does get easier with time-- and also practice. As tough as it is and nerve racking, the more you practice the skills the easier they will become. You'll may never be "normal" but you can probably be "normal enough" if you have the courage to continue practicing those skills.

As for starting a conversation, the easiest way is to find a common interest you have with the person and go from there. For example: if you're at school ask the person you're interested in befriending what they think of the homework assignment. If you're at the store and you see someone you're interested in, ask them for help with an item they're looking at ("Should I get brand A or B? I never buy this stuff, what's your suggestion, since you seem to know what you're doing?").

As a strong aspie, I suffered with sa until my thirties.
It was a serious problem for me and limiter in my life,
i can't imagine how or if my life would have been different if I did not have sa during the prime of my life.

I stumbled upon the social anxiety website social anxiety support forums by chance
One of the common self treatments is cognitive behavior therapy,
I downloaded a bunch of audio files called Overcoming social anxiety
They definitely worked for me.

My daily life changed and I was able to do things like join a gym etc and not be overwhelmed in what would have been a very hostile environment for someone with sa.

Later on I stumbled onto a newspaper column which described aspergers
Unfortunately so far I have not found any self help cures.

People love to say it gets better, but sometimes it doesn't. It can get worse in some cases as well.
I still struggle with starting and maintaining conversations. I always feel like the topic just kind of dies off and centers around my awkwardness. Either that, or I simply don't know what to talk about in the first place.

I wish that I was able to find someone who didn't intimidate me in a social situation. Most people do, as they are too loud and upbeat. In comparison, I am quiet and sometimes mumble.

Often I have trouble starting conversations with my friend largely because of anxiety and since he is socially awkward too we sometimes go an hour in the same room without saying a word to each other.

I sometimes am too anxious to start a conversation with family members, although fortunately that doesn't happen too often.

Today I had to give a speech in my debate class and even though it was just in front of the class I was in fight-or-flight for 10 minutes before I had to speak and it didn't stop until a few minutes after I had finished (and horribly messed up) speaking. I was even shaking a bit, it was pretty bad.

So yeah, I have pretty bad social anxiety. I don't really know how to deal with it very well though. The best I can manage is to logically try to analyze my fears and force myself to do what I am worried about anyway, although often my fears of completely messing everything up and making a fool out of myself are actually realized so that doesn't help a lot in most cases. Best I can figure the next thing I need to do is learn how to not make a fool out of myself in social situations so my fears are actually irrational ones, then my fears will become more irrational and will be easier to get rid of. That's the idea anyway.

I'll talk to you if you want, though I'll warn you if you want to do anything face-to-face I'd probably be too loud and upbeat.



Here is one secret I learned as an actor: if you have bad social anxiety, you can channel it into a REALLY GOOD performance, as if you just push yourself through, the symptoms of anxiety make it look like you REALLY CARE about what you are saying.

That sounds like some good advice and I will keep that in mind, although I also find it harder to do any form of language processing or recollection under pressure and sometimes I just draw a blank no matter how well prepared I am. The only way I have found to get around that is if I am reading a text version of my speech while giving it. That wasn't allowed in the speech I did yesterday though, it had to be memorized. There was even about 15-20 seconds in the middle of the speech where I stood there trying to remember what I had to say next because although I could recite it 5 minutes before just fine I couldn't remember what came next in that moment.

Have you tried practicing giving the speech before hand to say family or something? That could help with memorization. Also, instead of just memorizing the speech word for word, break it down into section, right a single sentence summarizing each section, and then try remembering the sections.

I don't regularly practice in front of family, although I did rehearse it in my mind a lot. That is a good idea.

The problem with the latter suggestion is that as I said before by ability to process language gets worse under pressure. Even when I'm not under pressure it takes me longer then usual to come up with what to say, I have to use delayed echolalia and scripting to sound normal and even then I sometimes have to make pauses to think about what to say. Under pressure it gets much worse so I have to either take regular pauses or fail at making proper English sentences, I am understandable but I don't sound very intelligent at all. It's super annoying.