Socializing is difficult, especially when you’re naturally kind of awkward. One thing that might help is answering questions with sentences instead of words. If someone asks, “do you live nearby?” Instead of yes/yes, I do, try “yes, I live just around the corner, it’s like a five-minute walk” or “no, I live further up north, so the travel’s a pain as well”. You can even add a question, like “what about you?” and switch up the formulation if it sounds too repetitive after a while: “do you live nearby (as well)?”
I’m someone who’s super awkward with speaking (and pretty anxious about it due to a speech impediment) but lengthening answers from words to sentences (including something small like my opinion) + asking questions has already made conversations flow so much easier. Especially when I talk before I take too long mulling over my words.
Nobody overthinks what you said in a conversation: they’re too busy worrying about their own words and what impression they left on you. Instead of trying to view your end of the conversation through someone else’s eyes, circle it back to yourself: What do you want to say? What do you want them to know? What are your thoughts and have you allowed yourself to share them? Whatever it is you have to say, it’s worth saying out loud.
Adding to this!
There’s a structure to it if it helps: answer + comment + question. For example, if someone asks “how’d your exam go?” it might be your first instinct to say “I’m not sure” or “pretty good I guess”. But it doesn’t sound very exciting or like you’re open to having a conversation. If you apply the structure, it’s way more open and dynamic:
“It went pretty well!” (Answer) “I had a hard time getting into it but ended on a good note.” (Comment) “How’d yours go?” (Question)
Of course conversations aren’t just you saying a sentence and them saying a sentence and you saying a sentence, there’s pauses and reactions. In this structure, you can pause in between your comment and your question to give the other person a chance to respond, so that the conversation looks like:
You: “It went pretty well! I had a hard time getting into it but ended on a good note.”
Them: “Yeah, the first few questions were so confusing, right? I just skipped to number five and did one through four at the end.”
You: “So did I! How’d the rest of your exam go?”
That way, you don’t just have answer + comment + question, but a reaction as well, which can also be asking things like “really?” or “how did that go?” as they’re talking! Reactions can of course also be nonverbal. With that I mean nodding, raising your eyebrows when they say something shocking, smiling when they crack a joke. Also, you’ll be a much better conversation partner if you put your phone away and look their way so they know that they have your full attention.
All these things combined are, of course, a matter of reading the situation, but at the end of the day you’ll find that most of the things you’re so afraid of when socializing with other people aren’t that realistic or aren’t that bad. We’re all kind of stumbling through it.
