Muddled communication style and self-conciousness

LegacyUser

Hi there, male college student in his mid-20s here. The long of the short of it is: I feel like I articulate or explain things in speech to other people poorly, whether it be something anecdotal, humourous (a joke, for instance), factual, or in asserting myself. It could be what I have to say – in my opinion – gets muddled, isn’t clear, crucial information gets skipped or left out, etc. This stems from significant self-consciousness in social situations. My faulty beliefs (which I believe developed in my childhood) are, ‘I don’t want to screw up explaining this’, or ‘I won’t be able to engage people’, so I tend not to.

I can be in a very personable manner with certain people; I tend to be much more comfortable with people that seem to take interest in me or what I’ve been doing. However I tend to shy away from people that don’t seem to show interest, and I find it difficult to engage these people.

I’d consider myself an introvert: I love spending time alone. But I crave social relationships too, and do enjoy going out with friends regularly, so this feels conflicting. I know there are different interpretations of the word ‘introvert’ – and I don’t see it as necessarily a bad thing. But sometimes I wonder if the ‘introversion’ label is just a cop-out from dealing with these communication issues at hand.

Can anyone relate to this? I feel like the action to take with this issue is to record myself on camera, essentially to have conversations with myself until my mind eventually realises that I can engage and entertain people, and build up confidence in this regard. The very thought of doing this makes me cringe, so perhaps I’m on to something. Hopefully by doing this my self-consciousness in conversations will start to dissipate.

Any advice or comments appreciated. Thanks!

LegacyUser

With those people who don't take an interest: as you get older you realise that some people just aren't interested in listening and when you speak to them, you find it hard to gain their attention as they are either more interested in their

That's not just a "you" thing, it's a "them" thing as well.

I've noticed that as I begin to notice someone losing interest, whether it be in a joke I'm telling, a story I'm recounting etc, that as soon as I notice their behaviour, that I just wrap it up quickly. It's not worth the effort if they aren't going to listen.

You learn which people want to listen and which people don't.

So we gravitate towards those who take an interest in us and what we are saying.

Some people just aren't interested no matter how hard you try so it's rarely worth the effort.

LegacyUser

That's a good point, balooogia. The fact that I take it personally makes me believe that such instances feed in to (or have the potential to feed in to) my faulty beliefs. Again it seems like it's the beliefs themselves that need to be challenged. Thanks for the input.

coconut5

I always remember a girl I know complaining that the lads at work didn't listen to one story she was telling, and one of them replied, 'I say about a hundred things a day that are completely ignored!' And this guy is very sociable, popular, and interesting. He is somebody that I always felt had interesting things to say.
It just really stuck out for me, cos you have these impressions of what people are like or thinking, and sometimes it's not what they are thinking at all!

So I would say try not to take it personally. If you can build your confidence by focusing on building yourself up in some way, whether physically by going running, or mentally by joining a class, and you have another focus, then you will have plenty to talk about and you'll worry about what others think a lot less. I always feel when I am bored and restless and need a focus, that's when I start focusing on small things like that way too much, and then I get the same way - panicked that I'm boring everyone, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.