Should people meet halfway in social interactions?

Yeah, I remember getting high off people a whole lot before middle school. I was the jokester. Then my self-esteem took a big hit.

Oh it's fun. Believe me. Improv? Great way to loosen you up.

You will learn all the skills necessary to feed off other humans! YOU TOO CAN BECOME A SOCIAL VAMPIRE.

^My self esteem was taking hits before middle school. My natural anxiety problems got much worse after a move and puberty set in though. Then we moved again when I was settled in and I was homeschooled for a year in an area where I knew no one. Took my psych teacher three years but he helped get me out of that rut and being the natural jackass that I am.

edited 26th Apr '11 4:37:41 PM by Aondeug

Well, I can improv. I took acting lessons in middle school. Fun times.

I just don't do it much in a non-acty setting.

My socializing problems started sixth grade, when I realized holy shit, people are dicks when they are a little bundle of hormones.

edited 26th Apr '11 4:39:08 PM by MrAHR

We must fix this then...YOU TOO MUST REGALE THE PUBLIC WITH STORIES OF YOUR GREAT FAILURES IN A HUMOROUS FASHION.

^People were much, much nicer to me in middle school than in elementary.

edited 26th Apr '11 4:39:47 PM by Aondeug

This thread left me really confused with those definitions, I don't know where the hell I belong.

I mean after I get too much time alone, I start to feel like I'll shrivel and die if I don't meet someone right away and start going out all the time. But after going out a lot, I feel like disappearing, and shut myself from the outside world for a really long time. And so on, and so forth.

Is it the moon? I'm really glad I'm going to start seeing a shrink next week.

What grades are your middle school, Aon?

6-8.

I was homeschooled for 9. 10-12 I went to normal high school.

Odd. Mine is as well. Must just be circumstantial then.

Of course, I was homeschooled 5th, 1/2 of 6th and 1/2 of 7th, so I probably missed the transition in maturity level.

edited 26th Apr '11 5:13:40 PM by MrAHR

It is indeed. People were fuck faces to me in elementary school, but I was treated well in middle school. I had but one bully and he graduated before me. Before then I had older friends who kept his shit in line. I began to grow paranoid about people then. Well more so. I'd frequently wonder if my friends actually liked me.

My school years were pretty shitty, with 5th-8th grade being particularly bad. I still have trust and self-esteem issues left over from back then.

Sometimes I wonder if the only reason I wasn't bullied at middle school was because there were weaker targets in my class.

Also I find it strange that I befriended everyone that was bullying me at some point in my life. Except in high school, but at that point I had enough willpower to stop them before they did anything.

I have some trust issues because of an "incident" in second grade with my then-best friend, "incident" because while it was a really jerkass thing he did, I overblowed it waaaay out of proportion. Knowing that I overreacted does not change anything.

edited 26th Apr '11 5:31:27 PM by RunoEddie

I was a living god in middle school. Man, that was awesome. All downhill from there. High school was pretty fun and college was ugh. Seems to me that in college people are more self-centered, probably because they assume that all their peers already have their act together in some sense.

I have never reached living god status popularity wise. I have become the life of classes I've been in though. Particularly in high school. English, psych, theatre, and art classes I was one of the big talkative people. I was well liked too which was nice. I got praised for many things...It was wonderful.

Theatre, Humanities, and AP psych were the best for me in this regard. In that last class I was apparently an inspiration to our sophomores...One of the three people who were regularly counted as such. The one kid and I had a sort of rivalry going on with test scores along with our weird semi sempai/kouhai thing going on...

edited 26th Apr '11 5:43:35 PM by Aondeug

"I have never reached living god status popularity wise. I have become the life of classes I've been in though. Particularly in high school. English, psych, theatre, and art classes I was one of the big talkative people. I was well liked too which was nice. I got praised for many things...It was wonderful."

Yeah, you certainly seem very easy to look up too to me.

I do?

Yeah, you seem like a cool big sis to me.

Ah. Huh. Well thank you!

Speaking of improv - it certainly helped me. Except that all my improv skills come from playing charades. On more than one occasion the usual round-robin principles of the Russian rules of charades had been tossed out the window in favour of "Ah, screw it, you guys suck! Let's all take turns giving Noel assignments and guess what he's miming!" I was stumped the first time this happened, but it IS fun when you're doing it in a pub and people from other tables start trying to guess.
"Thank you, thank you oh kind people from three tables over, because these idiots over here couldn't guess Le Parkour even if it sat on their heads!"

edited 26th Apr '11 11:32:46 PM by Noelemahc

*pokes head in*

Improv is indeed awesome. Back when I took Chorus and Voice classes in school, as much as we loved our teacher, we didn't mind whenever she was out. Because we'd always get as a substitute this woman whose name I no longer remember because we always called her the Crazy Theater Lady, and she would let us play Freeze Tag the whole period.

edited 27th Apr '11 12:00:30 AM by Jeysie

Your getting introversion and shyness mixed up, shyness is finding it hard to socialise, introversion is simply not socialising much, and isn't neccisarily cuased by shyness.

I'm sort of introverted I guess, I like being with people but don't talk much unless their idea of small talk is talking about something I have a opinion on or find educational. If I know the person I can manage more 'normal' small talk without being bored out of my mind.

edited 8th May '11 6:55:14 AM by Mysteria

Gonna add my voice to many, and agree improv is great for dealing with excessive introversion.

I personally am fairly introverted. I can be very extroverted for short periods of time, but it takes effort, so I don't usually do it.

I realize this thread is pretty old, but...