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Hot Chocolate

Posted 13th October 2014 at 12:32 by indigo777

I recently stayed with my friend for several days again. It’s weird to do new things at my age but still goes to show that anything new can be awkward at first. The new thing involved going into Starbucks for the very first time in my life. When I asked for a hot chocolate they asked for my name which threw me completely and I gave them my surname. The girl seemed bewildered by my reply and wrote Tim. Well at least the first letter was correct. If I ever go again I might give a false name like Augustus McFlapper. Although I was with my friend I was happy to see three lone people in there as if being alone in a coffee shop was perfectly normal. I suppose it is for others. Of course they were all younger and fiddling on their phones and tablets but they were still alone. I still could not do that and feel comfortable. The thing is it’s not just about exposure. I could that every day for a year and actually get worse not better. That’s because my mind would create the problems. It would assume the assistants in the shop would see me coming and laugh at me. “Here’s that strange lone bloke again, he’s always alone.” Because I am sometimes physically awkward I would imagine they would laugh at that too. The more I went, the more paranoid I would get until I would be a gibbering wreck sweating and looking quite demented. So I would have to pick different coffee places. I even do that now at the supermarket making sure I go to different checkout staff and avoiding the ones I don’t like. I suppose this is classic avoidant behaviour. The problem is of course that exposure to the problem does not always help either unless my SA is cured first thus meaning that doing this sort of thing does not help everyone. It also shows that there is far more going on in the brain and it might take more than just forcing yourself to go out more to become normal. Mind you I imagine lots of supposedly normal people would never go to a coffee shop alone either.
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  1. Old Comment
    Silver's Avatar
    Although I was with my friend I was happy to see three lone people in there as if being alone in a coffee shop was perfectly normal. I suppose it is for others. Of course they were all younger and fiddling on their phones and tablets but they were still alone

    Yep that's me, Im always looking at my phone if I sit in starbucks or costa alone, it somehow makes me feel less alone.
    Posted 14th October 2014 at 15:15 by Silver Silver is offline
  2. Old Comment
    Yes, I think fiddling with something makes people feel more comfortable as if they were still in contact with others or in the office and having a coffee at their desk(only without any annoying work colleagues!) If I went alone I would need something to fiddle with so I didn't become paranoid about being a weird loner.I dont have a smartphone or tablet so I would probably have to take a book. I think I'd still feel like I stood out though.
    Posted 14th October 2014 at 23:06 by indigo777 indigo777 is offline
  3. Old Comment
    I don't like going to a coffee shop near where I live as I would be nervous about making small talk etc with people that know me.
    However when in large towns or cities I don't have any problems being in a coffee shop in my own as it feels anonymous to me. Sometimes I just go in and buy a bottle of water/coke and sit down and look out the window for 30 minutes if I'm feeling tired. Other times I might listen to music on my mp3 player, read a paper or read a book.
    Plus I think going to read a book on your own at a coffee shop is extremely popular. I see a lot of people doing it, it's portrayed in films and hear people say they do it all the time.
    For me in these kind of situations it helps to just look around you. I think if you sat down in the coffee shop and looked up about it for one minute, you would see that everyone is too busy doing there own thing and wouldn't be paying any attention to you. Plus if the coffee shop you were in had three loan people in it, I'm sure they get maybe twenty/thirty people coming on their own to the coffee shop everyday. They probably wouldn't remember anyone unless they went regularly for a really long time and even then they wouldn't pay much attention.
    Though I know it's hard doing something new and I always hate it. Though once I do it once on my own, my opinion usually changes about how I would feel when doing it.
    Posted 15th October 2014 at 01:02 by Ezio Ezio is offline
  4. Old Comment
    Yes, I suppose it seems quite normal and uneventful to most people.Mind you so does having a relationship and children. Its the old problem of thinking if this will help me at all or I am yet again just doing anything because other people say it helps them. I really have difficulty imagining reading a book and enjoying it in the presence of others talking around me.if there were too many people I would feel in the way and if there was no one I would feel too noticeable. Another problem as I have written above is that I often get worse and more and more paranoid rather than relaxing and responding positively to exposure. I think this goes back to work where people really did take the piss out of me and ridicule me for being weird and quiet so I hid. It still sometimes happens now when out walking alone. I also sometimes sweat, blush stutter and become extremely agitated when feeling under pressure so looking normal is a problem.Even ordering a drink would make me rehearse it over and over in my head as I queue and be worried my voice would be weak or incomprehensible. I could probably go to a coffee shop once but the more I went back the more awkward I would become as I imagined rightly or wrongly the same people who would start to notice me as weird and then judge me. Obviously its not just paranoia as the same thing has happened on SAUK with the same clique only stalking to each other.
    Posted 16th October 2014 at 12:58 by indigo777 indigo777 is offline
 

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