Withdrawal.

When I was a teenager I was very shy.  I think this was mostly because I went to an all-boy's school and started puberty late.  I essentially lagged behind in becoming interested in music, fashion, coolness, sex, and therefore didn't fit in with cool people.  The other factor was that I lived in the countryside with no-one of my age that I knew within three miles.  There is also the English culture, which raises embarrassment to the most powerful social force.  The English love their eccentrics, those who manage to be brilliant and strange, but if you don't make it to brilliant then all of society will laugh at you.

Shyness is simply this fear of public humiliation.  All of us make predictions, models of the future, all the time.  These models range enormously, from predicting where the ground will be under our feet to what it will feel like to go on vacation next year.  They happen consciously and unconsciously, the vast majority unconsciously.  Shyness is what happens when your predictive models come up with humiliation as the most likely outcome.  If you think saying something will make you look like a fool you will become terrified of saying things, and will try not to do so.  If you think you will be rejected you will try not to meet people.  Of course, being shy is an excellent way of being rejected and making a fool of yourself.

When I first came to the USA if anyone wanted to talk to me, if the phone rang, if I thought someone was going to ask me a question, my heart rate rose, I started to sweat, adrenaline poured into my body.  I became frightened.  However, as a freshman with an English accent people wanted to meet me and talk to me as I was different and interesting based purely on being English.  Most 18 year old Americans have never met an Englishman.  As an aside, my accent was often called a "British accent" which is marvelously evocative of the ignorance many US people have about foreign parts.  The difference between a Glaswegian and a Cockney accent is greater than between any two accents in the USA.  Every American can understand any other American's speech, almost nobody can understand a Glaswegian, and a full-on Cockney isn't far behind.  The decline of the regional accent in the UK is a sad thing.

Anyway, as a freshman in college I would meet many people everyday.  This wouldn't be one person a day, but many people.  The numbers were enough that most days someone would say, "Hi' to me on the street, remember my name and start a conversation but I would have no idea who they were.  When you meet one Englishman a month you remember him.  When you meet 100 Americans a month you will not remember most of them.  After a very short time I realized that all of these people were interested in the same things, asking the same questions, finding the answers interesting, and trusting me implicitly to have the right answers.  This is about the most perfect way possible to develop confidence in meeting new people, have predictable conversations in which you will be interesting and have authority.  In psychological terms this is called flooding, and is an acknowledged treatment for some phobias.

As a result of this period I became a very confident person, very outgoing, very socially active.  I made friends easily, comfortably talked to strangers, and looked forward to new situations and new people.  This has been generally the case ever since.  That is until possibly now.

My social interactions in Texas have been generally poor.  Or at least any interaction that goes into any depth.  Superficially there is no problem.  I can smile at people in a store, have a brief exchange in a bar, or make small talk about sport.  However, as soon as the topic wanders away from these social niceties there becomes trouble.  I disagree with most people around here on everything from politics to religion, to art, to environment (both generally and the suburbs).  My exercise is different, my clothes are different, my education is different, my conversation style is different, how I think is different.  If there is one thing I have learned about Texas (or at least the bits I have encountered) it is that difference is not liked.

My other social interactions outside of the home have been on the internet.  The internet is particularly disposed to expressing opinions, and particularly disposed to people being displeased, upset and angry.  I can't remember the last time I was called a liar or dishonest in real life, but it happens regularly on-line.

This means that for the last couple of years my environment has taught me that social interactions are probably going to go badly.  I have been taught that I can either fake it, or be disliked.  I am bad at faking it, or at least I really, really dislike it.  Perhaps that is what makes me a "genuine person.  The result is the opposite process that happened to me my freshman year of college.  I am becoming more withdrawn, nervous at the prospect of meeting people, less interested in social interaction.  When I do meet people I am becoming less animated, less involved, less confident.

I can feel this process happening even with this blog.  This blog is supposed to be me expressing myself freely.  It feels like this has annoyed people that I know to the point that they don't wish to comment or even read it, hence my request for people saying "Hi" in the last post.  This impression might well be false.  I was just shocked to discover that this blog has had nearly 700 views this month.  I think that actually it is my feelings about social interactions that color this impression more than the actual situation.

I do not like this.  I think my greatest chance of changing this state is to move to a more supportive environment, a place populated by "my tribe."  Until then I should attempt to tell myself stories about my being an interesting, kind, empathic, intelligent person.  A person that interesting, kind, empathic, intelligent people would like to meet.  One thing Texas has taught me, it feels better to be confident and wrong than to be dispirited and right.