Maybe I’m being overly literal in this, but my first reaction to the chart of various fears is that the concept of asking to be friends is hugely underspecified. Like, what is the ask-ee committing to if they agree? ISTM that most of the problems in the chart are solved by replacing “let’s be friends” with “Want to do (friendly activity)?” and iterating until friendship is achieved. This seems to fix problems 1-3 at the least, and maybe 4 as well.
Also, the frame of asking someone to be your friend seems wrong too. If, for example, you enjoy someone’s company, why not just say that? There’s nothing to “reject” in that case, just as the case for invitation to friendly activities. (Because turning down an invitation doesn’t imply rejection of the inviter, so none of the fears or meta-fears really apply.)
Again, maybe I’m viewing this the wrong way, but the combination of this frame with the underspecified request itself seems like it practically invites rejection and all the meta-fears thereof.
From the bits of work I’ve done in the past with people with various social anxieties, a common theme is actually the person wanting not just to not be rejected, but actually wanting to be validated by other people… which does tend to result in over-asking and underconfident framing.
The anxious person is less likely to say something like, “Oh, you’re cool, let’s do X” because in their mind they are trying to get something rather than believing or feeling they have something to offer. The solution usually lies in addressing whatever issue created the need for external validation and/or the sense they have nothing to offer.
Using “wanna be friends?” as an example was me trying to be cutesy and it seems to have been confusing. But I disagree that just saying “I enjoy your company” doesn’t have the same rejection fears dynamic. Statements are often veiled invitations or requests, so if you mean it to be nothing but a statement, it can sometimes be helpfwl to first clarify that it isn’t an invitation/request.
To be clearer, I’m not saying to use any of the things I said as strategies or tactics. I’m more saying that if one is not trying to get anything from people and doesn’t feel themselves unworthy of receiving, then it feels more natural to interact in ways that don’t invite rejection and don’t put other people on the spot.
Statements are often veiled invitations or requests
Exactly my point: IME social anxiety is correlated with a craving for acceptance or interaction that makes the statement a veiled invitation or request, and no amount of verbal disclaimers will fix that. Verbal disclaimers are just stating out loud the self-deception attempts taking place in the speaker’s mind, and the dissonance will be felt by the listener.
If it seems like I’m basically saying, “don’t bother trying to create norms to help social anxiety because nothing will help until you fix the (underlying cause of the) social anxiety”, then yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m saying.
This is confusing but seems valuable to try to understand. Do you mean that if I say
“Would you like to talk for a bit? Please say no if you’d actually prefer doing something else, and I’m cool with that. I only wish to hang out if it’s mutually beneficial. :)”
“Would you like to talk for a bit? Please say no if you’d actually prefer doing something else, and I’m cool with that. I only wish to hang out if it’s mutually beneficial. :)”
I would say that a non-socially-anxious person would never say all of that, maybe not even the “Would you like to talk for a bit?” part. And that many people would respond with suspicion to the doth-protest-too-much-methinks length of your communication. (And other socially anxious or neurotic people may respond by internal agonizing over whether they are correctly evaluating the mutual beneficialness of a conversation, or the specifics of their own preferences!)
Just from an information coding perspective, the length of this utterance communicates, “I consider this to be a complicated circumstance requiring extra care in order not to go badly”—let alone any other nonverbal communication that might be coming along with it. This will put a lot of people on edge, even if they’re not sure why at first.
...I’m somehow stating a self-deception out loud?
The self-deception would be something along the lines of, “If I state things in the right way, I won’t be a bad person or deserve to be rejected if they don’t want to talk with me.” (Or be a bad person who forced someone to explicitly reject me.)
Part of the self-deception here is that introducing yourself by giving other people rules to follow is more than a little rude and entitled, especially as you are asking them to expose their true inner state to you. (I mean, if they’re from a Guess culture you’re metaphorically asking them to show you their underwear… and by asking I mean demanding, because in Guess culture explicit asking equals demanding.)
So, the external part of the self-deception is, “I am making a demand for you to follow my rules for interaction, but you are not allowed to disagree or protest it, because my earnest disclaimer will make it seem like you’re the one who’s being rude or mean if you object or express upset in any way.”
That is, “I am going to act like I’m being generous and magnanimous in catering to whatever your object-level desires may be, while completely ignoring any issues you might have about communicating them to me, because how I appear to myself/others is more important to me than how you’d like to appear to yourself/others in this interaction.” (And so I might also be setting you up for some sort of no-win social framing attack, no matter what you answer.)
I’m not sure if this is clearly communicating what I mean. The part I am tagging “self-deception” in the outward expression is the part where you are creating a social frame where you can be the offended party/in the right, even though what you are doing is actually pretty demanding and potentially quite offensive in the very act of stating such a “disclaimer”.
If you were intentionally doing it as a social attack, then it wouldn’t be self-deceptive. It’s self-deceptive in the part where you’re sincerely believing you’re being polite or considerate or whatever, despite the whole thing being about protecting you from having negative opinions of yourself, and not really about consideration for the other person at all, except insofar as the appearance of doing so lets you feel better.
(Because if you really cared what they thought, vs. how it would reflect on you, you might consider the part where you’re imposing rules and demanding legibility from someone who might not like doing either of those things, or that even if they normally do prefer being legible or having clear rules for an interaction, it doesn’t necessarily mean they want to be suddenly pressured into it by a relative stranger without getting any say of their own about what they’re willing to be legible about, or which rules they’re willing to follow.)
This comment is excellent and I would give it more upvote if I could!
I like this point too:
Just from an information coding perspective, the length of this utterance communicates, “I consider this to be a complicated circumstance requiring extra care in order not to go badly”
I don’t wholeheartedly agree with everything you say here, but I updated the post to point out the risk of putting people “on the spot” .
Maybe I’m being overly literal in this, but my first reaction to the chart of various fears is that the concept of asking to be friends is hugely underspecified. Like, what is the ask-ee committing to if they agree? ISTM that most of the problems in the chart are solved by replacing “let’s be friends” with “Want to do (friendly activity)?” and iterating until friendship is achieved. This seems to fix problems 1-3 at the least, and maybe 4 as well.
Also, the frame of asking someone to be your friend seems wrong too. If, for example, you enjoy someone’s company, why not just say that? There’s nothing to “reject” in that case, just as the case for invitation to friendly activities. (Because turning down an invitation doesn’t imply rejection of the inviter, so none of the fears or meta-fears really apply.)
Again, maybe I’m viewing this the wrong way, but the combination of this frame with the underspecified request itself seems like it practically invites rejection and all the meta-fears thereof.
From the bits of work I’ve done in the past with people with various social anxieties, a common theme is actually the person wanting not just to not be rejected, but actually wanting to be validated by other people… which does tend to result in over-asking and underconfident framing.
The anxious person is less likely to say something like, “Oh, you’re cool, let’s do X” because in their mind they are trying to get something rather than believing or feeling they have something to offer. The solution usually lies in addressing whatever issue created the need for external validation and/or the sense they have nothing to offer.
Using “wanna be friends?” as an example was me trying to be cutesy and it seems to have been confusing. But I disagree that just saying “I enjoy your company” doesn’t have the same rejection fears dynamic. Statements are often veiled invitations or requests, so if you mean it to be nothing but a statement, it can sometimes be helpfwl to first clarify that it isn’t an invitation/request.
To be clearer, I’m not saying to use any of the things I said as strategies or tactics. I’m more saying that if one is not trying to get anything from people and doesn’t feel themselves unworthy of receiving, then it feels more natural to interact in ways that don’t invite rejection and don’t put other people on the spot.
Exactly my point: IME social anxiety is correlated with a craving for acceptance or interaction that makes the statement a veiled invitation or request, and no amount of verbal disclaimers will fix that. Verbal disclaimers are just stating out loud the self-deception attempts taking place in the speaker’s mind, and the dissonance will be felt by the listener.
If it seems like I’m basically saying, “don’t bother trying to create norms to help social anxiety because nothing will help until you fix the (underlying cause of the) social anxiety”, then yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m saying.
This is confusing but seems valuable to try to understand. Do you mean that if I say
“Would you like to talk for a bit? Please say no if you’d actually prefer doing something else, and I’m cool with that. I only wish to hang out if it’s mutually beneficial. :)”
...I’m somehow stating a self-deception out loud?
I would say that a non-socially-anxious person would never say all of that, maybe not even the “Would you like to talk for a bit?” part. And that many people would respond with suspicion to the doth-protest-too-much-methinks length of your communication. (And other socially anxious or neurotic people may respond by internal agonizing over whether they are correctly evaluating the mutual beneficialness of a conversation, or the specifics of their own preferences!)
Just from an information coding perspective, the length of this utterance communicates, “I consider this to be a complicated circumstance requiring extra care in order not to go badly”—let alone any other nonverbal communication that might be coming along with it. This will put a lot of people on edge, even if they’re not sure why at first.
The self-deception would be something along the lines of, “If I state things in the right way, I won’t be a bad person or deserve to be rejected if they don’t want to talk with me.” (Or be a bad person who forced someone to explicitly reject me.)
Part of the self-deception here is that introducing yourself by giving other people rules to follow is more than a little rude and entitled, especially as you are asking them to expose their true inner state to you. (I mean, if they’re from a Guess culture you’re metaphorically asking them to show you their underwear… and by asking I mean demanding, because in Guess culture explicit asking equals demanding.)
So, the external part of the self-deception is, “I am making a demand for you to follow my rules for interaction, but you are not allowed to disagree or protest it, because my earnest disclaimer will make it seem like you’re the one who’s being rude or mean if you object or express upset in any way.”
That is, “I am going to act like I’m being generous and magnanimous in catering to whatever your object-level desires may be, while completely ignoring any issues you might have about communicating them to me, because how I appear to myself/others is more important to me than how you’d like to appear to yourself/others in this interaction.” (And so I might also be setting you up for some sort of no-win social framing attack, no matter what you answer.)
I’m not sure if this is clearly communicating what I mean. The part I am tagging “self-deception” in the outward expression is the part where you are creating a social frame where you can be the offended party/in the right, even though what you are doing is actually pretty demanding and potentially quite offensive in the very act of stating such a “disclaimer”.
If you were intentionally doing it as a social attack, then it wouldn’t be self-deceptive. It’s self-deceptive in the part where you’re sincerely believing you’re being polite or considerate or whatever, despite the whole thing being about protecting you from having negative opinions of yourself, and not really about consideration for the other person at all, except insofar as the appearance of doing so lets you feel better.
(Because if you really cared what they thought, vs. how it would reflect on you, you might consider the part where you’re imposing rules and demanding legibility from someone who might not like doing either of those things, or that even if they normally do prefer being legible or having clear rules for an interaction, it doesn’t necessarily mean they want to be suddenly pressured into it by a relative stranger without getting any say of their own about what they’re willing to be legible about, or which rules they’re willing to follow.)
This comment is excellent and I would give it more upvote if I could!
I like this point too:
I don’t wholeheartedly agree with everything you say here, but I updated the post to point out the risk of putting people “on the spot” .