I met a new person yesterday. This person will be joining our team at work soon, so came to introduce themselves to everyone.
Its a funny thing really, because I immediately reverted back to my usual social stance of staying silent and trying to avoid conversation with everyone. There were a few moments where I was spoken to, so couldn’t avoid responding, but in these moments I could really clearly hear my inner narration as I tried to navigate conversation with/in front of someone if not met before. It’s moment like this that really clearly highlight some of my social difficulties, but it was interesting to really notice my ‘inner script’ so vividly again.
”Don’t say that- it might be funny to you but they don’t know you yet”
”Don’t make eye contact, they might talk to you”
”Formally introduce yourself- no wait, don’t. It’s too much. in fact, it’s been too long now so you can’t possibly introduce yourself”
”You’ve gone into too much detail- stop talking”
“You’re being too abstract/vague, give more detail”
The list goes on…
I definitely don’t feel like I made a good first impression and keep reliving the bits of conversation I was involved in, but there isn’t much that can be done about it now.
Does anyone else find first impressions challenging?