After a year of isolation, there are things you start to
forget. You forget how to stand in a crowded commuter train (legs apart, slight
bend in the knee) or how to shimmy sheepishly past theatergoers to reach a
middle seat (face away, apologize repeatedly).
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And, without a constant parade of baby showers and work
mixers, you forget how to talk to strangers: The witty banter, the
conversational volley, the way you break the ice with “How about this rain,
huh?” instead of “So, what do you consider your greatest failure in life?”
But the world is starting to open up again, and that means
having to engage in that dreaded four-letter word — chat — with people you
don’t know. If the idea makes you nervous, you’re not alone.
“Social anxiety is extremely normal,” said Stefan G.
Hofmann, director of the Psychotherapy and Emotion Research Laboratory at
Boston University. “As humans, we have a strong need to belong and feel part of
a group.”
Still, knowing that something is normal doesn’t make it
easier. How can you coax yourself out of hermithood and talk to people when
your social skills feel blunted by quarantine? Here’s some advice from people
whose jobs require them to make friends with strangers every day.
Embrace the awkward bits. (And there will be awkward bits.)
Amanda Zion, a hairstylist in Davidson, North Carolina, is
well-versed in making small talk. But for someone who gets shy around new
people, it doesn’t always come naturally.
“It’s excruciating,” she said. “I get anxious before every
client.”
Her golden rule? When an interaction feels stilted, she
acknowledges it out loud.
“I’ll say, ‘I’m sorry. I feel so awkward today,’” she said.
“I try to break down the barrier with honesty or even a joke, like ‘Wow, those
37 cups of coffee didn’t help!’”
A one-two punch of self-deprecating humor and direct
instruction can work wonders, said Jennifer Hornbeck, an Episcopalian priest in
Sonoma County, California, who’s had “a lot of practice” mingling at
after-church coffee hours in the 20 years since she was ordained.
“Make light of it, then give the other person a framework to
help you,” she said. “I’ll say: ‘I seem to have forgotten how to have a
conversation. Can you tell me about your day?’”
Use the pandemic to connect, but tread carefully.
It helps to share your own experience first, said Larry
Cohen, a therapist in Washington, DC, who runs social anxiety workshops.
“That way, you’re the one being vulnerable and opening the
door, and they can walk through it if they want to.”
And if you walk through it to find yourself in a wildly
different room, it’s fine to walk back out. When a recent conversation about
masks veered into uncomfortable political territory, Zion was loath to join in.
To extricate yourself gracefully from a topic you’d rather
not touch, “say something affirming and sincere — ‘Yes, these are really hard
times’ — and then move to a different subject,” Cohen said.
Interject a little positivity.
While commiserating over a shared adversity can be a bonding
experience, Cohen said, “you don’t want the focus with a new person to be
overwhelmingly on the negative.”
When a conversation feels like it’s verging on a
complaint-fest — cathartic, sure, but kind of a downer — Zion steers it toward
more optimistic territory.
“If someone only wants to talk about how bad their vaccine
side effects were,” she said, “I’ll ask, ‘But what are you most excited to do
now you’re vaccinated?’”
Clementina Richardson, a celebrity eyelash stylist whose clients
include Mary J. Blige and Julia Roberts, makes the positive comment personal.
“I always try to offer a compliment,” said Richardson, the
founder of
Envious Lashes, an eyelash extension salon in New York. “People
haven’t gone anywhere for a year. Some of them are feeling a little
self-conscious about their appearance. Noticing something — their hair, their
bag — and saying something nice about it helps make them feel more
comfortable.”
Don’t overthink it.
While it can be tempting to construct a conversational
safety net by continuously planning the next thing you’re going to say, it also
makes it harder to pay attention to the exchange you’re having.
“The better thing to do, even if it feels like a leap of
faith, is to listen with curiosity,” Cohen said. “Step away from the idea of
performance, of ‘I need to make this go well,’ and try instead to adopt a
stance of mindfulness.”
Allowing yourself to become absorbed in the conversation,
Cohen said, means your brain will start doing the work for you, tossing out
questions and opinions you can contribute.
Practice being in control.
While this may not be the time to expose yourself to large
crowds, “taking small, safe steps toward socializing again” can alleviate some
of the pressure you might feel about reemerging into the world, Cohen said.
“Make it a goal to interact with one person every day.”
In her job as an account manager, Chicago-based Lindsey
Friesen often challenges herself to spend 20 minutes calling clients before
allowing herself to do more introspective work. To prepare for a return to
networking events, she’s practicing what she calls “a sort of informal exposure
therapy”: She runs one errand a week that will result in a social interaction.
If she meets someone she knows she’ll see again, she makes a
quick note of something they talked about as conversational fodder for next
time. And if she needs a moment to collect herself, she falls back on a trick
she learned in therapy for a childhood stutter.
“I always keep a water bottle with me, so I have a reason to
stop talking,” she said. “When you take a sip of water, it’s a pause that isn’t
weird. It gives you a few seconds to gather your thoughts or change the
direction of what you were saying. Nobody has to know you’re struggling.”
If all else fails: Netflix.
If, in the course of cutting someone’s hair, Zion has
exhausted all her conversational gambits, she falls back on the one thing she
can count on to get people talking: what shows they’ve been binge-watching
while stuck at home.
“TV has probably been the biggest sparker of conversation
with anyone this year,” she said. “You start with that and you can go
anywhere.”
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