How Socially Awkward Are You?
I knew I was experiencing an emotional hangover when I woke up the day after a friend’s birthday party, and I couldn’t stop replaying all the awkward moments of the night before. I worried that I’d come off as a super weirdo (the opposite of a superhero), and I cringed over and over again. This was not an unfamiliar scenario. The only difference was that I was fed up with feeling this way. I wondered why I felt it necessary to waste my time and energy fretting about the normal, albeit awkward moments, that came along with social interaction. But at the core of it was a deeper question: Why did I find it so hard to make a real connection with other people? Whenever I was at a social gathering, I tended to hover around the edges of the party, or I liked to escape to the kitchen. I was ineffectively trying to hide in plain sight. I deeply wanted to connect with others, but I found the landscape of socializing so full of pitfalls, it was almost too excruciating to bear. Even...