Please read the comment and then my reply………
Hi Ben, I’m glad you created this site and you are willing to help. But please bear with me when I say that, when I look at people, I think of myself as like a deer in headlights. I believe my problem is that, I don’t really know how I should keep my face composure, when to blink, or how long I’m supposed to look at the person. It’s really embarrassing and really limiting my growth as a human being. I’m surprised at how many other people have the same exact problem but I do wonder if there are varying degrees of this problem. For instance, I have several problems: – I’m boring – I’m tired, tired to even smile. – I usually have tired eye look. – I lack things to say, so conversations usually end real short. So within first few minutes, other guy usually tries to find ways to end our conversation, like says gotta go some emergency came up while taking a deep breath, which really infuriate me. Due to all this, when I am staring at the other person, I get the feeling that he doesn’t want to communicate with me no more. And he will feel weird because I keep staring at him with nothing to say back. I’m guessing I have more to overcome than just to “not be afraid of anything”. It seems I need to be stating in my head “I’m not boring, I’m funny”. But that doesn’t help me much because I still don’t know what to say. Do you have any suggestion for me? …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Hi there
Thanks for your comment.
Can I start with saying that you are definitely not boring, I can tell this by the articulate and interesting way you have written your message above.
You have brought up an interesting point here and you are exactly right, there are many forms of the fear, which results in not being able to maintain eye contact. Since starting this blog, I realised I had a fear of being inferior to the person/people I was talking to. Therefore, I altered the instruction to something like “I will not have any fear of Judgment”. I repeated this, really forcing it through my mind, as much as I could. I also made sure I said the instruction just before entering into a social situation and it worked and it was a liberating feeling! When I was really suffering with not being able to make eye contact, I was desperate, my head was in bits and I knew something had to change! One day I decided that if I repeated to myself, I will not be scared of anything, it might help me overcome my fear and to my surprise it did! So yes, change the instruction to deal with a more specific problem. Once one problem is dealt with, change it again.
Whatever the problem is, it is happens because of the fear of it happening. From what you have said in your message, it is easy to see that you are using the method I have described (which is known more widely as Auto Suggestion) in a negative way, without even thinking about it. You have convinced yourself that you are boring and you have done this by telling yourself you are. Remember, your conscious mind (what you are reading this with) feeds your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind makes you act and feel the way you do. Therefore, if you use Auto suggestion to feed your subconscious mind a positive message and it will eventually act, this is a fact!
To help others, I wonder if you could keep a diary and send it me at the end of the each week? I will send this as an email so you can reply to me on there. I really hope this helps!
Cheers
Ben