Friday 4 January 2013

The Difficulty of 'Hello'



It has been a while since my last blog, but here I am back with more to say about the confusing place that is my brain. I’ve talked about issues with socialising before, but I’m aware that there is one crucial part to socialising that I didn’t touch on before – the initial greeting. Through an awful lot of observation and practise, I have by now managed to master the art of small talk, I can participate in conversations with people quite well providing I’m interested in the subject and I’ve learnt to pepper my talk with thoughtful questions about the other person, but one thing that still fills me with dread, and which I don’t think I will ever feel comfortable with, is perhaps the most simplest interaction of all – saying hello!

The main occasion that this simple interaction fills me with dread, is when I am simply walking past someone, such as a stranger on the street, or a colleague in the office. As we approach each other I feel awkward and panicky as I desperately try to decide how I’m going to handle the situation. What I want to do is keep my head down, completely avoid eye contact and fail to acknowledge their presence, staying nice and safe in the comfort zone that is my own head. However, I know enough to know that doing so would appear rude. So a million things run through my mind: shall I make eye contact? shall I say hello, or just smile? do they expect me do anything, or can I get away with pretending I haven’t seen them at all? Usually I panic through these thoughts until the last possible moment, and then force myself to make eye contact and either smile or say hello – and I hate having to do this. If possible I will whip my phone out and pretend I’m doing something on it to avoid the awkward dance that I don’t really know the steps to, or I’ll even take a longer route somewhere to avoid people.

The same can be said for the coffee place in work. It’s the same meaningless niceties of greeting and negotiating space with other people that makes me extremely uncomfortable. I will sit at my desk for an hour or more wanting a drink, but having to wait until the coffee area is clear of people so that I don’t have to worry about what kind of greetings they might expect of me. I’m always mortified if I head there when it’s empty and someone else gets there before me.

I also struggle with saying hello when I initiate a conversation with someone else. There have been times when I’ve gone to talk to people and launched straight into the subject I want to discuss only to be quickly interrupted with a sarcastic ‘Hello Sarah!’ at which point I realise I’ve failed to follow the expected rules of conversation. Sometimes the act of saying hello just seems pointless to me when there are other more important things to get to. 

It’s hard to explain why this is so difficult to me, but I think it’s because it’s such a small subtle interaction that I just don’t understand how to do it, or if I’m doing it right, it’s causing me so much energy in the thought processes going into it, that it makes me feel extremely uncomfortable and awkward. It’s also true that the fleeting eye contact required is no small part of why it makes me feel uncomfortable. I put a lot of thought into regulating eye contact as it is, but the small amount required when greeting someone in passing means that it’s very difficult for me to gauge the appropriate amount to be made.

My son seems to have similar issues, and I’m currently trying to get him to say hello and goodbye to people, which he usually does without making any eye contact. I confess I sometimes use him as a way to deflect the responsibility of saying it myself. If I look like I’m focussing on getting him to say hello and goodbye I am looking at him, not the other person, which is more comfortable for me, and I don’t have to say anything to them. The truth is I could quite happily dispense with saying hello to people as the practise often makes me feel so uncomfortable that I can’t see myself ever feeling at ease with it.