March 20, 2008
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blocks and introversion
Some people can’t take tests. They just can’t do it. I mean it’s not like they can’t sit through the event and put answers down if they have to since undoubtedly they will sometimes in their lives. But that doesn’t mean they are really taking the test. They get nervous. So nervous their brain shutdowns. Every single time. They could know every answer but their score will be atrocious. This is just a block for them.
Other people I’ve noticed have a block around mathematics. I mean the very thought of being introduced to numbers creates a wall within their mind. It’s not that they can’t carry out simply subtraction or multiplication, they undoubtedly *can* do it. They’re not dumb. But the numbers make them nervous. They make them second guess themselves. They make them get the answer wrong, even though deep down they know the basic concepts and could derive the answer correctly. Math is their block. Numbers is their barrier.
I never really fully got either of these types of people. Math has always come easily to me and I get excited at the thought of taking a standardized multiple choice test even if it is on subject matter that I know nothing about. For me, it’s fun.
But now I think I’m starting to understand them.
I walked into the office. I stumbled in telling the secretary my name. Completely forgot the name of the person I was supposed to see. I sit down avoiding everyone’s gaze. First I fidget. My eyes keep darting around the room. I can’t seem to figure out what to do with my hands. I move them to ten different positions. before setting eyes on the nearby magazines. Aha! That will give m something to do with my hands AND my eyes. Oh how clever of them to make them available.
I nervously stand up and walk over to them feeling like I’m creeping along like a kid trying to sneak a cookie out of a cookie jar. I catch myself and on the way back to my chosen seat make a conscious effort to try and walk normally but this only makes me look more goofy. I sit down and start reading, only my eyes aren’t picking up the words, my brain isn’t comprehending their meanings.
I notice my hands are shaking. I can’t hold the magazine steady. My eyes are watering. My palms are sweating. I forcefully hold my hands against my legs to keep the magazine from visibly shaking. And I stare unseeing at the page taking deep breathes telling myself over and over again that this whole experience doesn’t matter.
People keep asking me if I’d like a glass of water. I stammer out my declination. They think they are being nice, taking pity on me, but no I don’t want any damn water. What I want is for this to be over with as soon as possible so I can go home and crawl into bed and try as hard as I can to forget it ever happened.
Finally the person comes. I go into their office. They are smiling and being jovial doing their best to put me at ease. They ask questions. I try to answer. But I fail. I stumble. I can’t seem to explain the things I want to say. The words won’t come. This is stuff I know. Stuff I know so well I could write dissertations on it. But I end up seeming like the most rank novice. My mind just can’t seem to form the connections it normally would. My brain just won’t start moving.
It ends soon after. I am ushered out quickly having been a complete disappointment to everyone most of all myself.
And then as soon as I leave the building. The feelings gone. It’s just gone. Just like that. More often than not it’s quickly replaced with plain old fashioned depression which is hardly better.
People say to me fairly frequently things like “you just need to go talk to people more often” and “you’ll get more comfortable with experience”. I know they mean well. And I want to believe them. I try to believe them. But deep down I know it’s not true. This is just a block for me. And it won’t get better. Not after 100 experiences or a 100,000 experiences.
The only thing that changes is as I get older I become more skilled at hiding the signs of it. Sometimes I only come off as seeming “a little” nervous. But my brain still falters. Inside, I’ve still lost total control. Every time. If I tell you that an experience I had “went well” what I generally mean is that I only stumbled and said the wrong thing half a dozen times and only managed to forget to say about 2/3rds of what I wanted to say. You don’t want to hear about the bad experiences. This is not going to get better. This is just the way I am.
People who have a block in math have it easy. Carry a calculator. Problem solved. If your block is tests, your schooling will be a pain in the ass but take heart in that some point you’ll reach a stage in your life where you most likely will *never* have to take another written test if you don’t want to. (Unless you’re a teacher because our government is filled with a bunch of bone heads.) But what if talking to people is your barrier? What if interaction is your block? Somebody tell me how exactly does one avoid that?
Sometimes people will say things like “I understand” and “I get nervous too” or even “I’m an introvert just like you.” And I don’t doubt them. I’m sure they get nervous in their own way. But it’s not the same. They know it. I know it. They may very well be an introvert.
But not like me.
Comments (6)
i used to think i was shy…turns out i just don’t like people. Merry Thor’s Day
it took me quite a while to get the hang of interviews. i also think experience is a BS answer of how you get better, because experience just means you do it enough until something happens… some freak accident that lets you succeed. and it doesn’t give credit to the actual meaningful cause.
so here’s my view… reflecting where i am now compared to when i was younger and less comfortable taking to people.
i lived many of the prior years of my life being a certain way… i knew how to play the game of academics. it was a quiet and introverted game. my interaction was primarily a teachers or close friends… and teachers only after a while when i was comfortable with them. so quick greetings and first impressions never bore importance to me, since all the important things i knew took time. and when i impressed people it wasn’t because i felt any need to impress them.
well all those things i learned and love.. that great game i was intimate with and so good at… that just got shot to hell and a whole new set of rules seemed to be set up for the working world. and it was really frustrating for me not being able to master it through practice.
these were what i viewed were my primary challenges.
1) too many damn expectations. from myself and from others. i wanted all the questions to stop.
2) i couldn’t see myself being a people-person. i could be a nice guy, but i had an opinion at the time that too many people-people were fakers pretending to be nice.
these were the contributing factors for me to overcome the changes.
1) i threw away the things that were giving me pressure, or looked for some clever resolution to them. (if it’s a person that pressured me, i told them to leave me alone because i’ll deal with it my own way. after all opinions only need to be given once, so shut up since i already heard what you had to say.) when it comes down to it, it’s more important to say at the end of an interview day that “it really didn’t matter” than it is to say “i’m glad it’s over”.
2) i knew deep down i wanted to a different person. that desire just need a will to bring forth the action. so i just made an active role to change my person by first changing my environment. could be a move. could be new clothes. i think in my very first case of (people-block) it was just rearranging my furniture then cleaning my room. (but that’s just me and i like to clean). the idea was i soak up the changes around me and realized that it was my will to better myself that i was witnessing. then it became much easier for me to see myself speaking to people well and having pleasant interactions with them. one of my favorite quotes… we cannot become what we need to be by staying who we are… so the question is.. do you want to stay who you are?
@qccan - lol. Unfortunately I like people. Well most of them anyway. ok that’s not exactly true either. Let’s say I like most people most of the time. That’s about right. There isn’t anybody who I don’t dislike sometimes. But even so, I don’t think the word “shy” is sufficient.
@moonlitsage - School was the same for me. No. It was probably worse. Certainly I could not stand oral exams, oral presentations, or even being asked a question during the course of a class. Seminars were painful experiences for me. Heck, even going to class the first day was difficult. Or any other day unless it was a big lecture hall where I was effectively invisible. And I could not stand meeting with my professors during office hours one on one either. Or deans or the counselors or advisers or the writing associates or study groups or lab partners or anybody else. So academics was never comfortable for me. The only time I was comfortable was, ironically, when taking the tests! That was a game I knew how to play well.
This is not interview specific. Doctors appointments, going to the gym, going to the store. It’s everything. Everywhere.
1). I don’t have anything to throw away that is giving me pressure. There is no external pressure. None at all. The only pressure is coming from me. I can’t throw myself away…. I do try to resolve issues that are providing me emotional distress, if that’s what you mean. And that just helps with all aspects of life, but it doesn’t come close to resolving these feelings. It does help me focus a little though. Nothing is worse than trying to achieve something while my mind is keeps wanting to wander back to some argument I had that was never resolved or some mistake I made that I feel guilty about.
But other than that I sometimes wonder if what I need is *more* external pressure? You know it feels good to know that somebody cares enough what happens to you to get pissed off at you when you mess up. Not that I would ever admit it to such a person…
2). hmmm. I don’t feel much desire to change into a different person. I only feel a resigned sense of the seeming necessity of it. If I could avoid it, I totally would!
I think, since you have an artistic persona, you are more influenced by your environment than I am. So changing the people you are around, the clothing you wear, the place you are in, cleaning, etc. will more directly influence your emotional state and will help you to manage your internal and external identity That’s why 1 and 2 worked for you.
I’m a little different. I’m more stubborn. I need more direct influence over me to result in change. And I need to be convinced, strongly, of the virtue of change. So if I want to move or change my environment, it’s because I am hoping to find something in the new environment that will convince me. I’m sort of having an internal argument with myself. And I want to give a part of myself more ammunition with which to fight. Or else I’m just moving and changing things ‘cuz I’m bored. For example, I’m really bored with the east coast right now…
And even if I were convinced though… I’m not sure it would make a damn bit of difference. Lots of people with test-blocks really really truly want to do well on the tests. Doesn’t matter though. They may be ten times smarter and more knowledgeable than me but they’ll never get a higher score on a standardized test than I will. It’s just a block for them. It’s like that. Maybe there’s some deep seeded psychological something-or-other creating the pressure within us that causes the block, but it ain’t going to be excised simply by willing it gone.
Oh and I still very much believe that most people are fakers pretending to be nice at least during most of the encounters that repulse me the most. But I also think that deep down virtually everyone wants and needs to be Good, and being truly nice and pretending to be nice are both manifestations of that most urgent desire.
Anyway, thanks for the comments!
Wow. I feel like you were stealing the words right out of my mouth. Almost as if you were blogging about me. Exactly. This is a perfect example of how I am. Especially with math. I can’t do math. It stirs up anxiety. Numbers are my enemy. They jumble in my head and I get stressed and pissed off before anything else.
But the whole magazine scenerio. I’ve been there. I cant focus. I read the same paragraph over and over and over and over..and I’m still asking myself what the hell I just read. It doesn’t register, my mind is on other things. The people around me, what they are doing, if people are watching me, what they are thinking.
It’s really sad. I didnt always use to be that way. Another well written post that I can relate to. I’m glad you shared it. Makes me feel less alone. less crazy! Some people just don’t get me and my weird anxiety issues.
Not always easy to handle. Though there are certain people and certain occasions where I don’t have these issues with. Usually people I trust the most. But really…ugh..such a perfect example…really.
@TigerIly - :) I thought that you’d be able to relate to that. I didn’t always used to be this way either. Well I’ve always been shy. Ever since I was really little. But not always this bad.
And sometimes it waxes and wanes. Sometimes the anxiety is so strong I don’t know how I’ll get through it in one piece. Other times it’s more sedated. More like an old annoying friend always hanging around that I can never quite banish.
Yeah there are people with whom I am more comfortable. People with whom I don’t feel this way or nearly as bad. And then it gets sort of weird because when I try to describe the phenomenon to those very people… they sometimes don’t seem to believe me. Because they don’t see it when I’m around them. I can’t seem to find the words to explain it. I don’t know why they don’t make me as nervous any more than I know why the other situations do. Just like people who have problems with numbers or tests don’t know why those things are blocking them.
I’m glad to know that there are others out there who think like me. Xanga makes me feel like this often. I am amazed that the world is full of so many people who can understand what we are going through. That’s why I share so much on here.
Anyway, thank you for reading. I hope this did help.
@nephyo - Yes, I agree. I love Xanga. I love it because there is a wide variety of people. And while physically I am not a people person and I tend to cower away, online I am able to enjoy people the way I can’t offline. I love reading on different people. I love associating with them. To learn about how differently other people lives their lives and how differently they think.
While I also love the fact that I continue to find people who think and relate to me. I don’t feel so alone in my crazy little phobias. It’s nice.
I still wish though that I could apply my online personality to my every day life offline. Because I could enjoy people a little bit better if I did.