I'm an anxious person by nature. I've found myself really seeking out the social interaction and I place a huge pressure on myself to have these things play out well for me. I don't get them often, so the pressure builds and I become anxious and I may come off as not relaxed or just not how I want to be viewed.

It's not a physical anxiety but there's definitely an aspect of not being in the moment and reacting too much.

What happens when I become anxious in a conversation?

Well there's a big tell for my anxiety and that's me being too quick to reply and too quick to agree. This is rooted in my aim to please and have the conversation go as well as possible. Well as it turns out, it can be overdone and it'll become detrimental to the conversation.

Here's a couple scenarios that play out differently and how agreeing by default can change the flow of convo.

  • You approach a person at a party. You exchange pleasantries and greetings. You then follow up by asking what they did over school break. As it turns out they spent time at home working on _____ insert hobby here. (Whoa, as it turns out, you did the same EXACT thing!)

This is where the conversational paths diverge for a calm and for an anxious person.

Anxious

  • "Wow me too! I had a lot of fun doing it at home with my family. Did you do your hobby with your family?"

  • "Yea. They enjoyed it too."

  • "Cool man. What else did you do?"

  • Queue film noir investigative interrogation scene.

Yea, it's cool that you share the experience. But the person had just opened up to you, and you jumped down their throat with your story.

Calm

  • "How did you start ______?"

  • Answer.

  • Talk.

  • "You say you learned from a guy on Youtube? What is his name?"

  • Answer.

  • "Oh wow, that guy has a lot of cool videos on Youtube, I love watching him too!"

  • Other person, "Wait, do you _____ too?"

Ding ding.

You successfully didn't blow your conversational load early. You gained a lot of points for showing interest in their story, developed the conversation and revealed a nice hidden layer about yourself after you made the connection with the person. You now don't seem anxious, but a calm and inquisitive conversationalist.

This same type of theory can be applied to just saying Yes, when you mean No. But you would rather skip out on the conversational path of saying No. Watch out for being too quick to please as it may be a result of being anxious or putting too much pressure to succeed in the conversation.