I’d noticed a local mental health in person meet up group on Facebook and eventually decided to give it a go – even though I was fairly certain what the outcome would be; me not talking, innards quivering and the only one not to say anything.
I got there ten minutes early and saw three women standing outside. As my anxiety is back to front, I can actually approach people and say hello. That is super easy for me. Apparently I have a confident air initially, and for around ten seconds, people assume I’m a normal regular human being.
It’s what happens after that’s the problem – I freeze like Windows 95. Which is exactly what happened here.
I said, “Hiya, is this the ***** group?”
They nodded.
I smiled.
Then… nothing.
Conversation dead. Just me, grinning weakly and nodding in what I hoped were the right places, pretending to listen when my brain was playing the Windows error sound on loop.
Inside the building, one of the leaders hugged me like we were long lost cousins. Then another organiser swept me off to a corner to explain how the group worked. It sounded a bit strange, but fine – I’m occasionally up for new things that don’t revolve around coffee and idle stilted chat.
There were about seventeen of us in the dreaded Circle of Doom. For ten solid minutes, no one spoke. We all just stared at the floor, our shoes, our cuticles – occasionally risking a quick, guilty glance at each other like hostages wondering who’ll make the first break for freedom. But this was the format. No pressure (!!). The silence was expected. No facilitator asking who wanted to go first. Just… wait.
Someone would let out a little cough or a sigh and I’d think they were about to say something, but then nothing happened.
Finally, someone spoke, her voice like an echo in a barrell of doom. I think around 7 other people also spoke, and I’m sure the rest of us wanted to but were too self conscious to do so.
I would like to have said, “
Look, I come across weird and I’m scared of rejection but if you give me a chance and even pretend to be interested in me, if we get along, I am a great friend. But my mouth needs a good oiling because it doesn’t usually talk to anyone apart from the cats. And to get me talking, people need to actually listen to me and not keep cutting me off or looking over my shoulder for someone coherant to talk to. The more people cut me off, the more I stutter and stumble. What do you all think?”
Obviously I would never have said that though.
Then came format number two: The Alphabet Game. The leader explained that we’d each share a thought or feeling starting with a letter of the alphabet, going round the circle.
The first woman spoke about her anxiety. Solid choice. The second woman – an organiser – spoke about her “bleeding dog.”
Apparently it was a saga that most of the room already knew about. But I was shocked when she casually called the dog a c*nt, out loud and with a smile.
Poor dog I thought. I hope she doesn’t beat it when no one’s looking.
When it got to me – I think I was H – I just shook my head like a stubborn toddler. Nope. Not doing it. H is for Hell No Chance. Which threw off the woman next to me, because she’d planned an “I” word. Now she had to improvise something beginning with H. I could feel the ripple of confusion.
And suddenly, I was that person. The awkward one. The weak link in the otherwise socially anxious chain. I imagined people locking talking eyes, “She’s… different.”
At the end we had ten minutes of “free talk”. Pairs and groups formed instantly, conversations happening all around me. Pats on the back. And me? I just sat there thinking: I don’t even fit in with people who don’t fit in.
If I go to one of these again, I might try to approach one or two people in the free talk time. I don’t know if I just expect too much but I do think one of the organisers should have come up to the new people and maybe introduced us. I would have froze but I could have managed a hello, have you been to this group before?
But this time, I couldn’t, so I did what I do best. I quietly got up, slipped out the door, and went home.
And, of course, no one even noticed.