It sounds like you have social phobia. Have you ever had a real consultation to get a real diagnosis of yourself rather than these test results that you display on your about me page?

First of all, you are being a bit hard on yourself here. Your post here is well written and easy to read. I don't see a signal of thoughts that don't line up with direct reasoning skills. You have a valid concern, however many of the things that you discuss in this thread are things that many people are concerned about. And it is a well known fact that if we develope one or two good friends in our lives that is a blessing. Even people who may seem to have lots of friends and are successful communicators, can whisper and beneath their breath a wonder if they accomplished their conversation goal correctly.

Nemo, you cannot predict another persons ability to comprehend and respect you. There are just so many different variables that come with each individual person that it is impossible to know what they really think about us. If I were to meet you and you were quiet, kept to yourself and avoided eye contact, how I would perceive that behavior depends on what I have come to understand about people in general throughout my life. Some people may consider that behavior stuck up, I know because I was often quiet in school and later in life people told me that they thought I was just stuck up. Which was the farthest thing from the truth, I was painfully shy. So my perception of your behavior if I met you may be that of compassion and understanding.

And to the contrary of your beliefs, people don't usually pop out knowing how to be good communicators. Usually that process is gained by having some genetic ability but also having an atmosphere where these capacities are nurtured by parents, siblings and others supportive people. So these abilities are cultivated over time in each individual.

Now, a person that may have appeared to be well liked and have lots of friends was Ronald Regan. But if you were to peer into his biography, he really didn't have close friends other than his wife. What he was good at was what your discussing you can do here, he was comfortable giving speaches that were carefully designed with a cut and complete agenda. He was by all definition an actor who could present a predesigned package, that was his forte in life. Other than that, he didn't like to converse and chit chat with the crowd as it was truely out of his comfort zone.

I think that your truely giving yourself too much critisism as your trying to be exact and no one can truely be exact. The whole purpose of human interaction is learning how to present one's self in a way that enables others to feel that they too can present thoughts wether they are on target or not. And whenever we do present thoughts and ideas, everything we say will be debated as we all have our unique perceptions about ourselves and others. And if there is silence after we present our thoughts or concerns, it doesn't always mean we are wrong, it can mean that the other person may have to think about our message for a while.

Friends will always come and go, and they always need cultivating which can be time consuming. And many people accumulate friends simply because they search each person and see that person as useful and productive and worthy of cultivating. However as we all grow it is very likely that the friends we make along the way will also grow and might stray out of our lives, not because we did anything wrong, but maybe they just want to mingle and learn from others, or even see if they can control others etc.

Nemo, you are truely critiquing yourself too much. There really isn't any way you can get a positive reaction from everyone you interact with. All you can do is develope yourself and offer to share whatever you have. Wether another person is receptive or not doesn't always mean you were not perfect enough or that you failed or are not worthy. I do hope that you take time and find out a real diagnosis and perhaps you can get help in finding more peace with yourself, I think you deserve that Nemo.

(((((Nemo)))))

Open Eyes