[Sometimes psychotic]

Non-verbal communication in meetings of... [Acta Psychiatr Scand. 2014] - PubMed - NCBI

I can't access the article but based on the abstract, about 1/3 of people in the study use nonverbal communication to tell their pdocs they really don't want to talk. Eventually the pdocs learn not to back off but the patients signal consistently. I really wish I had access because I'm wondering what people are doing and whether I do it with people or not, whether I mean to or not. Do you feel you let people know you don't want to talk to them and how do you think that impacts issues with social relationships irl or with medical professionals?

[Sometimes psychotic]

I swear the title from this is right out of Cosmo or something

[junkDNA]

im pretty sure i give off the impression that i dont want to talk to people . most all people. there are some people upon meeting that i feel pretty comfortable with. but most people i believe i act stand-offish towards them. but sometimes i warm up to them and can be more open to talking. ive been aware of this for a long time. i used to have people in high school ask me if i hated them . i had never talked to them before and we never interacted but something made them feel like i didnt like them.

[Sometimes psychotic]

That's exactly what I'm wondering....what might I be doing to scare people off....I know even my current friend thought we didn't hit it off when we first met but I really enjoyed the whole thing...it just wasn't clear somehow....

[junkDNA]

ive had many people tell me that i intimidated them at first. i dont know what i do thats intimidating.

[The_little_didgee]

I asked a few people I know really well why I seem to scare others away. My introverted nature and nonverbal communication are to blame. I come across as intimidating, indifferent, and serious which most people don't find appealing. I can be hard to converse with because I am not a very social person. Conversation especially small talk does not come easy. I don't really get it.

When I am in a group I am comfortable with not talking at all. Just being around others is good enough for me. Apparently this bothers some people.

Idk about health appts, but I've noticed that IRL when I'm isolating, when forced to engage in conversation, I use a lot less minimal encouragers (like 'yeah', 'mmm', 'uh huh' which encourage people to keep talking to you) and just talk less with one word responses etc, which gives people the (often correct) impression that I don't want to talk (though sometimes I'm happy to listen). It's even worse on the phone cos they can't see me listening so they assume that I've not heard them because I haven't said anything for so long. That's annoying though cos sometimes when I was away at Uni, I felt lonely and wanted to hear my Mum talk, but didn't really have the energy to say much, and she found it disconcerting and so didn't want to keep talking to no response so would end the call, leaving me still feeling lonely.

*Willow*

[Bigmike727]

Sounds like an interesting study. Personally I like to entertain conversation with pdoc, he is one of the few people I really enjoy talking to in RL. He is one of the more old fashioned pdocs who kind of doubles as a therapist, you know asks me about things in my life, we talk about current events, a real pleasure to chat with.