I know that people with schizophrenia can have limitations in social skills, but I somehow think that my problem with conversation may not be explainable by just saying its part of schizophrenia. What I mean is that when it comes to casual conversation, I never care about what anyone has to say, and I never want to share anything about myself. So in other words, I don’t mind situations in which someone has to say something in order to “take care of business”, or if I feel like I want to hear advice from someone and I have to reveal something about myself in order to get it, but beyond that there’s something about conversation that I don’t like.
The thing is, I feel like over time I’ve been conditioned to feel like something’s wrong with me for being this way. Yet, despite thinking this, I seem completely unwilling to give conversation a chance, to try putting up with small talk in order to possibly get to know someone and genuinely connect.
If I’m in a situation where I have to socialize for a little while, I can sort of manage to do what’s expected of me, asking basic questions and sharing basic things. However, if I had to actually attempt to make a friend (yes, I have no friends), and keep in touch, and keep talking at length on numerous occasions, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’d run out of things to say.
I think I somehow never learned to make normal conversation, since back when I had friends our “conversations” were mostly just coming up with random things to joke about. I guess it worked back when I was a teenager, but now that I’m older I feel like even if I could think the same way again, it wouldn’t work for me because once you get older conversation is supposed to be different from that. At the moment, I don’t do enough on a day to day basis to have much to say about myself, and my lack of interest in people makes it hard for me to even come up with questions to ask people about themselves, so I feel stuck.
Has anyone here had similar experiences? If you have and you managed to change, what did you do or realize in order to change?
Thanks.
