hmm
Okay, get yourself ready for one massive sweeping generalisation: but every single person this planet probably feels this way at certain times in their life. It's the human condition. Being a fluid, ever evolving individual moving through the world as themselves but also being part of groups.
A lot of people on here have this thing where they think of themselves as "outcasts" and in order to do that they have to assume that every other person knows exactly what to do in social interactions. Now, there are certain medical conditions and disorders that will put people at a distance from social interactions. But I'd be very wary of the argument that's built on: "I assume my parents didn't socialise much and so now I assume that somehow that got passed down through my genes and made me into an outcast". Indeed, everyone on here who has expressed that they are an outcast can't actually be too much of an outcast because quite a few other people expressed the same thing. And what are you going to have: a club full of outcasts?
This idea that you "don't know how to socialise" is where the skills mindset went bonkers.
People assumed the existence of social skills. Now, yes, they can be looked at as skills. They can also be looked at as subjectively selected skills and they can also be looked at as something people do naturally on various levels.
However, some people decided to take the skills thing and go loopy with it. They assumed that because these things were skills that they must have been "off school" or something the day that every single other person on the planet was taught how to socialise. Because we all understand exactly how to make loads of friends, get dates etc and only people with Social Anxiety or Social phobia have problems with socialising, bad days, fears, doubts, insecurities.
You observe people interacting and make a huge amount of assumptions about those people being good at socialising and knowing exactly what to do and then you make yourself feel bad and like an outcast because you assume you don't know to join in. Like there's some sort of secret code that you don't understand. Well, guess what, none of us fully understand the code. Is every single person on this planet popular? If people didn't have problems with relationships and friendships on quite a large scale then why on earth are magazines full of problem pages and why am I training to be a therapist? What would be the point? Surely there's already enough therapists to treat people with Social Anxiety and Social Phobia and those are the only people who have problems interacting with others so what's the point in me training?
One of my biggest influences, Richard Bandler, has a line on this: "if you think you're not good enough for something it's a signal, an opportunity to find out. Because it wouldn't be the first time you've been wrong".
