I dislike cliques with a passion (rant)

[blackomen]

First, I'll say that I'm currently making some progress treating my own social anxiety.. I've been routinely trying to put myself outside of my comfort zone and in social situations for a couple of months.. however, there is this new problem that seems to be looming...

To get down to the point, I really hate cliques. I'm at the point now where I enjoy meeting new people all the time. However, I do not wish to hang out with the same group of 5 - 10 people every weekend as this bores me out over time.. maybe find a new group of 5 - 10 people every month and (hopefully) make one friend out of the group. I suppose I would not last very long if forced to move to a smalltown...

I'm actually finding that I enjoy making smalltalk with strangers and classmates at school as well as talk about our future careers. This is especially helpful in networking and making new connections. But I find that I rarely have anything to relate to on a deeper level whenever talking to a new person. I think it may be partly due to the fact that I don't watch TV or movies and have eccentric and non-mainstream tastes in books and music.

I'm not expecting any dirty and quick answers to this problem as I'd think it may take years of soulsearching to find ways to better relate to others. I'm just curious if anyone else, particularly those who have made some progress in combatting social anxiety, share my preference in jumping around different social circles rather than sticking to one clique?

 

[Thelema]

I have strange likes in music and ideas too. What you may try in a conversation is when you're talking about the music, what music you listen to isn't important because people have reasons why they like the music and thats what you both can connect with and agree upon. If you liked death metal and they liked country you could still talk about music. You could bring up how it can help you deal with a stressful day or you like a certain band because of there way of thinking outside of the box etc. (not very good examples, but I think you get the idea)

Even if you have different tastes you can both relate because you both like music and its less important what kind of music or whatever you like.

I hope this helps