yeh i'm even reserved around my family but that is more because of the way our personalities clashed i think, so everyone was sort of distant and stand-offish from each other growing up...
i know what you mean regarding feeling (retarted) in the sense of not being able to respond to people in the context of the conversation matter or jokingly adding my opinion to the fun! so i'll stay quiet and hesitate instead and often respond awkwardly and sometimes rather vaguely.
i was informed last week that apparently i show little to no emotion in the group which sort of shocked me that someone would go out of their way to say it. what does that even mean? do i behave like a robot? ...i dont agree with that at all because i talk and express myself but perhaps i'm not intense or expressive as much as i believe i am and i tend to laugh alot instead of responding to chit chat out of self consciousness.
often i do wonder if i'm sort of stupid when it comes to general knowledge. i read alot but i do forget alot of what i read and also i dont always conceptualise content properly so i'm not truly understanding what i'm reading or being told by other people. so i have to make sure that people explain things to me in greater detail then just firing the words out at me ...
at the moment i'm in this group at school, two people are non stop joking about random and obscene things, movie quotes, random hilarity etc and they are both in tune with each others funny radar, so they finish off each others sentences. often i join in as well but some of the time my attempts come off as awkward which can be a real mood twister but its not the others mood that is changed, it only gets me down really.
you see those two are super confident at expressing themselves. in fact i get the impression that they probably even had verbal control over their parents decisions perhaps in charge of their surroundings of all kinds of people from a young age because for instance one of them could walk up to a teacher and say something revoltingly offensive but because its said in joking voice and their physiology was to make you laugh it doesnt matter how offensive the words are he just gets away with it because he's also out witting the teachers and everyone in the room, he has full control.
so yeh i do know what you mean in terms of people being able to talk and talk about anything and they execute their wit so effortlessly and sharply that i can either respond or sit there in awe of their skill to talk and its easy to sit there feeling retarted if you're more on the quiet side. its just a matter of practicing and reading and paying more attention to everything around us. if you are watching a tv show how hard are we really concentrating on the plot and words of the characters? same goes for reading a book or an article so that we walk away understanding the message. i believe the cause of the mental haze comes down to a combination of being stuck in a fog like anxiety from depression and self esteem.
because its amazing how much a burst of confidence can magnify concentration and alertness and self esteem which turns all of the emotional controls way beyond what they were before...
many types of personalities are moulded by their experiences and the environment around them rather then initiative, for instance i'm quiet depending on my self esteem. so what if sayi went to a different high school that instead helped to lift my self esteem because the class i was in were more positive and proud to be there? would that make me a different person today? very likely. also what if one decision meant i went in one direction or the other? alot of that comes down to the outside world controlling my mood and self esteem rather then me adapting to my surroundings and lifting my own self esteem from personal choice. its just that we become so used to the conditioning of the outside world eg (friends, family, authority figures, our living surroundings, events, education) that after a while that outside world can control our mood and confidence.
what if i had grown up and my friends and family had filled me with joy and positive motivation all the time, i'd probably feel alot more accepted and perhaps my life would be vastly different. this means that i'm depending far too much on other people and outside circumstances to mould my attitude rather then me as an individual. that is the key to solving this confidence issue.
