How to Share About Yourself Without Oversharing
Good conversation is not an interview. If you only ask questions and never reveal anything of yourself, the other person feels the imbalance, and it can st...
Category
Conversation Skills
How to Disagree Without Damaging the Relationship
Even in the warmest relationships, disagreement is inevitable, and for anxious people it is especially frightening, because it seems to court the rejection...
How to End a Conversation Gracefully
Anxious people often struggle to end conversations, trapped by the fear of seeming rude, and so they linger awkwardly or flee abruptly, both of which feel...
How to Deepen a Conversation From Small Talk to Real Talk
Small talk is the doorway; it is not the room. Many people get stuck forever on the threshold, trading pleasantries with the same acquaintances for years w...
How to Keep a Conversation Going Without Panicking
Once a conversation has begun, a new fear arrives: what if it dies? What if there is an awkward silence, or I run out of things to say? For anxious people...
How to Speak Up in Group Conversations
One on one, a socially anxious person can often manage. The group is where the fear multiplies. Around a table of several people, in a meeting, at a party,...
The Art of the Follow-Up Question
If interest is the engine of good conversation, questions are the fuel, and the most powerful of them all is the humble follow-up question. Master this one...
What to Do When Your Mind Goes Blank
Few things frighten an anxious conversationalist more than the blank mind: that moment when someone is looking at you, waiting, and there is simply nothing...
How to Start a Conversation When You Are Nervous
Every conversation has a hardest moment, and it comes right at the start: the opening, the approach, the first words where there were none. For anxious peo...
Small Talk Is Not Small: Why the Weather Matters
There is a widespread disdain for small talk, a sense that it is shallow and beneath meaningful people. Anxious people often share this disdain and use it...
How to Be a Better Listener
We all believe we listen, but there are levels of listening, and most conversation happens at the shallowest one. Learning to listen deeply, in a way the o...
How to Make People Feel Significant With Sincere Appreciation
Beneath almost every human interaction runs a quiet, universal hunger: the longing to feel significant, to matter, to be recognized as a person of worth. M...