On Being Awkward

There are a lot of layers to trauma, abuse, neglect, and stress. The repercussions become particularly embedded if these hardships occur in childhood, but they deliver significant impact in adulthood, too. 

As I have cultivated faith, I have had the great luxury of feeling safer in my own skin, probably because I have become more willing to set boundaries. Boundaries are easier to establish when we believe that better is a possible - or maybe even likely (GASP!) - future outcome. We start to believe in better treatment, better behavior, better friendships, better partnerships, either from the people currently in our lives or those that we are destined to meet in the future. 

With safety comes awareness, and one thing that traumatized people learn in safe spaces is that we are AWKWARD. Call it whatever you want - socially inept, a bull in a social china shop (my personal favorite), confusing, confused, an imposter, masking, a wolf in sheep’s clothing - many of us are working very hard at getting it right (whatever it may be) while inadvertently acting like a robot wearing human skin. 

This is for a variety of reasons. First, if we come from a dysfunctional childhood (hello, nearly everyone), odds are VERY high that the people who raised us lacked some basic social skills themselves, including limitations in communication, emotional regulation, self- or co-soothing, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. You know those building blocks for having healthy, happy, functional relationships or acting somewhat “normal”? Intergenerational trauma isn’t just about abuse, neglect, or hardship, it’s also about passing down flaws and dysfunction. 

Many of us are very paranoid we will become our mothers or fathers, while watching ourselves act just like them on a regular basis, particularly if we haven’t gone to therapy. In stress or trauma, the list of social skills limitations is somewhat endless, and is a primary reason why our family history contributes to the pain we experienced.

Second (sorry, the first thing was so long ago, hang in there with me, people), stress and trauma literally change the brain and can manifest as neurodivergence. For example, children with more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are also more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, which is a form of neurodiversity that includes miscues, misreading, misinterpretations, over-doing it, under-doing it, or general confusion in social skills arenas. 

The good thing is there are a LOT of resources on social skills out there in this day and age. It may feel embarrassing, but there is nothing wrong with starting with books on social skills meant for children, teens, and tweens. They’re bright, colorful, concise, and they offer information we may not have ever been given when we needed it the most. 

These skills, like so many others, are learnable skills. From the safety of some newly cultivated faith and shored up boundaries, we can spend some me-time in our safe space reading books or listening to podcasts or watching videos to learn skills we were never taught in the first place. 

And we can cut ourselves some slack for all the miscues or misunderstandings or malfunctions of our past. We can offer ourselves some grace for all the mistakes we’ve made, our cornucopia of social faux pas, and our inevitable future failures. Most importantly, we can just be… well, nice to ourselves about it for once.