Sad Boyz - Social Anxiety w/ Lauren Shippen

Episode Date: February 28, 2018

Today we're joined by one of the internet's best people, Lauren Shippen (creator of the Bright Sessions), to discuss social anxiety! We define social anxiety and discuss our experiences with it (touching on our introverted, yet outgoing tendencies) and we ALSO play a game that Jarvis created which is basically awkward social situation DnD. Also on this episode we discuss how internet friends are real friends, how Jarvis used to be a pokemon podcasting superstar, lauren gives actually valuable advice and Jordan faked an american accent in an uber ride

Welcome to the sad boys a podcast about feelings and other things also I'm Jarvis and I'm Jordan if you think about it The octopus is actually like one of the most intelligent creatures on earth You just have to redefine your understanding of intelligence cope. Wow, that might have been the most helpful nickname that you've ever had But most you mean at all And today we're joined with a wonderful guest sure. Yeah, she's Sorry, I don't mean to bring the energy down. She's wonderful.

We'll see. Well. That's fair. I have to prove myself. Yeah. It's like we'll figure it out at the end. Now we can agree that we have a guest. We agree that we have a guest and we'll give her a rating out of 10.

And we're kind of like the pitchfork of podcasting. Yeah. We will intentionally give you a low review for attention. She's a writer. She's an actress. Also of the voice variety. A podcasteress. A musician.

A singer. Everything, really. She does it all. A professional fan. Name one thing you want. Bilingual. Whoa. Somebody get on Wikipedia.

Do they accept things that you aren't lauren shippen yes here i am thank you guys for having me thank you for being on the show thanks for taking over the show i think you're the main host now is that right this is my podcast now it's actually a rule that i have any podcast i'm on automatically becomes my podcast now for people watching the video version of the podcast which doesn't exist you will first of all how how are you doing this you will say that lauren and i are wearing exactly the same outfit and jordan isn't so no i really uh so jordan is our guest now yeah welcome to sad boys jordan uh yeah do you want to do the intro again with you too and so yes welcome to sad boys a podcast about feelings and other things also i'm jarvis and i'm jordan cope no nickname nope wow i like this new show yeah it's actually a lot more accessible it doesn't immediately alienate yeah this kind of eliminates one of the key pieces

of feedback we received. So just speaking to how Jordan likes to alienate our listeners. Yesterday, I had a sketch show to which someone introduced themselves to Jordan and said that they were a fan of the podcast. Yes. Wow. To which Jordan responded. Which you'd think, okay, only good things can come out of this conversation. Was this a stranger or a person you knew?

This was someone that I knew that Jordan did not know. And Jordan responded to, I'm a fan of your podcast with, are you an emotional pervert? To which she did not know how to respond. She has not caught up then. In my defense, I said it very enthusiastically. Does that help? I'm just like. It might make it worse oh yeah the cops are here i like so so so jordan really does like to just put people on blast

oh you listen to my podcast well are you exactly i i wanted to bring this up because spoiler alert you've already seen it in the episode title but we're talking about social anxiety yeah yes and for the record i brought it up so how about you not take credit for it I appreciate it You may have heard I do an excellent Jarvis impression I just brought it up all by myself This is the perfect example of Me having the kind of social anxiety That manifests itself as

Oh he's just a weird guy What that actually was Was wow I'm so excited Thank you so much Alexis For being friendly and saying that about the show. That got me really excited, made me feel really good. But I think at the time, I got so excited that my brain just defaulted to, oh my God, what's the most intense thing I can say? Oh, it's a crime.

Whoops, I did a crime. And I think that really feeds into our topic today, which is social anxiety. Yes. Which is going to be a struggle. Which, yeah. How are the three of us? I mean, we're all incredibly comfortable, confident people. Now, to illustrate that, myself and Jarvis are going to be silent for about, I don't know, 30 seconds.

And you can just talk by yourself. No, thank you. Because of your natural comfort and confidence, actually. And begin. We're actually recording this from Lauren's house in LA, and it's an apartment. Isn't it a house? I was going to say house is generous.

Honestly, Sad Boys is about being candid, and I'm ready to say it. It's an apartment. I'm not afraid. I have neighbors. I share walls. It's a lovely apartment. It's quite nice. I'm a afraid I have neighbors I share walls It's a lovely apartment It's quite nice I like it

I'm a huge fan It's like a Fandom to fandom It's a A love letter to fandom A love letter to fandom Yeah I think there's just like

A lot of celebration Of art around And it puts me In a really good mood Oh that's so good to hear We'll be staying You get the podcast And we get your home

I mean that seems Like a fair trade to me absolutely but that's to say that we are in la so the i was gonna say the boys are global but it let's be honest it's a 45 minute flight the boys have uh uh swung back to the one of two locations that sad boys is recorded in the very the first episode of sad boys first episode was recorded i tried to book that hotel by the way it is six hundred dollars a night do you think maybe it's because of our name brand i think it's because i was trying to book it roughly four hours before checking yeah that'll do it god they hate that that's so fuzzy so instead we are staying at a artist loft is what it's called a quirky artist are you at the the brewery

lofts downtown? We are downtown. We're in the arts district, which I am learning is a place. Like mostly converted warehouses and breweries. Yes. So that really speaks to what I experienced last night at 1.30 a.m. when I got to the location and I was terrified. I saw your Instagram story. I was worried for you.

But not enough to communicate with you. Well, to be fair, I saw it this morning at 10 a.m when i could do nothing about it there was i i did wake up and give a it's okay everyone i'm still alive but yeah i i arrived earlier than jordan just we had like some scheduling conflict stuff come up and well sorry not to interrupt but i i want to emphasize how baller your friday was because you did not only just fly casually you had a full day yeah a uh sketch show in the evening and then on the way out of the sketch show a bunch of us that had attended were like hey javas were a great show and you went okay i have to get on a plane now and you just left that was that was also uh i before the sketch show, I recorded three YouTube videos.

Yes. Because we had an internet friend. So me and Mayuko, friend of the pod. Emotional pervert of sorts. Emotional pervert of sorts. So about seven months ago, Mayuko and I started YouTube channels. And when I was learning, I was using iMovie originally. And when I switched to Adobe Premiere just to be able to more easily express myself or just to have more power in the tool, I was looking at

YouTubers who had like had Premiere tutorials. And I found this YouTuber who was a like lifestyle design vlogger. She's a designer, lives in London, makes like design YouTube videos. Found her video, learned Premiere from like how she edited her vlog. That was like one of the ways that I picked up Premiere. Fast forward. Oh, and then I sent her video to Maiko and I was like, inspiration for your YouTube channel. Fast forward to seven months later, she's in my apartment with Maiko and we're recording collabs. And that is wild, right? That's so bizarre. It is super bizarre. Like, yeah, we like got introduced from somebody on Twitter and then we were internet friends and then we became real friends. And I was like, that is like exactly why I love creating things because I'm building that community with people like all over the world.

I'd say one thing that we don't do enough, which this is a nice bookmark in, is personally interact with the people that we interact with online and are inspired by. Yeah. personally interact with the people that we interact with online and are inspired by yeah because i am i believe since the first time we met lauren i became and like absorbed bright session i became a fan of and absorbed yeah yeah yeah so it was this very quick like oh that sounds interesting oh this is great yeah and now it's like i'm just trying to everybody who i think would be into it like doesn't know that the genre of podcasts even exists and so i'm like grabbing them by the arm and just saying like hey you need to listen to this and they're like what's it called again and i'm like it's so peculiar in like this weird pseudo validation way to uh enjoy one another's art and this extends to to charlie the youtuber that you were working yeah exactly to say like

hey you produce something that basically led to me being able to do the thing i currently do and now we're not like peers i don't like that term it sounds kind of weird but like like you were something below before right but like now we're collaborating yeah that's how accessible this is that's how flexible the creative community is it's not this strange insular world where you have to get a special pass to be able to make art with other people well in podcasting especially because it is such a low barrier of entry in terms of like the equipment you need and it's very low all right high five the amazing things about podcasting is that you don't have to have fancy equipment you don't have to have like a wealth of knowledge or degree in audio engineering to make a podcast exactly um and i've made so many friends i was telling you guys that two of my friends from london were here who pop

some champagne hell yeah we don't get a lot of live pops yeah normally that's good so perfect here it is we play a kendrick lamar track in full so uh real quick and i'm sorry to have interrupted lauren's story with a pop but for the as you know, we always drink some sort of champagne. Usually it's a rosé. We have a brute champagne rosé here. But when I showed up, Lauren had already bought rosé and was also wearing the same outfit as me. Listen, I am a fan of the Sad Boys and part of the Sad Boys fam. I knew what to expect.

Do you know? Those are both pretty good names, but I feel like there's a third even better name you could use. Would you like to weigh your vote on Emotional Pervert versus We'll call this the official vote. Fam of the Boys.

Oh, God. I mean, I do love Fam of the Boys because I love the word fam. I think it's great. I love it, too. I want the show to have accessibility at all ages. I don't want everybody to be called an emotional pervert. Every time you've said emotional pervert,

I have laughed. So take that as you will. Maybe we'll keep it as an in-person only phrase. It's much better when you're staring deep in someone's eyes and calling them an emotional pervert. And they aren't ready for it. I had someone reach out to me uh about the show on instagram and offhandedly referenced emotional perverts and i was like haha yeah well that was a joke and they were like no i was also joking and

i was like oh because i couldn't take i had to take them seriously because i was like please don't start using that term i needed to to be absolutely sure. The train has left. This is the relationship. You're describing a relationship you now have with all the fans that we have together. That's the exact dynamic we have of me saying something like that on the podcast and you going, I think that might be the worst idea in the world. Whoops, too late. It's concrete.

It's true. It's good that that's defined. I've annexed the show with my terrible phrase. Lauren, we interrupted you with the pop, but you were talking about how you had some podcaster friends yes from london in town um and they make a show called wooden overcoats which is a sitcom about rival funeral homes on a fictional island in the english channel it's really really funny and really great and i it's so cool that it can exist. It's so cool that it can exist. And like they're good friends of mine now because a few years ago I, you know, found the show and loved it and started talking to them on Twitter and because the audio drama

community. So fiction podcasting is such a small, small community within podcasting, which is already a small creative community. The community is strong. Yeah. And I've just now just because of following people the algorithm like shows me things that people are liking and retweeting and stuff and i'm like hell yeah i'm like it's a community that i'm excited to at least be following in a twitter contact they're the best every person

i've met and it is so delightful and i would guess it was even smaller when you found this show yes it was super super small and so we got talking on twitter and then um anna who's one of my best friends and and acts on the podcast and i won these tickets to london at this uta party it was crazy whoa that's awesome yeah it was amazing first class delta tickets to london it was awesome that's like a competition or it was like just this we were at this uta party that was like sponsored by delta and they were having like an instagram raffle and she won and took me to london which was amazing that's amazing um and my uncles live there and so we stayed there for free and it was like it was it was amazing but amazing so we met up with wooden overcoats and like ever since i was

now two years ago we've kept in touch and it's like it's just one of those things of like internet friendships that then you meet them in person you're like oh wait no you are really cool yeah like it's not just your internet persona i like you and I get along with you Relationships like this validate all the time I spend on Club Penguin Does it? Excuse you Absolutely excuse you The cadence, the online cadence that I learned via RuneScape I always said would pay off

I said the future was relationships like this I'm going to be honest, you guys have mentioned RuneScape a couple times on the podcast Never heard of it It's a Jarvis is leaving We should finish the show man I just thought I thought I knew you cast never heard of it it's it's it's a uh this is leaving wait no and there he goes yeah i just thought i thought i knew you well runescape is a mmorpg founded by andrew gower in the uk uh it was so much more information that was in browser it it was it was free um

you guys can have this permit now. Yeah, it was like a free MMO that a lot of middle schoolers around me played, but I think its claim to fame was that it was entirely in the browser. So in the 90s, it was using a Java web applet, which is kind of like an extinct thing now on the internet, but I think that that made it super accessible for kids in in school who could like go to computer labs and play this thing. It predated any experiences. I don't know about you.

It predated any web interaction experience. I did not touch email, IMDb, anything. RuneScape was the first time I typed something into a computer and somebody else read something I put into it. Interesting. For me, it was early in that um but i had like aol chat rooms and uh email at that point but still uh anyway anyway you're a couple years my junior jarvis you're head of the game uh this is 48 years old yeah wait you're junior wait i'm your senior jarvis don't embarrass me in front of long so i'm the oldest one here is what i'm

getting um what i was going to say about online communities is, you know, back in the day, have I ever talked about how I was, I guested on a Pokemon podcast a number of times in, you know, 2009, 2010? Possibly. When I was in high school? Extensively. But anyway, yeah, there's this Pokemon podcast I listen to. And it was like a very small community that like mostly hung out in a forum in like a small like flash based chat room and everyone that I know from that um from that community I still kind of keep in touch with like on Facebook or like I was how old are you in this

scenario uh I was like 15 um or I guess it went from about 15 to 18 roughly or 16 to 18 um you still stay in touch yeah I that's amazing i was um i was in japan at the same time as one of who's actually a listener uh someone who they were like you know a few years younger than me in the chat room uh and we weren't able to meet up but we tried a couple times it just like didn't work out uh but we were like sharing recommendations back and forth and just like and and what's weird is that i still think of them as their like handle and and my friend russell who was also like less involved in this community but was still in the chat room with me we all met in real life and did a live podcast at paxi's 2010 so that's still on the internet but um well other

than that like he didn't really ever put real names to to usernames so oftentimes i'll be like oh meowth mix is in japan with me and it's like a kid named meowth mix and it's like actual name is jad you know and and i think it was before russell re-christened him as meowth mix that's amazing but yeah i i just think that like well internet friends are real friends yeah and um i've been fortunate enough to like come up in a time uh before people were like super afraid of the fact that i was like meeting random strangers on the internet kind of like slid in there and and now it's become something that i'm comfortable with that i can like meet a person on like twitter and youtube

and like invite them into my home i saw this tweet once that was like as a kid you know growing up in the 90s you're told be careful with the internet and don't ever get into a car with strangers. And I would literally use the internet to get into the car with the stranger. It's just like the way that we interact with the internet and people on it is so different than it was 20 years ago. I guess that's what you're doing literally with Uber now. Exactly. Is that you're using the internet to call a stranger and their car. And I like to chat for a couple of weeks with my Uber driver before they pick me up.

Really establish that baseline relationship. To make sure that they understand me, that they get me, you know what I mean? And then they pick me up and never talk again. Have you ever taken a relationship with an Uber driver outside of the car?

No. Wait, so this is something about social anxiety that I have very strong feelings about. Have we mentioned the topic of the episode

is social anxiety? yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Sorry, I mean, subtextually,

the topic of every episode is social anxiety. The topic of every episode is social anxiety the topic of every conversation i ever have with another human yeah it's usually social anxiety when i'm just chatting to a friend i will suddenly go by the way the topic of this conversation is that i'm anxious um but i wish that there were like a button on lyft and uber that you could click to be like i'm a socially anxious person don't't talk to me. Or even just please don't talk to me in general. I 100% agree. Outside of the app.

I sit in the back seat. Yes, me too. To try to do that. And with headphones in, like I try not to interact and it just, because it makes me. Okay, wait. Now both of you give me crazy anxiety.

Do people normally sit in the front seat? Yeah. Well, that's the whole thing with Lyft, right? When it started. When Lyft started, you would get in the passenger seat, you would fist bump the driver and you would like have a conversation that was basically the way that they were marketing their service i mean that makes a nightmare but it's very cheap you just described a regular human interaction and i went oh wow yeah what

have you ever well have you ever had someone be like, I love talking to Uber drivers. And then you go. Yes. Gross. People have said that to me. But what I mean by that is not like they're gross, but more like that sort of human interaction if I'm not prepared for it. Well, so this is the thing. I was going to ask you guys, like, what is social anxiety to you? Yes. And now you're transitioning into the topic, which is social anxiety, which I mean, frankly,

Lauren, you're a professional. A top tier. And I'm embarrassed for Jordan. I mean, we can, you know, we can wait on it. I'm a president to represent me. Sad boys. Oh, 2018. Yo, Jordan, you mind if I go in first on this one?

Yeah, hit him. Yeah, yeah. Sad boys like to talk about our feelings, and we have a mission for you if the listener is willing. With your help, we can reach the ceiling. You want to go first on this one? Yeah, hit him. Yeah, yeah. Sad boys like to talk about their feelings, and we have a mission for you if the listener is willing. With your help, we can reach the ceiling. We can reach the high moon by noon with your review on iTunes. Fly like balloons and make it into outer space.

But there's a certain set of stars you have to set in place. My homeboy's cutting to the chase. How can he? Come on, Jordan. Just go ahead and tell him how many Our five stars Will be the number That you should do To get the review

And hear it do You said you could do this I'm trying my best I spent a couple weeks Reading these lyrics Are they not good You don't like it so far But one more

Give me one more Let me do it again Just one more For 2018 Give me one more chance Fine you got one more You got one more chance Just don't fuck it up Here it comes I got a good one i got some bars all right

it's all you it's all you two three four five bars lose yourself in the moment that's that's lose yourself by eminem it's close it is very close and i can see why you'd think it was lose yourself it's exactly the song so far yes and for most yeah it is just it is just lose yourself yeah yeah can we do a weaker transition into the topic? Jordan, how about you sing us a theme song? Oh, sure. Lauren, you want to give me a beat? I do not.

I yelled to you a couple weeks ago when you mentioned the topic idea. Okay, here we go. Uh-huh. Yeah, one time. Lose yourself in the moment you want. Also lose yourself. It is, this time certainly it is very close to lose yourself. But let me finish the song. want. Also lose yourself. It is. This time, certainly, it is very close to lose yourself.

But let me finish the song. Okay. Go on, Lauren. Okay. Let me take a breath. The topic, social anxiety. Wow. Yeah.

You know, I judged the book by its cover, and I was mostly right. But there was a twist at the end. Yeah. There was a little prestige. Yeah. Social anxiety. Defin definitions of social anxiety yes yes what does it mean to you young jarvis why don't you kick us off um so for me social anxiety is like when i imagine social interactions and it gives me like pause or like a bad feeling

and like it's like a feeling of avoidance like i don't want that thing to happen like almost as if you imagine a bad thing happening to you like in a spooky voice like you will be in a car and your driver will talk to you and i'm like oh no like please not that your driver has follow-up questions your driver has a sound cloud oh no that's happened to me by the way yeah me too um and i'm the last person who should be defining this but all i know is that i am am actually like uh in terms of like introverted versus extroverted more it's a spectrum obviously i think i'm more 50 50 but i play an extrovert on tv so to speak and and it gives people the wrong impression of me like just my outward like behavior and so i inadvertently invite interaction sometimes that i

am not ready for which which i think in in the uber example particularly what somebody what an uber driver does when you enter the car is they, at least the more tactful amongst them, play that kind of dousing rod sentence, right? You're like, hey, how's it going? Yeah. And if you drop down like a, no, it's fine. Then they're probably not going to follow up with you. Right, right. They'll go like a, I'm pretty good, man.

How are you doing? And then they go, I'm good, man. And then they feel like maybe it's appropriate. Yeah. And then I feel in that situation I have to be like, oh, I'm great. How about yourself? I feel like I need to be like i'm not a dick i just like need to take care of myself in this moment and try to turn off this conversation and i have definitely been in the situation where i want to

just like pretend to fall asleep so that people are talking because i don't know the like most socially acceptable way to remove myself from a situation. It's also common not to lean too much on this specific situation. But quite often, if you're getting in a car, chances are you're going somewhere where you're going to engage with somebody. Right. Yeah. This is your little vestige of safety. Yeah.

Exactly. A moment to think to yourself, oh, my God, the world is terrifying and I can see things outside the window. I'm curious to hear everyone else's definitions because I guess I think of it in terms of like a thing I'm not prepared for or like something that's going to drain energy where I'm trying to charge energy or something. Preemptive. Yeah, I don't really know. I'm hoping that like this, your definitions

give me more color into what I'm experiencing because I don't think I fully got at it. I do think preparation is a big piece of it. Like I think for me with just anxiety in general, it's so much about control, right? And wanting to control your surroundings. And that's like for me, like when I have panic attacks, it's because something I feel out of control or there's something I can't control. Right. And I think for social anxiety, which is a really, really huge piece of my anxiety, it's

social interactions where I don't know what the script is. Oh, yeah. I think that that's something where like there are certain circumstances and certain conversations where I'm like, all right, yeah, I know how this is going to go. But then because other people are unpredictable. How dare they? Yeah, it doesn't always go like that. And so I'm much more comfortable interacting with somebody I've interacted with before because once I sort of figure out their patterns, I'm like, I think I know how this is going to go. I can put this in my head and I can kind of pre-plan my answers absolutely but like sometimes just going to the grocery store and like talking to cashiers i'm like yeah what if they like make a joke and i respond to it weirdly

or like yeah yeah you know it's just it's something that it's the unknown it's like unpredictable and not knowing the script that's a really that i really identify like that phrasing a lot yeah not knowing the script. Jordan, how about you? It's interesting that the two of you have kind of identified a pre- and post-interaction chronology to social anxiety because I'd never thought all that much about the term functionally speaking, and I suppose it's not the actual interaction. That's what I'd internalized it as. Like, social anxiety is not being super capable all the time when you chat to people or something like that.

Right. Social anxiety is not being super capable all the time when you chat to people or something like that. But really, when I think of my own social anxiety, for the most part, it's concerns around how I'll perform. And then it's over analysis over how I perform. Oh, yeah. Yes. The amount of time. Fortunately, as I get older and as the story with the very nice person I met outside your show will tell, I have kind of a fairly high cringe factor at this point in my life. My cringe tolerance is pretty high.

I can be kind of a doofus and I'm okay with it. But growing up, the hours I would put in in college to reassessing conversations that I'd had. Oh, yeah. To this day. Down to elements that nobody could remember. Yeah. The amount of time I would have between words. Yeah. The ways that I would pause, twist could remember. Yeah. The amount of time I would have between words.

Yeah. The ways that I would pause, twist my head. Yeah. The interaction elements that you'd have to be a fucking psychopath to be able to internalize. Yeah. Oh, I did a long blink. So he probably thinks I'm an asshole. Right.

Exactly. Most commonly, the place that this comes up still for me, and I imagine the two of you can relate to this, is dating. Right? Oh, yeah. Sure. What is that? What is... Oh, do you want to define dating? Never heard of it. Yeah. still for me and i imagine the two of you can relate to this is dating right oh yeah sure what is that what is oh do you want to define dating never heard of it yeah so dating is is when you have like um a jar of milk and you're like well this we need to let people know when I'm sorry

there's such a for me joke sorry I can't imagine where this is going let me try again sorry so dating is like

when you open up a calendar and you pick a random stop you have to stop oh I'm crying oh my god I'm so embarrassed we completely forgot we forgot to ask laura to do the theme for dating

to do the what oh the theme for dating i a theme song for dating yeah dating is really hard and weird i agree wow that was so good you did so poorly in the rehearsals but that was really good that was also uh yeah that's basically how i would define it uh it's solely things to get anxious about to be honest a collection of interpersonal interactions uh where there is a fail state where there's a fail state and no script where you don't know the person very well yeah and yeah so it's really just like a you have even less data than you normally would yeah do you guys watch 30 rock yes okay so the episode with like early on with um oh what's his face from snl uh floyd he that's his name in 30 rock and

and she like finds out that he's an alcoholic and goes to alcoholic anonymous with him is it wolf forte or no it's um jason sudeikis jason sudeikis yes yes you're right sorry and she's like i just wish that that when you meet somebody you could just tell them all of your weird things yeah like that's how i feel about all social interactions i wish i could just meet people and be like here's the thing i have anxiety i'm not good at texting i'll like i don't necessarily want to spend a lot of time with you but i might want to hang out with you and it's like i wish i could just sort of lay that out to people this is the tricky thing though because in my particular case i would be so excited if somebody did that but you are flipping a coin oh right you're rolling a d20 and roll and betting on a single number yeah chances

are you're not going to bump into somebody else that's like man creepy amounts of transparency really gets me going right but if that was the norm right like if that was the norm was creepy amounts of transparency it would make our lives easier right for it for example i now like we have a podcast and a youtube channel where you can like learn facts about my life and that makes my interactions with people who like have seen my stuff a little bit easier because they know where i'm coming from i think a lot of my anxiety i think a lot of my fears in general that are interpersonal are related to misrepresenting myself um which is that i mean that's the classic post-date analysis right yeah yeah oh my god she thinks i skate no you get that happens to you right you always tell people that you skate yeah when you show up with a helmet

you're like it's not what it looks like but i the misrepresenting thing i i totally get and to your point about sort of like introvert versus extrovert, I am definitely an introvert in the sense of like social interaction drains me and I gain energy from being alone. But I'm also like a very outgoing person. Right. Which is weird. No. Right.

I'm the same way. And I think people think that outgoing and extroverted are the same thing. Synonymous, yeah. And when what it really is, is you really like charging up and then using all that energy exactly and i'm the same way which is why as you mentioned it is clearly a spectrum because preference and application are thousands of different degrees of that which do not necessarily indicate whether or not you're extroverted yes a high concept idea of was oh you get into an uber and you kind of express some of those points those points that you stored up right sitting inside

making a supernatural puzzle and like lying under your and like covering yourself in a blanket you've got to spend a little bit of that on an uber driver by being extra friendly right what that does not indicate is hi i got into this car for a long form engagement right i'm here to answer all of the questions you have and throw in a few of my own well because to your point if you're in an uber you're probably going somewhere where you're gonna have to expend a lot of that social energy and so i don't want to waste it all in the uber yeah yeah it's finite it is a finite resource it's like you're over the party and they're like how are you fine fine my uber driver was very chatty it's i really connected with him but by god i've spent all of my points yeah it's

like you're worth it you're you're gambling with like small amounts of money almost like if you only had $10, right? And every social interaction like cost you like $2 to $5. You would be very conservative about how you spent your money, right? And there is this offer that happens at the beginning of every social interaction where it's like I'm offering something to you and now you can like come back to me with a response there are responses that cost you nothing but they come off as rude yeah and and which itself may generate the kind of anxiety that drains you in a entirely different way exactly exactly well that's where i'm going with this which is that like if i'm in the if i'm in a situation with an uber driver and i've only got two dollars to spend but they've offered to me and i don't

want to be rude because i get anxious about being rude yes yeah then i'm going to spend that i'm just like well here it goes i've just got a dollar is now on the line and it's going to go whether or not i say anything exactly but that is that is a bit of a um a slippery slope because you were then it's you're not respecting yourself or you're not taking care of yourself in that in that instance because you know that it costs you something but you're just going like this person doesn't know that it costs me something so i'm just going to spend it anyway like someone's like hey can i have a dollar and you only have a dollar and you're like well they don't know that i only have a dollar so here you go right well and this is

where the social anxiety comes in is i know how to take care of myself to a point and i i know what needs to happen in order for me to like feel good in my brain right that makes sense you've been practicing for a really long time yeah we are all high functioning people with like lots of weird stuff going on to get to this stage we've got coping mechanisms yeah and we know ourselves and the moment you add somebody else into that equation, it really complicates things because then it's about, okay, well, I know how to take care of myself, but that might be at the expense or the perceived expense of that person. And that's going to ultimately detract from my own self-care. And so, yeah, making that kind of like risk versus reward, you know, sort of summation

is really difficult. It kind of goes back to what we were talking about with guilt where um the risk reward is what you're risking is kind of being rude or not being there for someone and like the ultimate consequence of that is that that person feels bad or you think the perceived right like you think that that person is going to feel bad and thus you feel guilty about it right yeah um and at that point you've just you've again you fall into a self-feeding cycle yeah a self-completing philosophy of well i'm going to be spending x amount of points tonight well it's going to happen either way and the uber driver's mad i didn't say anything to him guess what the uber driver has not thought about it yeah driver doesn't remember giving you a lift well this is where perception is so dicey because

you cannot know what somebody else is thinking and you cannot know what somebody else is feeling. And you can drive yourself insane in sort of those post-interaction evaluations. Yeah. Or something that I've fallen into so many times of like, oh, what if they thought this? What if they thought that? You're never going to know unless you ask and you're just going to drive yourself crazy if you keep making it up in your own head. I have a question for the two of you. Which of the two, pre or post, do you think causes you the most drama in your interpersonal life be it by yourself be it

with other people what gives you the most pain the net amount of pain it's the the while I'm interacting oh yeah moment because so you know how people are like oh I'm so bad with names yeah I'm bad with names because when I'm meeting somebody for the first time I'm shaking their hand the thing I'm thinking is like okay look them in the eye shake the hand not too hard like don't be weird don't shake it for too long yeah it smiles you're not being weird you've been holding on for too long exactly by the time i've run through all that stuff i've missed their entire name and like oh my gosh and so then it becomes a thing of like well now i'm anxious about the fact that i don't know their name because i didn't hear it because i was trying to like show myself as a normal person who can shake someone's hand and smile

which you achieved presumably at the sacrifice of knowing this person's name. And that's what all social interactions are for, basically. And they're not going to really appreciate that. That's the thing. No. They don't know. They don't know how much effort goes into just shaking a hand. Because what we are ultimately doing is trying to be perceived externally as normal or what's accepted as being normal.

And what comes with that is when you do it right it's very thankless it's like that's what i expected yeah it's like i was coming from a completely different place like you were driving from arizona and somehow you got to california uh in on time for some meeting right like and you're like sweating and you're running and you show up and you're on time, but everybody's like, okay. As expected. As expected.

Very good. Yeah, that was a weird way to put it, but whatever. For me, it's the pre. It's before. It's all of the things leading up to that. The prep. The prep. Not knowing the script.

But what Lauren pointed out is something that I realized I do where I am going through a checklist like I think I'm going through it very quickly and I think I'm very like good at it at this point but that's kind of what I meant by I play extroverted on TV because I'm like shaking someone's hand and I'm like Jordan cool I know that I'm gonna say Jordan at the end of this interaction yeah to sort of tie us together even more closely so we have a conversation anyway hope you have a great night Jordan and then you're like he knew it he did the trick he like threw the the basketball behind his back and it went into the the goal right and i never saw you miss the hundred times

prior right yeah i didn't see you walking around the court by yourself at night throwing it backwards and hitting cheerleaders but but that for me that's at the cost of like being present during the interaction because i'm thinking about the cost of like being present during the interaction, because I'm thinking about the stats and like the mechanics of the interaction, like throughout it. Right. So to that point,

do you guys find that you're like trying to balance the seesaw in social interactions where you're like sort of doing that mental check of like, I've said too many things about myself. I need to make sure they have time to talk. Absolutely. I mean, now that we've covered pre and post as areas of interest say we dive headfirst into uh the shared nightmare we all have which is interacting with any living thing is that the the place that causes you the most

anxiety or is it the yeah because i want to do that and then i actually have a series of scenarios that i've written oh my god yeah wait oh okay this is now the pre is affecting me yeah i'm anxious that we have to do that and afterwards i'm going to be thinking about how do i do on the podcast correctly um so pre during your post what caused the most anxiety i would say probably post um actually no addendum when i was younger, post, these days, pre I think when I was younger I was very overly analytical about the results Of an interaction

Mainly because I was more externally validated Than I am now, not to say that I'm not externally validated But at that point in my life We're all very externally validated when you're in your teens When you're in school, when you're surrounded by people That you are only valid if validated by Yes In my view, you almost in my view you

almost need external validation to even build the capacity for internal you need a review scale you don't like come out a baby going i am myself whole you know like no feedback required you have to like get that in and go oh oh being a 100% external is bad, which is in that an external, like being externally validated to a point. So anyway, continue. Yeah, that's exactly right. So when I was a little bit younger, I used to struggle a lot with, okay, I want to review and make sure I was as successful as possible. And really what your teenhood is, and early 20s as well, but mainly teenhoodhood is your apprenticeship in being a human being yeah saying to yourself okay i've been told by well frankly everyone that in a few years i'm going to be responsible for whether or not i live or die i'd better figure out roughly how that goes

and how i interact with i'm sorry you've just made me want to imagine every child as wearing some sort of monk's robe at a blacksmithing table that just makes all of childhood feel a little bit better. It's like, oh, it's an apprenticeship. It is. I mean, that's what it is, and that's what we should be communicating to our kids because being a child is the time to fail, and yet we have so many systems in place

that evaluate failure that we don't as an adult. We have tests and systems to say, you failed as a child. The worst possible thing you can do is fail. And also on the flip side, I feel like as a child the worst possible thing you can do is fail and also on the flip side i feel like as a as a child and a young adult you sort of expect to get to a point in your 20s or i did anyway where i was like then i'll know right then i'll know what's going on yeah and i sort of wait are you saying that doesn't happen because i'm kind of optimistic about it um so i remember sort of being like 22 or 23 and looking around and being like, oh, so

no one knows what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think that is the official rite of passage to becoming an adult. Yes. Is figuring out that nobody is an adult. Exactly.

We're just old kids. Yeah. Pretty much. But yeah, I would say as I got older, it definitely became the prank. At this point in my life, which is what in me uh pretty often like get flaking on social engagements right during the social engagement is the fact that i overanalyze it for so long and yeah you know to this day maybe five percent of the things that i will go to or the interactions that i'll have were worth worrying about yeah occasionally yeah but those five like like the one mean tweet you get out of the thousand you receive

sticks with you far more concretely than yes you know yeah positive interactions i can probably word for word recount the last negative youtube comment i received was from me um sorry about that yeah and i do think that i'm a pretty good podcaster and i don't think it was appropriate to comment on youtube because that's not even the medium for that sort of discourse yeah it was feedback about our show and i was criticizing me i have a list of scenarios uh that i have taken from my own life so these when when i describe this as a faceless second person it's really just me um this is i want to know is this giving you as much anxiety i'm terrified right now. I'm excited to hear them,

but just the fact that you said, thing is coming, you can't prepare for sing. Also, knowing that Jarvis does improv, and like, I've done improv, and I hate improv.

It's good for me, and I hate it. So improv for me is very mechanical. It's like, if I can't build the schema for improv into like a real life situation, then it didn't make me better at real life interactions. Like, if I can't build the schema for improv into, like, a real-life situation, then it didn't make me better at real-life interactions. Like, if I'm talking to an Uber driver and I'm playing a character, easy. If I'm my normal-ass self, hard.

100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So before we jump into that, I specifically wanted to bring something up for two major reasons one we recently received feedback that somebody was frustrated that i was no longer doing jordan's extremely vexing and ultimately embarrassing social interaction of the week whatever the segment was called yeah that was definitely it don't check the other jordan special space was the original worst name it was easy to remember it was short sweet to the point for the sake of ease i'm bringing back jordan special space space for one time only till I can open up Evernote again and check.

Jordan's special space this week is to talk about a Lyft interaction that I had that was the specific manifestation of my social anxiety. Because I want to know, A, does this make any fucking sense? And B, what else would I have done after this first step? So for a little bit of context, I live very close to a law college near a civic center. That's law for our American listeners. Yeah. This is, no, I mean law like the podcast.

Law by Aaron Menken. I live next to Aaron Menken. So I live next to a law college. And pretty much any time that I get into any car going anywhere Somebody will say like hey how's school Because if I'm coming out of a building that's predominantly students Maybe they pick up people from there So usually when people say this

I'm able to go like I'm an adult I actually have a job downtown I'm fully functional And we move on And guess what Interactions over over headphones are in brockhampton's blasting i already know where this is going oh wait sorry

jarvis was at the destination that i told this story okay so well i don't know so i'm excited no i don't think you told me i just feel like i know where it's going Oh my god wow Maybe I didn't Oh god That's not good for my brand So I hop I hop into the car Person asks Hey do you study here?

How's it going? And they do it very authoritatively To the point where I'm like Well can't say no They cracked it open In fact I don't even believe they said do you they were like is this school good or something like so encapsulating that i was like oh fuck are you getting a good education here son how much of jordan cope can i be in this

restriction and so i opted for not at all because i did an american accent and i didn't do it as a bit this was the thing it came up and for some reason like maybe it's just like a immigrant adaptation thing like i think to myself okay this person wants me to come into their world they've invited me into this world where they perceive me as a student what else might they perceive me as uh they probably perceive me as kind of a hipster and i watch netflix and i skate and i like all of these things i assume they think about right i just want to apply to them and then i go like okay um also maybe i'm american so two major things came out of this one i discovered that my american voice which i've never done for more than like a sentence yeah we need to hear this it goes up in

pitch over time so by the end of the 50 minute ride i was like yeah man i can't believe thanks just hold on the car it started off just like uh yeah you know i just study at the college you know it's fun and uh i love football which is the sport where you pick it up with your hands for some reason um and it ended up like yeah see you later um but like as a result, oh my God, I don't know why it happened. That's the thing that panics me. I don't know what I could have done differently. Because at no point did I think, yeah, I should probably do an American accent.

I just opened my mouth and the voice came. I totally get that. When people ask you questions that don't really have a yes or no answer, and you just sort of enter into that mode that you think they're expecting, that's something that happened to me before. Oh, that's totally happened to me before. Well, my question is, anything else I could have done for future interactions? Any advice?

Very, very welcome. Honestly. I mean, that's exactly what I would have done. That's what I would have done, too. The number of careers I've made up to Lyft drivers is so many. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The crazy thing is I think I got better at law. I feel really confident about that.

I think you're a lawyer now. You graduated from UC Hastings. Yeah. Aaron Manke himself gave me my diploma. I walked away. You have a law degree. From a law college. And my second question was,

have either of you experienced similar interactions, be it in or outside of an Uber? However, I imagine Jarvis uh topics will cover that oh so i've definitely experienced this yes yeah i mean even just going to the airport so i actually had my sketch show and then went to the airport immediately after the show like the last two fridays oh yeah um and and last week i was going to new york and i this is kind of in like code switching territory but like whenever i'm in a situation where i'm like okay this person's speaking to me like with this accent that is like an accent that i it's like similar to where i grew up right so i

like go into that you know what i mean like and and I don't feel like I'm being inauthentic, but I just feel like I'm sort of projecting myself through a different like voice box or through a different lens. But through a more like, more accessible. Well, I do think there's a difference between like lying about who you are

and code switching, right? Like those are two distinct like those are two distinct enhancing something you are right like moving into a part of yourself more fully versus like fabricating something especially if it's in service of the other person right but i think that in this example um i see a lot of similarities because i just wanted to make them comfortable and and what i imagine you saw in your interaction jordan is that the crime i did in the fraud that i committed yeah there were just too many things to fix when in your pre like when you were thinking about the interaction there were too many things that were off yeah and you were like well i don't want to talk about this about myself i don't want to talk about this about myself i don't want to explain that i'm not what

this guy thinks i am because all that is conflict this is going to take my energy this is going to take my energy so it is easier like you weren't trying to do a joke you weren't trying to do a bit you were like in my mind it is easier to go through this situation as a different person. It is a smaller net investment for me to do a gradually elevating American voice, which ended up as Mickey Mouse right at the end, than to explain that I'm a law student that moved from the UK,

which is a thing that didn't happen. So I'm really going to have to think about that, right? Or just to explain who you are. At no point did you describe that you're not actually a law student, right? Wait, I could have done that? Yeah. See, that wasn't even at all true.

No, but I do this all the time. Like Uber drivers will ask what I do and I'll say I'm a writer and then they'll ask what and, you know, explain what a podcast is is sometimes a real journey. And so I'll just say like, oh, I write novels

because I am writing three novels over the next two years. And that's just a much easier sort of baseline for people so I have it easy because I'm a software engineer in San Francisco so it's very like that point they will stop talking to you like oh no for real like for me it's like a different thing where I'm like oh yeah yeah no I I'm a software engineer blah blah it's like oh yeah a lot of people are doing that out here and I'm like mm-hmm yep I'm not at all unique whereas in LA when they hear writer they're like oh that's that's common but I'm also a writer let me tell you about all my stuff exactly you know which is a kind of different thing so it's for me that goes back to knowing the scripts um I know that when I out myself as a software engineer, as long as I self-deprecate, the interaction will probably end because they probably don't have the schemas to respond a lot.

Or at the very least lead into an environment that you're comfortable in because you've done this a thousand times. Exactly. So I think that that level of comfort is a big part of it. I want to put us to the test. Yeah, these scenarios. I want to hear these scenarios. Okay. All right. Let's go.

So these are scenarios taken from my own life. Over the past couple of days, I've been writing down things that I thought about that gave me a bunch of anxiety. That was a fun exercise. Are these for the most part the pre? These are actually a lot during. that was a fun exercise are these for the most part the pre is this like these are no these are actually a lot during but really

what's gonna happen is I'm gonna say the scenario to you and then what's your reaction is probably just gonna be the pre I think like cause when I

phrase it to you and these are actually written for me to have just talked about as my own experience but I realized halfway through the episode that it would be fun

if we all just put ourselves in someone else's shoes except for me who's in my own shoes and sure still it makes me anxious they're still written in the first person i'm going to now describe them to you so you're at a party and oh my god it's like millennial dnd yeah you're at a party and your friend who texted you about the party, who's one of the hosts of the party, is there. And you're able to spend a few minutes with them. But shortly thereafter, more guests show up and they have to continue being a host. And none of your friends have arrived yet.

Do you have a timeline? Your friends won't be there for 15 minutes. Oh, boy. By the way, I think it would be fun if you described how you think about the situation and then I described what I did. Yeah, okay. So we'll try and come up.

Much like Dungeons & Dragons, you have a pre-described idea that we will throw out. This is Jarvis' completely awkward, socially vexing, whatever, interaction of my entire life.

So when I used to be into YouTube, which was a thing i did for a little while i did this video called the introverts guide to partying and there were a couple things in here that i still do to this day and that i would apply here oh which are the podcast is about to become useful wait whoa we're gonna have to cut this part out so my friends aren't arriving for about 15 minutes yeah so i would probably um follow my friend the host for like a minute or two to kind of do the introductions as they're greeting people and just sort of be like the like oh hi like i'm i'm lauren like nice to meet you and then go to the bathroom for a good cool four to five minutes yes you mean 45 45 45 four to five minutes and then i'll come back out it's sort of like get the lay of the land um and if there's a food table

or a drink situation go there first yeah to try to like kind of do something and hopefully start up conversation with somebody about drinks and food. Make a drink that's proactive. Exactly. The script about making drinks or getting food is like pretty well trodden too. Exactly. Even with strangers. And at that point we're at like eight or nine minutes.

Yeah. I can probably. You synchronize watches before the event began. And so I've got like seven minutes to kill maybe. And everyone knows that this is an exact ETA. Yeah. The FBI is about exact ETA. Yeah. The FBI is about to infiltrate. People are never late in their life.

And they're in Uber, and everybody knows that Uber is not exactly on time. It's super correct. Unfortunately, they pull over to the side of the road because one of the passengers is doing this weird accent. So then you also offer if you can help at all with any of the party preparations. Yes. Early on in the party. Yes. Whoa.

Yes. That's a promo this is i feel like uh these are is also in my wheelhouse i've never tried that one that one's really good oh yeah yeah it's very useful and then you just basically try to parlay either the helpfulness or a conversation about the food or drink into a larger interaction and that would be my plan i like that i like that a lot what do you call that plan just social anxiety at work really survival instinct survival operation social anxiety at work plus survivalistic yes operation like don't collapse into a bomb corner like operation like don't go throw up in the

bathroom oh that's our lives operation don't do this don't do this okay so jordan what do you do in this situation oh boy uh roughly what time is it uh it is so the party started at nine and you showed up at 9 45 well the party don't start till i walk in here right you showed up at 9 45 thinking surely people have started arriving so often yeah wait when i often. Oh, shit. Wait, are you spying on us? Remember, I'm actually describing this as if it's not from my personal experience, but it is a thousand percent from my own experience. You're a fantastic GM

because you've managed to construct this world where you're like a weird, awkward millennial. How did you do that? It's so amazing. It's so real. Well, I've studied them like Jane Goodall. Before I learned to speak to be on the podcast java's taught me via sign like so okay so it's 9 45 and you show up thinking the party started at nine certainly some of my friends will be there the host will be there it's going to be fine and in about 10 is when

your friends are planning to show right so 50 of my expectations have been met i have the host i have you have to glob. I have the host. You do have the host. I have something to glob onto. You have something to glob onto. Now I feel like what I'm going to do, because your answer was perfect, and that's everything I should be doing. The drink one I might gravitate towards, but all the other ones were fantastic. I haven't considered following the host or any of that kind of stuff.

Oh, yeah. Just like glue. Particularly the helping with tasks. Genius. So what I'm going to do is describe what I would actually do. Right, right. Or what I have historically done, have historically done because from now on try to compost or recycle i will immediately find the recycling to show people that i care

um oh shit lauren really does listen to the show i really do yeah thanks my secret's out um so i would yeah i would enter the party good step one have this brief interaction with the host good step two after that i mean if i can stave off the tears which are pretty likely to start coming you know because of the because of the tension to be honest i'm probably gonna go for the wall lean phone out really classic operation wall lean phone out the reason that uh operation wall lean phone out works is that i have a and i haven't talked about this in the show before because i'm kind of self-conscious but i have a medical condition called resting bitch face and what this leads me to do is be pretty inaccessible to any human being unless I engage them first.

So if I lean against the wall, all like nine foot two of me, then people are not going to engage with me. And I don't have to worry about it until people turn up. However, your solution is much better. That's just what I've done. And so the wall lean phone out is interesting because that causes me more anxiety than not. Because then I start to wonder about what everybody in the party is thinking about yeah yeah the the wall lean phone out that's true you don't understand um it doesn't help at all i should explain it's not a successful tactic and so i well okay first i want to hear what jarvis actually did at this this party at 9 45

um oh my god i'm so nervous so i i showed up i i hung out with the host for as long as i possibly could and then they started like sort of circling up with like groups of friends from school and we didn't go to school together so i didn't know any of these people so i felt like i didn't want to go through a bunch of introductions yeah so i essentially wallied phone out but what i like to call stand in the corner And get on your phone And don't interact with anyone until your friends show up And I think I may have also done the bathroom thing

Where I'm like Oh so useful Yeah it's like I don't need to go to the restroom at all But I'm going to sit here for a while Yep because that's where I can sort of go And like have my phone out and do that kind of stuff Like sort of leaning up against the sink, but nobody sees. Yeah.

And this is where I have sort of a philosophical question, which is I wonder how much of this is gendered. Because I think that as a woman, I at least sort of a woman growing up in the Northeast and like kind of a wasp society. And this is you? This is me. Yes. This is me yes this is me the sort of expectation of like offering help or of sort of making sure

that everybody's comfortable okay was very much kind of like the host kind of the hostess you know it's like sort of being

the consummate hostess which is something that my mother is and I'm very grateful that she sort of passed on to me of like making everybody comfortable because my mother was extremely extroverted

right and could like carry on a conversation with anybody which is such a wonderful quality yeah um but i do sort of wonder like because i i'm thinking about parties that i've been to here and it's always the girls who are sort of saying like oh can i help with anything like do you need anything yeah and i sort of wonder if that's gendered or not i mean that's um a broad that's a fantastic assessment that's a really good assessment i also also wonder like you brought up a great point, which is so you said that your mother was very extroverted and you like for me when I've been in similar situations, that has been a blessing in that it gave me the instruction manual or it gave me like kind of the playbook by which to interact. Like I don't have to like I don't have to improvise this i can just like

follow i can just play the character or i can improvise this i can play the character of the person who i've seen do this very well yes exactly um i want to give a because it's an episode of sad boys i do need to give my shout out to joy cope um favorite listener of the show yep uh also incidentally my mother but mainly a listener of the show She is She's a really interesting case study around this kind of stuff Because when I was growing up I always identified my mum As an extrovert That's what she appeared to be

She played that role incredibly well And still can when necessary Far more charismatic than me Far more likeable than me Completely free of resting bitch face I assume that came from my dad's side The genetic condition The few times that I've met Joy

She has Still come off as like a very Much like go and talk to everybody In the party Just immediately Emanates like this very Very nice very extroverted Personality

I think since I've become an adult We were always super close and always super open, but I think unconsciously your dialogue starts to shift as you age and as your reference points start to change. Once you can reference doing your own taxes to one another, it just sort of changes the way you communicate. Or talking about the weather, which is probably why that conversation happens.

That's exactly right. I'm sorry, my mom's an Uber driver. She'll put me up, we'll have a chat. Talking about the weather, which is like probably why that conversation happens. That's exactly right. Yeah. I'm sorry, my mom's an Uber driver. She should put me up. We'll have a chat. But I realized in the last few years, particularly, especially since I moved to the US and we communicate mainly via like FaceTime and stuff, it has to be like as informative as possible to try and communicate as much as possible in that small amount of time.

What I realized is, partly through her communicating and partly just through seeing her in certain types of interactions is that she is the same as me she's just better at the second part right she's had more time to figure it out she's more naturally gifted at it but she is 100 an introvert like she gains her energy from being by herself yeah actually oddly enough without going too much into her life right now the last last couple of years she's been living in France and doing up this house and has been sort of her hermit period. She has plenty of friends over there and interacts plenty, but it's been a little slower and calmer than it was. She was an entrepreneur and very busy when she lived in the UK. And as a result, I think she started to realize, oh, I got so good at playing the role, at being that version of myself, that I almost lost track of the person that I actually am. Yeah.

Which I think is something all three of us, not to judge you, Lauren, I can judge Jarvis because I know him. No, please, judge away. He's a bad guy. But what I would say for all three of us is that it's very easy to fall into a pit of, well, because I did X, I must be X. Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah yes yeah absolutely which is what other people will identify you as which makes sense and that's like kind of goes back to what i even have anxiety about because usually for me it's like i behaved this way and it's possible to have perceived this set of actions as a different me it's mischaracterization. Usually my anxiety is either leading up to a thing

I'm not going to be able to perform. And I'm really glad that you brought up like the performance aspect of this because it really does feel like a performance. And, or I had an interaction and it didn't go well or I think that it could have been perceived as not going well one example that I'll give I went to an improv jam which is just like when a bunch of people like go on stage and it's not like a team it's just like everybody jamming it's like the equivalent

of a musical jam with instruments except for with improv scenes and I I went out and I was pretty rusty and I did some improv and I thought it was horrible and i went back to my seat and i sat down and i stewed on it and eventually it bubbled to the point where i couldn't be in the crowd having given my performance so i left i like there it was something so bad about it that i like couldn't there anymore. Oh, yeah. Why be there if it's not serving you? Who were you sitting there for? I mean, yeah. Let's be real.

No, but it was just like I just kept thinking about how bad it was, the post. Yeah. And I was like, oh, no. Oh, no. They all know. They can all see, you know. And then I left. Okay, so I have one more very basic scenario.

It's all happened to us. This is the boss in the dungeon. That was us getting through all of the winding hallways. We just beat a couple of rats and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this one's like one of those that's, you know, you know it, you love it. It's always going to come back for more.

You're walking in the streets of, you know, pick your city, L.A., San Francisco, New York. I'll take Vienna. All right, Vienna, Austria. So you're walking down the street. Vienna, Virginia. Oh, well, there you go. Paris, Texas.

Vienna, sausages. The moon, Texas. And someone walks up to you and goes, Jordan. Uh-oh. Lauren. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Lauren. Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

Uh-oh. Lauren shrank into about a two-inch long version of herself in a puddle of tears. It's me. Remember? From? No, they don't even say what they're from. No, they're not even going to give you that much context. It's me.

And then they somehow, they know you so well. And you're a part of their narrative so much. And you have no idea who they are. You can't even, you don't even recognize their face. I mean, I'm rushing somewhere i wasn't but i am now this happened to me a couple of times um and it's usually i i will try to be like oh my god like it's so good to see you like how are you i'm sorry i really i have i'm so late for a thing. I have to go. Just get out of it as fast as you can. Damn. Jordan, I want to hear what you've got to say.

Holy crap. Yeah, same, dude. Totally. I deal with it in the very efficient way that Lauren just said. No need for a follow-up question. Pull the parachute. So, actually, fortunately, this is one I'm actually pretty good at because i grew up in a very small rural town in england and uh my mom if i shout out my mom this episode i don't know

but shout out to my mom now you have a mom yeah something of a mom uh she ran a cafe and then a vintage store in this small town at separate times in my life so both very social forum environments especially in a small town so suddenly my mom's constantly bumping into people that are like hey did you run this cafe and it's like oh well yep 11 years ago i don't know why we're now currently talking about it but that would happen to me a lot because i would bump into these people throughout my childhood not know the reference point yeah and then somebody would you know it's like 20 000 people in the entire area yeah right so people would come up to me and be like aha jordan still uh still doing it and i'd be like oh me you know me guy if i would not be doing the thing you're referencing

oh wouldn't be jordan the guy you know just like you're the person that i know all right see you around fella uh but the fortunately i think something that's different about being in a small town that made this more challenging is that there is for some people the assumption that you must know who they are because hey it's a small town so what i would do a lot is just be like as excited as possible and as engaged to almost compensate for the fact that i'm not saying their name because then well i wouldn't be this excited if i didn't know what your name was right how could i be this excited yeah you were um but then in when i moved to san francisco last few years it's pretty different i uh i bumped into somebody recently actually at a store near my place um

and they recognized me from an improv class with you yeah a year ago maybe yeah yeah they recognized me this is like three weeks ago they recognized me and not only did they recognize my face they recognized my name like this is this is presumably when they meet people they aren't doing the checklist right because she was able to lock this shit down yeah so she comes up to me she's like hey jordan how's it going still working and then names like my company and like how long i've been the company all these small references like holy shit that's amazing i think that's so alarming because you realize how like the the the dichotomy of like their presence in your narrative versus your presence in their narrative.

The data they were able to extract. That is what's the most, I immediately feel horrible in that situation because of that reason. And it's not that they did anything wrong or that we have different fundamental approaches that may be a factor at play. What really happened was,

hey, I was probably like, maybe I was a little bit hungover and they were caffeinated. Or maybe I was a little bit hungover and they were caffeinated. Or maybe I was over caffeinated and they were chilled. Like something about our statuses just didn't align. And for whatever reason, they were able to absorb the information. Or even like for me, I do, I bring a lot of people to improv drop-ins. And I don't bother like learning people's names at those things in that context.

Right. But if I'm at a different type of event, if I'm'm at you're having a house warming party and i'm there i want to like remember everyone's names because if they're your friend then like they might and so the context has a lot the context helps in it like feel i now feel like a shitty person saying that like i'm not like trying to memorize everyone's names that i meet at like improv classes but but we're back to talking about value proposition right because do you want to spend that currency really if you have a saturday and between 12 and 2 it's going to be an improv thing and you're never going to see those people again and you have a party tonight i might just save the points yeah and i'll tell you what going back to the guilt episode my my initial reaction is like uh but i should like i'm not horrible but

it's like i know i can't good guy i know i can't i know i don't have the capacity to do all those things but i'm going to feel guilty about putting myself first in that situation yeah but in that particular scenario with this person i was kind of so overwhelmed by how competent they were that i just said i did not know their name i recognized them from the show unfortunately i was able to go like oh i remember we did it i think i've only ever done it at one improv class i was able to like go oh that was uh at end games right yeah right of course sorry i go to so many that i was able to remember you for your face and talent yeah um but then i just asked them their name uh what was the venue for your example oh this has happened to me so many times

what do you do typically um so i i actually do a like both of your things depending on the the scenario oftentimes like in the situation where you're running into a friend who is not a good friend but someone maybe you went to school with uh and you're in a different place like you're in a different city um i'd pull the i've got to run but wow so cool to run into you and then i'll always like follow up on facebook and something i'll be like hey it was so great to meet you sorry i was in a rush because what you're trying to communicate in that situation is like uh really that was all about my anxiety and i um i do actually value you as a human being um and jordan i i was trying to remember the situation that i was just in where this happened

um but doing the thing where um if someone says like improv, that's a great example because it's like, oh, I only do it at this one place. Oftentimes when they identify themselves, then I just play along. I want to be excited. I want them to feel good because they put themselves out there. And I really don't want to like, it sucks to put yourself out there and have that not be reciprocated.

So oftentimes I will just do or say seems like right at the moment to make them feel like they had a positive interaction. And this will be like I'm running late to things and I will ask them about how something is going or something like that. And like if they give me more information than the thing, like that's like a gift. If it's like, oh, I'm running to class. It's like, oh, yeah, how is class going? And then, you know, it's like if you give me information, then I'm just going to try and make this a rich experience for you.

But know that my brain is just like it's a red alert. And I think we're all big fans of candor, right? Like in most scenarios, if it was somebody whose name you genuinely didn't remember, you're probably going to be seeing a fair bit. Like maybe you're at a conference or something. You haven't seen them for a while. Let's just fucking ask. Let's clean out the potential anxiety producer right now and just get to clarity. But when it comes to, hey, there's probably a reason we don't hang out all that much.

We like don't run in the same circles. You live in a different city. Let's just get as much positivity out of this as possible and just not bother with the other stuff. Enthusiasm can do a lot of work. Enthusiasm is the life hack. Yeah. In general. let's just get as much positivity out of this as possible and just not bother with the other stuff enthusiasm can do a lot of work enthusiasm is the life hack yeah in general in general and all things uh at work we actually have have been growing a lot recently and there are a lot of people like walking around who i don't know the names of right now and so we've kind of just in our all hands and stuff started talking about how it's okay to ask people what their names are.

Because, you know, it is easy to lose track. We don't have to discuss it. But a flavor of that interaction that I just gave is the I'm a friend of your parent. And I've known you since you were a child. Yes. All the time. That's a peculiar one. I mean, I think by design,

that one gives you a little bit of leeway. Yeah. Well, I think that what's really interesting about it is that it makes me feel the same way even though I have no responsibility. Yeah. Because my brain wasn't forming memories back then, so it's not about me forgetting your name.

It's about like there's no way that I could have yeah it's like i never perceived you as a person lauren i came and saw you when you were in that coma you don't remember talking to me as i read you that has happened to me a lot yeah you got us in a coma for a very long time so um thank you for participating in Jarvis's These terrifying scenarios. Completely terrifying scenarios. Available at board game stores everywhere. Oh, God.

It's true. And real quick before we wrap up, I just want to give a message to the people who are like us, right? Like maybe all of us like back when we were in high school or back when we were in middle school and experiencing all of this anxiety. What is your message, Jordan? I'm going to start with you.

Oh, no. I'm getting anxious. What is your message to a young Jordan who is walking around Stroud and keeps getting recognized by people who went to his mom's shop okay young jordan i mean i'm gonna uh flavor this with a little bit more relatable energy just because that is i lived such a peculiar childhood i don't want to alienate anybody from this advice tell dan this other thing grab a grab joel's hand for a moment

just check in with him uh shout out to joel what's up um honestly something that i struggled with a lot when i was growing up particularly surrounding uh anxiety was that over analysis of things that may not have gone well what i would request of young jordan though uh if i do this i might might mess up the time stream and become a functional adult if I learn this thing. Wouldn't want that. Giving this to other potential Jordans, younger Jordans listening. It's okay to overanalyze, but find something valuable to take away from it. I found what happened constantly when I would overanalyze small interactions that the other party had forgotten about immediately would be that I would be robbing myself of hours of potential enjoyment

I'd be sitting watching a movie playing a video game whatever I'd be sitting there bothered by this like nucleus of frustration just sitting at the back of my brain yeah oh you didn't handle that as well as you could yeah you didn't but if you can walk away with don't i don't know don't call gerald dave again it can be something as small as that or it can be don't make like jokes amongst people that may not be on your wavelength just small things like or forgive yourself for making the mistake that's i mean hey number one yeah in all environments in all anxiety producing environments yeah it's okay to say that you failed providing you understand why you failed. It's not bad to fail.

Yeah. And Lauren, what would you say to the 18-year-old Lauren who's sitting in the bathroom right now, waiting for her friends to arrive, doesn't want to help out? Yeah. 45 minutes deep in the bathroom. That's not always the role that you have to play people are not paying as much attention to you as you think they are yes that's the thing that i would tell her like it just people are are paying attention to themselves and their crushes and they're not

looking at you and it's fine you can just be who you are yeah in fact we are all doing that right like it's like none of us we're all paying attention to ourselves and not any yeah anyone else the the uber driver forgot that he ever gave us a lift young jarvis what would you tell young younger jarvis oh yeah youngest i would say i think for me it has to be just like giving myself cutting myself slack because the obsession over things that have already happened and things that like you've lost control of is is really unhealthy because there's nothing more that you can do about it. So like letting go like even if things go as badly as you think that they're going, there's nothing more that you can do about it. So like, let it go. Like, and that's-

You might be guilty about a lack of ability. Right. Yeah, and then I'm like, but if I had a time machine, perhaps I could, you know, like, I could remember Dave's name and I could not call him Joel. And so, yeah, I think just letting, like cutting that off and being able to move on is an important skill to develop.

Be cool with your apprenticeship, dog. You're a little kid in a monk's robe, man. You're in a monk's robe. You can fuck things up. You can accidentally break your vow of silence. You'll just start it again. That is the time to fuck things up. And here's the thing.

When you're an adult, still in a monk monk's robe a monk doesn't get out of their robes no it's a that is a lifelong thing no and it's the same robe it's the same really really tight super short at that point yeah so so i think that that's like some pretty good advice that we've given to folks um and we're about at the end of the show it feels like some i'm gonna give the show five star itunes review advice if you ask me yeah social anxiety is cured for everyone forever we did it you're welcome we're still accepting submissions for pen pals with a z and you can reach us on twitter and facebook and email all at sideways pod um and then for email's sadboyspod at gmail.com

because, you know, we can't have mononyms. Or if you just contact any Gmail address and ask them to forward it to us, they'll forward it to you. Or sadboyspod at any email server. AOL, MSN, Hotmail, go all the way back. We should make a Hotmail. Yeah.

I don't think you can anymore. If you email us at Hotmail, tell Mailer Damon what's up. Jarvis runs Mailer Damon. I am the Damon himself. You are the Mailer Damon. Lauren, if people really enjoyed your stylings, both comedic and otherwise. They should seek help. They should seek help.

And once they've sought help and they are confirmed in their feelings about this episode where can they find you on the interwebs at Lauren Shippen basically everywhere it's S-H-I-P-P-E-N on Twitter on Instagram and thebrightsessions.com go listen to my podcast thebrightsessions a fantastic

fiction podcast I thought it was real for a while got pretty disappointed sorry what I do that is real i do want to give a shout out i don't know if i've given my mom a shout out on this episode but my mom uh got super into the show i love that she fell in love with the bright sessions and recently i wish she'd sent me a text so i could read it and give you an incredible amount of anxiety but she uh while we were facetiming gave me like a monologue that was and again joy cope is just a better version of myself yeah so it was a it was like you know how when i do a monologue and it's shit and inarticulate it's like that but good

um she did one of those about how the bright sessions was one of the most compelling and fundamentally joyful if at times difficult you know it's not a purely positive show there's drama and pain but it results in catharsis in a way that she hasn't experienced with many pieces of art and she just said that to me I was like shit that is really lovely to hear Joy Cope thank you so much I hope you come to LA at some point

and we can hang out we'll buy you coffee it's a wonderful show you didn't need that external validation from us I hate it I should say doesn't matter your mom likes it which means i have to like it that's both your mom joke and the truth your mom likes my show i like my podcast so and jordan where can we find you oh geez um you can find me at my apartment i study at the law college just around the corner from my house And Jordan, where can we find you? Oh, geez. You can find me at my apartment.

I study at the law college just around the corner from my house. You can find me in many Uber rides riding around the city doing a variety of accents. And you can find me on Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, and a bunch of other places at Jordan Adika. One word, and the Adika is spelled A-D-I-K-A. Awesome. And you can find me on Twitter at Jarvis and on YouTube, Jarvis Johnson and all the other places. You can figure it out from there. You should keep an eye out for upcoming videos. Keep an eye out.

Subscribe. The homework for today's episode is just give us some of the scenarios that make you the most anxious? Because I love just reading those. I like that. I tell you what, if we get enough interesting submissions, we will do a part two, which is all Jarvis' D&D game. Yeah. Millennial D&D. We'll run through these scenarios.

We'll build some characters. It'll be a bunch of fun. But as is customary on Sad Boys, we like to end the show with a certain phrase. Lauren, are you ready? So ready. All right. Oh, my God.

She stood up. She struck me in the face and said, I'm ready. She's gleaming. I can't even. You can't look upon me. I can't look. All right. We love you.

And we're sorry. Boom! Fantastic.