> Ty Tashiro writes about how "awkward" people need things to be spelled out and made explicit. With that, we can function as well as anyone. Without that we suffer when we get advice like "be yourself", "read Dale Carnegie", etc.
As an awkward person myself this certainly rings a bell. But for me it's more about getting permission. Growing up in an abusive household, everything that I did was like walking in an open minefield. You're running and doing things intuitively and everything seems normal until you're hit with an explosion of verbal and sometimes physical abuse.
I can relate to this. The "permission" aspect also cuts both ways sometimes, because I learned to be cautious and then _that_ became the thing I was doing wrong, according to others, who berated me for not being assertive enough.
What's worse is that when I left my home and had finally the permission to go outside, at ~14 years old, I was basically unable to make any decisions or take any initiative. I literally had to relearn how to behave in society and at work, one hurtful mistake at a time.
As an awkward person myself this certainly rings a bell. But for me it's more about getting permission. Growing up in an abusive household, everything that I did was like walking in an open minefield. You're running and doing things intuitively and everything seems normal until you're hit with an explosion of verbal and sometimes physical abuse.