They look sheepishly at their shoes rather than cutting the bib in the butcher's queue. They are speechless when their neighbors suit them for an aperitif, a real one, without Skype but with glasses that clink glasses. They ostensibly back three steps into the metro as soon as a traveler dares to cough. Back at the office, they have nothing to say to their work colleagues during lunch, at a distance, at the "cantoche". In short, there is embarrassment in the air!
Millions of French people have been disoriented since deconfinement when it comes to communicating with the other, permanently on their guard or hesitant, to the rhythm of small misunderstandings and heavy silences. "Have we all become social goofs? "Wonders, thus, Nicolas Méra in a book which has just come out baptized" Glad to see you - Overcoming social awkwardness and learning to (re) live with others "(Éditions de l'Opportun, 208 pages, 12, 90 euros). According to this young 26-year-old business creation advisor, the traditional circle of shy people of which he is a part has considerably expanded under the era of vital measures of physical distancing.
Distrustful and lost
“After having been isolated, you no longer know very well how to approach the other, you have doubts about your neighbor. Individualist reflexes urge us not to get close to each other, "observes the man who, in his work, gives humor, lightness and kindness to ways to" get out of his personal cave ".
In his eyes of expert, the deconfinement destabilized the introvert a little more. “Because a safety bubble had been created during the confinement that prompted him to close. Social awkwardness, it suits him to stay at home, he finds his account there, he tells himself that he no longer needs to escape from his comfort zone. However, the salt of the relationship is outside, that is all that is unforeseen ”, underlines the expert.
But the current climate of health vigilance, which has invited all bipeds to advance masked, has also, almost overnight, embarrassed women and men usually very sociable. They will not necessarily blush or stutter but be suspicious and… lost.
"Re-acclimatize after getting out of the jar"
“Those who were very comfortable with the standards of the previous society sometimes have difficulty adapting to the new rules. Their brains got used to a family type of social relationship for two months. It takes time to re-acclimatize after getting out of the jar, "decrypts Christophe Haag, researcher in social psychology and author of" la Contagion emotional "(Ed. Albin Michel).
Like the Covid-19, prolonged discomfort is a "particularly contagious" emotion. "It can also generate anger and rejection in others," warns this professor at the EM Lyon business school. This “loss of bearings” could have a lasting impact on our interactions with each other, along with the uncertainties that surround the coronavirus and cause social anxiety.
Focus on eye language
So what can be done to restore collective trust? "By developing our sense of self-mockery, for example by sticking a smiley on the mask which sometimes gives us the impression of being ridiculous", he replies. He also proposes to bet on the language of the eyes which have the power to smile. Marie de Tilly, lifestyle coach, is on the same wavelength. "In the eyes, we're not going to send contaminating droplets to each other," she says.
At a time when logically, "our health comes before politeness", this specialist in good manners suggests, rather than being silent, "verbalize things" when we are forced to respect a safe distance. “You have to be cash but don't forget the little sentence that feels good: Take care of yourself! She recalls. It is also an opportunity not to "scatter all the time" and, on the contrary, to get closer to your real friends. “It's not a retreat, it's a way of refocusing. We realize sometimes that we were very mundane, ”she smiles.