You’re not antisocial. Your social battery is depleted by masking. #shorts

If being around people drains you to the point where you need days to recover and you've just accepted that you're antisocial, there might be a different explanation. And what can it look like? You cancel plans. You dread social events that you used to enjoy. After a gathering, you feel like you ran a marathon and everyone around you seems to handle it fine. So, you assume that something's wrong with you. But, here's what you probably don't realize. If you're spending social interactions performing like monitoring your facial expressions, regulating your tone, hiding how you really feel, or making sure that you're perceived correctly, you're not socializing, you're masking. And masking burns through cognitive and emotional reserves at an extraordinary rate. It's like running two operating systems at once. One [snorts] is engaging with the conversation, the other is managing how you appear. And that's why you're exhausted. You're not doing one thing, you're doing two. You're not antisocial, you're overworked in social settings. And so, the question isn't how do I get more energy with this, it's where am I safe enough to drop the mask? Because when you don't have to perform, socializing actually gives you energy back. Send this to a friend who always cancels. They're not flaky, they're running on fumes. This is the it's not your personality series. Follow for the next one.