It just doesn’t work. I can go into LFG join a group while being super confident and then get too nervous to get out a single word out of my mouth the moment I here other people talking. Tips?
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trick to not being nervous is not care what other people think of you.
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I used to have this problem. I still have issues speaking out all the time on voice chat, but that’s more because I’m autistic which has made it difficult for me to always appropriately find the words I want to say over voice chat and actually express them.
The best thing that happened to me was being forced to speak in chat. I was always too nervous to ever bother saying a meager hi over voice chat. Eventually, playing WoW I was put into a situation where I was expected to talk and communicate. I did arenas, and we had vent (old chat program) to talk, and I listened to stuff. Someone mentioned not being comfortable doing call outs as the healer, the other guy didn’t have a mic. I did, so they asked me to shot call.
It was really rough, and I was pretty bad at it. It took me awhile to get used to. But I found the more I did it, the more I realized there wasn’t much to be nervous about in the first place. I understood that on a logical level before already, knowing that most people aren’t going to be giant jerks for no reason. But it hadn’t connected to me on some form of emotional level until then to make me comfortable with it.
I’m not sure if this is really advice or anything that will be helpful. But I legitimately found simply doing it despite my nervousness to help abate those feelings until they went away entirely.
This was a good ten years ago now, was fifteen at the time.
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+1 for you, Iaina. Hopefully it would boost your confidence.
As a person who had to do public speaking on a regular basis for over a decade as required by my job and categorically, an introvert (INTJ based on the MBTI); my advice is to just shelf personal feelings aside by telling yourself that it is something “which has to be done”.
Personally, i did not go on voice comms when i was still playing Overwatch regularly because it was a personal preference. However, when required, i would because it was simply something which needed to be done, if necessary.
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Aren’t you the same person who made a thread complaining about Valkyrie?
Realize that this game is essentially anonymous, anything you do will have little to no impact on your life or how people treat you (especially the ones that actually matter). Taking this philosophy a step further: I don’t worry as much about embarrassing myself in front of any stranger because all it takes to live it down is move on, they’ll forget about me in a week.
Hey buddy, how’s it going.
Yes, i agree with you. There really isn’t much to be nervous about as one goes along with the “just do it / get it done” mindset.
It really is all mental, as you mentioned.
I would add that for people starting out communicating with strangers (public speaking or via internet comms), always just do the minimum necessary initially.
A simple, “Hello, Good day.” and communicate as and when required in game or at work.
The only advice i would like to bring up is for the non-North American English speaking players who may be too shy to speak on comms because of their accent and are afraid of being ridiculed for it. I used to have that hang up at work because i had to work with colleagues from the U.S., Australia and the U.K. I reached an epiphany when we had different nationalities in a conference room and everyone was joking that they could not understand each other’s accents.
So basically, everyone has a accent and a manner of speaking, it really is not a big deal. If someone cannot understand your accent, then just repeat or type it out.
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Yes. I personally really dislike it. Why are you wondering?
Drawing a bit of a connection here, that’s all
click* Noice
Btw, thank you to everyone who took the time to give their advice. I appreciate it.
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Watch what you say. Ask some to stop feeding and you can get banned for abusive chat…
Doing well man, hope you are too! Just finished moving a ton furniture into my mom’s new house earlier. Thinking I might take a nap haha!
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Have you ever gotten diagnosed for social anxiety? I know its silly to ask but an inability to talk comfortably despite being confident beforehand and around strangers is one of the symptoms of it.
Welcome to social anxiety.
picture everyone in there undies!
I tried that and I only saw myself…
jk
Haven’t got diagnosed but I’ve suspected something is up. But I don’t know if it’s that severe. (Nor dö I think it is).
ha ha! Good lad!
Yeah, better get some rest, dude.
I am doing ok.
Had not played OW in over 2 months, though… =(
Busy with work and family and rushing to build a new PC so that I can pass the previous one (6 years old now) to my daughter so that she could have the holidays to fiddle with it and do some work in preparation for the new semester.
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Your symptoms are exactly that of someone with social anxiety, you want to and are able to speak, but in an environment where you don’t know people all that well and are more or less forced to communicate, you back down.
One key question, if you were to theoretically speak perfectly fine to them, would something like being judged or negatively treated for something you could say hold you down?
It may not really be as serious as you may think, Iaina.
When i was a child until my early teens, i was so shy and afraid of speaking that i could not even order food at food courts. Even now, as a father of two children and at an ancient (by OW gaming standards) 42 years old, i sometimes have issues with ordering food. I am an introvert through and through.
However, at work, no one believes me that i am one and especially since i was in sales and marketing. Even a certified MBTI trainer who thought that he knew me was shocked when i announced that i was one (an Introvert) prior to a training session as were some of my long-time friends. Because at work especially, i am not afraid to speak my mind and of course, perform public speaking on a very regular basis. In fact, it is much easier for me to get up on a stage and speak to the public for work than it is for me to order food in a restaurant (i let my wife and kids do that for me now, thank goodness!).
The reason why there is this juxtaposition is simply because my mind just shelves all neurosis aside when something “has to be done” and it “just does it”.
Just gotta suppress the irrational emotions and git wit’ it, yeah?
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Find someone you’d feel comfortable talking with on the mic and practice with them. I was the same until I found someone I could talk with 1 on 1, and now I talk in groups and in comp with strangers all the time. I also noticed that the more confident I became playing the game, the easier it was for me to talk and give call outs.
Good luck!