Memoirs of A Healer/Clinical Social Worker: Autobiography of Bruce Whealton

Chapter 4: Boy Meets Girl (A cliché)

There are many things I learned in college, but the most important learning came in the form of social skills and how to overcome shyness.

I had a psychologist/counselor for the entire time period I spent at the Georgia Institute of Technology, aka Georgia Tech. All five years. From the beginning of classes in August 1984 through graduation in 1989. This was at the Counseling and Career Planning Center and the services were free to all students at Georgia Tech.

It would take me most of the entire five years of counseling to ask out a girl for the first time.

I started going for counseling so that I could learn how to make connections, which required building social skills and confronting anxiety.

The details about how I did this will be discussed in a later chapter. I just wanted to illustrate how shy I was and how social anxiety held me back. The point of this chapter is that I did finally go on a date during my senior year and that this was a major accomplishment.

I was learning how to start conversations, how to engage in active listening and so many other communication skills.

I didn't realize it for some time, but these skills later would be very valuable both in my career as a psychotherapist and in acting with empathy toward others in my life. It turns out that these skills can be learned.

So, while I was at Georgia Tech, I discovered that learning social skills and overcoming shyness requires practice and homework just as it was with my classes. It turns out that there were other students at Georgia Tech who also were lacking social skills and needed help. My counselor facilitated a therapy group where we could practice our skills.

Of course, shyness isn't just about learning skills. I had a tremendous amount of anxiety. Social anxiety.

I was given an education on how to deal with these issues. So, I don't repeat myself, let me repeat that I will describe this in greater detail later.

It didn't take me long to start making new friends but meeting a girl was different.

If you are asking me if I was afraid and if so, what was that like, I would say that I avoided situations that might provoke anxiety. So, I wasn't blushing. I didn't have situations around girls where my heart was racing due to fear/anxiety. I was avoiding a situation where I might want to get to know a girl. If I didn't know for sure that someone was interested, I wasn't going to take a chance on rejection.

So, I was avoiding the actions that might trigger anxiety and thus I was avoiding anxiety but doing that meant being all alone.

By my senior year, I had come so far, and I was a totally different person. I cannot overstate how amazing this transformation was and how great therapy can be. I saw changes that I never thought were possible. Take the times when I was working at the post office. I made friends fast. I felt comfortable with my fellow students talking and joking as we sorted mail or waited on customers at the window.

The goal of asking a girl out was something that was particularly challenging. The fear of failure or rejection was immense. It's important to note that as much as I had changed this had been a long journey. It took years.

I did see a girl that I wanted to get to know when I was working at the post office during my senior year at college. She was attractive to me. She always wore these John Lennon/airline pilot glasses. I am not sure why I associate these glasses with aviation or airline pilots. They were small and round with an almost black color to them.

There was something mysterious about her. She seemed intriguing. She also seemed "quiet" - like me. She seemed friendly.

I had made friends with girls through that job and could feel comfortable with them. Sharing stories, laughing, being very open about myself and my feelings. If I knew I just wanted to be friends with a girl that made it easy for me to talk to her, to laugh with her, to smile with her.