[18al]

I too tried gym, but now I'm muscular and awkward. Now, before interaction, people don't expect me to be awkward, and it feels as though they are more forgiving of my awkwardness but that could just be my perception.

Going to the gym and losing weight did help a lot with self esteem (and posture) issues though.

After observing my interactions, I found that if I'm unfamiliar with the person, I'll miss out on social cues or there'll be a delay before I perceive them. Also my brain goes into some kind of _fight or flight_ causing slightly impaired speech and memory.

What I do to _fix_ this is watch how others interact with this person and try to mimic them while adjusting for unfamiliarity. Assuming familiarity could be perceived as rude.

For me building familiarity allows me to interact with decreasing awkwardness, so I just try and find the fastest way to do that.