After placing your order, you and the barista exchange a few words.
The two of you chat about your days, compare your favorite drinks, and bring up the weather.
You feel yourself blushing, getting warm theyre kind of cute!
Alina Rudya/Bell Collective / Getty Images
At one point or another, weve all become inexplicably nervous around someone we find attractive.
However, times like these make us question why we must lose control of our bodies.
Is it so hard to play it cool, calm, and collected?
Although these actions relieve stress, she says, they frequently develop into reflexive reactions to discomfort.
That is, we can end up displaying these behaviors to self-soothe without even realizing it.
Thankfully, with the right amount of understanding, we can approach these situations with confidence.
Lets take a deeper look at why these feelings might manifest.
It turns out we have a built-in mechanism for coping with the charged feelings that arise around a crush.
Both of these are high-arousal emotions, and trigger the same physiological responses in our bodies.
Here are a few of the most common ones.
We can start by considering the context in which the behaviors occur, such as setting and personality.
Other mental health conditions may also contribute to nervous habits.
Above all, be patient and observe how the other person acts over time.
Situational factors, like stress levels andlack of sleep, can influence the behaviors we engage in, too.
Becoming aware of patterns can help us determine whether its appropriate to make a move.
Cultural factors can also impact whether or not nervousness is expressed.
How do we move forward?
It all starts with understanding where it’s coming from.
We can then work on building comfort in the situation.
One especially brave approach that I really love is admitting your own nervousness first, says Gilbert.
This might look like saying, Im feeling really nervous right now!
or, I just noticed Im twirling my hair.
I always do that when Im nervous!
Conclusion
Nervous habits can be… well,nerve-wracking.
Its important to be kind to ourselves and the others involved throughout this process.
Nervous habits are part of the human condition, and we will all experience them at some point.
Chaplin TM.Gender and Emotion Expression: A Developmental Contextual Perspective.Emot Rev.
2016;16(7):1033-1039. doi:10.1037/emo0000201
