Discomfort at Corporate and Social Events

By the time you reach a middle or senior role, there's an assumption, often unspoken, that social ease should come with the territory: that you'll be comfortable making small talk at the drinks reception, confident introducing yourself at the conference, naturally at home holding court at the team off-site. For a lot of people, that assumption simply isn't true, and the gap between how composed you appear at work and how uncomfortable you actually feel at these events can be a quiet, persistent source of shame.

It's a strange kind of awkwardness, because it has little to do with competence. You can be entirely capable of leading a team or closing a deal and still feel completely lost the moment the agenda disappears and you're just expected to "mingle." Often, the discomfort isn't really about the event itself, but about being seen outside of a defined role, without the structure of a meeting or a task to hide behind.

In therapy, we look at where that discomfort actually comes from. For some people, it traces back to earlier experiences of being excluded, judged, or simply never taught how social connection is supposed to work outside of clear rules. For others, it's less about social skill and more about the exhausting effort of maintaining a professional persona, where a "social" event still feels like another performance rather than a break from one.

The aim isn't to turn you into someone who loves networking. It's to help you find a way of being in these spaces that feels more like you, so that walking into the room costs less than it currently does.


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