[Sourcerer]

I've had a serious problem when communicating with people for as long as I can remember. I've recently noticed signs of improvement, but I'm still far from what my goal is.

The problem is this: whenever I start a conversation with other people, my consciousness is switched off completely. Even if just a minute before the conversation I thought that this time it won't happen, it still does. It's like an automatic switch somewhere - when I engage in a conversation, or someone starts a conversation with me (and particularly then) it goes off and I'm completely shut out of the whole thing.

If you've seen the movie Click, then you know what it means to be on 'autopilot'. Well, in a conversation that's what I am - on an autopilot.

After the conversation is over, I find myself emerging from the depths of my subconscious and I wonder what the heck happened. I can remember some details of the conversation - the topic, what I said, what the person who I was talking to said - as well as their mimicry such as would reveal their emotions and perhaps a deeper meaning of what they were saying, or what effect what I was saying had on them. But during the actual conversation, even though I notice these things, I have no control over them; my responses remain default.

I've been learning some conversational techniques lately - keeping eye contact for example, if the term I used confuses you - but what good are they if I just can't use them?

The improvement that came lately was that I manage to "wake up" during a conversation. However, when I do, I can't seem to drag all those techniques I learned into conscious view so that I may use them. My greatest victory lately is that when I finally woke up once, I looked the person I was talking to in the eyes. But that was all I managed to recall, and even this was because for a while, seing that I simply can't recall all of the techniques at once, my plan was just to remember this one - "next time you talk to someone, look the person in the eye!" was what I told myself.

Can someone help with this problem? How do I stop that switch from being thrown off automatically, letting my consciousness wither away while the autopilot is having a (lousy) conversation? How can I make an improvement in this area faster? This is not just a temporary problem - it's completely messing up my social life.