Okay yeah I think I know what might be going on there.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you’re someone who can take potentially disturbing and unusual information without much fuss as long as it’s presented in an explicit, straightforward manner. That’s a compliment incidentally.

My guess is you have mild autism, never got diagnosed, and as a result have lower than average working memory.

What I can report from my own life — where I had exactly the same one-on-one conversation preference, blindness to body language cues, and panicked alarm when an unexpected third appeared at a planned two-person social occasion — is this:

When I expanded my working memory through focused and long working memory training, the problem disappeared so entirely that I love having four person conversations, and I feel a level of ease and a depth of engagement I never even knew existed with people. And it’s all easier than it ever was before even one on one.

So my recommendation to you is to expand your working memory.

What did it for me was 60 minutes of Follow That Frog on Lumosoty. A paid subscription is necessary to enable repeated playing of the same game.

One hour of that game over and over, no breaks, exhausts my brain for a couple of days and then it finally recovers and I’m enhanced. It’s incredible.

Please promise me you’ll try it.