When a stranger asks you how you're doing, if your happy and all is well, be honest and keep it simple. If you're not feeling well, then lie and say you are. Most people only ask how you're doing as a social courtesy, most often they don't want to know if you're feeling anything other than great. If you respond honestly and say "actually, I'm really glad you asked, cause I'm not doing so well" they will find the quickest excuse in the world to exit out of the conversation. As a child I would answer people honestly and I can still remember the look I would get from people when I would be honest. They would look at me as if I was an alien. How dare I honestly answer a question that they had asked me. I learned at a very young age that almost no one actually wants to hear about your problems. It never made sense to me why people would ask me a question they only wanted a specific answer to.
To avoid being stared at as if I was an alien, I learned very quickly that lying was just easier, give the people what they want and they will treat you normally and not run away from you like you have the plague. Over time I began to loathe being asked how I was doing. I had a rough ass childhood where I was born into a neglectful environment, and I wanted nothing more than for someone to actually give a shit that I wasn't ok. I wanted help, I needed help, and no one cared, all anyone wanted to hear is that I was doing great.
Growing up as a "boy" and also being naturally tall, I was asked by most every man I met and some women what sport I played. The assumption is that if you're a boy and tall is that naturally you must play a sport, more often than not basketball was the assumed sport, followed by football. I never cared about sports much as a child. I didn't care about watching them or playing them, let alone talking about them. It seemed like everyone wanted to talk about sports and whenever I would be honest and tell people I didn't care for sports, they would literally try to convince me to play. I would have complete strangers give me a long conversation about the "benefits" of sports. After that happened enough times, I learned it was easier to pretend that I liked sports.
Pretending to like sports saved me from pointless conversations with strangers but that meant I had to actually learn something about how sports worked in order to appear as if I knew what I was talking about. I ended up watching sports to get educated on them. It seemed like the more I learned, the more I was forced to talk about them with people. I couldn't win, I couldn't escape.
As I got older conversations shifted to girls, money, cars, and "boy stuff". I spent my entire life trying to be someone I wasn't in order to fit in and be treated normally. Eventually I became extremely socially anxious and became reclusive for a couple of years. I was terrified of simply going to get the mail in fear that I would have to talk someone and put on my fake smile. I was so done with the fake bullshit where everyone pretends to be nice just out of some social normalcy when no one actually gave a shit.
The me that I am now, no longer pretends for anyone. I discovered it was easier to stop giving a shit about what people think than to pretend to be someone I wasn't. I am who I am, and I like what I like, if others can't or don't want to relate, who cares, no loss for me. If someone asks how I'm doing now, I tell them the truth no matter what it is. If they don't want to hear my answer, they shouldn't have asked the question. If people try to talk to me about things I'm not interested in, I simply tell them that I'm not interested, if they persist, I walk away. So many of us think that the way to talk to someone is to find something "common" among the majority and talk about that such as sports, news, religion, politics, or the weather. It may be hard to believe but not every person in America cares about those topics. The true way to start a conversation with someone is to find something that they are personally interested in and talk to them about that. It's actually very simple.
This all may be obvious to some but for people like me who weren't raised by anyone and were forced to figure things out on their own because they had no support system at home. This was all a shock to me when I learned it for myself in my thirties. I spent my earlier life believing that there was something "wrong" with me simply because I didn't share the same interests with others. I didn't have anyone to teach me these things as a child and sadly, there are plenty of us who weren't raised in healthy home environments. I spent my life being a fake version of who I thought I was supposed to be. I didn't allow myself to show the real me to anyone, since no one seemed to care who the real me was.
If you hate small talk, it's simply because you know that small talk means you have to be fake in order to appease everyone and you hate being fake. Not being authentic to yourself is exhausting so it tends to lead to anxiety, depression, and isolation. We have an epidemic where everyone is socially anxious, and everyone is socially anxious because so many of us are trying to be someone we're not. If we all had complete freedom to be whoever we wanted to be and like whatever we like and do whatever we want to do, as long as we aren't harming anything or anyone, social anxiety wouldn't exist. Social anxiety is a direct result of people not being allowed to be themselves.
How do we solve social anxiety? Acceptance, candor, Love. Judging others, condemning others, and trying to change others doesn't seem to be working to well. If it were possible to change society overnight all our problems would be solved, until then we are forced to work on an individual level. How do we do that? By Loving and accepting ourselves. By letting go of what others think about us. Love and Peace!