Is it normal to come across as cold and distant?

try to realize that yo are as welcome as the rest of us. try to open up. Alot ofpeople have the proble. Talk to peopl as friends not strangers.

Just put the word out to your friends that your shy, not conceited, and soon the word will get around. Also with time & experience this will become less of an issue. But there are workshops for personal development you can attend if you wanted.

Oh it's totally normal... or it should be.. I've always been asked why im so quiet.. or why i dont engage in the conversation.. well I dont really join a conversation that doesn't interest me .. it is normal.. i dont like wasting my time talking about something that i find useless in the end.. lol i'm just going to meet my cousin again in few hours for dinner and he always thinks i'm strange cos i dont "Blabber" .. He makes me feel like a complete stranger I sometimes wish i never were this way But I really like myself that way.. People should do what comforts them right?

This was my whole problem in high school. I went to a totally different school than any of my friends and so I knew nobody. I was so debilitating shy I wouldn't even talk half the time. A lot kids thought I was stuck-up especially the popular girls (talk about the pot calling the kettle black!)by my senior year I loosened up a bit, enough to make a few close friends and enough to where even some of those same popular girls were being huggy sweet with me. High school still sucked though. It wasn't until college that I slowly became more comfortable talking in groups and meeting new people, I'm sure the speech classes I took helped a lot. Now I find it easy to talk in any situation. I still have a quiet day or two but that doesn't bother me. I enjoy being solitary sometimes.

Mm hm. Once, my dad even told me off for being a rude snob for not talking enough...

Okay, fine. That time, I didn't want to feign interest or talk because my parents had forced me to go to the dinner. He was socialising with people I'm not fond of and other random people to do with his business. It was all fake and horrible. I couldn't stand it. They hadn't even told me that I was going to have to attend this thing. So, I sat at the "young people's" table, listening to someone continually bitch about people I don't know. It's not like I had anything to contribute to that anyway. I said one bland sentence, I think. It wasn't entirely because I really was pissed off and acting like a brat that night, I was surrounded by people I didn't know, so I felt very uncomfortable and put on a cold exterior. Whoops, life story time, sorry. I tend to ramble when I'm tired.

Although it's regarded as the norm for people to be outgoing and sociable and people who are more reserved or shy are seen as having something wrong with them, that is not the case. We're all different.

This reminds me of something my driving instructor was telling me about the other day. She was going on about her son's 21st birthday and how he isn't ultra sociable. She wanted to hire a limousine to take him clubbing with some girls, but he emphatically said NO because that isn't his thing at all. I said "well, that's alright if he prefers not to and he's happier with it that way..." and she quickly replied "no! It's not alright" shaking her head. Poor boy. I almost felt like laughing at how seriously his mum takes this, as though there's a real problem here when there's nothing wrong with him.

"He's nice and friendly with people, but only has a couple of friends and doesn't like to go clubbing with the others!"
Oh dear.

Sorry, just a bit disapointed, wanted to first to comment on a good post.