The Social Anxiety Cornerstones

[goblinchild]

I was in that sort-of half awake dreamy state this morning thinking or dreaming about social anxiety things and these two words popped into my head. I've been figuring out my social anxiety and how I connect and relate to people, and I think these two things are what I never had the chance to naturally and fully understand when I was a baby kid when I was supposed to be developing an understanding of this. And my understanding turned out a different and unhealthy way because it was shaped by a different and unhealthy environment.

Anywho they where just acceptance and empathy. I feel like that's not earth shaking news to a lot of people and it seems obvious in retrospect? I guess it just took me a minute to put all my experiences and feelings together and see the bigger picture more clearly.

The acceptance part turned out to be... not what I expected? I guess that would be why I hadn't figured out the problem earlier. I'm finding acceptance can be a really casual sort-of... like... lack of judgment. Just kind of a casual acceptance. Like. You're good. It's like being one step above completely neutral? It's like if someone magically removed all of the negative ingrained beliefs and bad feelings you have about yourself and then plopped you in public with people who also have no negative beliefs or bad feelings about you. And they would often prefer to err on the side of assuming you're an okay person. But it's genuine. I wish I could better put the feeling into words.

Also acceptance can have to do with your personality I think? You can emote and be whoever you want. You can be loud and expressive. You can be wrong. You can be bossy or a know-it-all. This one is still really throwing me off. I still feel like any error of mine is a grievous one. I wear a mask of politeness around people and I feel like I walk on eggshells. I hate it and it hurts to admit but I feel terrified of presenting myself in a way that I feel would be less pitied or excused for any slight transgression. People often tell me I seem younger than I am. I feel like teenage girls are more forgivable. A safer thing to be.

I've had too many examples of very unhealthy, destructive personality flaws around me who where unforgivable and who no one wanted to be around. And, as a kid, I was so used to these behaviors that I would often be friends with kids who no one else would stay friends with for the same reasons and it was unhealthy. I'm so used to thinking about accepting people with flaws in an unhealthy way, that people accepting someone who's merely loud, bossy or sloppy feels unreal to me. I don't feel like I'm allowed to be those things. I don't feel like I can have flaws.

But! That's all part of this acceptance thing. Even when you do transgress I'm not sure that people really take it that seriously? People seem a whole lot more forgiving than I thought and not knowing where the line is is scary but the fact that it seems to take a lot more effort to get on someone's bad side than I thought is comforting at least?

Also all of this feels a lot softer and easier to live with when you consider the empathy part. I don't think about the fact that people might have empathy for me. Or, *, be capable of competently having empathy for if I'm upset or if I screw something up? I remember thinking that I must not be expressive at all because of my family's apparent inability to see emotions on my face. Or when people in my family would try to have sympathy for things but do it in a really screwed up backwards way to the point where you can see the conversations they have with people falling apart. Or sometimes they try to "empathize" with each other but they're actually just trying to excuse abusive behavior because they would rather explain it away than confront it.

It still feels complicated but what I think I took away from all of that was that I just wasn't the kind of thing people had empathy for and if I was, that was bad because it meant that I was probably doing something toxic. The most I can picture of someone trying to have empathy for me is if they did it in that same backwards screwed up way which is hard for me to appreciate. I associate that behavior with people I need to distance myself from and not take anything they say seriously.

I wrote a lot. I'm not sure what my point was? I hope if someone else hadn't quite connected the dots about their social anxiety yet, some of this can be helpful? It was good to get it all written down. It sounds really bleak but it really is more hopeful than it sounds.

[Three Roses]

I like your definition of acceptance:

I'm finding acceptance can be a really casual sort-of... like... lack of judgment. Just kind of a casual acceptance. Like. You're good. It's like being one step above completely neutral? It's like if someone magically removed all of the negative ingrained beliefs and bad feelings you have about yourself and then plopped you in public with people who also have no negative beliefs or bad feelings about you. And they would often prefer to err on the side of assuming you're an okay person. But it's genuine.

[Blueberry]

I was in that sort-of half awake dreamy state this morning thinking or dreaming ...

It's often when I'm in this type of state that memories and/or realisations come floating up. More often realisations and connecting the dots, so to speak.

Anywho they where just acceptance and empathy. I feel like that's not earth shaking news to a lot of people and it seems obvious in retrospect? I guess it just took me a minute to put all my experiences and feelings together and see the bigger picture more clearly.

Your last sentence here sounds very much like my experience. "Just acceptance and empathy" - often the answers or dot-to-dot connections I make seem very simple and non-earth-shattering, but in my case they come with emotion attached to them, they're not just empty words on an intellectual level. So it's really big for me. I'm wondering if something similar is happening to you? Feel free to disagree and/or ignore if incorrect.

I also really like your definition of acceptance as quoted by Three Roses.

If you check my own posts and even responses you'll see I'm a prolific writer. It's good to get it all down and often writing it helps me understand what's going on. Sounds as if that may be the case for you. Scanning your post, it seems to me there's a lot in there, a lot going on. I just don't have the energy atm to look further.