Find a life of your own.

Hello there! I haven't posted anything on here in a while (though I did once write a draft but never published it, oops), but no matter how sporadic these posts appear, I still occasionally feel like making a new one.

You might be slightly confused by the title, thhinking, "Well, who isn't?!" but let me explain. I never really thought of myself as being so controlled b what other people think of me. I mean, not anymore, at least. I had learnt the hard way that the opinions of strangers do not matter because they do not know me, hence why should I care about them liking me? Well. Turns out I'm not as over this insecurity of mien as I thought I would be.

As you may or may not know, I finally have a therpist I see regularly. And it's funny how these things go because a lot of time, when she asks me why I'm acting a certain way in certain situations it comes down to me being terrified of not being liked. I could now tell you why, but that would be a long story, plus I probably have already posted about it somewhere on here and I also don't know if I truly understand all aspects of it. But, let us note for the moment that I go into every situation in my life thinking I might not be liked and being scared of the repercussions if my fear ends up being confirmed.

Of course I did notice that I'm scared of this in some sort of way, but I always shrugged it off. I mean, I still enter social situations, right? So it can't be that bad. That is until I realized how many of my issues can be traced back to this fear. For example, I was surprised to hear myself tell my therapist that I indeed avoid situations for fear of not being liked. This might seem contradicting right now (haven't I just claimed the opposite?) but that's just because I didn't realize it myself. 

For example, a couple of weeks ago I wanted to throw a small party and I thought I'd invite my new friends from uni. Well, over the course of two weeks I convinced myself so much that they wouldn't want to come anyway, that they'd think of my party as boring anyway, etc. that I was really really close to just ditching the idea all together. Despite the fact that my new friends have never made me feel like I'm not good enough for them.

It also leaks into smaller parts of my life. I stop myself from asking other people questions because I'm scared they'll think of me as dumb and thus won't like me. I don't speak out when others hurt me because I'm scared they'll then be hurt in return and won't like me. I overanalyse every social situation ever, like a detective trying to find proof that the other person/people don't like me. I could go on and on.

Now, being scared per se is not a bad thing. But what is bad is that this fear controls my entire life. I hold myself back from new, exciting experiences because in my head I have already decided someone will judge me. And even if I do end up granting myself the experience, I'll spend the entire time overthinking how I should act so that others might like me, while at the same time convinced they have already settled on their opinion that they hate me. Or, I'll go home after a great day, and in the course of a few minutes I will have convinced myself that what I thought was a great day was rather a sham and everyone was tos cared to tell me they secretly hate me and hate that I'm there.

So, now that I'm conscious of it, I try to be aware of whenever this mind cycle starts happening. And I try to act counterintuitively. Enter new situations despite being scared, for example. Not avoiding but instead seeking conversation. And trying to accept that this fear might never go away, but I can change the way I act based on it.

This is all a long and winding way to say that I am trying, I guess. In Germany, we have this proverb called "Einsicht ist der erste Weg zur Besserung" (transl: Being aware of somethign is the first step to improving it). So I'll just have to believe in that.

xxx Sarah