NightTimeForever said:
I heard some giggling and I don't know if it was about me or not.
It wasn't. It never is.
I'm very familiar with the feeling. In high school it was one of the biggest manifestations of my social anxiety. With all of those little barely-heard conversations going on in class, in the hall, at lunch, it was easy to convince myself that they were often enough about me. The agonizing part was that I had no way to know one way or another, no way to know what was wrong with me that I might fix, and no way to respond.
That agony came from within, though. Nobody else had to actually do anything for me to feel bad. It was all just a set of feelings that I had that weren't reflective of reality. I eventually realized that this meant rather than being something about the the world and the people in it that I can't change, it's actually part of myself that I am responsible for and can change. And to do that I think you have to try to learn these things:
- Most people, most of the time, are not talking about you, are not laughing at you, and are not watching you. If you don't know for sure, it's safe to assume they aren't.
- If they are talking about you, most of the time you don't know what they are saying. If you don't know for sure, then why bother making guesses? That only allows your own self-doubts to creep in without having to admit that they are self-doubts, not things that others have criticized.
- If they are saying something negative, most of the time their opinion shouldn't matter to you anyway. Even if they were talking about you, and negatively, strangers in a clothing store (to use but one example) are not a good judge of your character and personal value.
Even though it's hard to convince yourself to believe these things emotionally and instinctively, I trust that nobody here has a hard time accepting them rationally. That's just the first step to internalizing them.
NightTimeForever said:
You weren't, though! You were right where you needed to be and you had as much a right to be there as anybody else. As real as feelings are, they're still just feelings, not reality. Good job getting through it.
