Source of your anxiety?

Be honest to yourself and think deeply. What do you think is the source of your anxiety around people? I have thought about mine; it's my deep conviction that I'm ugly or not attractive enough. I can't relax or be myself because of this deep conviction.

A feeling of being isolated around everyone else. Being desperately lonely but too shy to make friends. A feeling of not being good enough...not being interesting enough, funny enough, or talkative enough.

kayelle said:

A feeling of being isolated around everyone else. Being desperately lonely but too shy to make friends. A feeling of not being good enough...not being interesting enough, funny enough, or talkative enough.

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That's kind of vague, why do you think you're not good enough? Do you think you're not intelligent for example? Do you think people won't like you because of the way you speak etc...?
Of course, it's all very complex, but I think we all have some deeply ingrained convictions....

I dont know , that they are not interesting in me .

a feeling of not being good enough partly because of my wearing, appearance and anxiety which causes my behavior to be weird.
i also think everyone thinks different from me and i can't expect to have happy time with them so they think i'm boring. maybe i care a lot about others.
i think i'm socially underdeveloped and every other one is very good in social relations so they don't like to be with me.
although these beliefs are mostly weakened in my mind but i got used to safety behaviors and avoidance.

i forgot to say girls are a big cause of my anxiety.
i am still uncomfortable in presence of young girls.

The ritual oriented life of our ancestors is gone.
Everyone is born to be locked away in a building by default.
There's nothing to look forward to.
We're all destined to a life of guesswork and uncertainty.
Why do you ask?

Argamemnon,

If you could change how you look, do you really think you wouldn't have any anxiety?

Social anxiety makes you think that there is a cause, a reason. But it's just usually the biggest, easiest thing to focus on. It might be a problem, but it's not the cause.

A good analogy is think about someone who's walking a trail with friends and he keeps slipping and falling and everyone else seems to be doing fine. His focus might be on the grip on his shoes because its the most obvious thing. He's thinking that its a faulty grip. He happens to have another pair of shoes that he puts on and yet he still keeps slipping. He might blame the 2nd pair again or he starts to put blame in his legs, his posture, his natural clumsiness, the list can go and on. It's the same with social anxiety.

The point is if you are looking for a reason why you are falling down, you will find one. Be it looks, intelligence, likeability and that list goes on and on as well. If you believe you have fixed one, you will just focus on the next thing and then probably end up focusing on the first one again soon enough.

it's that pesky DNA

I DON´T KNOW. I don´t know a lot of things. Life is a mystery to me. It can be DNA, or astrological influences, past lives, bad karma...

Well after thinking about it, I would say that circumstances has something to do with it.
That is, I was the youngest one in the family for a long time until my siblings started bearing children.
I'm not so introverted that I haven't mixed with others before, which lightens the blow.
But I think that in order to begin mingling requires that I get past a 'babysitting' frame of mind which I may have picked up from my earliest surroundings.

I feel the source somewhere in my pants region, but I can't quite pinpoint it

Argamemnon said:

That's kind of vague, why do you think you're not good enough? Do you think you're not intelligent for example? Do you think people won't like you because of the way you speak etc...?
Of course, it's all very complex, but I think we all have some deeply ingrained convictions....

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I think it's that what I say just won't be as interesting as everyone else. I just have an image in my head of a group of people having a conversation, and that I would say something I thought would add to the conversation and then everyone goes quiet! Lol, I know it's a silly image, I'm just to illustrate what makes me anxious. Or another one is that I would introduce myself to someone and they would find it really random or inappropriate.
It's not that I'm worried I'm less intelligent, I just worry that I'm really boring and not funny.

Ehsan said:

i forgot to say girls are a big cause of my anxiety.

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Me too. I hate talking to girls. And I am a girl. Almost all of the friends I had (when I had friends ) were guys, just one of two girls that I'd known from school. I much prefer guys to girls.

SickJoke said:

I feel the source somewhere in my pants region, but I can't quite pinpoint it

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Could you elaborate?

I think maybe for me it's the fear of being inferior to others. Whenever a group of people get together, there will always be someone who ends up being the bottom rung, the butt of the jokes, the weaker of the species, etc. I'm scared to be that guy....and yet I often find myself filling that position....when the other people are louder, have better opinions, more intelligent, are funnier, deeper, more attractive, etc....inside I feel like I'm as interesting and as worthy as anyone else.....but in combat I always instinctively submit....I just can't be bothered to fight....I'll just let everyone else slug out their power struggles above me, while I get comfortable on my bottom rung and await the barage of crap that is fated for my head.....but on the bright side, at least if I always take the bottom rung, it spares others the embarrassment.

and I think the reason I am like this is because I grew up the youngest of four kids and my life followed certain patterns in the first 10 years....namely this scenario: family gets together....older siblings are loudest...I am the butt of their jokes....I feel small....mum comes to the rescue and tells my siblings off....mum comforts me....I feel redeemed. And now that I'm older I still feel like this pattern is inbuilt into my nature. In group situations I almost feel like I immediately adopt that bottom rung role cause that's MY role....that's who I am.....and I instinctively wait for the jokes and insults.....and when they inevitably come....I feel small....but then usually what comes next is that comfort from my mum......so I wait for it.....only problem is that, now I'm all grown up, there's no-one there to comfort me anymore.....so it's just a cycle of destruction without any reconstruction.....which is a hard cycl;e to break out of without feeling fake or like I'm denying my true nature.

but I dunno....this is just a theory I just thought up....maybe it's just DNA, maybe something else.....or maybe I'm just a coward, or maybe I really am just weaker or more inferior to everyone else!?

I feel inadequete, unfunny, uninteresting, sometimes feel ugly. I often think ''why would anyone want to talk to me?'' Also bad experiences from some people have made me wary of most people.

I also hate my voice, and the way I speak. I think I'm boring too.

small penis

Source of my anxiety? Other people ::

Actually I suppose it's mostly the negative voices in my head that pipe up every time I'm around strangers, colleagues, even friends. I start remembering embarrassing or awkward past incidents and convincing myself it'll happen again, then getting myself so worked up over it that I'm barely able to function in a social situation - it's a horrible downward spiral. I really want to have some hypnotherapy to break out of it! I don't know if it'll help, but I need to try something...