Which one are you?

[sleepysparrow]

...

 

[Elad]

The longer I don't socialize the harder it gets.. I isolate myself for a long period of time, then meet new people and do stuff only to isolate myself again and I repeat this over and over.

I'm starting to isolate myself for longer periods of time and the only people I talk to on a regular basis at the moment are my family, I don't feel like I have any genuine friends left, since I just stopped talking to them.

 

[Erdkunde]

I guess I would be a daywalker. I tried college but never finished my degree. I have a part time job and roommates, though, I often feel I make them uncomfortable. Does anyone else always feel like you make people uncomfortable? I wonder if I'm not projecting my feelings onto them some of the time.

I used to, and to some extent still have, a similar problem. A specific example is that I was very uncomfortable sitting next to anyone I didn't know in classes because I thought I made them uncomfortable.

My theory is that my anxiety activated hypervigilance, which meant that I unconsciously paid much more attention to the people sitting next to me than was necessary. This was to try to pick up cues that they didn't like me (in order to find evidence for my anxious idea that I made people uncomfortable), even though it makes no sense that they would even care I was there. Maybe the unintentional extra attention made them actually feel uncomfortable and emit subtle body language cues, which in my hypervigilant state I interpreted as evidence that I made them uncomfortable. You see how this quickly becomes a vicious cycle/self-fulfilling prophecy and escalates into real panic.

It helps to try to figure out other interpretations for people's gestures and behavior than that they're uncomfortable with you, or to ask yourself if it even matters that much if they are.