u/Fit_Protection5550

I don’t even know how to describe the way I perceive social interaction. I avoid it quite a lot because I feel I’m embarrassing and like people don’t want me around.

I’m not good with social interaction, I’d say I’m polite but awkward, I try to be nice but I’m not really a friendly person and I end up being rude sometimes on accident but I only realize after the interaction. I’m not good with cues, I’m lowkey hard of hearing or something cuz sometimes I have trouble understanding things I can’t hear, I’m not really good starting conversations or doing small talk, I actually kinda hate small talk because it makes me feel really awkward. I mean, once I warm up to someone and they get me going I do talk a lot and engage, I just have a hard time trusting others and feeling safe around them so it takes me a long time to open up, I’m lowkey just very reserved and like the safety of keeping to myself, I’m really protective of my alone time too. Even when there’s people who actively seek out my company and are really nice to me I just avoid them and look for the fastest way to escape the interaction.

Anyway… outside of those anxieties I also kind of pay attention to other things? I don’t know if my awareness is inherent to my experience or if I overly focus on these things. I personally don’t care about social hierarchies but I also know how much they influence daily interactions so I’m very aware of them, stuff like being a woman, being queer, not being conventionally attractive, it all plays into how I’m seen by others. I just don’t know where I fall socially and that confuses me, maybe because I focus too much on how others perceive me while being kind of ambiguous and reserved about stuff. People tend to categorize things and I feel like not knowing where to categorize me makes me off-putting to them, and me not knowing where to place myself and being anxious about it doesn’t help with me socializing because I’m so awkward.

I’m probably not making any sense and I’m over analyzing everything right now. I just wanted to vent. I wish I could avoid social interaction entirely but it’s a part of life and I don’t even know where to start approaching it. I mean, I feel lonely but when I’m around others I just wanna be left alone. I just wanted to vent about how this feels for me and I don’t even know what I want because the only solution to this is to expose myself to social interaction rather than avoid it, I should be rewiring these thoughts instead of feeding them but that’s easier said than done. I go back and forth between feeling lonely and wishing I was more social and had more friends, then feeling exhausted by having to maintain those friendships because of how much energy it takes to perform while I have these thoughts, it’s just really tiresome.

I’m mostly venting and I might ramble a lot, but there’s probably multiple content warnings for what I’m about to write so beware.

I feel awful and struggle a lot with mental health but I don’t know what it is I’m struggling with. I just know I can’t rest. No matter what I do I find a reason to feel bad about myself, even when I try to do what feels like the right thing I end up twisting the facts and feeling like it’s not good enough. I feel like a huge failure and my life is a mess.

Other than self loathing I struggle a lot with intrusive thoughts, I feel a lot of shame and I feel like everyone hates me all the time, I wouldn’t say I have social phobia but I do have some kind of social anxiety. I went to therapy for a few months, it was a therapy service provided by my college campus but I stopped going since January and even though the therapist gave me a referral I just haven’t mustered up the courage to start therapy again. During that time I was heavily struggling with suicidal thoughts, self harm and I was pretty deep into a restrictive eating disorder, that was the worst of it but I’m better now. I discussed BPD with that therapist because I ended up at outpatient due to the severe suicidal thoughts, while I was there a doctor suggested I look into it. I’m more stable now but those struggles still come and go.

I do relate to BPD and it does make sense given my symptoms and other factors in my childhood and family history, but I also feel I have symptoms of OCD. I am a twitchy mess sometimes because of my thoughts, when I’m at home or in my car I literally scream just to distract myself from a thought, when I’m in public I can’t be as loud but even then sometimes I end up making weird noises like a huff or a small grunt, most of the time I try to stay quiet in public but I still end up blinking my eyes shut, twitching my nose, jerking my head, grimacing, in general I end up doing jerky movements or weird twitches that are probably noticeable even if it’s quiet.

I just needed to vent about this… I feel like no matter what I do I can’t escape this crappy mental health. I feel horrible about myself all the time, I’m always worried about something and anticipating the worst outcome possible, I’m always tired, I’m isolating myself because I feel like everyone hates me even when they show they don’t. Ugh. I’m probably not making any sense and I don’t even know what I wanna hear other than “yeah that’s rough buddy, get help” since I’ve already stated the obvious.

Anyway, the point is that I feel broken. I should get proper testing done but first I need to make sure a physical illness is not the issue and even then in my country there’s a huge shortage of mental health providers, waitlists for evaluations are long so either way it could take upwards of a year for me to just get an initial interview and I would be struggling blindly with this bullshit all that time. There’s only so much I can do to rationalize my way out of these things when they’re so persistent.

I’m not looking for medical advice, I know only a professional can give me that. I’d like to hear about similar experiences or just know I’m not crazy, I don’t wanna feel so alone in this.

I’m mostly venting and I might ramble a lot, but there’s probably multiple content warnings for what I’m about to write.

I feel awful and struggle a lot with mental health but I don’t know what it is I’m struggling with. I just know I can’t rest. No matter what I do I find a reason to feel bad about myself, even when I try to do what feels like the right thing I end up twisting the facts and feeling like it’s not good enough. I feel like a huge failure and my life is a mess.

Other than self loathing I struggle a lot with intrusive thoughts, I feel a lot of shame and I feel like everyone hates me all the time, I wouldn’t say I have social phobia but I do have some kind of social anxiety. I went to therapy for a few months, it was a therapy service provided by my college campus but I stopped going since January and even though the therapist gave me a referral I just haven’t mustered up the courage to start therapy again. During that time I was heavily struggling with suicidal thoughts, self harm and I was pretty deep into a restrictive eating disorder, that was the worst of it but I’m better now. I discussed BPD with that therapist because I ended up at outpatient due to the severe suicidal thoughts, while I was there a doctor suggested I look into it. I’m more stable now but those struggles still come and go.

I do relate to BPD and it does make sense given my symptoms and other factors in my childhood and family history, but I also feel I have symptoms of OCD. I am a twitchy mess sometimes because of my thoughts, when I’m at home or in my car I literally scream just to distract myself from a thought, when I’m in public I can’t be as loud but even then sometimes I end up making weird noises like a huff or a small grunt, most of the time I try to stay quiet in public but I still end up blinking my eyes shut, twitching my nose, jerking my head, grimacing, in general I end up doing jerky movements or weird twitches that are probably noticeable even if it’s quiet.

I just needed to vent about this… I feel like no matter what I do I can’t escape this crappy mental health. I feel horrible about myself all the time, I’m always worried about something and anticipating the worst outcome possible, I’m always tired, I’m isolating myself because I feel like everyone hates me even when they show they don’t. Ugh. I’m probably not making any sense and I don’t even know what I wanna hear other than “yeah that’s rough buddy, get help” since I’ve already stated the obvious.

Anyway, the point is that I feel broken. I should get proper testing done but first I need to make sure a physical illness is not the issue and even then in my country there’s a huge shortage of mental health providers, waitlists for evaluations are long so either way it could take upwards of a year for me to just get an initial interview and I would be struggling blindly with this bullshit all that time. There’s only so much I can do to rationalize my way out of these things when they’re so persistent.

I’m not looking for medical advice, I know only a professional can give me that. I’d like to hear about similar experiences or just know I’m not crazy, I don’t wanna feel so alone in this.

I put the trigger warning just in case, I’m not sure if it applies so please tell me if I’m in the wrong place but it might be triggering. This is also just kind of a vent post.

Earlier I saw someone talking about how they went through CSA and a bunch of other things that were going on in their life, watching their video kind of triggered me.

Every time I see something related to CSA or SA in general it brings back feelings I don’t wanna think about and an ambiguous memory that I wish I had never remembered because I don’t know how I feel about it. From what I remember nothing physical happened, it was a mistake… but even if it was a mistake what happened on its own was pretty bad I think.

To keep it short, my dad got in bed with me while I was unclothed, I remember how it was dark except for the light from the hallway, I remember how I was unable to speak up from fear and the way the sheets felt on my body, then I just turned around and fell asleep because it was all I could do at that point.

I don’t get why themes of SA bring this back for me when nothing else happened. I mentioned earlier it was a mistake because the next morning my mom found out and my dad claimed it was a mistake and he hadn’t noticed, but he was consistently an unsafe figure during my childhood so I don’t know what to believe. I still feel pretty bad about the whole thing and I hate it when something triggers it back because it always brings me back down the same spiral of trying to make sense of it which I know is useless and I shouldn’t do that… I know it probably boils down to seeing a trauma therapist but I haven’t mustered up the courage to schedule the appointment.

Does anyone else have a similar experience? Honestly any advice or anything that might help me feel less alone and confused would help.

I just hate it. I hate the way it has completely fucked my life and I’ll never lead a normal life without having to take a fuckass pill every single day or else I’ll go insane. I’ve struggled with my mental health for years and I know it’s my fault because I’ve left my thyroid issues untreated. I’m trying to take care of it now and I’m taking my meds again but it’s obviously a process and something that can’t be fixed overnight.

My life is a huge mess and I don’t even know where to start putting it together, this is probably right where I have to start. But I hate it, I don’t know why. I just feel like all the struggles with mental health and all the environmental issues that also contributed to all of my struggles are a lie if it’s all just attributed to this stupid hormone imbalance, like I’m just crazy and dumb by default and it invalidates everything else I’ve gone through. I know it doesn’t make sense… but I don’t know. I guess I have to get over myself because thinking like this is stupid.

Aside from that I’m just so tired and slow all the time, I feel like a completely different person in some ways, I used to be much more alive even through my mental health issues. I struggled even when I took my meds consistently but everything has gotten so much worse, I’m so anxious I have symptoms that strongly resemble OCD and last year I was so depressed I had severe suicidal thoughts that landed me in outpatient. I just feel like I’m crazy, and I hate that this disease is what’s making me this way and on top of it it’s my fault for not treating it like I should. I know this rant is completely stupid and I’m not being reasonable about this at all… having this illness feels like a huge burden I got stuck with and I despise it.