u/SignalChange9988

Okay, when I go outside, I feel like everyone is looking at me and judging me, and I don’t act naturally at all. I try to avoid looking at other people, and sometimes my vision becomes a little blurry and my eyes start closing on their own. I don’t know if it’s because of the way I look at things or because of stress. I feel like everyone is looking at me, and that makes my condition worse.

When I’m at home, I completely forget that I’m like this. For example, when I look out the window, the way people behave outside seems easy and normal to me. But when I actually go outside, it’s completely different.

I also feel like my movements are slower when I’m outside, and I feel like time passes more slowly. I constantly have thoughts that people are watching me.

I am a person with social anxiety. I am very bad socially, and after almost every social situation, I start overthinking, followed by emotional pain from past failed experiences.

Although I have read a lot about how to overcome this problem, it is not something I can simply decide to change. I cannot just tell myself, “I won’t be anxious in social situations,” and make it happen. Unfortunately, no matter how much I try to mentally program myself to get rid of the anxiety and social phobia, nothing seems to change.

However, I have noticed something. Whenever I have good and successful experiences, even if I did not intentionally seek them out, I improve and feel more confident, which motivates me to have more experiences. But when I lose that momentum, either because of a period of stagnation or because of some failed experiences, I go back to my previous state—and sometimes I feel even worse because I remember the things I did and see them as embarrassing, thinking that I should never have done them.

This makes me feel that the treatment for me is to have many successful experiences. But that seems to depend on things that are completely outside my control.

If I deliberately try something with the goal of overcoming my social anxiety and it goes badly, the emotional pain feels much worse than if the experience had happened naturally. In other words, whenever I am around people, I try not to do anything at all. So if something embarrassing happens, it does not hurt as much because I was not really trying to do anything—I just act almost like a machine.

But if I have some motivation to do something, I feel as though everyone can see it and is watching me.

I feel like everyone who reads this is going to think that I live on another planet. Maybe they are right. Maybe it is a planet inside my imagination, whose walls are not made of iron but of… hmm, I don’t know.

Okay, perhaps my problem is shyness and severe social anxiety, and maybe that is the reason behind all my problems. I stay at home all the time and only go out when it is necessary. Even though I don’t like being at home at all, I hate being outside even more, especially when I’m alone.

In the past, I had friends, but they would always drift away from me. Now I’ve decided to become someone who doesn’t need friends. I won’t accept becoming friends with people unless I’m the one who rejects them, rather than them being the ones who throw me away after a while. That way, I would be the one in control. But ever since I started thinking this way, my situation has gotten worse. My shyness and social anxiety have increased, and I’ve started to hate going outside.

Sometimes I think: What is the difference between me and a prisoner? We both have food and a room. He can’t leave because of physical restrictions, while I can’t leave because of restrictions in my mind.

Maybe I’m being ungrateful for what I have, and I hate being ungrateful because, honestly, some people don’t have a home, and some don’t have food, while I have all of that.

I’m not stupid. I’m intelligent, and I used all my intelligence to program myself into believing that I have to live alone and that I will never make friends. I’ve programmed myself this way for years. Is that stupidity? Maybe I’m arrogant too, and perhaps that is stupidity rather than intelligence.

Okay, perhaps my problem is shyness and severe social anxiety, and maybe that is the reason behind all my problems. I stay at home all the time and only go out when it is necessary. Even though I don’t like being at home at all, I hate being outside even more, especially when I’m alone.

In the past, I had friends, but they would always drift away from me. Now I’ve decided to become someone who doesn’t need friends. I won’t accept becoming friends with people unless I’m the one who rejects them, rather than them being the ones who throw me away after a while. That way, I would be the one in control.

But ever since I started thinking this way, my situation has gotten worse. My shyness and social anxiety have increased, and I’ve started to hate going outside.

Sometimes I find myself wondering what the difference really is between me and a prisoner. We both have food and a room. A prisoner may be unable to leave because of physical restrictions, while I seem unable to leave because of restrictions inside my own mind.

Maybe I’m being ungrateful for what I have. I hate the idea of being ungrateful, because honestly, some people don’t have a home, and some don’t even have enough food, while I have all of that.

I’m not stupid. I’m intelligent, and I used that intelligence to convince myself that I have to live alone and that I will never make friends. I’ve programmed myself to believe this for years.

Sometimes I wonder whether that was actually intelligence, or whether I simply used my intelligence in the wrong way. And maybe there is some arrogance in it too. Perhaps what I thought was strength and intelligence was actually just another form of fear.