The Story of Why I am this Person That I Hate Pt.2

[Dave G]

I'm editing this post, because there doesn't seem to be a way to 'delete' it.

I haven't posted on here for years now. A lot has changed in that period, and when I read my old posts I don't like what I see. It reminds me of the more anxious me - the me that I hated.

I'd prefer to use this account as a way to start replying to and helping others, rather than it being a reminder of sadder days - not to mention the potential career liability that I feel it is now.

[alankay]

I bet you could benefit from CBT and meeting with a counselor. It's seems you are not so much as anxious but mixed up, nervous, and troubled. But not to the point of interupting things too much. More of an identity thing. Am I wrong about this? Alankay

[anxiousmess]

i definitely think you are dealing with anxiety - but i don't think that is the main issue here.
i think the bullying you went through as a child has been a huge, huge thing for you. to the point you no longer no who you are!
you are so caught up in trying to be how 'everyone' else seems to be, you aren't allowing yourself to just be - if you know what i mean.

like alan said, CBT and things would fix this.

everyone is different - it is ok if you don't want to be as social as your 'friends', it's ok if you don't want to go out every weekend.
it is ok to just be you! you need to learn to accept you for who you are before you can expect anybody else to!

you don't sound stupid - and you are asking why can't you see what is going on? you answered your own question before you asked it - you said you are starting to hate yourself. that is the problem right there.
ACCEPT YOURSELF!

[alankay]

Dave, with those details added, like me, I think you do have social anxiety(SA). I have found that using a beta blocker(propranolol, 20mg-40mg) minimizes body sensations and movements as well as the racing heart. In addition to reduce the worry or "obsessive thought patterns" that make all this worse, I take lexapro(but any ssri will help, Zoloft is a cheap alternative). If you really have no panic attacks you may have also have Generalized Anxiety Disorder(GAD). These often occur together. I have Panic Disorder(PA) that accompanies my SA.
My advise after having managed my anxiety for 30 years and learning a great deal about it? Meet with a GP and describe all your symptoms/feelings. And ask if a trial of zoloft starting at 25mg for a week or two then 50 mg and hold there and adding propranolol(20-40mg) for meetings/social situations where you get the tics/tremor/shakes/racing heart. I find 20mg helps me allot and never seem to need to go over 30mg. Meet with a GP and ask him about this. He will be very familiar with this stuff. He will likely have several patients he helps with these things in a similar way(he may prefer other exact meds, etc). He may just suggest zoloft and see how that benefits you or he may think my idea is a good one. Print this out and have it with you to discuss all this. In my case over time I have been desensitized a bit to these situations because the meds helps so much and over time, you start to use a bit less. I feel also the SSRI(zolft) meds help but take weeks to really kick in. It's what I would consider and if you were my friend, I'd recommend the same but also would see if you could find a Clinical Social Worker or Psychologist to talk all this over and get it off your chest and get suggestions and reassurance. If you can't afford that just meet with a GP and ask about my idea after telling him about your anxiety. He will have heard it alllll before...believe me....you are NOT alone. Like me, you are overly self conscious and the ssri will help........allot PM me any time. Alankay.

[Dave G]

Thanks for the input guys. I'm going to look into the CBT, but I'm going to try to stay away from meds for now. I don't know why, but I feel like taking meds should be my last resort if I'm not able to overcome the anxiety without. Also, I am going to be a mentor to a child in my area. He is the son of an incarcerated father and is at a social disadvantage. I think this will be a good thing to help him, and also to be doing something good would help me have a little more confidence and self-worth.

I'll continue to post and let you all know how things go.

[Bulletproof_Pocketwatch]

I feel like I have some key experiences in common with yours, like being bullied for a speech impediment and later being very reliant on social acceptance. You write them out a lot more coherently than I ever could though, so thank you - reading your story was really helpful for me, Dave.

I started writing this post and then started rambling, so I'll try to say the useful stuff first now: CBT is a really good alternative to medication. I got diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder while taking the gifted test when I was 12, so they sent me off for that some time after. It was CBT for little kids, but it still gave me fairly effective tools for managing at least the physical symptoms of my anxiety. From what I remember, there's a lot of focus on awareness of your physical symptoms and awareness of your anxiety triggers, some coping strategies, and then if you find yourself in a situation where you successfully coped with your symptoms and got whatever you needed to do done, you reward yourself so that you have positive associations with successfully coping. At the same time, sometimes the "triggers" part is pretty hazy which makes it hard to cope with. Like, if you're worrying about what the person you're talking with thinks of you, you can do breathing exercises and stuff to suppress whatever physical anxiety presents, but it's not like you know what to do to defuse the source of your anxiety. They're still going to think something of you and you're still going to care. On the other hand, something simpler like a needle phobia, I used strategies from CBT to completely overcome that. The last thing about CBT therapy is that therapy sessions are pretty much "lessons" that will rely on anxiety situations from your actual life as examples, so if you're as good at talking about your anxiety as you are at writing about it, they'll be very beneficial to you.

Thoughts from your story: I think you probably find it easy to act confident when you've already got a circle of people you respect who like you more or less unconditionally, and you already realize that you lack this resource since you just moved. While I wish you the best of luck in finding genuine self-confidence, one thing you can do is find a hobby or activity where a bunch of people get together for the sake of the hobby. Make sure you are really good at this hobby, because if you are, then people will try to befriend you. Because the point of the activity is the activity and not specifically the social connections, it feels like there's less pressure on you to "perform" socially, so it might be easier to relax.

(and now the rambling)
Ever since I can remember, I've had a problem with speaking too quickly and stuttering as a result. When I was little, my classmates would make fun of me for that, and for some reason my reaction was to adopt strange mannerisms and try to alienate myself, even from the few people in my grade who (in retrospect...) were trying to include me and be nice. I switched schools in Grade 7, and I was hopeful for a few months because I'd made friends with a group of people, but it turned out we weren't the popular ones, and the better-adjusted half of the group just stopped hanging out with the three of us that remained for the next year and a half. One of my friends was a girl who was sweet to a fault and always tried to be a good friend to me, but I was so horrible to her and I'd get angry and yell at her just for asking how my day was. She never stopped being my friend through that period though. I hated myself because so many people wouldn't even talk to me, because I was such a horrible friend to this girl, because I couldn't make myself do any of my homework, it got so bad that I couldn't sleep properly without sleeping pills, and while I was terrified that I'd give up and kill myself someday, I got by thinking that I could start over at high school.

In high school, I suddenly became really good at making friends, but also very bad at keeping them close. I never stayed close to a group of friends for more than a year, and there was even a year where I didn't have any regular friend group to hang out with. Nevertheless, I had a reputation for being extremely talented in academics and extra-curricular activities, so I was accepted wherever I wanted to hang out and I never burned my bridges with any friends I made. Another easy way to be accepted I found was that, since I'm a girl, if you act cute, people try to take care of you. Even if you can't think of anything meaningful to say, in a casual social situation, nobody expects you to as long as you seem vaguely positive and you send them a birthday card. Essentially, I found a way early on to relinquish responsibility in social situations - my friends take care of me, and back then my teachers had to take care of me as well.

In spite of general success in making friends and in school, I had random and frequent problems with anxiety or depression or both, interspersed with 2-week to 2-month periods where almost every day was very happy other than the fact that I didn't like myself at all. The first two months of high school where things were starting to look up for the first time in my life, I actually did like myself. But I was also really naive at the time and I had a sort-of boyfriend on the internet (we'd say I love you and it was pretty innocent, but I was really, really infatuated). At the end of the term though, I was starting to put it together that I might be interested in a boy I was friends with in real life and there was one day where he said something really sweet to me and then disappeared and it felt like everything broke and I hadn't really escaped the person I was in middle school and before who I hated so much. I became depressed for another four month period. It would come and go, sometimes with specific anxiety problems and sometimes not, but the net result is that I could never count on being able to take care of myself for very long. I'm just fortunate that I have my parents to look after me.

I've more or less continued like that into university. Most of my high school friends came with me, since there's a well-respected university in the same town. The only notable difference is that I've managed to keep stable friends by "letting" myself be befriended by very charismatic people. I can't remember the exact wording from Part 1 of your story, but I really identify with the whole "I genuinely like this person, but I'm also very aware of the social advantages I reap from being friends with them."

As far as dating goes, I've basically done a mix of "trying out" people who I knew were in love with me and using my partners as an emotional crutch (often with some overlap). I've never truly been attracted to anyone I've dated (arguably I had a close relationship with my first/on-and-off boyfriend, but I think it's more like he was really clever/persistent and really supportive, so I just grew to need him very deeply as opposed to being attracted to him because I respected him). Oddly, I manage to befriend people I'm attracted to, but I feel that I fail the standards I measure them against, and maybe that's the reason they can't like me back as more than a friend. I do not exactly exude confidence.

My biggest problems now involve talking to people I'm professionally involved with, because they usually expect me to say useful or interesting things. I still have a problem with speed-talking and I can't say or even think of half of what I want to say to someone - but on the other hand, these are situations where acting "cute" or being too quiet is marginally unacceptable. I'm doing really well in school and I've been given a lot of rare opportunities to put myself out into the field I'm studying, like being sent off to attend and present at undergraduate conferences, which is delightful except that I can't meet the social demands required and even though I'm not dumb, I feel like it whenever I meet people in my field who haven't met me in a classroom (a situation where again, I am taken care of and thus accepted, so I am free to be myself more).

I feel so useless because a lot of people believe in my abilities and want me to have some kind of fulfilling career where I make full use of my skills and am highly respected, but I know I'd have an easier life if I just became really good at a job where I work for someone else. Everybody gives me second chances and extra opportunities because they want me to succeed, even though I myself prefer to shoot me in the foot.

[Dave G]

I am truly happy that you got something out of this. I find that helping others tends to help me feel better about myself, and this instance is no exception. Your advice and story is very helpful. I also think, based on what you've said, that you understand me more than others. I think it would benefit us both to talk about this more. Thank you for taking the time to read my story, and for your helpful input.

[Bulletproof_Pocketwatch]

Sorry, I can't answer your PM because apparently I haven't posted enough to be trusted. x_x Hope you don't mind me posting here again.

It's a little hard to say how quickly CBT helped me just because my anxiety doesn't present itself on a regular/daily basis. I definitely think that the strategies are viable basically as soon as you start learning them; I was kind of young and stubbornly in denial when I first learned CBT (13 years old, I terrorized my therapist because I thought the lessons were really childish and I didn't feel anxiety was my biggest problem at the time), but once I was old enough to identify what an anxiety attack was, I was able to use those strategies to function well enough to get through the day. One of my therapists was saying that most people feel some relief almost immediately after learning the basics and I'm inclined to say that's true. But it's not the kind of thing where it "cures" you of whatever issues set off your anxiety - you're still going to feel anxious, it's just you'll have a way of dealing with it now.

Maybe try taking out a book on CBT if you're not quite sure you want to make a financial commitment? I think the advantage of having a live therapist teach you is that you have an opportunity to talk about those deeper issues that cause your triggers, but I'm only 19, when I did CBT I was even younger and I didn't really... get that stuff at the time.