Extroverted social anxiety and a world of animosity... [View all]
I'm not your typical person with social anxiety. I have a strong personality and the way I learned to deal with my extreme shyness and social anxiety as a child was to become something of an extrovert. However I'm not your average extrovert either as my extroversion stems from a deep well of insecurity and fear of others. I desperately want to be liked and so I seek out positive attention from them by engaging and talking with those around me. I seem excessively friendly as a result and can get along with most anyone. But this is only skin deep. I've never managed to form long term friendships as "taking it to the next stage" so to speak entails too much anxiety for me. I have to expose too much of my fragile emotional core to make REAL friends. So what I have are lots of very nice acquaintances who probably would tell you I'm one of the friendliest people they have ever met, but few if any people who would actually say they know me. The thing with social anxiety is the world seems like a very harsh place. I very often feel a false sense of animosity emanating from people around me when I fail to engage with them or even just making eye contact. I often get looks from people that create great anxiety in me. I feel they are passing judgment on me, I swear I can almost read what's going g on in their heads "what the fuck is that guy doing over there?", "he doesn't belong here, what an idiot". The reality is usually these people are just neutral, they aren't mean or unfriendly at all. Because of this I have to constantly tell myself that I'm probably overreacting, but of course this doesn't always work and something always manages to slip by and hurt me.
Does anyone share any of these difficulties?
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