Fear

I’m scared of making women uncomfortable, so I avoid eye contact if I’m walking by them or am not actively speaking to them.

This just makes me look like a weirdo who’s tense, so it makes them uncomfortable anyway.

I’m scared of looking weak or feminine with my body language or demeanour when I’m feeling quiet and reserved.

I’m scared of looking like a creep when I look at people. I look at people because I want connection and once I start my mind just obsessively looks for certain people to look at and to stop I need to force removal of staring and eye contact which makes me tense and paranoid on how people see me in those moments.

I’m scared of telling even therapists some of the things I’ve done and thoughts I’ve had, in case they see me as a sexual deviant or general weirdo. [update - I did this yesterday, thank god].

I’m terrified of people seeing me as bad in some way.

Please understand that you have fears, you just tell yourself you don’t, or you don’t admit how strong they really are.

I can train groups of 25 people, aged 18-65, with a loud, assertive voice. I can be myself, laughing with someone, making eye contact. I can be incredibly charismatic and seemingly un-concerned about how I’m being presented to others around me.

But these aforementioned fears still hinder me. But it’s not the fears that are bad, it’s the fact that I’m not willing to be vulnerable. I’m not willing to stop presenting as a certain person. I’m not willing to risk people misunderstanding me. I’m not willing to give people the opportunity to make presumptions about who I am at my core just because of things I’ve done and thoughts I’ve had.

It’s not necessarily who you are that’s the problem - it’s how much of yourself you’re not willing to show that’s the problem.

Additional notes:

People talk about not caring what others think because those people aren’t actually thinking about them. This isn’t true and if it was that isn’t necessarily positive. You’re best to acknowledge that people are judging you all the time, but that judgment is often projection. Displacement? I can’t remember, maybe. Projection is essentially what I was doing when I internally judged people’s intelligence to imply that I was smarter than them, which reinforced the intelligence ideal I thought I needed to embody in order to be worthy and loveable.

Acknowledge this judgment from others, then allow yourself to be as you are, not presenting to gain acceptance, allowing messiness if that’s applicable to you and embracing your polarising parts. Be willing to be judged, stop avoiding it.

Just as I used to “improve my social anxiety” by manipulating myself into a confident state before going into a social interaction. Even though I looked confident and I did initiate interactions like going up to speak to pretty women in public, I was still being avoidant. I was avoiding truly personal rejection, where I might allow myself to be so anxious that I struggle to smile and go walk up to the girl anyway, where if she rejects me, she rejects me being myself. That sounds bad, but it’s kind of beautiful.

That’s being confident - the confidence to be seen for who you truly are in that moment, and then pushed away or demonised. No matter how many confidence guru’s there appear to be online or in real life, can they do this? Or is rejection only allowed when their true self was never actually exposed?

Maybe I’m just an awkward little boy sometimes, but what’s the problem with that?

Riley