Day 19 Low Self Esteem and Social Anxiety

Hello,

Today in the SEP it has us journal about TMS personality traits. I learned something interesting about low self esteem that I never really put together before.

I always seem to get anxiety before going to social events and sometimes I avoid it altogether. In fact, I usually get a migraine when it's time to go. When I'm there I feel really out of place. People talk and I feel like I'm not connected to my body. Everything is blurry and in slow motion sometimes. I feel different and out of place. I've always chalked this up to social anxiety because I often do get anxiety. Also, I have fears like standing there all alone and nobody talking to me. But, then when someone is talking to me I'm hating the small talk.

I was reading about the TMS personality traits and after my longest journaling session I'm realizing I feel out of place because I have low self esteem around other people. Things like I don't feel like they really like me, I feel really boring compared to other people, I feel like I'm not funny enough or pretty enough. I feel like I have nothing interesting to say and I get anxiety when they want to commit to further social gatherings.

I never thought I had low self esteem because I am very ambitious and independent but boy do I around other people. I'm going to keep digging. I just wanted to share.

Thanks

 

I could have written your post, I can so completely relate to everything you said. I realise that I desperately want to fit in and feel connected, to happily chat away, yet at the same time, I find small talk so annoying and boring (and I struggle with it so much) - all that has to enraging, right?! I think Allen Gordan wrote something somewhere (or maybe in his program) about self kindness/compassion, how we can sit there with people, while our inner bully is saying, "Go on! Say something interesting! You're so boring! And you're wearing the wrong clothes.... whe would they like you...." and so on when we really need to suppose ourselves.

 

Ladies, my entire life I have felt like the proverbial square peg. I have always been *too* sensual, passionate, loving, childlike, lazy, feminine, weird or generally other. Little wonder I retreated into a shell whence I would smoothly, magically wheel out a well-crafted persona as need demanded. Add to the fact that my personality type is INFJ (rarest, most likely to become a nun), and that I crave silence and solitude as much as I need air and one can easily see how a schism is formed. I give you the people-pleaser vs. who I actually am. Artifice is painful and unbearable but if you rebel and show your real self, it appears that all is lost. This is only true if you are playing the game. Once you cease giving two hoots about it a great liberation is yours.

By the gods you must nurture self-esteem. It's absence renders us all less. And yet this is not the whole of it. One silly person can affect everybody and sadly there are a lot of silly people. So much social confidence is of the intellect or the ego. I consider it perfectly natural to feel like a stranger at social gatherings. Everyone is so busy caring what everyone else thinks about them that nothing is ever said at all.

We need to belong. It is a basic human hunger and desire. And yet the rules of joining rest on such false and flimsy terms that it repulses the heart. Our expressions of self doubt are the confessions of this need to be loved, held, respected and cared for. I have come to the conclusion that tms is not a battle within ourselves but rather a rejection of what we have become. When did we forget our dreams? When did our imagination run dry? Where is that girl that was me? I ache with a nostalgia so strong it burns holes in my memory. Little wonder that social events make us sick. We are all colluding in one big hurt and we are too timid to rip the veil asunder and be our true selves and celebrate the same in others. We fear social death more than living.

I am unapologetically passionate about this. Courage begets Courage. Love begets Love. Be your selves. I see how luminous you are. I see it in everyone here but we are all lost in hiding and placating and manners. Be vulnerable. Be quiet. Be soft. Be authentic. Everyone on this forum is engaged in the most extraordinary unravelling of their lives. Bless you Ines and Sara, may you strip back the layers of personality to find the joy that possesses your whole being.

 

Exactly! I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling this way. Definitely something to keep working on.

 

I can relate 100%. I may not have put this together on my own. Something for me to work on as well. Thank you.

 

I have come to the conclusion that tms is not a battle within ourselves but rather a rejection of what we have become. When did we forget our dreams? When did our imagination run dry? Where is that girl that was me? I ache with a nostalgia so strong it burns holes in my memory. Little wonder that social events make us sick. We are all colluding in one big hurt and we are too timid to rip the veil asunder and be our true selves and celebrate the same in others. We fear social death more than living.
.[/QUOTE]
Plum, that is so profoundly true. That is exactly it. I keep having strange dreams where I am beating certain people up with enough strength of a Greek god. I know I have hidden rage and that's exactly it. I think I'm mad that I let myself become lost. When I look in the mirror, I'm not even really sure who that person is anymore. That's the root of the low self esteem. You are so right. Thank you so much for your wisdom.

 

Plum, that is so profoundly true. That is exactly it. I keep having strange dreams where I am beating certain people up with enough strength of a Greek god. I know I have hidden rage and that's exactly it. I think I'm mad that I let myself become lost. When I look in the mirror, I'm not even really sure who that person is anymore. That's the root of the low self esteem. You are so right. Thank you so much for your wisdom.[/QUOTE]

Ines, for reasons best know to technological wizardry I wasn't notified of your reply. It was the *like* from @Shells (thank you angel), that brought me back to this thread. I wanted to comment on not recognising yourself in the mirror. I went through years of this and it was not simply ageing or gaining some weight or anything immediately identifiable. It was that very real and inexplicable failure to see my essence looking back at me. I absolutely knew I was starting to heal when on holiday in Cornwall last year, I glanced in the mirror and there *I* was. It was in my eyes, those precious windows of the soul. A change, a presence, a me-ness. I see this more and more as my healing gathers pace. I'd be interested to hear if you or anyone has observed this phenomenon.

The Greek God thing. I have that too. Dreams of tussles and triumph. I used to dream of being hunted, stalked, preyed upon. I don't have those dreams any more.

Plum x

 

It was hard for me to figure out which personality tread I am supposed to write about, until I saw this post. I think low self-esteem affects my life the most. I don't like being in the crowd, I don't like meeting new people, I don't like to be in the center of the things as if someone would realize that I don't deserve to be in the center of the things. Also I feel just like this: "People talk and I feel like I'm not connected to my body. Everything is blurry and in slow motion sometimes. I feel different and out of place. I've always chalked this up to social anxiety because I often do get anxiety. Also, I have fears like standing there all alone and nobody talking to me. But, then when someone is talking to me I'm hating the small talk." I feel like I am standing on the corner all the time, metaphorically and sometimes physically both, there are people who are in the middle and there are people who are friend/relative etc. with them. This is the way I feel. But I know that when I have to do something or I really want so bad to do something I do it, I have no problem achieving it. But since most of the things require contact with people I prefer to stay in my corner. Most of the time I feel I should just stay out and be comfortable, just do the things I have to do and leave. Because I really don't like the small talk and the fact that people usually speak just to speak or just to impress others, I don't find them sincere. I feel stiff in the social gatherings and I discovered the similarity today while writing, I have FMS and also I clench my teeth. This is the stiffness in my body.

By the way I have difficulty in writing about one trait as I think all traits are related to each other. For example maybe I have low self-esteem and that's why I am a goodist, to make myself needed and wanted. But I can't figure out how I can have low self-esteem and at the be a legalist and think my ideas are the right ones, I don't even bother to say them out loud. This is all too hard to untangle.