This is the worst.

I've said for awhile now I'm Avoidant-Borderline. But ppl kept shutting it down and I do share almost all of the Avoidant symptoms, but I just learned about quiet bpd which I think I also am. It's this quiet bpd that is ruining my life right now.

It's bad bc it is so complicated I lose myself trying to understand it.

I want to hang out with friends. So I find a friend who is willing to hang with me even knowing my emotional problems. It's fine. Then he leaves and I castigate myself over every awkward pause, confused look, tone of voice, etc.

But next week he asks to come over again, hey that's good right?

I make myself sick thinking about all the ways I'll disappoint him. He expects certain things. I’m inviting him into my home I can’t just sit there and stare. When you invite someone over there is a certain level of responsibility to provide some form of entertainment. I’m gonna fail. He’s going to resent me. I will be overcome with shame, humiliation, and guilt.

I’m so afraid of dealing with these emotions I’ve cancelled evenings. “There.” I think to myself, “Now I’m safe.” Except I’m not….

Now I’m subjected to a litany of self-shaming and self-guilting. ‘You say you want friends then you don’t, you are such a loser. What’s wrong with you? You don’t deserve friends. No matter what you do you are just a disappointment. You shouldn’t even be alive. What’s the point? All you ever do is make everyone miserable. You try and you scare them. You try to relax and you scare them. You can’t win. All you are is selfish. Look he’s depressed and going through and separation but you can’t get over your dumb issues to help someone else for a change. I think you just like being miserable.’

And I feel so bad from the self-shaming I’ve convinced myself he must hate me. In an effort to correct this I start over-sharing. I get very nervous, I lose the ability to speak on a single train of thought, I end up sounding like I’m blaming him for what I’m feeling like he did it on purpose. I thought he hated me and now I’m going to make it come true.

I am so dedicated to being the Schmendrick I am not comfortable being liked. I want him to hate me because I feel like that’s all I deserve. I only cause pain why would someone like me? He must want to hurt me in some way. I must protect myself. No? He really just wants to like me. That’s even worse because now I’m obligated to become a little chatter-box. He sitting there getting more and more aggravated at me that I can’t relax. At any moment he’s gonna yell at me and tell me I need to get over whatever this is and just be normal. I can’t take that! I can’t take the guilt of not being normal.

I’d rather be hated for being a weirdo than deal with the guilty feelings and feeling like I’ve let everyone down.

So as much as I want to come out of my shell the fear of the emotional fallout keeps me inside.

Sounds really exasperating to find so many obstacles on your way, when all you want is to be friends and help out when people need relief from loneliness or sadness.

Maybe what could help is if you think back to when you were growing up. Maybe then it was really important to protect yourself from people's aggressivity? And that's when you found this way of protecting yourself, which is to keep to yourself and not do anything that anyone might attack you for?

If something like that was going on, then it could make it clear that it's not your fault you started protecting yourself this way.