Hi everyone !! Wall - o - Text ahead

Warning: Very long post, also known as "wall - o - text" ahead!

I´m not sure if this is the correct forum, as many times symptoms from stuff ranging from shyness to depression to social anxiety tend to overlap, but after having read a lot about this and other subjects I think APD´s symptoms fit me perfectly...again, sorry if this is not the correct place to post anyways, I´m 22, male, and live in Chile - so english is not my native language, please excuse me if I make a mistake somewhere - now to the point:

I [censored] hate my situation, myself, the world for the most part...etc. I have always known that I am different; didn´t give a damn about sports, cars or anything else that all other kids were crazy about. And this has been a trend that has continued until now; don´t care about stuff like football, hate facebook with a passion, and as far as I am concerned, celebrities can drown themselves a thousand times. At the beginning I thought it was the cause of me avoiding human contact as much as possible; but later on realized that I can´t even interact successfully with people who share my same interests [anime, manga, stuff like that] what happens, you might ask?

Well...I just cannot, and probably couldn´t if my life depended on it, initiate and/or keep conversations with pretty much anyone. That´s the gist of it; I just cannot connect with others no matter how much I try. I usually stand there as if I were frozen after the mandatory greetings, the uncomfortable silence comes in, and the other person just gets bored and goes away. Friends? that is not even a word that is in my dictionary anymore, as pretty much everyone [save for my mother] who has ever been nice to me, has acted in such way just because of second intentions, leaving me after I was no longer useful for them. Such events led to me becoming wary and untrusting of people, to such degree that it could probably be considered as paranoia. Seriously, whenever someone acts nice towards me the first thought I have is something along the lines of "Yeah right, you are lying just like everyone else" or "You are just doing this because you want to be polite/need something from me, or both"

Since almost every person I ever thought cared a bit about me ended up abandoning me, I have found myself making less and less of an effort to try and connect with others. My general line of thought has been "Why even bother? they are going to abandon me anyway." and therefore I pretty much avoid social situations and gatherings unless it is completely unavoidable, and even then I spend most of the time trying to hide the best I can, and waiting for the time to go in what seems like a torture. It also goes without saying that I avoid trying new stuff ._. a total lack of initiation would be a better way to phrase it I guess. I know that I´m going to fail anyway; my social skills? zero; athletic skills? ditto; intellectual skills? see number 1 and 2; the list goes on and on...I´m beginning to think I got all the defective genes, or that something is just wrong with my brain. Not even animals seem to like me, as far as I know. It´s as if the rest of the world were blue - colored, with me being a red - colored outcast.

Not only I do hate this, but I´m also afraid of thoughts such that I just will never be able to belong in this world, or fit in anywhere. There is also the fact that next year I will have to start working for real, and it will be either interacting with people, or sending my life to hell...I don´t want to be 30 - something and still live with my parents, afraid of going out and without having accomplished anything worthwhile [this being the reason I left MMORPGS for good] so this is THE year.

But I don´t know what to do...I just feel so powerless; and whenever I try to do something against it, negative thoughts devour my mind as if they were shadows waiting for the right moment to strike. And I just go back to my old ways.

Ok, time to stop for now. I just realized that I could go on and on, but this is supposed to be a post and I´ve just turned it into the bible lol. Sorry, I´ve always been really bad at summarizing stuff =(

See you around, I hope

First point:

Your English is impeccable.

In future, I command you not to apologise in advance:)

The very many members of this forum who speak English as a second language make me feel very foolish indeed. It's really all I've got.

I've read that, "To possess a second language, is to possess another soul".

Anyway - I can relate to everything you wrote and it was extremely well put. I look forward to your contributions on the forum.

Best wishes.

Bienvenido. Welcome!
Have you got any possibility to attend to a doctor or a phychologist, perhaps in your school?
I suppose you have different likes or interests to friends of your same age and this might made you lock in your own and feel depressive.
It sounds that you want to change. There are different types of avoidants. The only thing I could say is to visit a proffessional. Does your mother know what´s the matter?
I can related to many things you´re saying and I understand your worries. The first symptom that something is not ok is depression.
Don´t wait like me to have 24 to go to your first therapist. I think he or she could help you. Or perhaps an assistant.

Buena suerte!

Hi !! first of all, thanks for taking the time to reply...makes me really happy now on to the topic:

Faux: That´s a really nice saying you put there, I´ll surely remember that for a long time especially since I just started
learning Chinese [about three weeks ago] so I guess I´ll have
three souls by then, hopefully it will be better than the first
one...third time´s the charm, or so they say hehe

Zahra: First of all, thanks for the warm welcome !
About the interests issue I thought it was the cause
of the problem at first...but then I realized that I
cannot interact even with those who have the same,
or almost the same, interests as me...it´s just that I
cannot think of anything to say, as if my mind had just
decided to go on strike ._.

I told my mother once, a few years ago when I was
feeling suicidally depressed...didn´t tell her about the
full extent of this disorder thought, only told her that
"I needed to see a professional because I didn´t see
any meaning in life any more." and she sent me to one,
but we could only pay for six sessions and therefore
didn´t even get to scratch the surface of the problem.
Nowadays I don´t want to trouble her, as she has
enough worries for me to become yet another one

I should be getting quite a bit of money sometime in
the next two months, so I´ll likely use some of it to
see a therapist. If not, I´m planning to start working
as soon as I finish university and then use some of
my pay for such ends. I know it´s going to be hard
as hell, and therefore I do want to use this year to
change whatever I can in order to ease the impact,
even if only a little. The thing is...I´m lost as hell
but at least I haven´t felt suicidal again in years,
for I realized that as long as I live I still have options...
guess that could be called a progress of some sort ._.

PS~ Wow...I can write A LOT [could have turned this into
an even larger post] wish I could talk like that hehe.

See you around

I can definitely relate to the feeling of being born messed up and inferior to everyone else. I really feel as if I cannot accomplish anything in a halfway decent fashion. Sometimes I manage to gather up enough confidence to at least try something with the hope it will go well and then I can maybe feel a little better about myself, but every time I just end up failing and disappointing myself. It seriously makes me feel like there must be something wrong with me, that no one could possibly be so bad at everything.

I'm also the type who never has anything to say, and I think this the main source of my social awkwardness and anxiety. Normally, I prefer to listen to people talk and then say something on the rare occasions when I have something useful to say. If I have something to say, which is more likely if it is a particular interest of mine, I'm usually not anxious or nervous before speaking. Sometimes I will feel awful afterwards, though, if I felt like I said something stupid or didn't express myself in an understandable way. Those times I'll wish I had not opened my mouth.

It is good you posted here. Sorry that all I really have to talk about is how I can relate, but I do not have any advice. It sounds like I've gone on and talked about myself too much, so I hope I didn't.

It sounds as if you are looking at things from the right angle now, and at least have a basic plan. If/when you come across any setbacks, try not to be too hard on yourself. It can take quite a while to change and everything won't always work out, but you'll still be making lots of progress.

Just to add my thoughts to everyone else's, you're English is indeed perfect. English is my native language (and only, bah), but I still tend to worry a lot about not expressing things, both when speaking and when writing, in a way that others can understand me. Teachers used to make lots of comments on my papers and essays in school to the effect that I wrote too long, complicated sentences that were hard to understand.

faux wrote:
The very many members of this forum who speak English as a second language make me feel very foolish indeed.

And..and .. fer me are you not say, are you not? lol

Reiji Moritsugu wrote:Hi !! first of all, thanks for taking the time to reply.

Zahra: First of all, thanks for the warm welcome !
About the interests issue I thought it was the cause
of the problem at first...but then I realized that I
cannot interact even with those who have the same,
or almost the same, interests as me...it´s just that I
cannot think of anything to say, as if my mind had just
decided to go on strike ._.

I told my mother once, a few years ago when I was
feeling suicidally depressed...didn´t tell her about the
full extent of this disorder thought, only told her that
"I needed to see a professional because I didn´t see
any meaning in life any more." and she sent me to one,
but we could only pay for six sessions and therefore
didn´t even get to scratch the surface of the problem.
Nowadays I don´t want to trouble her, as she has
enough worries for me to become yet another one

I should be getting quite a bit of money sometime in
the next two months, so I´ll likely use some of it to
see a therapist. If not, I´m planning to start working
as soon as I finish university and then use some of
my pay for such ends. I know it´s going to be hard
as hell, and therefore I do want to use this year to
change whatever I can in order to ease the impact,
even if only a little. The thing is...I´m lost as hell
but at least I haven´t felt suicidal again in years,
for I realized that as long as I live I still have options...
guess that could be called a progress of some sort

So you had a therapist for six sessions. I think six sessions are enought to told you what the hell have you got? I say that because, in my honest opinion, when you know what you exactly have is useful. At this moment, I´m confused about you, from the point of view that you say that you don´t like anything.
What sort of therapy were you following? I have hear about and Intensive therapy. It seems to be faster than cognitive-behavioral one. I´ll look for you this information in another forum. The guy who was following this kind of theraphy seems to be very happy with it.

I understand your possition respect your mother. I know something doesn´t work on me since I was 17 years all and the only thing I made was focussing on my studies, pretended to be there as nothing wrong with me, so my parents wouldn´t worry.
So I only go to a therapist when I begun to work and got money.

Anyway, there are many things you can do before, if you can´t afford a therapist. Mainly, I´m talking about listen to your inner( your needs, your thoughts, your feelings) I know, this is a long way of self-knowledge. Listen, there are many self-help books in the forum (if I remember well, in Social Phobia or Self-Steem forums, I´m not sure). The books are in English, so you won´t have any problem to find them.

Bueno, voy a buscar esa terapia para vos, ok?

The links about Thansitional Intensive Therapy:

http://www.istdp.com/

Some information in Wikipedia about the same:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_ ... chotherapy

Good luck (Buena suerte)

Tujjen: First of all, thanks for posting !! don´t worry about not having any advice or talking too much, as your post not only helps you by becoming a chance to vent your thoughts, but also helps me as it adds to the thought that I´m not as alone as I thought I was in this.

Zahra: Thanks for the links !! From what I´ve read it seems like an interesting and useful form of therapy, so I´ll look for more information about it along with the self - help books that are in the other sections of the forum. About the therapist, it wasn´t about any sort of "specialized" therapy...he just made me talk until time was up, and then apparently scribbled some stuff in a notebook he was always carrying, but that´s in the past now ;D I´ll probably go to a cognitive - behavioral one in the future, when money is less of a concern.

See you around

You´re welcome.

No hay de que. Estamos a la oden. Un abrazo y mucho gusto!