Are we just overly sensitive!

HELLO TO EVERYONE!
/This is my first time to the site.It's encouraging and great
to see support. Of all the anxietys, this has to be the
worse one to have.To imagine were afraid of people, to
admit were afraid to socialize with people I find that a
terrible burden, but there is hope and if we so desire
we can conquer this. I never really felt like I fit it, always
on the outside looking in. I am a very sensitive person, my
feelings get hurt easily. Lately, I been thinking maybe for
me or some of us we are just to darn sensitive and or lack
self-esteem. Well I am on the road to self-discovery please
join me and together I hope we can all find what we so
badly want. We have two choices live with it or conquer it.

The pros like to use the word over-sensitive. Self-esteem is usually an issue as well.

I personally think that a lot of what we call a disorder is actually quite natural responses to our environment. I think it's like that some of us are more likely to develop these kinds of traits, genetic predestined (not the right word, my brain seems to be misfiring. lol) but the environment triggers it. Usually some kind of emotional short coming or abuse in our early child hood. If that abuse is strong enough, we develop a personality disorder. That is what happened to me and many others

I have paranoid personality disorder but I think it's a normal reaction that resulted from an abnormal environment. That doesn't mean I shouldn't work to make it better. I should, it hurts people around me and it has nearly destroyed my life. Leaving me in all but total isolation.

So I think you're right on target. Welcome to the board, I hope you come back often

MindMatter

You are right there is a way to conqure social anxiety/ phobia..

Thank you for posting something so postive...

I'm senstive, I mean emotionally senstitive, I still will cry at Bambi likely.. haha

Everyone is different with stuff like this, no one is exactly the same. Everyone has different ways to cope, some people just get stage fright, some people are afraid of the public, ordering something at a resturant. (I had that problem when i was a kid, with Mc donalds etc), I really don't know where I'm going with this right now, so i'll end it.

I was stalked for 4 years. I was left with a terrible social phobia as trust was a forgotten concept. Self acceptance is still the best cure I know.

I went to a BBQ tonight. My husband arranged this big party for all his friends, and wanted all the wives to come too! Sounds fun, sure. I was feeling good initially, not too self conscious - then........ someone makes what I thought was a snarky comment, in relation to something my husband said! That ruined the entire night for me! I clammed up, got cloudy minded, WORRIED the entire night that I was being 'weird'- didn't understand what everyone was talking about, etc., etc.

I just got home and I'm exhausted!

I saw this topic, and I thought, Hmmmmm. I wonder if this IS a trigger to social phobia!!

I really feel like I made an ass of myself all night- by not talking and when someone asked me a question, my reply, "Nice", or "oh".
I'm exhausted.

But, what's wrong with being sensitive though? Why can't others just be kind!?!?

A higher sensitivity to people and the experiences a person has had before could be a factor for those who believe they have SA, but I think many people carry/keep their previous experiences with them generally so this isn’t the full story.

I have come to see that SA isn’t really a disorder or condition, as the mental health world likes to portray it as, especially in the USA with their perplexing fixation on categorizing every aspect of human experience that is seen “outside the norm” and turning many symptoms into conditions and illnesses.
But there really isn’t any norm and no "fitting in", so we can do away with how we are “supposed to be” and focus on how we actually are and what we actually like/prefer.

I have also come to see that social interaction is on a continuum, much like most of human needs/preferences/desires and it seem there is a lot of variance along the continuum. But such is the way of human society that only a few narrow ways of interacting with people are seen as acceptable, "normal" and “right”. For example, we can't really have part-time girlfriends/boyfriends, wives and husbands, or friends, or meet up a few times a year with someone, for a variety of needs. People want a regularity with other person/people.

I ended my SA many years ago and then soon after I realised that I didn’t actually get much from being with people and much preferred being on my own. For many years, I had been forcing myself to be social and make/get friends (I was married twice too) but it always felt awkward, contrived, weird and I didn’t understand it all. I still don’t understand what friendship is actually for, but it seems mostly to be for people to resolve a number of things/questions which they can’t do on their own, as well as seeking acceptance when really, this is wholly unnecessary. We are all OK, regardless, and so we don’t need anyone’s acceptance or approval.

Sure, people can bring pleasant things, like humor, fun, comedy, physical pleasures, experiences and knowledge of/with something, and “a loving way about them”. But it is not only pleasant things that come from being with a person, or having people in one’s life. There’s an awful lot of unpleasant things too, that can come along with a person which are also on a continuum, from differences in mood (changes without notice), sudden preferences/choices/decisions, changing tastes, conflicts, arguments, sadness, instability, hostility, belligerence, unknown agendas/lying, violence and murder. And some things may not surface in a person for years and years, leading to a surprise reaction from the other person “who thought they knew them”.
Within all these things, there is an incalculable and unknowable amount of doubt, nuances, subtleties, variances/unpredictability, from one day to the next and many many things which are too much to go into here. A single person can contain a colossal amount of things…..and there’s around 8 billion people, currently.

And for having some sort of partner, there’s the ever present and unavoidable nature of the other person “always being there” and of having to meet their needs and desires for attention, of various kinds, more or less constantly and when they want too.

As I got older, I just found it all much too much for me, on top of not actually getting much/any benefit from being with people, so for me its an undesirable double-whammy.

So I have found it much, much better for me to avoid social interactions generally (impersonal ones like shopping, customer service, impromptu street chats, etc., are all OK for me). I don’t work and I spend almost all my time alone at home, mostly in a more or less constant state of calmness.

I do watch movies, comedy, YT stuff, etc., and read things online, but it is always at a distance and almost never face to face. Yes, I do have neighbors and when I encounter them on my way out or my way in, its mostly a hello/wave and I’m gone.

At its root, SA seems to be a misunderstanding/errors in perception about oneself and other people, all of which are wrong and untrue. But many people have such misunderstandings/perception problems, but for those people they are at a far lesser degree and extent than “SA sufferers” and they do not interfere with their day-to-day living experience or cause them anxiety.

SA is caused by our thoughts and not by other people.