Hello, thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope that my SO can read some of your responses and realize that shes not crazy, and Its a major issue with alot of us.
She is 25 and has debilitating social anxiety, She is working on it and making good progress. She has a small group of friends online and talks to them regularly, plays games with them and ever since she started talking to them Ive noticed a huge upswing in her moods and demenor. Lately shes been trying to branch out and meet more people in other online spaces.
She has expressed to me that people seem to just know something is different about her, or they seem to interact with her differently than everyone else. I tried to explain (from my perspective) as a fairly autistic individual (undiagnosed cant afford). That yes people can just sense neurodivergency, and will treat us differently. however I, being raised by extremely extroverted parents am very good at masking.
She, on the other hand doesnt “feel right” hiding herself behind a mask to make people feel comfortable. I tried to explain that, thats just how people are, everyone to a degree is masking. The people who dont, often get a lot of respect for being “real” and or put down by others for being overwhelming or annoying.
Ive tried to offer tools to meet others somewhere in the middle, where i believe most people exist. mirrorism Is a tool that I frequently use to guage the extent of what i can and cant say to someone. I also have a “nonchalant” attitude towards people in general which I think makes people feel comfortable around me. This frustrates her, understandably. Because she cares alot about people and wants to build meaningful friendships. She looks at my tools as being fake, and even points out others within her circles that are unabashedly themselves that get treated better or are more “noticed” even if shes been around longer.
This and other factors are of life are often sending her down these spirals of thinking that are difficult to comfort or reason away, since alot of what shes experiencing is determined by other people who themselves are not always of sound mind. She thinks people dont like her and that shes not “worth” the attention. She is a wonderful presence and cares so much about me, her family and everyone to an extent. I find it frankly unbelieveable that any of what shes telling me is grounded in reality.
Im hoping that a few people sharing thier own experience and tools to work through the spirals. Will both motivate her to keep trying for friends in spite of the cruelty of people, aswell as offer a fresh perspective on being “real” or “fake”. In regards to talking to new people.
Normally Id say im sorry to hear about your situation, but you seem the defiant type. So i assume that would be taken as pitty or an insult. Instead id like to say that you and people like you are in my opinion the most genuine specimens of humanity your defiance in the face of adversity is truely an inspiration.
That being said, do you think its healthy to compare belly aches? I am not accusing you of doing so, but your words in this paragraph
To me express the idea that “because others have it worse you should be grateful”. This to me is obviously true, but to someone deep in depression or any other dark place in their life could easily be interpreted as, “suck it up”. So when dealing with friends and family in some sort of mental spiral. I tend to heavily avoid this line of thinking. Even it is the cold truth they need. But maybe im wrong?
This is probably the most helpful bit for my girlfriend (her words), but she mentioned that her social anxiety makes it impossible not to consider every single word and action of those she interacts with. How do you “deal” with not being able to change reality? I feel that ive acheived something similar, a state of neutrality towards the chaos around us. How would you go about helping someone along that path?
So, I agree that other people's troubles do not change your own. However, the capabilities of others to cope with certain situations helps to add perspective and set your own expectations. Without a broader perspective and awareness scope of what is possible, the anxiety and internal ungrounded expectations of normalcy may cause real harm. The social and internalized stigmata are what actually cause most of the damage.
In that regard, I would look up Maslow’s Hierarchy of human needs and be sure you understand exactly what you feel is missing or inadequate.
When I say ‘only worry about the things you can change’ I am internally thinking about Maslow’s Hierarchy. I cannot change some of the missing pieces of my fundamental human needs. So where do I stand. Well am I doomed to cognitive dissonance and disorder. Not really, because, as I mentioned, I can name off all of these circumstances where I know people have made the best of a bad situation and survived with some degree of normalcy.
Now if we really dive into my situation, I am super lucky that I was a competitive amateur cyclists 11 years ago when I was hit by a couple of SUVs on my commute to work. I was in a collar and off the bike for two months. I never fully recovered, but I never lost my race legs. Even now, I’m not in race shape any more, but I’m pretty fast for a gimp. Though my neck and back are torture when I do it. The thing is, exercise is the easiest self accessible source of endorphins to exit most if not all depression situations. It is very hard to build the momentum and routine to become self sustainable, but that is what I already had. I was accustomed to 250-400+ miles of riding every week. Now I can only do around 50 per week without it preventing me from sleeping at all. Every time I feel depressed or existential, I go ride a bike. I don’t need anyone else or want to be with anyone as it will cause me harm. I need to ride against my pain and follow the ups and downs without distractions. I also have PTSD because I was just on my way to work, then everything was black, and suddenly I am waking up in a hospital 3 hours later in extreme pain and already heavily drugged in the ICU.
In my situation, the hardest part has been being young and seeing people’s lives move on and progress. I’m 40, but most of me died at 29. I haven’t experienced life and I can’t. I tried really hard to the point of hurting myself physically and breaking bones before I pulled back the reigns to my reality.
I also believe that one of the biggest issues at 25 is that there is so much cultural nonsense in the Western English world about the age of majority being adult and that is absolute nonsense. The age of majority is set to the late teens because of the ability to easily manipulate child soldiers into very stupid situations, and the age when boys are just capable of carrying a full kit of murderers. There is no scientific basis for this age of majority. The most important parts of the human brain for reasoning and decision making do not finish developing until the age of 25. Talking about this scientific definition of human adulthood is taboo in the USA because it would make it much harder to use the military for corporate interests and bullying if everyone present had their full faculties available and the self awareness to hold and maintain their own ethics. I feel like I went through a lot of challenges and some depression in my early twenties that was just part of growing up. There were so many assumptions and things I jumped into without understanding them fully that I would never do at this point in life. For me, my self awareness is what grew the most. I have a much larger scope of understanding than I did back then. I know who I am in my functional thought process and how that relates to the spectrum of other people. I know the types of people that are more common and less and how to spot who I am most compatible with, along with who will misunderstand me.
I personally feel like we should be talking about how the the age of 25 is an import point in our lives as humans. It might help with some of the more subtle changes and uncertainties some of us encounter around that time. I’m not trying to say this is what is happening with y’all, but I am mentioning it because I was not aware, and even if I was told I don’t know that I would be able to process that in a meaningful way. Like ‘big deal, what is this some kind of useless trivia factoid.’ In more tangible terms, for me, it meant growing into my self and greatly expanding self awareness. I was loud, and figuratively clumsy. I did not know the value of routines. I didn’t know when to tune out how other people perceive things and assess them for myself in an objective way. I realized ways of measuring when I am objectively the smartest person in the room and committed myself to never letting these people hold me back from my own personal growth in life.
I don’t think that anyone can tell you the path to take that is going to work for y’all. All I can do is tell you about the trail that I am on, what the journey was like, and how I managed to overcome it so far.
Good luck, and happy trails–there are many great adventures to be had, even if the journey is constrained to the vast universe of one’s own mind, the possibilities are limitless. I have an entire science fiction universe I write within and explore for fun. I have no external motivations with that story. It is where I go when I have nowhere else; one part of my vast inner universe.
I see, sorry for misinterpreting your words, reading back its obvious what you were trying to convey. Your perspective is much appreciated. Yours and everyones comments have been super productive in our converstation trying to work through this today.