Situations where I don’t feel much anxiety:
Meeting a friend of a friend for the first time
Picking up the phone
Going to the till and paying someone
Asking a stranger for directions
Giving a random person a present
Situations where I feel anxious:
Meeting a friend of a friend for a second, third, forth time - and then it ramps up a bit - and then it only settles down once they’re an official friend, whenever that happens.
Picking up the phone to someone I’ve spoken to in real life
Paying a friend
Asking someone I know for directions
Giving someone I know a present (I usually give it to Nabil to hand over for me)
Sometimes it feels a bit backwards to me. Like shouldn’t logically I be more anxious meeting a new person - cause I don’t know what they’re like and they could be horrible or not like eating bakes or something??
But when I think about it, it does make sense. I don’t feel anxious meeting new people at all because it’s totally risk free, I can easily shake it off if they don’t like me because I know they don’t know me. However, once they get to know me, it’s like they’ve invested in me - not money, but time and emotional resources… And then I get this fear kicking in that at some point, somewhere, I will let them down or they’ll realise I’m not who they thought I was. They’ll be upset they spent that time and emotional resources in me.
I always see myself as one of those cats who comes up to you wanting petting, and then gets nervous and hisses and runs off. I want them to like me, but at the same time I want to run away.
The cat holds its head back slightly rather than leaning into the stroke. Or it runs away for a bit after a stroke. I’m a bit like that. I just try to not let them get to know me too much. I’m happy to see people and love being around people that I enjoy, I’m just fearful of letting them in too much.
But I’ve figured out why I’m like this. My attachment style is insecure AND avoidant. It wants people to like me, and at the same time wants to run away. The core belief I have is ‘people won’t like the real me’. It’s definitely a trauma thing and the way I was brought up.
Luckily, attachment styles CAN shift a bit and I’m working on it, and have been for a long time. My partner Nabil has a secure attachment, and apparently that can do wonders for my wobbly double pronged attachment style. It can shift and shape it gradually, like a bit of coiled wire that slowly can be straightened out.
I also look at him and cannot fathom how he is just totally opposite to me. He is slightly nervous meeting people the first time (but not really anxious, just a standard dash of nervousness), and then as he gets to know them better, he feels more confident and comfortable with them. I know that that makes sense rationally, but it blows my mind all at the same time. And conversely, he looks at me and it blows his mind. It’s interesting how we can learn from each other and hopefully shift our minds where.
I also think a big part of this thought though, is that it’s grounded in some small bits of truth, because I suspect I’m autistic (self diagnosis is valid, I’m also seeking a professional diagnosis - but even with that validation, I’ll always be self diagnosed first and foremost - and proud of it because I’ve put a lot of work into researching this and don’t want anyone taking the credit for that!!!). I totally got lost in writing in brackets there - so yes I suspect I’m autistic for loads of thoroughly researched criteria (but that’s a whole other topic for another essay), and part of that is the fact that in the past when I have been ‘myself’, I really have been rejected and disliked. I had selective mutism in secondary school, and a large part of that was that I quickly realised other people weren’t like me, and didn’t like the real, unmasked me. I learnt to mask and ‘fake it til you make it’ at university, and since then it’s been difficult to drop.
What makes it trickier to shake is that part of this fear is very real. But I feel like part of it needs to be let go of too - but it can be done gradually in small ways where I challenge myself. Like asking someone round to my house, giving someone a present, things like that. Yes the autistic fear of being misunderstood and later rejected is real, and at the same time I’ve never seen anyone hate anyone because they’ve given them a present (apart from when it’s wildly inappropriate).
Just some of my thoughts lately. Are you like this? Or slightly different?
Share this post