And that’s a rather big problem. ^[1]

Because I have realized that the chain reaction fireworks of assumptions I bring to every social interaction don’t just lead to a very distorted view of reality. They lead to my radically misunderstanding people’s motives and reactions, and hence misjudging them.

So tonight’s round of Face the Insanity will be about how full tilt crazy I am inside when it comes to social interactions with people I do not know very well. In other words, people who are not in either my group of friends or my family.

There is always so much going on in my head when I am in less than perfectly safe social situations, and most of it is not sane. Fusillades of emotional fireworks are going off constantly – possibly because I have such trouble expressing myself in other ways. So while I am having what seems like a normal-ish friendly conversation, something like an artillery battle is happening inside. No wonder I have trouble keeping my attention fixed on people sometimes!

Like I said before, I just want it too bad. I want so badly to be funny and charming and likable that it raises the stakes on even the simplest of interactions beyond anyone’s ability to cope. It also makes success nearly impossible because I am trying to hard to get so much out of every interaction that I am doomed to fail.

And the thing is, I know it’s crazy. I know I’m crazy. It’s not just a matter of consistently low mood. It’s a matter of knowing that things you think and believe are not just untrue but insane, and not being able to stop believing them anyhow.

I always feel like people are just barely tolerating me and that, at any moment, I could be neglected, rejected, and ejected. Even when I am relaxing with my friends. That little mind gremlin of mind is always there, convincing me that nobody really likes me, people only put up with me out of pity, and everyone silently wishes I would just go away and spare them all the burden of having to humour me.

Countless times I have been told this is patently untrue. And yet, the feeling persists. I have no rational evidence to back up this persistent belief, and lots of evidence to the contrary. And yet I still feel that way most of the time.

Only the intensity varies.

The more active arm of that suite of toxic beliefs is my defensiveness. I always expect to be ignored, neglected, and given the lowest possible priority. And I am not saying it doesn’t happen. What I am saying is that I am not sure that I do not play a part in it, on a subconscious level.

Perhaps. like a person who has been beaten up by every romantic partner they have ever had, I need to take a good look at the common factor in all the incidents, namely me. It seems highly likely to me that I unconsciously create the situation with which I am familiar, namely being treated shoddily. Perhaps, at times, I project an air of unimportance as I try to disappear into the woodwork.

I know damned well that there is, within me, a mighty struggle between the desire to be seen, heart, and known, and the desire to be hidden, overlooked, and safe. That fundamental feeling of being unsafe is a very powerful thing, and that is what makes me want to disappear. In the past, it’s been so strong that I have wanted to vanish from existence entirely and live like a ghost, just wandering through the world feeding my spectral head without any worldly dangers or complications, safe at last.

Or at least until some assholes in jumpsuits show up and “bust” me.

But of course, it would never work. I need people to talk to. I need companionship. I need to be seen and heard and so on because when I am not, I feel like I don’t exist. I have gone through times of extreme solitude, where I was entirely on my own with nobody in my real life that knew me, and it went very badly indeed. I became extremely depressed. So depressed that it went well beyond a negative mood or self-loathing and become more like a very dark dissociative state. Nothing felt real, and I felt like I was disappearing and that at any moment my pilot light would go out and that would be it for me. I would die like the flame of a snuffed candle.

So I have no delusions of solitude. No Walden Pond for me. I might not be the most social guy around, but I definitely need people in my life.

I truly believer that people can engineer their own doom without knowing it. All it takes is part of your mind influencing your seemingly random choices and informing your supposed reason with its negativity and suicidal desire to self-negate. Over time, this leads you to the exact same negative result as before… and the worst part is, part of you is relieved. Ah, good, the same old nastiness. Good ol nastiness. Now I can stop worrying about whether it will happen or not.

Picture all that coming from an Eden-type snake. Now THAT would be REAL evil.

The thing is, I have no idea what the real territory, the one beneath all the delusions, even looks like. I try to imagine what it might be like to have normal emotional responses and I can’t. Not in myself. I honestly have no idea what it would be like to be free of all this craziness.

Seems like it would be a lot better, though.

I am going to go see my therapist at least once during my break. Maybe twice. Maybe he can help me sort through all this mental detritus.

Otherwise I am stuck doing it myself, and that takes forever.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.