Social anxiety

[Dorrie2553]

I don't have many friends, other than a very close relationship with my brother and my psychologist. I have a long history of being bullied, and many people on Reddit believe I'm stupid and childish (e.g. comments such as "This was made by a child" or "OP is an 8-year-old"). Since the age of 13 (I'm 17 years of age now) I have been very obsessed with personality, and I love learning about and discussing MBTI, Enneagram, Socionics, Big Five, psychosophy, etc. I use the website Personality Database a lot but I feel ashamed to because it makes me look stupid and childish. My self-esteem depends a canny lot on whatever personality I think I am, e.g. if I think I'm an ESFP SLUEN EFVL I feel awful about myself and if I think I am an INTP sp594 I feel very good about myself. The same applies to intelligence - if someone thinks I'm smart then I feel very good and if someone thinks I'm stupid I feel very bad. I constantly seek reassurance from both my brother and strangers on the internet. According to my brother I really am a dumb, ugly cringeworthy person trying hard to look cool, intelligent, and physically attractive.
I feel ashamed to live in an ugly house with ugly bedroom furniture that I have no control over. I feel ashamed to be transgender. I am ashamed of many other things that I'd rather not elaborate on.
How can I ngaf about other peoples' opinions and how other people perceive me?

 

[Sideways]

How can I ngaf about other peoples' opinions and how other people perceive me?

If it were me? I’d start with a personal IT audit.

Anything that I’m logging into that doesn’t offer anything more than curiosity-value needs to go. Because it’s clearly causing way more distress than its worth.

Reddit isn’t going to be where you find meaningful relationships. Go and get out there into the real world, which is fascinating, and full of amazing people.

The truth is that those personality tests offer the same amount of insight as Astrology. For you, they sound like they’re tantamount to the person who scrolls through Instagram for curiosity and to ‘feel connected’, and comes away hating their body.

My self-esteem depends a canny lot on whatever personality I think I am

Right! So, self esteem is a fickle beast. It waxes and wanes, and we need to be really careful about what we’re feeding it voluntarily. At the moment, you’re feeding your self esteem false ‘science’, and it’s not working for you.

Instead? Work on the self acceptance part. Whatever personality you happen to have is you. But you’re a lot more than personality quizzes that someone came up with as clickbait. What do you value? And what are you doing to fuel those values, and live a life that is rich in value for you?

 

[arfie]

you did a pretty spot on job of describing my own social anxiety, all the way to the big words (multi-lingual) and esoteric concepts i throw around to help me feel less stupid. when my own social anxiety kicks in, there isn't any way i have found to convince my heart that my reputation is safe or that anybody could actually like, ". . . a dumb, ugly cringeworthy person trying hard to look cool, intelligent, and physically attractive." like me.

personally, i learned how to skip over trying to convince my heart to feel what my head tells it. the heart goes where it goes. i detach from my social anxiety by thinking of it as an illness i suffer, not a definition of who or what i am. that bit of detachment makes it easier disregard what my social anxiety is telling me and focus on managing the symptoms. easier, but still not easy. fact is, i still prefer to be alone, but at least the symptom management keeps me from worrying holes in my soul while i am alone.

 

[Movingforward10]

I'm not sure this is social anxiety but more a lack of sense of self. You're defining yourself on external things rather than internal things. What people think of you. As opposed to you knowing yourself.
So, do you have a T to help you work out you? Build up your self love, sense of self worth, and self love.

It also sounds quite insular. And I wonder how you can begin to form relationships with similar people.
Reddit is a hell hole of the world. Perhaps questioning why you put your self worth in the hands of strangers who give no two shits about you? Why give them that power over you? Where is your power?

You're transgender. So maybe joining a young transgender group? You might feel you have more in common there. Sense of identity. Belonging. Being understood.

And we are all childish at times! Why lose that?! Being childish can be fun and silly and that's good things to have. I wonder what childish means to you? You are navigating adulthood, so maybe it makes you feel less of an adult? But it is ok. Also, do YOU think you're childish? And if so, what and who do you want to be and what is stopping you from being it?

 

[Aprilshowers]

There is a thread on the forum that I find sad where people are commiserating about feeling old. One of the best gifts of getting old for me is that somewhere along the journey I learned to drop the pretense. I stopped caring about what looked "good" and acceptable and even "normal" to the rest of the world and just allowed me to be me. Life gets SO much easier when you do that!

Who sees your bedroom furniture? Won't that change when you move out? When my kids were growing up they used to say to each other, "In the scope of eternity, will this matter?" The point being - the externals such as furniture aren't YOU.

When someone introduces him/herself to me by including their Enneagram number my immediate reaction is to walk away. Don't tell me you are a 4 or 9 like it's a merit badge! Instead, let's talk and get acquainted. Tell me what kind of music you like, who you read, and what kind of movies you enjoy. Do you get my point? Enneagrams and those psycho/social tests and databases are meaningless in true interactions with real people. We want to get to know YOU...we don't care how you scored on a personality test. You need to stop caring, too. I enjoy spending time with my best friend because we share similar interests and beliefs, she's compassionate and caring, and is just as crazy as I am. All that matters is that we can talk, laugh, and cry together. We've never ever considered personality types or Enneagrams.

It's great that you're interested in studying personality. Why not learn about some other things and expand your personal world a little? I enjoy reading all kinds of nonfiction books. There is so much to learn and discover in this big world. Expanding what you know will not only increase your knowledge and widen your interests, but it enables you to discuss all kinds of things with all sorts of people.

There's nothing wrong with hanging on to a childlike side when you're only 17. My daughter's valedictorian speech was about how difficult it was for her to leave behind that world and enter the "mature" phase of her life at college. At the end of her speech she talked about packing her grown-up things like her graphing calculator and a bottle of laundry detergent, but she was also taking a squirt gun, her Crayola markers, and a bottle of bubbles.

Just be you!