Meeting people after not seeing them for months or years is hard
I always feel overwhelmed because I don't know what to say or how to act or what to expect and whether it feels safe or not or whether I'm wasting their time and afterwards I'm just haunted by all the uninteresting or weird stuff I said for hours or days or weeks, months etc. after.
I should count it as a win, I mean I met 2 old friends which is pretty low stakes. I just feel like my life is worse off than both of them and there's just so much inherent shame and I'm not.......................... like............. I don't know............. interesting. The stuff I'm doing I don't feel like I should talk about and so it's just like yeah I'm existing. as a being. I always wonder whether I'm a necessary presence at all.
Geh. I know I need to do some form of exposure where I meet up with more people slowly over time but it's just like. why would anyone want to even be around me though when I don't really have anything to offer and I'm not doing anything interesting. I'm not really living a life people would think is worth living.
I know that there's no point to caring about this stuff but I just feel like apologizing every time anyway. I guess if an interaction doesn't literally contain me helping someone with something I feel insecure.
But really, I do think I'm boring. But I also hate it when I get too passionate about something in front of someone who doesn't have anything to do with it.
I feel like I should try to prime myself for not being liked or being found boring since that happens often but it's the dealing with the shame of wasting someone's time that really gets me, I guess. I guess an idea would be to deflect it onto them with "they signed up to be bored by me and they can opt out of it in the future," but I guess due to trauma from being stuck in interactions where I couldn't leave I always struggle to see something as someone's actual choice.
Stuff like this is why I wished CBT actually worked for me. Seems so nice to just be able to tell yourself "actually it was fine, good, even," and then trick yourself into believing it. Big sigh.
I also feel kind of insecure about the fact that I've been in therapy for 4 years and may not have a lot to show for it. Like other people would do therapy more efficiently or something. Lol.
Drags myself along the ground and tries very hard not to cry just because I feel preemptive shame. I had an idea before on visualizing the worst that could happen and then just accepting it but I kind of fell off that. There's also a big difference between like, thinking something and then experiencing people. Bleh.
I want to care less and believe that other people don't care either and can leave whenever they want. And I want to not care when they do. I mean, as it is I don't really care when people leave unless I think I did something actually wrong that hurt them, but that's mostly because it's an excuse to go back to isolation which probably then just furthers the cycle of being scared of people. So idk I guess I need practice in disappointing people but I just feel so sad and scared about it because I feel like other people have more right to live than I do.