An unavoidable situation

Anyway, sorry about the long, drawn out story, but I thought I would use it as an example of how unpredictable people can be. Just when you think you have things figured out, you’re making progress, and you feel some sense of normality and hope, something like that comes along and just blows you out of the water.

In my opinion, nothing can really prepare you for that kind of scene. No matter how careful you are not to offend people or draw attention to yourself, there are people in this world that feed off this kind of stuff. So one might say, why worry if it’s going to happen anyway? I finally came to this conclusion after years of tip-toeing around people. The end result was that it was out of my control, so why not just be me?

Now, I’m not saying that I behave like a total assh*le, and simply blurt out whatever is on my mind. Yeah, in that case, you might be asking for some aggravation. However, I don’t suppress my personality for fear of being judged or confronted.

The situation in the bar was going to happen regardless of what I did, or how I acted. Someone simply singled me out. I don’t know if it was how I looked or what, but it certainly was not something I could have prevented.

Mind you, trying to use the stare method in a situation like that only threw more fuel on the fire. I’ve come to the conclusion that my technique for dealing with social anxiety in public has a very specific purpose. That purpose is to stop my self-defeating inner voice from sabotaging otherwise normal events. The bar situation was not normal, and there was certainly not an unrealistic inner voice telling me how pathetic I was. No, this was a real person telling me how pathetic I was – totally different. The question as to whether or not it was justified is irrelevant. The fact is, it was there, and it was real.

Was there any way I could have turned the situation around? Highly unlikely, since the other party didn’t follow the same rules as civilized society. They were drunk, very unpredictable, and I’m sure that we had not been the first victims.

Years ago, I would have gone home and fallen into a depression for weeks. Situations like that were unbelievably crushing. I would have played things over in my head hundreds of times, while beating myself up for not saying this, or not doing that. I would have kept telling myself how much of a loser I was. Obviously, I was a loser because I had been told in no uncertain terms by this group.

That didn’t happen this time. I didn’t blame myself for anything, and I didn’t keep playing the scene over in my head. Actually, I think I was more angry than anything. I had almost completely forgotten about it after a day.

There were very obvious changes in the way I was processing information. I could feel it. There was a noticeable change in my self-esteem and confidence – and it felt real. It wasn’t much, but it was there – and so much different than the “phony” self-esteem I felt after trying some shallow self-talk method. Oh yeah, it was real, and it had substance to back it up.

So what did I learn from this unfortunate incident? I learned that I only had control over how I felt about myself and how I interpreted the rest of the world. I had no control over social psychopaths that are intent on crushing another’s self-esteem for their own pleasure.

Behavior like that is really a sign of true insecurity. Social anxiety disorder does not have full claim on the issue of insecurity. Low self-esteem can manifest itself in many ways – and it has taken me so long to figure this out. Loud, boisterous behavior does not equate to confidence – however, people like that will try very hard to make others believe it does.

Hey, it takes all kinds to make this crazy world go round.

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