The ONLY way to resolve this fully is by overcoming and transcending the meaning you’ve created around friends, being alone, what people think of you etc. This will likely take a fair deal of time to work through completely. I recommend going through this with a professional such as a coach who has experience with helping people to shift their mindsets and mental stances.

Effectively there will be a series of beliefs in your mind, such as “I NEED people to love / respect me”, “Being alone would be absolutely TERRIBLE”, “It would be AWFUL if people thought badly of me”, and so on and on, and none of these beliefs are serving you. From a cognitive behavioural therapy standpoint you are “musterbating” – turning what would healthily just be desires, such as love / approval, into MUSTS that you MUST have. Unfortunately this is a recipe for the kind of anxiety you are experiencing.

I recommend seeking out and employing as many strategies as you can – CBT, mindfulness meditation, general semantics, philosophies from individuals such as Noah Elkrief and Eckhart Tolle have all helped me. It will take an enormous desire on your part to change and a willingness to shift your perspectives – that means no longer thinking the same way you used to. “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein.

If you are willing to do that, commit to it and keep persevering, then in a few weeks, months or years you will have broken through this completely. But enjoy the process of transformation and enjoy the journey, for the destination is a way off. Just focus on enjoying the self-change you will be undergoing. As I say employing a good life coach to work with you will mean this likely gets worked through much faster and the support will be very encouraging.

As for in the short term, right now look into mindfulness meditation and I recommend becoming highly present when the nightmarish thinking appears. You’ll know more about what that means once you’ve started meditating.

You don’t have to believe or do anything I say here but I would personally highly recommend it for what you are experiencing. The key to this isn’t in your nightmarish scenario, it’s in what’s behind it, which is this: “I have really bad anxiety.. i always worry im doing something wrong either with friends, relationships, family, or work and people are just going to walk out of my life.” That’s your problem. Only by becoming comfortable with the idea of being alone, by realizing you don’t NEED people to stay in your life and by going from a people-pleaser to a creative force in the world will you really start enjoying life on another level. Of course, the nightmare scenario you keep envisaging CAN be worked on in the short term but there’s a lot behind it which I would also explore and seek to work on.

By the way, you have noted it’s irrational. You do not become some weird svengali puppet in your sleep and start doing crazy things. But you know that . This isn’t ABOUT that. This is about what I’ve talked about above. Good luck over the days, weeks, months and years ahead. Remember to ENJOY THE JOURNEY and not just the destination because the destination is a way off! All best with this.

well done on the progress you have already made, and remember above all, don’t beat yourself up, take it easy on yourself.

a few things I WILL say: there are lots of shoulds / coulds in your post despite saying you had eliminated these from your mind. “I should be accepting of this and that”, for example. Who said you SHOULD do that? It’s not about what you SHOULD do, it’s about what you CHOOSE to do. If you choose to accept the present moment because that is going with the way of life (instead of against the way of life) and will create happiness into your life, then cool. But you don’t have to. You can choose to resist what ‘is’, that’s an option that’s available to you too, but it comes with its own consequences of course.

You said you can control yourself. Everything? Can you control the next thoughts that will pop into your mind? Nope thoughts just pop into your head. Can you control it so you never ever get ill? Some people claim to be able to influence their health to enormous degrees but I don’t think you can control every element of ‘you’. For example a spot might appear, did you control that? Can you control it away? Nope. What you do have is enormous influence over yourself because you can, for example, choose which thoughts to believe, choose your responses to illnesses, choose whether you accept the ‘isness’ of this moment or not, and so on. So you do have a huge amount of influence and power, and you even have a lot of influence in life itself, but control? Nope, not over anybody else or even yourself in a lot of cases.

I would also argue that deserve doesn’t come into this, it’s about what you desire. “Deserve” is just a thought. But what do you actually want in life? If you change from feeling like you ‘deserve’ this or that to ‘desiring’ this or that then this may well be a positive shift for you.

as for change…When you change, everything changes. Your mind is generating your entire reality and experience, so when you change what’s being generated, the whole situation changes. What do you mean when you say you ONLY are able to change yourself? ONLY?? That’s everything! Change how you are in the face of life and your whole experience of life changes. It’s as if the world has changed. That’s the whole point. You don’t JUST change yourself, your life seems to change as you change in the face of it.

Develop more empowering perspectives and there will be no troubles here.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND These videos by Noah Elkrief that I’ve recently been watching. Just watch whichever of these are relevant for you and you will soon get the idea (or watch as many as possible, they are great IMO): https://www.youtube.com/user/NoahElkrief/videos?view=0&flow=grid&sort=p

see how much those help!

all best – take care – take it easy

• This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by Rock Banana.

You are trying to suppress thinking, which is pointless. What happens if you try not to think of a pink elephant? Huh? Keep trying your hardest NOT to think of a pink elephant…go on…

You see, suppressing thinking isn’t really an answer. Read up and do some mindfulness meditation, this is about letting thoughts come and go without judging them and observing them from a distance. If you are suppressing the thinking you are trying to avoid feeling a certain way, but what you need to do is to observe the thoughts from a distance and feel whatever comes up. If it gets too overwhelming you can return to the sensations of breathing in and out. So start doing mindfulness meditation which I highly recommend for you.

Also, read the book “You Can Be Happy No Matter What” by Richard Carlson. If you read that you’ll realize what’s happening with you and you’ll understand why you don’t need to suppress your thoughts.

Good luck
All best.

Stop processing other people’s opinions about you through your own sense of self. If you co-create your “self” with other people then you give them power over you, power to determine how you feel about yourself. Can you see the huge problem with this if your goal is to be happy and independent? In order to overcome this you will realize that almost 100% of what people think of you has nothing to do with you whatsoever. It has everything to do with them – the stuff that’s going on in their life, the mood they’re in, whether they have had breakfast or not, their preferences when it comes to the people around them, etc. So see their responses to you as THEIR (responses to you), instead of (their responses to) YOU.

Realize that nothing that anybody thinks about you or says to you can change who you are, and that includes your own inner monologue. No matter what you or anybody else thinks of you, your essence remains unchanged. And remember that you are not inherently “good”, “bad”, “ugly”, “beautiful”, etc – these are judgements bestowed upon you, either by yourself or by other people, and have very little to do with who you actually ‘are’. After all, everybody disagrees – some people, for example, find me annoying, others find me very charming and love being around me. That’s life.

But here’s the catch: In order to detach from what people think about you, to stop caring about all that (think of all the neurosis it causes throughout a lifetime to be constantly self-censoring and micro-managing just to control your image, which isn’t even a real thing, just an abstract concept in the minds of others and yourself!) you can’t have it both ways. You either believe people, whether they’re telling you good things or bad things, or you don’t, i.e. you realize that nothing anybody says changes who you are, even positive stuff. The problem is, if you give them the power to build you up with compliments, you also give them the power to smash you back down with insults, and vice versa. It’s too unstable, and people are too unpredictable, for this to be a good source of emotional stability. It will just throw you all over the place like you’re being washed around by the waves in the sea.

Imagine instead that the insults, and compliments (admittedly rather counter intuitively), could be seen from a distance, like an observation. “Oh, they think that. What does that say about them?” I’ll give you an example. A friend of mine has suddenly started becoming very rude to me and dodging my calls and blocking me. Weird, right? So I was angry and wanted to reply saying, get lost or something like that. But my phone died before I had time to respond. Good thing, too, because hours later my actual response was very different: I hope everything’s ok, let me know if you’re stressed or anything, it’s good to have somebody to talk to about these things. I therefore stopped taking it personally and started seeing it as having everything to do with them. Whether they came back “why the hell would I want to talk to YOU?” or “thanks so much, I’ll call in 5 mins” is totally irrelevant to who you are and what your action meant. All that matters is your intention and your orientation in life, to yourself and to others. The way they pick up on that intention doesn’t actually matter because you can’t control that at all. It’s moreorless completely unpredictable and can be influenced by totally arbitrary factors. So give over your happiness to it and you end up being washed around by the tides of whatever random thoughts pop into their heads. Scary stuff.

Realize that NO adjective of you actually describes you, you are not who you think you are, and you’re so much more than that besides. As a natural extension of that, if even your judgements about yourself have no inherent ‘truth’, why the hell would you believe anybody else? Do you really think they’re any more of an authority on ‘who you are’ than you are?

The real emotional benefit of this shift in thinking and being takes time and is something you work on, really, I’ve done it through reading philosophy, introspection and thinking, as well as some experimenting in shifting my perspective in certain moments. Change is often slow, so keep being positive if you’re not instantly walking into the world not caring at all about what anybody thinks. It may well take years to make this transition. Either way, if every day you are getting a little bit closer to where you want to be, then that’s all that matters. You will after all one day get there. Change WILL happen if you keep applying new perspectives, trying out new stuff and being relentless in your commitment. And remember Shakespeare’s quote: “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

By the way, quick note on empathy. Compassion & empathy are not hindered by you not being overly concerned about what people think of you, actually the opposite. As you stop caring about their opinion of YOU, you move out of a neurosis-driven ego space that’s all about “me me me”. And you start caring about THEM, helping THEM rather than trying to control how they see YOU. Your whole focus shifts to them and serving them effectively, whether they appreciate it or not. Remember the great people of the past who went against the ideas of their day (e.g. slavery, racial segregation) were hated by many people. It was irrelevant because the people that hated them were not ‘right’ if equality, empathy and compassion are taken as core values. Those great people DID have those values so were unaffected by such criticisms.

Also, when you stop people pleasing and being inauthentic to make others like you, you will often end up with a slightly more polarized response. Some will absolutely love you, more than you have ever been loved before, some will despise you, more than you have ever been despised before. I’m not saying this is necessarily true but for some people it could be. The trick is to keep living by your values and realize that not everybody will ever like you. Some people may just dislike you, due to your voice, your beliefs, whatever. Who cares? What does that say about you? Anything? Nope. Some people don’t like me, and that’s totally cool. The point is, when you’re inauthentic people pleaser, everybody kind of likes you or is pretty much indifferent. When you’re bold and totally your self, authentic and grounded in your values, it’s a possibility that you will get more of a love/hate polarized reaction. That shows you’re doing something RIGHT. If nobody hates you, what exactly are you standing up for, what are you representing, who are you in the world? If nobody hates you, are you grounded enough in your values and authenticity? After all, all the best people who made big positive changes in the world were hated by a large number of people. It’s part of the game. See it as necessary conditions of playing the game of life and the stress and anxiety around it dissipates.

It’s also true that the less judgmental you are of others, the less they tend to be of you, although that’s not always the case.

And even if you could successfully achieve your aim of having 100% of the population love you, you would still be a dumb idiot who spends all their time trying to get people to like them. Your energy would be totally wasted on that instead of making a positive contribution in the world. You would be obsessed with challenging nobody. And where’s the fun in that?

The above is the way I see things and it’s not the “truth” but the perspectives I believe in. I too have made this big shift and am continuing to make it day by day. If you are familiar with mindfulness and meditation etc then you will know already you are not your thoughts. Well, you’re not anybody else’s thoughts either. 🙂

All best
Much love!

• This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by Rock Banana.

Why do you think she might have a better life without you? Has she said that?

You need to become comfortable with leading your own life. You need to become more independent, to have your own values and beliefs.

You do not need to make anybody happy. If you want to stay in the relationship then stay, if you want to leave then leave. Of course you don’t want her to be upset, but if you don’t like the relationship any more, then it’s more kind to end it than to keep it going.

If you do like the relationship, then why are you making this post?

Also: there is nothing to feel guilty about. Your needs and desires are just as important as anybody else’s – in fact they are even more important in your own life.

Who said you can only make money in music by performing?

And “I’m nervous” is a pathetic excuse not to perform. Presuming music is a passion for you, are you going to avoid doing it just because it has made you feel a bit scared in the past? Serious? Wow. Considering you can overcome that and become much more confident, relaxed and assured, I can’t believe you are willing to throw away all of that just to avoid a bit of fear.

John Lennon was so nervous before gigs he threw up before he went on stage. Did that stop him? Of course it didn’t. He didn’t sit about complaining that he was “too nervous”. Because he had better things to be doing. Stop making excuses and start creating the life you want to create. It’s not going to create itself.

I’ll echo what belove has said as well, I can’t believe the final statement of your last post, I really hope you aren’t seriously considering that and if you are then it’s obviously something you need to discuss with someone.

I recommend taking up mindfulness meditation. At the moment you are buying into very unhelpful thought patterns revolving around age regression. It’s totally pointless, it’s doing nothing to improve your life and it’s a waste of time. And when you do it you just feel bad. The simple solution is stop doing it. It’s as simple as that, but not doing it and instead focusing on the present moment and the reality of what ‘is’ ‘now’ is something that requires practice.

All this “could have been” is total rubbish and nonsense. What a total waste of time. In 20 years do you want to look back on when you were 59 and you could have been enjoying your life but instead you were sitting about brooding and worrying about what you didn’t do when you were younger?

Focus on the present and future, they’re the only things you can influence in any way. I’m not saying it’s totally easy to disconnect from all this obsession with the past, but I am saying that if you don’t do it then you’ll regret it. (In fact, you definitely will, cos you’ll still be looking back at the past with sorrow!!!) So WHAT INSTEAD? WELL, when you connect to the present and future and focus on how you can shape them, you become empowered, free and a master of your own destiny. As I say, look at mindfulness meditation for a place to start.

Forget all this past stuff and focus on the now and your next steps in life.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 11 months ago by Rock Banana.