Dear mete:

At the least, a good part of what you wrote on the forum was your real, authentic feelings and thoughts. It was you that you put out there for others to read. Unfortunately, you got attacked. Like an individual in a herd attacked by the herd, rejected, expelled. That is a scary experience. There are herds of elks where I live. The safety of each individual is dependent on being accepted by the herd. If separated from the herd, the individual elk will feel such fear, that it will do anything to be accepted back.

I think that your anxiety is not much different. We all want to be accepted and liked by “the herd”- by other people, the forum herd in your case.

As humans we need to be authentic. The individual person has a need to express oneself. And the individual person has a need to belong, to fit in, to be liked, to be accepted.

Fitting in at the expense of being authentic will cause you anxiety as well as being authentic and rejected.

What do you think so far?

anita