Dear Lily:

“I went to the meeting and nobody accused me”- remember this experience. You expect people to accuse you and most often it doesn’t happen. The one who often accuses you is that voice in your brain, that “inner critic”, the mental representative of a parent or parents who did accuse you as a child.

“I was very nervous and probably made others uncomfortable”- an assumption, probably not true: you felt your own discomfort, not others’ discomfort and you assumed they felt the discomfort that you felt.

I think it is a good thing that you shared that you feel uncomfortable about being suspected as one who stole items.

“there were weird looks and someone ignored me”- you assumed that people were thinking about you and their thoughts about you brought about weird looks. They probably were not thinking about you at all, or not more than a passing thought. Maybe some had a weird look on their faces because their stomachs hurt or they needed to go to the bathroom and were holding it, or something like that.

“I don’t want to be noticed or be seen as different”- again, I don’t think people notice you anywhere close to how much you assume they are noticing you. It is that inner critic inside you who  is noticing you, a whole lot of the time.

“People were friendly..”- you dismiss this evidence of people thinking well enough of you, and make unchecked assumptions about an expression on someone face meaning they think ill of you, etc.

“In school people called me ‘freak’..”- that experience stuck, understandably. But it doesn’t mean that in every social situation in the present and future people think you are a freak. You keep experiencing your childhood experience in the present, everywhere you are. I did too. Learning and better understanding made it possible for me to see the present for what it is, removing what-was from what-is.

I do. I know: lots of people can and do lie shamelessly. As a matter of fact, lying shamelessly to a woman is part of normal courtship for many men. Not all, maybe not most, but it is the case for a lot of men. They will lie shamelessly so to satisfy their sexual needs.

He didn’t want his sister to know about you and him (“make it a secret”), maybe because his sister knows that he is seeing another woman and he doesn’t want her to know he is cheating on that other woman. Maybe.

“the same flatmate ignored me again… I am wondering: what did I do wrong?”- it is the same core belief, the same feeling you mentioned in your post before  last, a belief/ feeling formed in childhood: “I had this feeling that I was responsible for everything that goes wrong… I was the problem“.

So the flatmate ignored you, probably nothing to do with your behavior, maybe she is just not a polite person and ignores lots of people. But you assumed, once again, that you are the problem.

Congratulations for fixing the problem with your co worker, for attending the meeting and for saying no to K. I am very pleased about this progress that you are making!

“It is actually progress.. so why do I still feel so bad?”-

-because you keep feeling the same that you felt as a child. Quality psychotherapy is the best place to re-visit one’s childhood and see the child that you were truly as she was, not the problem. When that happens, you will feel differently. It is a process that takes time and dedication.

anita