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Reply To: Social awkwardness, low self esteem

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Anonymous
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Dear coconut:

I am glad to read, “I don’t act bad towards my bf when feeling like that.. I am proud of myself”- I am proud of you too, for exercising self discipline successfully and no longer picking fights with him (if I remember correctly from your previous thread).

“I forget words.. I kinda forget what happens pretty fast. I also don’t remember much from school, I feel stupid… I didn’t really understand what I was learning.. I just memorized everything. It helped me get good grades but now I don’t remember almost anything”-

– you and I have a lot in common. When I was in school, including college I too memorized, passed the tests and then forgot. I had a great difficulty processing and retaining information. I too forgot words when talking to people and not only did I forget what happened in a movie, I wasn’t able to follow what was happening during the movie. Later in life I understood that it wasn’t that I was unintelligent but that I was anxious. Significant anxiety interferes with natural intelligence, it creates a sort of a fog in the brain that slows down mental processes. Once you become way less anxious, your ability to process and retain information will greatly improve! And you will be able to come up with the words when in conversations with people.

“I also think a lot about my boyfriend’s past.. I feel really jealous”- another thing we had in common, I too thought a lot, obsessing about a man’s past, as if it was happening in front of my eyes. With improved mental health, this too will dissipate.

“every time I get out of the house for shopping or work I feel like everybody is watching me and I feel like I walk weird, like I stand too rigid when waiting for the bus. I feel watched when I do absolutely everything which sometimes makes me drop things etc.”-

– you are being watched but not by other people. You are being watched by a mental entity called “the inner critic”, it is a representative of a critical parent that criticizes us all day long, it criticized me all day long similar to how it criticizes you. You get out of the house and it tells yo: you are walking weird!. You wait for the bus, and it tells you: “you stand too rigid!” You do whatever it is you are doing, and it tells you: you are doing it wrong!

Having someone (the inner critic) criticizing you like this all day is very uncomfortable, quite scary, really, this is why you drop things, and forget things.. this overly active inner critic is causing and fueling your anxiety.

When you learn to weaken more and more this inner critic, you will be less anxious because you will no longer be under ongoing attack, and then you will be able to “be natural.. able to relax in public”.

Would you like to share about who your inner critic represents, who criticized you early on and maybe still?

anita