“You need an experience equivalent to asserting yourself with the bully who poured the drink on you years ago. You need to feel that kind of power, and you can’t feel it, and you can’t believe that you have that power, until you experience it in action.”

But I’ve already felt that kind of power, only very few times, maybe once or twice, when I felt I did the right thing and was able to stand up for something. But I think that it needs to become a pattern in order for a change to make place.

Same goes with people. I’ve found and met people who respected me and whom I felt good with, and who contacted me and wanted to meet me without me initiating it, but it’s still not a pattern. And all of them live in a different places, so I am not able to meet them regularly.

I believe what you said in the beginning, that change will happen through time if I don’t give up, and one day I will realize that I have changed. It’s just that I feel way behind others my age who haven’t had this social anxiety and social fear, and I’m often afraid that because of these I will never be able to fully reach the “normal” level. The truth is that I can do it with certain people, who respect me for who I am, but with others, with new people I still feel that I’m hiding myself and I’m afraid to show myself to them.

For example here is how I see things how: if I were at an event, let’s say a smaller party, and I saw a girl that I liked, I would have absolutely no idea what to say to her. I would just shake and I would not even be able to talk clearly. And even if we have a 5 minute conversation, she would leave me afterwards and go to other boys who are more “interesting and fun”.

I remember one time 4 years ago when I was at a student party and I saw a girl that I liked and as nobody knew me there, I decided to go against my fears and go dance with her. We did dance a little, then she told me she was going outside and will come back, and she never came back. I just kept looking for her like a child. And then I found out that afterwards she danced with 3 other guys all of whom she kissed while dancing. And, honestly, this is something I have never done and I don’t regard to as an achievement or anything like that, but I kept wondering why she had left me there and why she had kissed all other boys and not me.

This was my only experience of this kind, and as you can imagine, it didn’t encourage me to believe I was attractive.

I keep asking myself whether the problem is with me, or rather with me almost always having been in the wrong places with the wrong people.