It would be really nice if my social anxiety were maladaptive. If it were a totally irrational reaction. If it were only holding me back, and overcoming it would only make me happier and allow me to have more and better friendships, social interactions, etc.

It’s not really that maladaptive, though.

Every so often I meet someone who acts like me except they talk more, and people hate them. People make fun of them, cut them off, talk over them. They have no patience for people who say the wrong things at the wrong times, or take too long, or ask too many questions. Or they have just enough patience to let them hang around while constantly pointing out that they’re annoying and don’t really belong.

I didn’t pick being silent and afraid of attention. I’ve never thought of it as a good thing. I admire and envy Mr. Big Fluffy Dog for being able to deal with all that not-quite-friendly needling and still open his mouth ever. But the fact is it protects me. People tolerate me who wouldn’t if I was weird in a way they had to listen to instead of a quiet way.

It’s only a little maladaptive. I could be worse off without it.

To have more actual social interactions, I have to overcome my fear, and also magically somehow

stop having trouble hearing people in noisy places
start understanding the flow of conversation and when to talk
start getting my thoughts in order more quickly so I can say them at the right times
stop pausing, using the wrong word, etc. all the time
stop mumbling or whatever I do, I don’t even know, obviously I think I talk reasonably clearly but people don’t always understand me so who knows?
do the right thing with eye contact at all times
do the right thing with my tone of voice at all times

I have to overcome my worries about getting every little thing perfect while also getting every little thing perfect, is my point.

(And the truth is, I’ve made progress! I do have slightly more capacity for this stuff than I was using. I am doing less unproductive worrying. I am actually learning a lot about the flow of conversations and my ability to initiate them, etc. I just want to state for the record that I’m making progress at a fundamentally contradictory task. I am trying to get better at something and also spend less time thinking about whether I’m doing it right.)

But right now I mostly just hate the whole world, everything that made me this afraid and also made it a reasonable feeling.

Clearly I need to reset my expectations re: writing

Because (AGAIN) I’ve written something with my only intention being “This makes sense for the character. This is how they would feel, based on their history,” and it’s turned out to be really close to my own issues when that hadn’t occurred to me at all.

Sorry, Fictional Guy. Turns out I don’t know how to deal with people expecting things from me either.

So, relatedly, I have way too fucking many feelings about Big Fluffy Dog Guy, and not romantic feelings, but “I don’t feel how you want me to feel, I’m lying to you, I’m leading you on, I am awful”-type feelings. Like, a really excessive amount of feelings that don’t really have anything to do with him. I am going to do my very best to behave like a responsible adult when I talk to him, but my brain is kind of imploding.

I’m wondering whether I should call this a subset of the general “I don’t like to disappoint people”/”I just can’t do the thing and how can I explain that” problem, or whether I actually have a specific issue about this re: relationships.

I’m telling myself that first dates are for getting to know people, and reminding myself that in the past there are many cases of my feelings changing after I got to know someone better, but he’s just so much of an innocent puppy.

And I feel bad. I DO want to get to know him better either way, I WOULD like to be friends with him, and I DON’T know how I’ll feel in six months, as has been previously demonstrated, but I still feel like I’m leading him on or something. Like I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel. I feel bad.

Politeness and assumptions about dating aside, I can’t keep feeling like this. I have to tell him explicitly that this is a very slow and non-guaranteed thing, for my own peace of mind. And I have to tell him about Sparkly ASAP too.