I'm so tired of being invisible all the time

To be honest. My anxiety has gotten to a point where I reach borderline paranoia in social situations. I always feel like no matter what I say, what I do, or whatever, the other person will simply not care about it even if they show signs on interest. Socialization is just so volatile and unstable. I never know when the other person will lose interest and simply hop to their better, more interesting friends. Even if someone were to approach me, I know in the back of my mind that no matter how they're acting right now, they'll be back to ignoring my existence in a span of a few days.

And when someone tells me to force myself to engage in conversation it's hard to keep up the act. I might be able to drop in a comment on an existing conversation and if I'm lucky I MIGHT get a response (but only one, hardly enough to start a full blown conversation). but no matter the case I always hear that nagging feeling in the back on my mind like "go away, can't you see they aren't interested?" or "stop bugging them, they don't care" and it doesn't take long for me to feel extreme regret and stop engaging people.

And the worst part is, I feel like it's all my fault. Sure I haven't done anything inherently wrong or bad. But everyone around can seem to build and maintain stable friendships, everyone I look at seems to have some sort of person they socialize with regularly. And based on this data it seems like something is inherently wrong with me, not them. This translates into a vicious cycle of self hate, extreme envy, and spite. Which only drives me to distance myself even further from society, severely limiting my chances to break the cycle.

Posted Apr 15, 2017, 9:27 AM UTC

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spitz81•

ISTM maybe you're surrounded by the "wrong" people. A lot of people have fake, hollow relationships driven by a stabbing fear of being alone. So they settle. They tolerate people who they find almost intolerable. Because as you know, it's not always possible to find your own "tribe".

Ultimately it starts with yourself. When you accept that being a real person means sometimes you will be alone, it unties the burden. You build resilience, work through your issues (the cycle of self loathing etc), and you begin to see through the fog. I have so much more I want to add but I'm on the phone and it's awkward. But I hope that helps.

2
peopleR2offended•

Being invisible is actually beneficial in my line of work. I'd never thought I see the day where it would come in handy.

Some people don't even know I exist

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[deleted]•

[removed]

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Laoyangyang•

You know when I was in high school I thought being invisible was an amazing thing. Being that quiet kid no one noticed and if they did, they were scared of, let me get away with a whole bunch of things. But in college where absolutely no one cares, especially if you go to a really large school, made me realize being invisible isn't such a good thing. But the kind of work I want to do might require my invisibility so I haven't lost hope yet. It is lonely AF though.

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