Source
r/socialanxiety•
BeyondRepairs29

DETOX!!? Post your SAD-related bad memories

I want to purge myself of all these bad memories!!!

GRADE SCHOOL: Chubby, quiet, sweaty palms and hairy legs. Comments re: hands/legs were frequent.

  • Swimming lesson - too shy to ask for bathroom. Peed in the pool. Combined session with 2 grades' worth of kids/teachers watching. Some laughed. Some cringed.
  • Just about every oral presentation. Read straight from paper. Kids not interested. Teachers not impressed.
  • Trade market day - Only sold one brownie because I was so quiet (my friend bought one out of pity). Mom looked sad on drive home (didn't even have the brains to just eat them and lie about the profits).
  • Ballet classes - Puberty hit faster than usual. Mom wasn't the "let's have The Talk" type. Didn't shave my armpits. Didn't know about tampons. DISASTER.
  • Dad: "I like kids who are outgoing."

HIGH SCHOOL: Chunky, quiet, face full of BAD pimples. Good grades on test, so mostly left alone by by teachers but really dumb AF and slow to understand anything.

  • Had one potentially-could-be-friends. She decided to sit at another table. Dragged a chair and sat at her side. Everyone: "...WTF?"
  • Blushes at everyone. Girl from popular group: "Popular Guy thinks you like him. He's freaking out."
  • Didn't have friends. Spent lunch breaks in empty classrooms. Found a couple making out but didn't know where else to go, so just sat in at my desk and pretended to sleep.
  • Skit for advertise-your-commitee day: Did a dirt poor swordplay thing on stage in front of the entire school and staff (was forced to). Ended 5 sec before the next skit. 5 sec of standing frozen on stage doing nothing but converting O2 to CO2. Got deathglares from the backstage folk.
  • Again, every oral presentation. And talking about anime in my "talk for 2 minutes on anything you enjoy" speech.

COLLEGE: Forever 5kg too heavy from goal weight. Face still full of pimples.

  • No friends. Lunch in toilet.
  • Dumb AF. Too anxious and depressed to study. But maybe just baseline dumb AF even without SAD.
  • Broke down crying before exam. Mom came out to fetch me. Knelt in front of me and rubbed my knees. Took rest of the year off for depression.

WORK: Maybe still 2kg too heavy. Flabby. Mostly free of acne but skin ugly as hell.

  • Incompetent because I'm still dumb AF.
  • Calling out seniors who are not on duty because I can't manage on my own.
  • Weekend training thing - Quiet. Became the "one not participating" because I'm dumb AF. Quiet even on the odd occasion where I know the answer.
  • Full on crying on occasion at work.

Is it helping? Maybe not. So many more bad memories.

Posted Mar 1, 2020, 2:18 PM UTC

135
milkyjoeslowflow•

*hugs*

3
BeyondRepairs29OP•

Thanks 😭

2
OhGodPleaseJustNo•

Okay here we go.

Last year of primary school (11):

Scored top 3 in my class out of about 30 in the regional exam that decides which high school you go to. Extremely good. Everyone's happy. I'm happy I didn't let mum down. Terrified of new school. I'm the only one going to this particular high school.

Something weird happens at home with the neighbourhood kids and one night they're all teasing me. I start crying, no idea why. Eventually my parents come out and tell them all to leave. I honestly don't remember what triggered this whole episode but that was the last time I considered any of them friends. Thankfully we were already planning to move so not-so-long after we left I never had to interact with any of them again. Great but now I had absolutely no friends.

High school (11 - 14):

Struggled to socialise and instantly became the fat, shy kid with the weird name. Made 1 friend. Grades were shit at first but by the end of my 3rd year I was top 5 in my class again. Felt pretty good except for the no friends, fat, shy thing. Discovered IRC and online gaming. School was an anxiety-inducing mess but man was I happy gaming at home.

High School (14 - 16):

Grades plummetted in every subject I didn't like. Fortunately I liked maths so I was seen as kinda smart but my english literature was extremely poor. My end of year grades were something like 2 As, 3 Bs, then Ds and Es. Initially I didn't make the cut to continue my education at my high school and would've had to do my pre-college classes at the community college. Mum complained to someone in the government and got the principal to accept me. Got in because I scored 98% or something in maths.

Pre-College/High School (16-18):

Honestly, I was no longer smart enough for this school and I knew it. I could ace the maths but that isn't enough. You need to know how to at least speak to people and I didn't. I started skipping any classes that involved being social. No one even realised that I only attended 2 out of 5 classes. Anyways, I had some real life friends that I gamed with and was still enjoying myself once I got home.

Mum got me into a gym. Lost weight, felt great not to be the fat guy anymore, some girl adopts me as her best-friend-that-she-makes-out-with. That was nice, and awkward, but really nice. Of course I had no idea how to deal with that and eventually pushed her away when I realised I was a shit bestie-boyfriend since I refused to go to parties and hang out. She deserved better. I don't even remember "breaking up". I basically just ghosted her even though we continued to hang out in the same friend group but she never really confronted me about. God that was so fucking awkward that I'm cringing as I remember it while writing this. Eventually I stopped hanging around all my other friends because it got so bad. Around that time something broke in me.

"College" (18 - 25):

I had some kind of silent breakdown at the end of high school. Unless I was sitting at my PC playing my MMORPG of choice, I was absolutely miserable. I put on a shit ton of weight over the holidays. When college started, I skipped classes, a few times at first, then for years, lying to my parents about my grades. I kept that up for 7 years until it just got too unbelievable even for my naive mum. The news broke her. I broke her. My dad appeared indifferent as usual. He always thought I was an idiot anyways. They kicked me out. Well, kicked me out with love. I took my clothes, pc and a pretty healthy bank account for a guy that had never worked full time.

Full-time job (26 to present):

On my own for the first time in my life. Alone, quiet, no internet yet. This is where I should outwardly breakdown and express all the emotion I held back at the end of high school. Except, no. I feel a huge relief. Everything's out in the open. I no longer have to pretend I'm going to college every night. No more lying to mum. Even more than all that, I can finally, FINALLY turn off for once. For the first time in idk how long I'm anxiety-free in this empty apartment. I always fantasized about getting out from under my parents' thumbs but being too much of a coward to do it. Once I got internet, it was all as great as I imagined. No one silently judging me for playing games all night. No anxiety while listening for my dad's truck so he wouldn't just see me camped out at the PC when he got home. It was bliss.

I'm 30 now and if there's one regret I have for the past 10 years it's that I didn't move out sooner. Having somewhere to look forward to every evening to be anxiety-free... nothing beats it. Over the past 2 years I've even managed to lose a whopping 120 lbs (from 300 to 180). With the right-fitting clothes on I look great (imo). Stable job, good enough money and very few complaints in the world atm. Life's great...

But I still have social anxiety. I'm not too bothered about it tbh. I'm an extreme introvert and have absolutely no desire for a gf or even platonic friends at all. Honestly, I wish I lived in another country so I was out of reach of my parents as they are the only ones that can cause me anxiety in my apt - I can't ignore their calls because they'll just show up at my door.

Well, that was long. Felt great to get it out though. Thanks u/BeyondRepairs29. Apologies for the shit grammar, yall.

P.S. One day I'm going to run into my ex (assuming she's still in the country) and I'm just going to die. The awkwardness of that encounter will literally cause me to just vanish right in front of her lmao.

2
Jellitree•

I don't have the social capacity to talk about my awkward stuff right now, but I just wanted to say thank you. Reading this made me feel so much less alone after a weekend full of self-hatred from being socially anxious. I hope from my heart that this purge works out for you in some way, and you will be haunted less by these situations.

Want to add something to your Dad saying "I like kids who are outgoing." God I got this so often, especially from my Grandma and Mom. "I just wished you were more like your mother. " (My Mom is really outgoing). It hurt so fucking much.

2
sexualsidefx•

It's better just to forget your bad memories. They aren't happening anymore. They don't matter. Read The Power of Now.

Stop beating yourself up for mistakes you've made. Stop calling yourself names.

1