I've been working on peeling back the layers of my thought processes, distinguishing truth and logic from the lies of anxiety and depression that are so easy to believe. Trying to sift through the lies floating around in my brain has made my already low bullshit tolerance even lower. I have enough bullshit going on in my brain, I don't have the capacity to deal with other people's. The truth is your friend. Let's all pursue it.
I've known a few compulsive liars throughout my life. Every time I've dealt with a compulsive liar, I've found myself wondering, "Why would anyone lie about an insignificant thing like that?" My current state of picking through my brain is similar to the process of uncovering the deceptions of a compulsive liar, with the beautiful exception of knowing that the truth is attainable. Every lie uncovered has several more waiting to be revealed along with it.
Today's seemingly insignificant lie that I uncovered is the lie that I do better interacting with people one on one. Social anxiety and introversion make other people seem overwhelming, so it just makes sense that I'd want to be around as few people at once as possible. I realized today that I'm actually less anxious in situations where there are two or three other people so that I am not the sole focus of another person. One on one I'm too much at the center of the other person's attention. With three people, you don't necessarily have to contribute to a conversation unless you want to. There's less pressure to keep the conversation going. Thinking on it, there are really only a handful of people I'm completely comfortable with one on one. I think the main thing I don't like about being the entire focus of another person is that I'm more open to judgement. They're likely to ask more personal questions and come to conclusions about the type of person I am or how I live my life.
Realizing that I interact with the world in a different way than I thought is actually kind of huge. It's a lot easier to shift your focus when you know where you're shifting it from. Hopefully I can learn to stop putting so much pressure on myself in certain situations. As for that deep fear of judgement that everything in my life comes back to, well, I think I'm going to have to have that surgically removed.
