Post by salts on Mar 5, 2012 13:40:46 GMT -5
First off, I feel a little weird asking for help without having contributed anything to the boards yet, but I don't have much time right now and I intend to return.
Anyway, when it comes to shyness, I consider myself one of the luckier ones; I don't believe I suffer from SA or anything (though I've never been evaluated by a professional) and I actually have quite a few friends, all things considered. But that's actually beginning to be a problem for me - the quite a few friends thing.
Since high school ended I've found myself a member of two "cliques". One is a group of mostly high school dropouts (myself not included in that criteria) and the other is a group of comic book geeks and video game nerds. They're pretty drastically different when I think about it and, naturally, they don't spend much time together. I behave differently around both of them, and I think this is accentuated by my shyness because I feel less able to be myself around them and so behave more like them.
That may not seem like such a bad thing on the face of it, but the big problem is that I find myself under two separate sets of social pressures to behave a certain way. Each group thinks of me differently than the other, and so when it comes time to make certain decisions or give particular opinions, I find myself trying to come up with a compromise between the two so that on the off-chance I'm ever hanging out with one group and run in to someone from the other I won't come off as acting unusual to anyone. Whenever I feel comfortable with a decision/opinion I make on my own, I find myself worrying what at least one group would think of it.
Over the years (I'm 23) this has built up to a point where I'm actually starting to outright lie to some of my friends about bizarre things (whether or not I'm going to school, whether or not I'm in a hockey league, etc.) and I'm being unfair to some friends by putting them down when they're not around. I've never had such a hard time just being myself - something that'd already been difficult for me.
I don't know what to do - or, at least, how to do it. Part of me feels like maybe I should just slowly distance myself from one group to make things easier on myself, but another part of me (the part I'm inclined to agree with) is saying that I should just be my goddamn self already and let things figure themselves out. If some of my friends don't like the real me, then so be it. I'll move on and be better for it. That scares me though, for fear that no one will accept me, and that I'll be unable to find any friends after words because I'm so damn quiet. I'm so sick of this though - sick of feeling like I need to be someone I'm not. I'm not sure I even know who I am anymore, to be honest...
Anyway, when it comes to shyness, I consider myself one of the luckier ones; I don't believe I suffer from SA or anything (though I've never been evaluated by a professional) and I actually have quite a few friends, all things considered. But that's actually beginning to be a problem for me - the quite a few friends thing.
Since high school ended I've found myself a member of two "cliques". One is a group of mostly high school dropouts (myself not included in that criteria) and the other is a group of comic book geeks and video game nerds. They're pretty drastically different when I think about it and, naturally, they don't spend much time together. I behave differently around both of them, and I think this is accentuated by my shyness because I feel less able to be myself around them and so behave more like them.
That may not seem like such a bad thing on the face of it, but the big problem is that I find myself under two separate sets of social pressures to behave a certain way. Each group thinks of me differently than the other, and so when it comes time to make certain decisions or give particular opinions, I find myself trying to come up with a compromise between the two so that on the off-chance I'm ever hanging out with one group and run in to someone from the other I won't come off as acting unusual to anyone. Whenever I feel comfortable with a decision/opinion I make on my own, I find myself worrying what at least one group would think of it.
Over the years (I'm 23) this has built up to a point where I'm actually starting to outright lie to some of my friends about bizarre things (whether or not I'm going to school, whether or not I'm in a hockey league, etc.) and I'm being unfair to some friends by putting them down when they're not around. I've never had such a hard time just being myself - something that'd already been difficult for me.
I don't know what to do - or, at least, how to do it. Part of me feels like maybe I should just slowly distance myself from one group to make things easier on myself, but another part of me (the part I'm inclined to agree with) is saying that I should just be my goddamn self already and let things figure themselves out. If some of my friends don't like the real me, then so be it. I'll move on and be better for it. That scares me though, for fear that no one will accept me, and that I'll be unable to find any friends after words because I'm so damn quiet. I'm so sick of this though - sick of feeling like I need to be someone I'm not. I'm not sure I even know who I am anymore, to be honest...
