get over my fear of people

i have no friends .. no life .. i am scared of any kind of interaction with people …:(

So, in my explanation of what little happened last night, I forgot one guy.

This guy Ryley and I hung out last April for a couple weeks. Nothing too exciting. I met him at a party playing Wii Bowling. Then I gave him a ride home so that he didn’t have to walk. And he gave me his number and I went over to his house a couple times to watch movies with him and his roommate and this girl they were friends with. I went to 2 or 3 parties at his house, he’d hug me before I left, and right before I went home he told me to keep in touch for the summer, but he never did respond to my texts and never was on Facebook, so that didn’t really work out. Now he’s living about an hour away and once in awhile I text him and we talk a little, but that’s it.

Perhaps “fear” was not the word to use for this goal. I don’t actually fear people.

This goal also relates to like 5 other goals that I have.

I don’t trust people. Hence why I HAVE told people that I cut, in an attempt to have their support to make me stop, except all but 1 live a LONG ways away. As in like more than 8 hours. I think this is also why I struggle so much with going by myself to talk to a person at my school who can help me get counseling.

I have never before been in a relationship and for whatever reason guys still don’t seem to want to be in a relationship with me which I do find rather frustrating, as I go to a 95% male school. I learned what “I Love You” does NOT mean when I was 15. I used to go to weekend church retreats and this guy from another state always went to them also. We never talked at the retreats- he was always off making out with some other girl- but we talked on AIM almost every day and he wanted me to have sex with him and I said no. A few weeks later he’d ask again (this was all “planning” for a retreat in May that we were both going to). Then he would ask again. After awhile he decided that maybe adding “I love you” before his question would improve his chances. It didn’t. So, then at this retreat he keeps kissing me and wants to hold hands which I thought was all great- for once I was the object of his affection- of someone’s affection. The next afternoon I went to his cabin (nevermind that girls were not allowed in guys cabins) and we were making out, which I started to not be so OK with. Considering that my prior experience consisted of 1 game of spin-the-bottle, making out on this guy’s bed while he tried to take my clothes off was not working for me. I don’t remember exact details- maybe I told him to stop, maybe I didn’t. I do remember though that he asked me to have sex with him, which I once again said “no” to. Eventually some adults came along and yelled at us and I sort of avoided him for the rest of the night. I think it’s because I realized that his agendas and my agendas weren’t the same, and I don’t think he necessarily cared about what I wanted.

I think my experience with Paul really changed me a lot. I developed a hatred for hugs. My “personal space bubble” got bigger. I became CONVINCED that every guy out there had ulterior motives. If I was alone in a room with a guy or guys, I would start to freak out. It got to the point where I didn’t really feel safe around guys anymore. Which I think is a extreme over-reaction to what happened to me and I wish that I hadn’t reacted so harshly. If I was at a dance, I absolutely would not dance with a guy if I did not know him. I never talked about Paul. I rarely do now. I realize that talking would probably help me feel better. But I feel like if I don’t talk about it, it never happened. I spent all of last year saying I’d never been kissed (I don’t count spin-the-bottle as kissing). My roommate knew about the existance of Paul and in turn told her boyfriend about Paul, but neither knew the actual significance of Paul.

Now I am 19. I liked a couple guys in high school, but then I got to college last year and was like “Wow. Boys. Lots of boys. This school is very male-dominated, surely I can get a boyfriend.” Didn’t happen. The only action I got was
1. A shoulder massage from guy in a “massage train” on my friend’s bed.
2. Holding my best friend Marea’s hand during scary movies. Yep, I’m cool like that.
3. The occasion drunk guy putting his arm around me at the few parties that I did go to.
4. Hugs from my friends Justin and Chris. Occasional other hugs from guy friends.
Yea, I was disappointed that guys never seemed to like me back, but I wasn’t real upset about it.

I continued to basically be afraid of guys, and actually people in general.
-One thing that really stands out in my mind is that I was playing volleyball one evening and I hurt my ankle. I went back to my dorm room and sat down on the floor to get an ice-pack out of the minifridge. My roommate and her boyfriend were in the room and he offered to pick me up and put me on my bed and I FREAKED out on him. Looking back, I don’t know what I thought he was going to do to me, but whatever it is, I was intent on it not happening.
-I started throwing myself at guys, which I have yet to understand. I say that I am so afraid of them, yet I liked the vast majority of guys on campus. I think it might be a “If I have a boyfriend, I’ll have someone to protect me, and then I won’t have to be afraid anymore” thing.
-I got assigned to work on a class project with these two guys. They’re both great guys and I don’t believe they would ever hurt me. Yet, I was ALWAYS on edge while working on the project. One of the guys frequently would leave at some point cause he spent the weekend in another town, and I would always rack my brain for excuses to leave also.
-If a guy sat down next to me on a couch, I was moving in the opposite direction as fast as I could. If there was another guy there, I immediately needed to “go fill up my water bottle”.
-Jeremiah (my roommate’s boyfriend) would sometimes hang out in our room while my roommate was in class. I felt weird just leaving the room, so I never did. But I frequently “had to find something under my bed” because I felt safer there.
-Jeremiah would sleep in our room at night. Which I never really minded. While I stated in the last example that I was sort of afraid of him, I didn’t think he was someone who was actually going to hurt me. Plus my roommate was the kind of person where if he tried to move, she just held him tighter. In a way, Jeremiah sleeping in our room every night bothered me, but I never said anything, even when they asked me if I was fine with it. For one thing, they always talked about how much they enjoyed sleeping together and how much better they slept together and how much Jeremiah enjoyed not having to be in the room with his creepy roommate. I think the main reason though was because I saw this as an opportunity to work on lessening my fear of guys. If he could sleep in my room every night for an entire semester and never hurt me, than obviously not all guys were completely horrible, right?

Last year I was ALWAYS having nightmares. Pretty much the same 2 recurring nightmares. One is Paul raping me in the woods at this church retreat place. Which didn’t happen. The other takes place at this dance that I used to go to in a neighboring town. I’m walking to my car and these 3 random guys grab me, rape me, and then just leave me there. That didn’t happen either. I have other nightmares about guys taking advantage of me, but nothing like the 2 I mentioned.

I am slowly reaching this point where I am beginning to accept that not every guy will hurt me. I am also realizing that keeping my feelings caged inside of me doesn’t help at all. All I do is confuse people when I am freaking out because they sat too close to me or when they accidentally bump into me. I am realizing that I liked Chris’s hugs, which he no longer gives me. They made me feel protected and cared about. I think that’s a huge part of this battle- how do I feel protected and cared about without completely giving people a chance to hurt me? To take advantage of me?

A couple weeks ago I was hanging out in Jeremiah’s room (he and Erin were broken up at the time, otherwise me hanging out with him NEVER would have happened) and that alone was a HUGE step for me. Because no matter how much I think he’s a good guy and no matter how much I trust him to not hurt me, there is no way to completely elimiate the possibility that he could hurt me, that he could take advantage of me. Then we started making out (In hindsight, bad idea. He decided to go back to his Erin and it just made it hard on me) which was a HUGE HUGE test of my boundaries. It was like “OK, now we’ve got a guy who apparently finds me attractive, and I’m sure his hormones are going, and my mind is distracted”. But nothing bad happened, so I would say that it was a positive experience. And he was making sure I was OK with what was happening which I really liked. And then even just cuddling with him involved a huge amount of trying to calm my brain down, trying to keep it out of overdrive and “Time to freak out! Time to freak out! Something bad will happen! You need to freak out! NOW! Freak out now!” mode. Then it was like 3AM and I didn’t feel like driving back to my apartment, so he had offered to let me spend the night there, and after laying in bed with him for an hour I was like “This is too much” and I just left.

Then like a week and a half after that I went over there basically for the sole purpose of trying to fall asleep with him. I just felt like it was something I really needed to do. I think part of it was my body saying “Here’s an opportunity to spend some time alone with a guy who isn’t going to hurt you, so you can build up your trust in guys”. I’m not sure the end result was me exactly trusting guys more. But there was definately a sense of relief of “OK. There is at least one guy out there, who I can get riled up (Probably shouldn’t have done that either. I kissed his neck and he was like ‘Be careful. That really gets me going.’. So, being the genious that I am, I did it a couple more times. Then he said ‘You should just be glad I have self-control.’. So then I of course had to ask how long this self-control lasted, and his answer was ‘As long as it needs to.’. And it did last. But I also decided to be nice and stop kissing his neck before I got myself into any trouble.) and who is not going to take advantage of me. And even though Jeremiah is no longer speaking to me, I don’t regret my experience with him, because I did gain a lot from it. Just knowing that there is at least 1 guy out there who won’t take advantage of me, makes me feel a lot safer.

Then a couple nights ago a guy friend came over to watch a movie. Then he sort of coerced me into cuddling. When he told me that I was a very cuddly person for someone who claims to hate cuddling, it just pissed me off. Then, since I’m horrible at saying “no” I told him that he could go ahead and lay in bed with me and cuddle. Then I started freaking out. Pretty much every guy is stronger than me, but Richard by pure size could make me do what he wanted me to. He demonstrated this at one point by flipping me over and making me look at him because that is what HE wanted. Eventually I was like “You need to leave”. That entire night I had nightmares once again about guys being capable of taking advantage of me and making me do what they want me to, and I hadn’t had one of these nightmares for months, so I really didn’t appreciate it. Since then he’s been texting me and I’ve just been ignoring him. I think just the pure idea that he seems to like me scares me. I’m always the one liking someone. No one ever likes me back. Plus the fact that he told me “I want to be in a relationship because I miss being in a relationship and cuddling” sent me flying in the opposite direction.

Paul and Toby are the two people who have ever told me that they love me. Paul didn’t mean it, but I believed him. Toby might have meant it, but I was too busy freaking out to care. Since then I’ve told him that I love him twice, and I did mean it. At least the first time. The second time the meaning was a little hazy- I think I might have been doing it partly as “Please don’t abandon me because I told you that I cut (I have a HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE fear of abandonment)”. The time he told we was in FacebookChat and the 2 times I told him were at the end of lengthy text message conversations. Mine and Toby’s relationship is one of “I like you and you like me but neither of us wants to date someone who is going to school 7 1/2 hours away from us”. We’ve talked a little bit about one of us driving to see the other sometime, which I think I am OK with. We had a big fight one night though because he said “Don’t you want to do more than cuddle” which I interpretted as “Don’t you want to have sex with me” which freaked me out because he knows enough about Paul to know that I am terrified of pretty much anything involving a guy. Plus I was pissed off because he and I had previosuly talked about how I didn’t want to have sex and he said that he was perfectly OK with that. Since then we’ve talked, but never about what he actually meant by “Don’t you want to do more than cuddle?”.

I don’t really trust my “friends” which I think can also be attributed to Paul. I think I’m just afraid that anyone can hurt me. It doesn’t have to be a guy. And I just never ever ever want to get hurt like that again. To feel that powerless and taken advantage of. To be in a situation where what you say doesn’t matter in the least to the other person.

I think Paul can also be attributed to why I don’t drink, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Last year I developed quite an attachment to the idea that Jeremiah will keep me safe. If I were with Jeremiah, I would consider drinking. If Jeremiah will be at the party, I am more easily talked into revealing outfits. Because Jeremiah has said before “I will protect you” and I believe him.

Library is closing. Time to go. This is longer than I meant for it to be.

im the same with popcornball.. i was bullied in my 3rd year of high school and since then i never got over it. i mean i try to understand all the situations why im sad, why i fear people and realize that i don’t fear people at all. it’s their judgement that i fear. but it got so over the edge that even though i don’t know that person. i still think he judges me by the way i look and will judge me by the way i talk. i can’t remember the feeling of being free anymore. i mean i feel like im locked up in this cage. and my real self is just itching to get out. i don’t want to stay here. i have a girlfriend and when i’m sad because i feel like failed her because we go to the same school and everytime i get scared. i feel terrible. because i shouldn’t be scared of them heck i don’t have to mind them at all. because it’s all about her. but my fear always gets the best of me. sometimes i just get angry at her for no reason.. because i feel angry at myself for not doing anything when my fear strikes. i love her. and everytime i feel down like i want to kill myself. i think about her. and everything seems so clear. that i shouldn’t have to worry about anyone. it’s all in my mind. but when i have the guts for fighting my fear i feel like im doing something wrong. cos the people in school thinks im a weirdo for looking at them for no reason and now they’re scared of me. it’s just that i can’t help looking at them. i feel like they’re saying bad things behind my back when im not lookng. i think it became irrational now. im so scared of being judged but i want to get out of it. i wish i can get over it quickly so i can love my girlfriend fully.. thanks for reading if you ever finish it. lol

Tomorrow is the first day of school again. I have to be back in a classroom with a bunch of people. And lucky for me I hate those people.

I’m trying to list the reasons why I hate them, but I can’t come up with any. I know this is irrational, but I get this feeling of utter dread when I think of going back there. The class and the work isn’t the problem, it’s the people there. That I have to face people again.

Shit.

I have two people on my team who also had to present… We all pulled each other through. We got a lot of complements and accomplished a major objective…. everyone was pretty happy.

Up to 30 people in a conference room at work….. Nice innocent little venue of friends. It has been over a year since I held a review this size. I’m nervous as a cat. What was it Rich told me 2 years ago?
1) be prepared
2) pray and meditate immediately before the meeting
3) leave my ego at the door
4) cover the material
5) leave the results to God.
Worked before. Maybe it will again. What have I got to lose?

talking about it helps. I talked about it with Howard. It helped.

this is probably the most important goal on my list! i have depression and anxiety disorders – esp. social phobia. i am terrified of people! this started because i was severely bullied in school, from elementary school through college. i have a really hard time talking to people – even doing things like answering my phone. a stranger knocking at the door is my nightmare. i’m afraid that all people are mean and evil and want to hurt me – even though i know it’s not true.
i want to get over it!

The more I am isolated the worse it gets. The more I feel I am under scrutiny, the better I get. I have never been free of it without the aid of alcohol. I don’t use alcohol any more…. It actually had a really sharp effect on the other side… I was actually socially unacceptable when I drank alcohol and something that people had to put up with…. all people.. I cetainly don’t want to be that type of person at all. Still, I want to conquer this fear of people thing… I need this both personally and professionally.