Withdrawal from Social Success

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Many of you are probably familiar with social withdrawal. I'm talking about a different kind of withdrawal, though—not from anxiety, or at least not from the normal fears behind withdrawal. Today I was talking to a girl I knew from years ago riding the bus to junior high. I think it went well, but now I'm a little anxious about going over in that area again for a little while. I feel I've done so well doing anything else is likely to mess it up. This sometimes happens to me when I've done well socially.

I don't think she's my type, but still success is success. If I see her again this week before I go back to college, I'm going to say hi, of course.

Hmm, I know I always stay far away from previous schools/work places. I try to avoid meeting anyone I have met if I can help it... At least out of the original situation. During elementary school I would never talk to anyone outside of school if they said hello because it was weird.

If I do well socially I'm scared about messing it up, too. I just usually try to get over those feelings.

Congratulations on your social success, NeantHumain.

What are the "normal fears" behind social withdrawal? I tend to withdraw socially because I feel like I'm going to have nothing to say or do. Essentially I'm afraid of people asking "So why did you want to talk to me/meet with me again?" Because I'm standing there absolutely silent. I have problems with initiating contact as well as with reciprocity .

I have felt like this a lot. I never like to see people out of context. In college I was working full time and going to school part time, and living with a bunch of friends. One day I realized that I had totally compartmentalized my life. I couldn't bear the thought of these different worlds coming together.

It is sort of the same thing, in that I could handle myself well socially in each given setting, but if they ever overlapped, I knew everything would fall apart. Sort of a "quit while you're ahead" mentality

"Normal" social withdrawal is from fear of embarrassment, anticipation of rejection or failure, etc. This is a different play on the theme. This is the idea that you've already done something perfectly, so you don't want to mess it up. You want to bask in the success.