Super Self Conscious?

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NT'S seem to talk effortlessly, while I am mortally afraid that anything that I say can and will be held against me.

NT'S seem to read their interlocutor effortlessly, while I am petrified that I am getting their signals all wrong and am being foolish.

NT'S seem so relaxed. I am always ready to jump out of my skin.

Can anybody else relate?

Yeah. Of course I could.

Absolutely, 100%. I feel like I’m constantly being judged for pretty much everything.

I even feel like my writing will be judged harshly. For years I hesitated to put my thoughts down. Its only now when in this Social Media era everybody types what they are thinking, that I feel (somewhat) ok in doing so.

Me too. I lurked here for years (yes, seriously, years) before I finally worked up the courage to make my first post.

I've never been that self-concious. I can't decide if i'm really insecure or not. i'm extremely critical of myself. And am a huge perfectionist that is for sure. I occasionally get super self-concioius in public for little to no reasonn, but i think ti's more of a social anxiety thing.

Perhaps "perfectionism" is a key to what I am getting at. I am an impulsive person, so I am painfully aware that I am usually not "giving my best" or even a reasonably good facsimile thereof. Over time, that results in a feeling of being a complete failure at life itself

I was that way for most of my life. Luckily, gradual exposure therapy while thinking positively helped me overcome my social anxiety and hypersensitivity. I'm now just as relaxed as everyone else. If you want to try it, it's fairly simple:

You basically just have to gradually start being yourself and say things that you think might be held against you or make you look foolish. However, it's important that you think positively immediately before you do it so you won't feel worse afterward. That way you can train your brain to get into the habit of not fearing those things. When I say positive thinking, I mean tell yourself you're just as good as everyone else, no one is perfect, everyone makes mistake, saying something foolish isn't a big deal, everyone is criticized, and they can only judge your actions instead of you as a person if they don't know you. Remind yourself that everyone has flaws. No matter what they are, you're not a loser, defective, or inferior (those are overgeneralizations). You're an imperfect person just like everyone else.

If you're criticized unexpectedly, you may automatically experience emotions due to classical conditioning that negatively impacts your thinking before you're able to think about the criticism. That's why it's necessary to deliberately seek out criticism and be yourself so you can think positively before anyone reacts negatively. The more you practice doing that while thinking positively, the sooner you will be able to overcome your anxiety and be comfortable being yourself. You may be hesitant to try it at first but it keeps getting easier and it's well worth it.

That's why it's necessary to deliberately seek out criticism and be yourself so you can think positively before anyone reacts negatively.


I think I post in order to, belatedly, do something like that.

Thank you for those excellent insights!

This was really uncanny to read - I have never been able to relate to the term 'perfectionism' and have an almost knee-jerk reaction to the phrase 'you gave it your best, that's all that matter' because I never feel like I gave my absolute best and in a weird way, sometimes feel almost incapable of doing so. I'm sorry you feel like a failure though (I try to hide those feelings from myself haha so that's not much better).

I am super self-conscious, for the record, and it's very limiting in life. For example, I like walking and I'd love to go for walks frequently but for some reason my stress levels spike whenever I encounter another person or a car drives past me. I feel so aware of myself all of the sudden. Similar with socializing, I'm hyper paranoid of upsetting people so I memorize talking points/questions/prompts that I know people like to hear to keep them happy. It's stressful. I envy people who have that sort of hyper-awareness seemingly turned off (although I'm sure that has its downsides too).

>Perhaps "perfectionism" is a key to what I am getting at. I am an impulsive person, so I am painfully aware that I am usually not "giving my best" or even a reasonably good facsimile thereof. Over time, that results in a feeling of being a complete failure at life itself

I think that's a part of it with me. When I'm with people I'm usually haunted by a feeling that there's something wrong with me that I have to hide or compensate for (presumably that's masking ASD traits, and as I went for decades without even knowing what ASD was, I guess I'd learned to mask it without understanding quite what it was about). But I think perfectionism makes it more intense. I see people making social gaffes and they just seem to shrug them off. I see them behaving less that perfectly in social situations and they don't seem to notice anything wrong with their behaviour. With me, when I notice even a minor shortfall in my behaviour, it's quite important.

And then I notice that everything else I do is like that. I weigh an ingredient for a recipe and I feel compelled to get it as accurate as the balance is capable of reading it, so if I want 100 grams then I'm using a sensitive gram scale, adding and removing grains of sugar or whatever so that it's not 99.99 grams or 100.01 grams but 100.00 grams, and I even start wondering about how I might get it more accurate still. I have to consciously remind myself that it's not rocket science, and that's after years of science training has taught me (intellectually) about tolerances. So applying that perfectionist thing to social performance, it's not really surprising that I'm never satisfied with how I've done.

What makes it worse is that people are so polite that they'll rarely give any honest feedback, so I'm essentially playing to a black box. Yet people don't shun me as a rule, and on the rare occasions when I've voiced my concern about my social competence, I've been emphatically told I'm worrying about nothing and that my performance is good. But still I don't trust myself. The prospect of "losing myself" in company feels way too dangerous to me. So all the time I'm watching myself, monitoring the pulse of every exchange. No wonder social fatigue is such a problem for me.

Maybe another aspect of it is pathological honesty, the strong urge to say exactly what I think. It's clear that for most people most of the time, that would never do. It's actually one thing I don't want to do, to hide my opinions too much. So I see these situations where somebody says something and they want people to feed their ego, like a Facebook selfie they post where everybody says how great they look, and I'm straining at the bit to cut through the hype with a truth bomb. Or they tell you a joke and it doesn't amuse you but you're expected to at least pretend it did. How did everybody's pride get so delicate that they can't stand to hear information that would show them where there's room for improvement?

presumably that's masking ASD traits, and as I went for decades without even knowing what ASD was, I guess I'd learned to mask it without understanding quite what it was about...

Well before the diagnosis of Aspergers was a thing, I had a sinking feeling that I was...cursed? That the proverbial "dark cloud" followed me around? It seemed like everyone else was reading from the same script, while I was forced to improv. Things that my peers did effortlessly---ride bikes, drive cars, date---seemed completely beyond me. I always had the sense that, whenever one of life's major transitions surfaced---graduations, weddings, job promotions---that I was being left behind.

That reminds me of an anecdote about a couple of kids, one with ASD, one without. They were doing some task or other for school. The NT one said "this is hard isn't it?" to which the ASD kid replied "everything's hard." That's why I get so annoyed with people expounding the work ethic and saying we should all work hard (as if I had any choice), and people who advise others to step out of their comfort zone (as if I'd ever been comfortable). Like they're living on another planet.

idk.....the title ..yes, but not how its elaborated, excuse my 20th century english

maybe nts have it easier to flow with any and all changing winds
my reasoning was, there's people with ears and there's people with mouths

Used to feel that I was under close scrutiny at all times, however this has lessened as Ive grown older. I still have bad days though - I'm never quite sure why.

A lot! It's a part of masking. When you mask all the time, you become super vigilant not to ever drop it.