Fear-based isolation and corrosion of sanity

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(First, sorry if this is in the wrong section, this one just seemed right) After dealing with social anxiety for some time and improving, I suddenly found myself peaking and even backsliding, my forward progress seeming to just disappear to leave me back where I was. After some time of alternating between trying and failing to connect with others and just outright avoiding them, I noticed that socializing was actually getting harder for me.

Now, after a good long while without friends or family or any real companionship or love, I'm noticing that life itself is getting harder and I'm feeling as if I'm going insane. Work is harder, depression hits harder, trusting the motives of others is nigh impossible and I feel beyond redemption. Has anyone else experienced anything similar or known anybody else to experience something like this?

Hi Cherrycoffee,
What are some of the strategies you've tried re connecting with others?
I don't have much constructive feedback today unfortunately, but I do relate to the experience you've described which I hope helps you feel a little less alone. I've become much more guarded in recent years due to trust issues, which unfortunately makes connecting with others increasingly difficult like you mentioned. I've noticed the trust issues I experience are beginning to cause some transient paranoia which I worry is a sign that my sanity is eroding. Like, the issues with trust have gotten a lot more vague. Lately I've also been experiencing this feeling that I'm floating away, or other times that I'm being crushed. I've been struggling to maintain my full-time schedule at work, too. I'll start to shut down (I.e. dropping things, moving slowly, fatigue) which only makes my co-workers see me as incompetent, making me more anxious and my performance that much worse.
Sorry if I'm not explaining this well.
Hang in there.

It scares me how much I relate to your posts, sbtxzro. But, it does help as far as feeling alone. As for attempting to connect with others, I have a few methods but mostly I just insert myself into a social setting and wait for someone to initiate contact, or occasionally I'll approach someone who seems receptive, though most of the time I talk myself out of it.

I fear I may be ignoring all of the progress that I have made. At times I have been able to come across as smart, witty and charming to others, but even then I'm afraid that I'll "slip up" and show the "real" me, the clumsy, inept me whom everybody eventually grows to hate. I'm always afraid that those near me are either lying when they say they like me, or that they just don't know me well enough and will start hating me shortly. Which honestly wouldn't bother me by itself except I'm so convinced that this is an indicator that it is impossible for anyone to like or love me beyond a purely superficial level.

Kind of. I don't have social anxiety, but I've been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I worry too much about whether I'll irritate or anger people. I also worry about others' motives, especially since I stared noticing how different I was and then got diagnosed last year, when I found out that my ability to read tone of voice is impaired. Things have been a downward spiral of worry since then.

I have been very isolated for a several years now: no friends, no dates, no hobbies away from home, and I haven't seen much of my family. Going through the motions of daily life has become more difficult in some respect, and I blame that on a generally low mood, something like sub-clinical depression. I blame the generally low mood on insufficient good things happening in my life in general, but lack of social contact is a big part of that.

Never getting any feedback or outside opinions on anything has occasionally made me wonder whether I was slowly going insane. I too have felt "beyond redemption" and was posting in my journal over and over again that my social life was over forever. Interacting with people seemed impossible because I never knew what they wanted, told myself that people are rarely straight-forward, and couldn't figure out how to make sure that I didn't miss too many non-verbal cues. My anxiety increased to the point of banging my head against walls, then I tried to stop that but just ended up switching to punching myself in the head.

I've worked on my state of mind and am doing a little better at the moment, but some of that improvement is due to something somewhat good finally happening.

CherryCoffee,
After almost loosing my mind twice in my life, boarding insanity, I may say it is possible to leave this situation. Please note that I am not the best of examples because I stay 95% of my time at home with my wife, avoiding contact with other people. But at least, I am happy most of the time and don't care much about other people say. After so many unfortunate betrayals in my academic life in science, some of them taking away all my research, scholarships, and money, I started to hate most of people even before knowing them. Mostly professors and colleagues, who bullied me for my whole university carrier, creating barriers that I couldn't barely cross. But I am aware it is not a fair way to see people, because there's a lot of good fellows out there.
You know, meditation and buddhist monks helped me a lot. Not religiously, I mean. But they have developed a series of techniques to tame the mind that can be very useful to us. I read the Book of the Dead from Sogyal Rinpoche (a NY-Tibetan monk). It's a good one to start controlling your fears and your forgiveness to the guys that made you suffer. Look for his lectures in YouTube.
Another thing that really helped me was moving away from my old slummy town to a new home in the countryside. I now live on a farm full of birds, goats, butterflieds and GREEN(trees everywhere!). I only have to see people when I drive to the village, a have to lecture/study at college (3 times a week).
Those two things helped me a lot not to get 'crazy'.
Try out!

no one likes me because I hate everything....
....

hi.

I'd be your friend. But you have to be nice

Or Crazy.

pleasure to meet you Coffee

Sounds very familiar, no advice unfortunately as I'm stuck in it too. I'm more depressed and anxious now than I ever was as a kid, I use to think I was okay and didn't need others but it's just gotten harder and harder.

I am telling you guys... watch the video from this monk. He really help us developing our mind control:

This forum doesn't allow me posting links. So, look for "Songyal Rinpoche Overcoming Fear and Anxiety" on youtube.