DaringGreatlyinArena

Has anyone read the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People"? I was struggling socially in high school and my mom suggested it. At the time it was a game changer, temporarily anyway. I suppose I am an introvert, and the big takeaway was to become more "interested" in other people, which I did. I started by being more interested in people at work. It worked for awhile, but it became exhausting. I have always been very ADD and memory retention has always been a struggle and still something I struggle with. I found that people loved talking about themselves, really didn't care about me or my life, possibly didn't even like me, but liked having someone interested in their personal drama. I realized I felt responsible to remember all these details, events, names in all these day to day stories of all these random co-workers who didn't give me the time of day a few weeks prior. I felt responsible for following up on the day to day stories. Sure, I made some close friends at that job but a lot of it felt fake too, and now I was accountable for all this information and follow up. Some people I couldn't stand but kept up the facade. I found myself finding excuses not to hang out with them because they would want me around but I didn't really want to go or I hung out with them anyway because this is what I wanted, right? It felt very fake and I started to feel like I shouldn't have to "win" friends. I became jaded, and it became too much mentally. I have struggled since to find my footing in social situations. Since my late 20's, I have found it hard to relate to many younger people (although I do have some younger friends), don't really care about mindless drama, and don't have the energy to pretend to. I am also finding it hard to relate to people my age, because the majority are married with children and I am not. To this day, with a new/old friend or acquaintance, I tell myself "I need to remember this/write this down" to follow up. Sometimes I remember, often I completely forget, and more often I screw up the names/dates/details and look like a jerk. I really wanted to remember, and I really meant well, but now they are insulted because they perceive that I don't care when I do. I am in my late 30's and social situations in general make me very anxious. I am pretty sure it stems from feeling like I can't be myself or have to say/do all the right things to fit in, and it feels like a prison. I also have used alcohol as a social lubricant for most of my teen and adult life and wish I could just hang out and be fun and have fun without drinking, but really feel like I don't know how. Sober me and drunk me are two different people. Sober me believes she is anxious, awkward, and boring, but she longs to be fun. I also have an issue where I want to put myself out there, introduce myself or chat someone up but something always stops me. If I take a chance and chat someone up, I feel like I am dying inside because of my lack of confidence. I am at a new job and keep to myself because I am overwhelmed and anxious but don't want people to see it. That is my defense; I put up a wall until I feel comfortable in my surroundings. Sometimes it takes years. It isn't necessarily lonely, more isolating. People think I am stuck up or weird when in reality I'm just dying inside. Being alone doesn't bother me (until it does) and disappearing has always been my way of dealing with problems, which definitely puts a strain on the relationships I do have. They say as you get older, your circle gets smaller. I am lucky to have a few close groups of friends, but I used to have more. I just felt overwhelmed and couldn't maintain nurturing and balancing friendships and thats too bad. Sometimes I distance myself because the social dynamic changes and my social anxiety creeps in so I don't go. Now my friends are married and have kids, I get invited to family gatherings and often feel internal panic when I go, even if I know a few people there. I feel like putting myself out there has made this worse instead of better, and I worry that this will continue to be a problem. The friends I do have I keep at arms distance often and then drown myself in new hobbies, alone time, or working all the time. I do the same with family, honestly. I still feel overwhelmed by the work it takes to maintain friendships. I am trying to make an effort but it doesn't necessarily make me happy. I am doing it for survival instead of because it brings me joy. Don't get me wrong, I love my friends and family and am lucky/grateful they are there. I am aware that I need to start making more of an effort long term. If anything, I wonder what's wrong with ME. I have this image in my head of what I want to be, and have tried to be, and its never really come to fruition, even with work. I don't want to keep living my life feeling like that. I want to be someone that made and kept friends because she was a good friend and really cared. I want to be someone that walked into a room and made it brighter, someone who could talk to anyone or chat up the person who is there alone. I want to be approachable and funny and kind. Sometimes I am those things. But often my head tells me I am not and never will be accepted or good enough. I often wonder if I am a narcissist or on the autistic spectrum but at this point I don't need a label, I need a mental shift. I want to fall in love with life, radiate love and happiness, without relying on booze to have a good time.

I had a situation pop up at work and it reminded me I still have a lot of work to do on myself. Hopefully I can get some productive insight. To give some background, I recently finished another degree, switched career fields, and started a new, high-stress job. I have been hanging in there, but am starting to mentally drain. Not sure it will get better in the immediate future but I am optimistic long-term. Right now, I am not on a regular schedule, and work a mixture of morning, day, evening, and overnight shifts. In a few weeks I will be mostly on days so that will be better schedule-wise and exposure to the person I will be discussing will (hopefully) be less frequent. When working on an overnight shift, there is a colleague who works with us but in a different job scope. During the day and pretty much any time except when she is working, we intercom page to get her department's services. Being a new person, sometimes her or another colleague are in the area but I don't notice and I page them, see them standing there, and I acknowledge them and apologize. Done. This particular colleague gets very angry when this happens. It happened a few weeks ago, she scolded me, and I said sorry and laughed it off, and explained I was new. This was the only interaction I have had with her until last night. I worked a very stressful 11 hours at this point, it is 2am, and I didn't see her down the hall when I intercom paged her. She blew up, started yelling. I said sorry and tried to laugh it off. She then accuses me of something else, saying she asked me something and I gave her the wrong information on that too. I don't believe I did and non-confrontationally tried to tell her what happened. She wouldn't have it, and I didn't want to argue with a stranger about something that in my opinion is trivial. I say "ok, I was wrong then" to squash it. On a side note, if I could just page her as we usually do, there would have been no discrepancy or confusion about the "wrong information" I supposedly gave her. I then walk past her a few minutes later and asks me if I am going to XYZ, and without looking at her I nod because I have had enough, and she aggressively says "I am over HERE" (because I didn't look at her) so I look at her and nod and she says I better bring XYZ back (which is not my job, her job) (I don't mind helping colleagues that ask nicely and are nice to me). As I am walking away, the answer I gave to where I was headed wasn't sufficient, and I could hear her loudly talking about that down the hall. Later, for an unrelated incident, she was slamming things and swearing while working. It made me super anxious and was nervous she was going to blame me for what she was mad about, even though it wasn't my fault. I was so rattled. I try so hard to get along with everyone and be friendly. I know that you can't win everyone over but regardless of how I feel about someone, I like to have a baseline of professionalism and respect. I have major social anxiety so socialization other than work-related topics has been tough for me, but I believe I am kind. The problem is, once people burn that bridge with me, in the past, I tend to become spiteful, awkward, or passive aggressive and it spirals. I know these are protective defense mechanisms that my brain jumps to in order to protect myself, but ends up adding to the problem instead of fixing it. (Again, things I need to work on). This time, I want to do better. I also ruminate about issues like this, which causes major emotional and physical distress. I want to be done torturing myself. The problem is, I am not sure what my choices are here. I just know I don't want to work in a toxic environment, get a bad reputation this early on, and am not interested in getting her in trouble. I don't want to have anxiety or obsess about this. But I also don't want to be "picked on" or a door mat. I am too old for that. I debated walking up and saying something to her, but I already apologized for my "mistake", which really was her wanting control over things. There is nothing to be "sorry" for. Not making eye contact was probably my passive aggressive mechanism, but she just yelled at and embarrassed me; what did she expect? Respect? That she doesn't give to me? I feel like she knows she can get away with it and I am being targeted. I also don't think talking to her would work because I don't get the impression she is rational. I could go into work and do my best to get a clean slate; fake a smile and pleasantries could work but I am not great at being fake. I feel like it's only a matter of time before something else makes her mad, she bosses me around, or she makes rude comments and I am not here for it. I am afraid either I will gain an enemy by standing up for myself (using my ineffective tactics/defense mechanisms) or become a doormat for her anger (by accepting, ignoring, avoiding or resorting to a victim mentality). I also am trying to see her point of view. Perhaps she is unhappy in her own life, feels a loud page when she is around is insulting (although not intentional from me, perhaps in the past it was from others), feels insecure and has to assert dominance, or perhaps being mean to the new person makes her feel good. Differences in cultural backgrounds may be a factor. Maybe she is worried about money or has sickness in her family. Maybe she doesn't think she's being mean at all. Maybe she doesn't care either way. We never really know whats going on with people. I came home this morning and have been thinking about this non-stop. I went to bed thinking about it, woke up thinking about it. I have a tightness in my chest that isn't going away and my heart keeps racing. Why do I let this effect me? How do I handle this without compromising my self-esteem, integrity, or sanity? And the answer comes back to the fact that I need to be a better master of my emotions and probably work on my self-esteem. I need better tools to effectively handle the complexities of people and issues that arise. I need to go to bed and wake up knowing that despite what happens in life, I trust myself to be the best version of me and have that be enough. This is where I am stuck because this takes time. I can/did start today but it won't happen overnight. So, I am looking for advice on how to handle this in the meantime. I work again in two days and I need a game plan. I cannot allow this to effect me the way it did last night. Going to the boss isn't an option.