I've been a bad person

[Bluebear]

I need a social skills manual

And a manual on how to read minds... accurately

Something in real life recently made me feel like crap, a terrible and worthless person.

I made a negative judgment/assumption about someone who had hurt me.

[Bluebear]

It's possible that they were unaware that they had hurt me..
I didn't say anything. (avoidant ''personality disorder'')

It hurts when someone does that to me - judges me as a bad, awful, person based on no evidence. Or perhaps based on some very flimsy (and inaccurate) things..

Going back to the other issue in real life lately... I do not want to name names. I've been the family scapegoat for too long to fall into that trap (again)
- ok ... I did have some evidence (but not proof).. Basically I Should Always Keep My Opinions to myself for fear of causing anyone distress. Even as a young child saying Anything At All automatically Made Me A Bad Person.

so yeah.. I did not have absolute proof.. mostly ''just'' hurt and distress. (and a few other things..)

[Bluebear]

Humans are so strange to me. I don't understand them. I can think myself round in circles before I say something, and still get it Wrong. I can still be Wrong.

Something that would be welcomed by one person might cause someone else distress.

I am not a mind reader.

I think/thought that over many years I've become quite good at reading people. But maybe I'm kidding myself that I was even good at that. Certainly when I get it wrong I'm good at making people hate me. So I am good at something.

My parents said I should be ''punished all my life'' and this has been something of a recurring theme in my life when someone takes the absolute worst possible interpretation of something I did when I had no ill intent. Something that virtually every human being I have ever known has also done multiple times. Like a child saying ''I hate you'' to a parent. I don't think that child Should be punished all their life.... How cruel.

I hate how my mind overthinks things. And how it is so confusing to me and sometimes to others.

Can anyone relate to the overthinking? Or possibly offer any input. Idk. Sometimes I feel like becoming a hermit

[biscuits]

Overthinking is my main activity. I find it helps to talk to someone I trust about it all and they can help me to organise my thoughts. So the main thing I have learnt is that I struggle to manage my overthinking on my own and I need an outside voice of reasoning to help me. Also writing things down can be helpful as well to get it out.

[Bluebear]

Originally Posted by biscuits

Overthinking is my main activity. I find it helps to talk to someone I trust about it all and they can help me to organise my thoughts. So the main thing I have learnt is that I struggle to manage my overthinking on my own and I need an outside voice of reasoning to help me. Also writing things down can be helpful as well to get it out.

[Mr. Nobody]

Originally Posted by Bluebear

I hate how my mind overthinks things. And how it is so confusing to me and sometimes to others.

Can anyone relate to the overthinking? Or possibly offer any input. Idk. Sometimes I feel like becoming a hermit

Hi Bluebear,

Yes, I can relate to your struggles,
I have had this same problem for a long time now,
I keep trying to find some way through it all to find respite,

What I've noticed lately is that instead of just taking each moment or situation as it is and dealing with what exactly is in front of me,
I'm always weaving and conjuring up imaginary conversations, imaginary situations and wrestling with arguments for and against, this and that, and getting entangled in imagined intellectual prevarications,....
And all this is taking me away in flights of internal thinking,..thinking about the past, thinking about the future,

But, anyway, lately I've seen that this is all imagination, and these flights of imagination are taking me away from the simple reality right in front of me,
It's quite often the case that the simple reality of what's happening in front of me doesn't require need or necessitate any thinking at all,
And so, I've lately been trying this, just staying with the current reality of what's happening just now right in front of me, . Instead of wandering off into imaginative flights of thinking,

I believe that over-thinking may be down to anxiety,
We have anxiety about something, and this anxiety is kind of informing our mind that it needs to protect or defend itself, as naturally, the anxiety feels like a response to a perceived threat of some kind,
In response to this "threat" maybe our minds are over-thinking as a way of heading off any potential likelihood of being caught short or caught out in some way,
And so we go on weaving protective layers of answers, strategies, plans, etc etc?
But, I'm liking this current trial of just taking each simple situation as it comes and just looking at how it so often requires actually very little mental activity,

I'd also recommend just focusing on your physical body and it's sensations as you move and go about your daily activities, being aware of how you walk, your posture, which parts of your body might be straining, and correcting these as you go,..but mainly focusing on the physical,
I find that that also can bring you into the moment and stop a lot of your casual unnecessary thinking that goes on.

[Bluebear]

Originally Posted by Mr. Nobody

Hi Bluebear,

Yes, I can relate to your struggles,
I have had this same problem for a long time now,
I keep trying to find some way through it all to find respite,

What I've noticed lately is that instead of just taking each moment or situation as it is and dealing with what exactly is in front of me,
I'm always weaving and conjuring up imaginary conversations, imaginary situations and wrestling with arguments for and against, this and that, and getting entangled in imagined intellectual prevarications,....
And all this is taking me away in flights of internal thinking,..thinking about the past, thinking about the future,

But, anyway, lately I've seen that this is all imagination, and these flights of imagination are taking me away from the simple reality right in front of me,
It's quite often the case that the simple reality of what's happening in front of me doesn't require need or necessitate any thinking at all,
And so, I've lately been trying this, just staying with the current reality of what's happening just now right in front of me, . Instead of wandering off into imaginative flights of thinking,

I believe that over-thinking may be down to anxiety,
We have anxiety about something, and this anxiety is kind of informing our mind that it needs to protect or defend itself, as naturally, the anxiety feels like a response to a perceived threat of some kind,
In response to this "threat" maybe our minds are over-thinking as a way of heading off any potential likelihood of being caught short or caught out in some way,
And so we go on weaving protective layers of answers, strategies, plans, etc etc?
But, I'm liking this current trial of just taking each simple situation as it comes and just looking at how it so often requires actually very little mental activity,

I'd also recommend just focusing on your physical body and it's sensations as you move and go about your daily activities, being aware of how you walk, your posture, which parts of your body might be straining, and correcting these as you go,..but mainly focusing on the physical,
I find that that also can bring you into the moment and stop a lot of your casual unnecessary thinking that goes on.

[Seagull]

There’s a good book called ‘I May Be Wrong’ by Swedish forest monk Bjorn Lindeblad, his whole life philosophy encapsulated in that one title sentence, a sentence that can be aimed at anything in one’s life to calm the mind, the notion that we don’t actually know, that our often default fearful or negative, catastrophising thoughts, predictions, worries etc. are so often utter bollocks.
SA or not, we’ve all been in what is now known in the recently updated Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as ‘Doing a Bluebear,’ it’s what the brain does.

[Bluebear]

Originally Posted by Seagull

There’s a good book called ‘I May Be Wrong’ by Swedish forest monk Bjorn Lindeblad, his whole life philosophy encapsulated in that one title sentence, a sentence that can be aimed at anything in one’s life to calm the mind, the notion that we don’t actually know, that our often default fearful or negative, catastrophising thoughts, predictions, worries etc. are so often utter bollocks.
SA or not, we’ve all been in what is now known in the recently updated Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as ‘Doing a Bluebear,’ it’s what the brain does.

Thanks Seagull