Gojira

I completely sympathise with you, mrkuz. I have a similar, if not the same, problem and it has become even more of a burden than it was at any previous point in my life, or so it feels. My home is like a sanctuary to me in a way because it is a place to where I can retreat, hide away, be myself and recharge. So it is no wonder why I never go out except for when I have to go to work or go to the shop or something of the like. I am always extremely conscious of my performance while around others and if I feel I have performed poorly then I will proceed to beat myself up, metaphorically speaking, for hours and hours after, and this leads to all kinds of self-destructive thoughts. I always feel something is expected of me, especially in social situations. I tend to try to blend in, not saying a lot and only responding, often in a forced way, when people engage with me. I try to speak their "language", forcing myself to say something so as to not appear rude and many times it left me with a bad taste in my mouth because it simply was not me and so I feel that I betrayed myself and so begins more self-loathing. Many times I go to work telling myself that I will just be myself and not worry about what others think of me, and not get stressed or anxious but when I get there and the night moves along I find myself defaulting back to that mentality. In my mind I try to deny that I feel these, deny my fear and weakness and can almost pretend that these problems are non-existant, and certainly this is what I try to show to others around me. I could go on and write essays on this but I don't have the energy.