I dont know how to interact with people, I have extreme anxiety

i cant imagine what on earth you are describing. peopel spitting on you on a plane? people calling you a retard at work?

are you sure you're not exaggerating a little bit? where do you live?

I avoid people and keep a distance to an extreme degree because I'm afraid of getting those kinds of reactions, but I get them anyway and they become intense and hostile.

My psych said that I should go to group therapy for social anxiety because exposure therapy is the mechanism through which social anxiety is relieved, but the thing in my case is that exposure does not make things easier.

I become increasingly paranoid and distrustful with time. The people around me sense this cageyness and are freaked out. They might interpret me as being shady/shifty and mentally broken in some fundamental way which causes a feedback loop of mutual distrust between myself and those around me that produces extreme dislike despite my best efforts to keep to myself to avoid being hated and abused - they always do end up abusing me and hating me intensely.

At this point I'm suicidal and afraid to leave the house. I'm losing my mind. I dont know what to do. I cant leave the house and engage in the most basic interactions. Even tellers and cashiers of places I go frequently seem to develop this uneasiness around me. I cant even go at midnight for food at a gas station now. I'm terrified of even those most basic of transactional interactions.

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>>17399248
I live in New York (not NYC, a small city).

When I was 16 I went on a plane and I was bugging out because I didnt know where to place my eyes or what to do, and then one man turns around and looks over his seat at me with this look. He goes back down and then two guys look over me and just start spitting at my face.

I thought it was a dream for a long time, but it was real. I know it was real.

I went to a public library as a teenager and these girls there are having a conversation at a table while I'm studying. They stop talking after awhile and then start calling me names - making fun of my ears, or calling me other stuff.

Another time I went to the same library as a teenager and I went to one of the seats in the aisle and used the wifi. Two girls were talking in the other aisle and then one calls me a weirdo and her voice is filled contempt and hatred. Then I cock my head in her direction and she says "Oh, he hear me" and I can hear her voice seething with contempt . She doesn't care that I heard. I'm not even a human being to her.

I didnt go outside for months after incidents like that.

>>17399252
What about people you love anon?your family?


Do you talk to them?do they know about your disorder?

>>17399266
I recently talked to my sister about it, but not in so much detail because the way people treat me is frankly embarrassing.

People treat me like I'm an animal. They openly try to scam or steal from me and then say "Damn" when they can't as if they think I'm either too passive to do anything about it or they think that I am literally retarded because I say almost nothing at all.

I had a co-worker who thought I was some sort of retard once and after talking to me for an extended period of time he solicited math help from me out of the blue and my interactions with him thereafter seemed to indicate heightened respect, so I assume my conversations with him changed his opinion of me, although I can't be sure.

A bus driver who I had to talk to had his voice seething with contempt when I told him I had lost my bus pass and I had no way of getting home because I dont have cell service on my phone or money on me. He was wearing glasses and growled "Well, you better go find it.", and I got off the bus. His voice, sun glasses and hair made him seem like some aging, aggressive rocker guy, but a few months later I was on the same bus, and that same bus driver was there.

A pretty girl around my age had a similar problem to my own and she explained it to him, and the way he spoke to her - it was like he was a different person. He just seemed like a regular 40 something year old dad talking to a family friend.

At the time I just thought he was gruff to everyone, but I then realized that he was just extremely creeped out by me.

>>17399265

>spitting on your face

i still dont believe this, but its a hot concept. would you mind posting a picture of yourself OP? or if you dont feel comfortable having your face here, emailing me a pic of yourself?

[email protected]

Do you hate people, OP? As a consequence of this, not as a cause.

>>17399287
Why do you need to see his face?
What is your problem?

>>17399296

im trying to gain a better understanding for OPs life. he is insisting a lot of it is the way he looks, so im curious about how he looks. a lot of what he described seems to be extremely unlikely. not saying it didnt or wont happen, but its oddly highschool sounding for adults on a plane. what adult on a plane spits on the face of someone sitting behind them?

>>17399296
Yes. I'm extremely distrustful. I tend to view people not as individuals but as groups, so if someone in a group of people is extremely hostile to me, and one person from that group of people tries to be friendly to me I will rebuff them as if they were that same individual who was extremely hostile to me.

The reason being that I view expressions of hostility or contempt as not emerging from a vacuum, but instead as these things that are communicated from person to person, and are strengthened in a feed back loop.

So when someone from that group is outwardly extremely hostile to me, I dont see that one incident as just an incident, but as a sentiment that was being exchanged between a group of people and reinforced until the person disliked me sufficiently and had so little respect for me that they were willing to be so openly hostile to me because they sensed that they could so with little consequence as far as their peer group was concerned.

In this way I view every single member of that group as being responsible

I dont know how to respond to people. I am filled with so much anger, but I know that when people abuse me they do so with the implicit approval of society. They know that I am at the lowest rung, that I am not even human to most people, so they feel like they can attack me, and if I respond back in any way then a freak is attacking a perfectly normal member of society and society will immediately view me as this deranged nutjob hurling abuse at a perfectly innocent and normal person.

I imagine this is a bit like what being black is like where you're always viewed as the source of whatever bad event happens just because you're black and involved somehow.

>>17399305
I don't know but i can see it happening.
>>17399324
I understand, inaction is an action (or whatever the right expression is).
Groups turn people much worse because they want to be accpeted, so they present themselves more extremely than they would outside a group; belittling other people also gives them a sense of superiority and ties them togheter for a cause, good or bad.

I don't know what to say, honestly, in your case i would probably go aggro because people only bully those who don't defend themselves, but people would never sode with you and the punishments would be.much more harsh than a regular person would receive.

I suggest changing psychiatrist, maybe.

I can totally understand what you feel and see people doing what yoi say, but your mind also worsens the experience, if you want to see a better side of people try talking to those who dedicated their.lives to charitable religions; they won't treat you like shit and will be much more understanding. That said they aren't the pinnacle of humanity and many have huge flaws of character but they are 'forced' to see the world in a better light.

>>17399354
I'll be more assertive, or try to be. Believe it or not I had a senior manager scam me out of money every month and not do anything about it after being alerted to it many times. After I was more forceful the manager in question just stopped showing up to the job site and performing their duties or being present in their office when I was scheduled to work, ostensibly to avoid having to answer for it.

This person who I had interacted with no more than half a dozen times for less than a minute in my entire time working at this place hated me so much that I was singled out to be basically stolen from (and I was told this was deliberate by a senior employee or rather it was said they sensed that I was passive enough that I wouldnt bother trying to get it fixed, but it was clear that they also disliked me a great deal).

I ambushed them at their office very early in the morning after a few weeks, and their demeanor changed completely. They were nervous and trying to be overly kind to me (before they were stoney faced and clearly disliked me). A few hours later I was e-mailed with a paystubb indicating the backpay I was to get.

It really destroys me when people I barely know hate me so much they are willing to engage in brazenly illegal activities to harm me.

>>17399427
Acts are not a problem to people, circumstance means everything.
It's ok to rob you because nobody likes you, if it was a normal person guilt and social pressure would get to him. It is horrible but you have to be there for yourself because no one else will.

>>17399462
How do I make people stop abusing me while also keeping my distance?

After years of being bullied I thought the only way to play the game was not to play, so I withdrew to an extreme extent, but in withdrawing people have come to regard me as even more suspicious than ever before, they project all kinds of things onto me and accuse me of those things as if they were fact.

It has really destroyed my view of the world that after withdrawing and being as meek as i am that otherwise normal, respectful people treat me like I'm an animal and openly attack me (thus signalling that this view of me they hold is shared by everyone else because it is viewed as acceptable to hurl abuse or random accusations at me).

They interpret my anxiety and my contrived way of speaking as concealing some sort of malfeasance, but in reality I'm responding to people who I believe to unironically want to cause me harm, so I weigh my words very carefully so as not to give them ammunition.

>>17399532
Theu have to feel like they have something to lose of they abuse you.
The only thing i can think right now muscle and dressing respectfully.
Dressing respectfully because if you pass the idea that you have accomplished something in life they can lose something by mistreating you. Of course i don't expect this to have a big impact but in your case anything you can get matters.

That's what i think.

>>17399588
I repeated the lose thing.
I meant they can not gain; like if you are sucessful people want a share of it, by abusing you they have no chance to get that hypotetical share.