An introvert in an extrovert's world

[Glides]

A particular issue that's been causing problems in what remains of my social life lately is that a lot of the people I'm friends with have the disease where they assume they're introverts and they're not. The reason is because people confuse anxiety and shyness for introversion when it has nothing to do with that. Introversion is just being worn out by constant social interaction, extroversion is the opposite.

Most of my friends, whether or not they realize this, are extroverts. They get restless if they're alone for too long, they enjoy constant and frequent interaction, but occasionally they get shy or anxious and think that's introversion when it's not.

I'm not really saying this to say that they're bad people, but the biggest consternation in the group recently is that I no longer have the mental energy to force myself into social interaction when I'm not capable of it. This has resulted in quite a few recent examples of people either taking it personally or getting annoyed that I continually have stopped accepting invitations to large social gatherings. Especially recently, with my mental health at an all-time low and no therapist, it's just too much for me. My idea of fun is not standing around getting drunk and chatting. I hate small talk, I despite it, I feel visceral disgust at the idea, but for some people, it's the most rewarding thing in the world, they live for it.

I was supposed to go to a party tonight and did not show, and so now everyone's concerned again because once again I'm isolating, and enough of them know me well enough to know when I'm in Suicidal Ideation Town. I'm not there as much as I was last week, I just spent a whole solid week doing nothing but lying in my bed and wanting to be dead. I know I need a new therapist, and I'm about to address that somewhere else.

I don't want to be concerning, but people get concerned if I force myself to show up and then proceed to act really distracted and unfocused the entire time because I can't focus on more than one person at a time. So either I don't show up and people worry or I show up and just ruin the mood because I'm just too in my own head publicly to be enjoyable to be around. Like after years of forcing myself to get piss drunk to be able to socialize with people, I don't have it in me anymore. Not that the people I currently spend time with pressure me into that, those people have been long kicked out of my life. I've lost like twenty pounds since I've mostly stopped drinking. I'm the thinnest I've been since childhood, which still means I'm a chubby fat fuck, but less so than usual.

Crowds just give me so much anxiety. I had to deal with 354 people today at work. That was a nightmare. 354 people who could've gotten me sick and breathed in my face and I had to smell their BO and listen to all of them at once. It was a nightmare. The party tonight would have a fraction of that number, but that's still too many people after I went from 6 AM-2 PM having to deal with 354 people at once in a cramped space.

And then what's gonna happen like what happened on Monday (when I forced myself to go to a crowded bar downtown) was that a couple of friends awkwardly were trying to hook me up with people there and sure, I found them attractive, but then all the reminders of what I've dealt with before and how I'm not even sure I'm capable of dating again and how goddamn tough that is. I had a shit ton of drinks with a fuck ton of CBD oil in it, and that helped. And again, what happens is that people assume that I must be just like them and love crowds and love small talk and being in close proximity with people I don't know. It doesn't matter if I find them attractive or not, I have gotten even worse about touch in the last year than ever and so now a person I'm attracted to touching me is itself its own nightmare. And people are touchy, and they love hugs and extended contact and they all get offended when I inevitably tense up and recoil because a lot comes back at once.

So then I have concerned friends telling me to stop sabotaging myself and telling me I need to start dating again as if I had been good at it before, or as if I hadn't spent an entire day having a panic attack because I realized I'd only ever had sex consensually <i>once</i>. 3 partners, only one of them was consensual, and even that person wasn't exactly the nicest to me.

I'm just tired of texts about "how I need to get out more" and "how I need to meet someone" and "i need to stop isolating" and "stop neglecting your friends" from people who are overly concerned and think that I can be very easily fixed if I just got laid. But it was the getting laid thing that exacerbated everything, and now I'm terrified of crowds. I'm just sad and hungry and lonely.

It is the most painful feeling in the world to so badly wanted to be touched and held and loved on (but not like sexually) and also knowing that getting exactly that will set you off into a panic attack. It's like getting an electrical shock whenever you're about to drink water.

[Hielario]

What is your idea of fun, Glides? Because it's clear that going out at night isn't fun for you, and I understand  because I have similar problems, but I don't have any idea of what you actually enjoy, so I can't make any suggestions. Do you even know in what kind of environment you would be comfortable? What would you like to be doing with people?

Also, could you describe the kind of parties you go to? I'm thinking of a suggestion but I don't know if it's doable.

[KMR]

I don't know if you're looking for advice at all, so feel free to disregard the following suggestion if it's not helpful to you. But an idea I had for finding a middle ground solution here would be that when your friends invite you to a party or big group event like that, you could let them know that you're not up for it (whether you want to be completely open and honest and say that it's because of your introversion and anxieties or would prefer to frame it more as a circumstance of your job wearing you out from crowds is up to you), but that you'd still like to hang out with said friend(s) in a one-on-one or small group setting, then offer to set up a time in the coming days/weeks to get together with them. That way, your friends will probably be less concerned about you isolating yourself or neglecting them, and you can still socialize and maintain those social connections in ways that are much more comfortable for you.

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