In my single days, I felt like dating was easy. Making friends was what was hard. If a guy didn't like me, well who cares, I could find a different one. Good friends seemed harder to come by. If a friend didn't like me then I had just lost out on what could have been the friend of a life time. Probably a bit backwards but that's how I felt.
Recently I have started trying to work on that mindset a little bit. I have realized that I really can't worry about whether or not people like me.. no matter who they are, if they don't like me for who I am then they would have been a waste of my time anyway. I hope this mindset helps ease my anxiety when sharing things about myself that put me in a vulnerable position. Instead of waiting, like a victim waiting to learn how they'll react, I can focus on me. Or at least, that's the theory. It can help me rationalize through the anxiety but it's no cure. And most people aren't very good at being sensitive to minimizing other people's anxiety. Not that that can really be an expectation either.
Sometimes you just have to trust that your decision to make yourself vulnerable was a good one... and be willing to accept the consequences if it ends up being the opposite. Anxiety in this context at least.. seems to me like fear of/unwillingness to accept that potential negative consequence. But when something is out of our control, it's better emotionally speaking if we don't worry about it. And if we cannot trust we made the right decision, I suppose we have to hope it instead.
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