For what it’s worth, being afraid of others’ judgements is a very normal thing. It’s also pretty normal that it gets exaggerated when one is isolated.
Now, you are a clear outlier along that dimension, but I think I can empathize with your situation at least a little bit, based on my own experiences with isolation, of which there are two: (1) for the last few years, due to complicated health issues I won’t go into right now, I am much less socially active than I’d like to be. Constantly cancelling on my friends, and being “more work” to be around has consistently been pushing me towards not even trying (2) during the recent pandemic I strictly isolated myself for months at a time, only having contact with 1 family member. This shifted my social reactions to be much more defensive, feeling easily overwhelmed, and so on. It took months to get back to a relatively “normal” baseline after things opened back up. I have a tendency towards avoidant behavior, and those two situations made it 10x worse.
I won’t give any advice, because you haven’t asked for it and I don’t have good solutions anyway. But I’d like to point out that the kind of social anxiety you’re describing (intermingled with avoidant and/or depressive behavior) can often be ameliorated by simple exposure and practice. So please don’t be too hard on yourself, and remind yourself that you’re in a place where you’re not the only weird one. Furthermore, people here will tell you in plain words if you “mess up” in any way, which so far no-one has done.
For what it’s worth, being afraid of others’ judgements is a very normal thing. It’s also pretty normal that it gets exaggerated when one is isolated.
Now, you are a clear outlier along that dimension, but I think I can empathize with your situation at least a little bit, based on my own experiences with isolation, of which there are two: (1) for the last few years, due to complicated health issues I won’t go into right now, I am much less socially active than I’d like to be. Constantly cancelling on my friends, and being “more work” to be around has consistently been pushing me towards not even trying (2) during the recent pandemic I strictly isolated myself for months at a time, only having contact with 1 family member. This shifted my social reactions to be much more defensive, feeling easily overwhelmed, and so on. It took months to get back to a relatively “normal” baseline after things opened back up. I have a tendency towards avoidant behavior, and those two situations made it 10x worse.
I won’t give any advice, because you haven’t asked for it and I don’t have good solutions anyway. But I’d like to point out that the kind of social anxiety you’re describing (intermingled with avoidant and/or depressive behavior) can often be ameliorated by simple exposure and practice. So please don’t be too hard on yourself, and remind yourself that you’re in a place where you’re not the only weird one. Furthermore, people here will tell you in plain words if you “mess up” in any way, which so far no-one has done.
Thank you. It is good to have reassurance that I am understood.