Do you hate or avoid crowds?

[noname223]

I know many people here have social anxiety. I have also problems. I feel like a sheep in crowds. Or like a drop in the ocean. I am not that important everybody lives in their own world and in the end we are all prisoners of our minds. I think about existential loneliness. That we cannot really connect fully to another person. That we can never know how exactly the other person feels. Due to the fact our imagination has limits and because finding the right language is very complicated. Moreover many people don't even want to spend time on wanting to know how it feels to struggle with life. They prefer to concenetrate on the positive in life.

Paradoxically I often feel more lonely when I am in a crowd. It reminds me how many people live on this planet. And I don't care about most of them. In general I want that humankind improves. But I think noone is utterly shocked when one reads a stranger died young or stuff like that. We are used to become numb about that. Sometimes I even become paranoid in crowds. It can stress me a lot.

I avoid them. I am also reminded that many people have better life qualtiy than me. I know some only show a facade. But when I see how wholeheartedly people can laugh and enjoy life I can get quite envious.

Furthermore I would love to a deep relationship with a women. And when I see how many people have strong partnerships I can become jealous. I compare myself too much with other people. When I isolate myself which sometimes have good or bad effects I feel less compulsion to compare myself. So sometimes I feel less loneyl when I am alone. A positive effect is for example I can relax better when I am alone. Or surrounded only by people who I trust. Being around many strangers can be too exciting and make me manic.
A negative impact. When I was islolated for too long time it damaged my sanity and my social skills got very bad. I was kind of weird. But I have made some good progess in the right direction with my therapist.

 

[Jrmull1993]

While not as mean-spirited as other misanthropes, I certainly have misanthropic traits.

I only have a small handful of people I enjoy being with.

 

[FuneralCry]

I agree that we are all prisoners of our own minds. That sums up how humans experience life pretty well. It's how I feel, I spend all my time trapped with my own thoughts. Crowds are absolutely horrible and I would never want to be around a large amount of people, it's definitely something to avoid. I would much rather be alone.

 

[TigerFestival]

I hate crowds and large gatherings with a passion. I feel trapped when I'm in one.

 

[GrumpyFrog]

I avoid crowds and I frankly believe that with huge crowds that's not even social anxiety, that's just common sense.

Spoiler: Careful, this can be phobia-inducing

It might be a massive testament to how fucked up my imagination is, but I watched a video of pre-COVID Christmas celebration in Disneyland with a massive crowd and I couldn't help but think "Jeez, imagine some Joker-like criminal hijacking the speakers and announcing that there's a bomb in the park. The bomb doesn't even have to exist to create a death toll, imagine all these people trampling over other folk's children...". Being pushed and shoved by a crowd is not a fun experience, and I can hardly imagine something more terrifying than being in a crowd that went out of control, crushed from all sides and hoping that for dear life you don't stumble and fall and then feel all those people stepping on you, crushing your bones and organs while you slowly meet Mufasa's fate.

Overall, I really do not enjoy being around strangers. Call me an asshole, but for the most part I enjoyed COVID restrictions on the number of people in public places and the distance strangers need to keep from each other, if I was building a society to my own liking I'd make both mandatory at all times. I do become paranoid when strangers are too close for comfort - you never know if the person next to you can randomly become aggressive for any reason from having a very shitty day to being on drugs, or if they are a sexual predator, or a thief etc.
I am somewhat extreme when it comes to avoiding strangers. I rarely leave my apartment without necessity, I deliberately plan my route to pass through the least crowded areas even if it makes the walk significantly longer, I am going out of my way to replace any phonecalls with using apps or websites, I only visit one grocery store that has self-checkout, I avoid public transportation and leave any place that is crowded or has people lining up for anything unless being there is an absolute necessity, etc. I understand that this is completely irrational and I cannot even explain why being around strangers makes me so uncomfortable - it just does. I think it's a mix of an irrational fear of running into someone who will get unreasonably aggressive and a deeply internalized need to "get out of everyone's way" that stems from a childhood when I was constantly told that my very presence is a massive hassle and a burden to literally everyone. I think I've encountered too many people who tried to tell me that I wrong them just by being around and it's okay for them to hurt me for it, and now it's really taking its toll on me.
I do not get jealous of happy people, though. I think I'm fairly empathetic and I even get a boost of good mood when I see happy people. Sadly, I don't get to see much of that lately...

 

[whatevs]

Yeah, I avoid crowds.

I definitely can understand very well how that emerald-green envy fluid starts to boil when you see how engaged and joyful people are while you're barely holding together a facade of normality.

Frankly, life for someone like that is objectively a net negative but I'm still looking for options or some development before finally taking pity in myself and taking a dive out of existence, into the mist of the unknown.

 

[Celerity]

I can tolerate them. They still make me nervous in general, but I have gotten over my anxiety about them.