I am extremely obsessed about what other people think about me

[noname223]

Recently something embarrassing happened to me. It is hard to evaluate on an objective scale how embarrassing it was. Maybe a 3 or 4 if the scale goes to ten. I told my friends about the incident and they told me noone would give any fuck about that and noone will probably remember. I won't describe the incident for the little off-chance someone could identify me which is in fact very unlikely.
Like there are different terms how I can describe what happened after the incident. Maybe meltdown, Chernobyl or going mental would describe it accurately.

I have no problem to admit that I am not fully sane. LIke something in my brain is not wired correctly, something is wrong connected and I am pretty convinced about that. I think it is at least better to be self-aware about that fact instead of denialism. Sometimes it is difficult to hide that fact. That is pretty disappointing for me. When I was hypomanic I was so articulate (partly this is still true), had a lot of self-esteem and I think sometimes even charisma. Noone could have thought I was mentally ill. Quite the opposite. I always had a great mood, made people laugh with witty joke, was attractive and had a high performance. Some people admired my intelligence. (more or less)

This ain't me anyomore. Self-isolation and very high neuroticism have destroyed me. In the past it was even way worse than now. But this recent event was a relapse in old patterns of behavior. Something similar happened to me when I was 15. People laughed about me at that day and this traumatized me. (In general the bullying.) This is one reason why my brain developed like this. In this manic state noone laughed about me because with very fast thinking I outpaced everyone.) This very fast thinking is still a thing. But it can be pretty torturous. Especially after my psychosis this was an unbelievable experience 24/7 extreme racing thoughts of self-loathing, contempt of my own and shame about my actions.

Compared with what other people do during their mania/psychosis my behavior is absolutely nothing. There are people who masturbate in the streets or a woman walked nude through the airport during psychosis. (the video went viral in the whole world - I feel sorry for her). I can remember almost everything I did during this periods of acute illness and still feel ashamed. Though it is very very likely noone remembers anything
.
My brain does not understand that I am not the centre of the universe. I am just a random person for other people, people don't care for each other and as long as I don't smack other people in the face noone will remember me. I mean I also talked with my psychiatrist about some embarrassing behaviors I had. I think she has forgotten everything when we had our next meeting 4 weeks later. I mean she get paid a lot and forgets almost everything and even most parts about my suicidality.

I could not concentrate after this incident. I hope I will calm down soon. I ruminated a lot. This is extreme overthinking things. But talking about it helps. To write this down is kind of therapeutic. (As in general being in this "evil" suicide forum.) I can reflect about my thoughts, I recognize some of them are irrational and this gives a certain distance to my emotions.

Songs that resemble these feelings are Crawling or Heavy from Linkin Park.

I am still going nuts due to this incident. I interpret and analyze it over and over again. I just repeat I HATE MYELF,I HATE MYSELF and I HATE MYSELF over and over again.The more I analyze it the worse it gets. I took a half lorazepame. I have just found another perspective in which the incident is even way worse. FUCK ME. I am so glad that I gonna kill myself. And this shit will be over.

 

[noname223]

Can someone please say anything? Why am I so fucking stupid??? You can also insult me or better kill me.
I try to give some facts with which I should calm me down. People could not see me. They just heard my voice. But I said something very stupid and a very embarrassing way. I wanted to be thought provoking but made myself look like an extreme fool.
If the people see me in real life they will have no connection to me. Except they recognize my voice which I highly doubt. In some weeks I won't meet most of them ever again.
All of them don't know how I look like. And probably never will. They don't know my full name. Except for one person. I could be easily misunderstood. I did not mean it in that way. Honestly fuck this all. The new perspective how I think about it is even worse.
I am not sure how likely it is that they will forget it.
Some of them likely don't even could associate my voice with my name. Normally I also made smart statements but THIS was so fuckcng stupid on so many different levels.
The only upside is I was not close to any of them. I was interested in 2 girls to learn more about them. Of course I can now forget it. But if I had made any progress in approaching them and then saying something like that that would even been way worse.


Like there is one good David Foster Wallace quote.
"You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do."
Though I can say that to myself on a rational level but emotionally I don't comprehend that.

My best friend tried to calm me down again.
The lorazepam starts working I think. I can breathe again a little bit.

 

[Foresight]

Hey love, hugs your way. I need a minute to read through this but I see you.

 

[forgotten15]

I am sorry you are going through this, I also put a lot of pressure on myself and think a lot about what others might think of me, my behaviour or what I say.
But maybe things aren't as bad as you perceive them to be, as in not that embarrassing as you feel that incident was or maybe the others didn't perceive it like you did, maybe your friends didn't even notice what you said or thought it was simply something silly. You shouldn't be so harsh on yourself, we are human, we make mistakes, we sometimes say things that are out of place, but that doesn't define us. Every person on this earth did at some point something embarrassing, even the friends you told about the incident. Try to look at it from this perspective, maybe it will help you to feel a bit better about the situation. ( i hope you understand what i mean because i have a hard time expressing myself in English)

 

[Foresight]

I have the same problems but I know with certainty I have avoidant personality disorder. Embarrassment is a huge problem with AvPD. Is that something that might apply? DBT is useful for that.

Your friends are right, and I'm glad you had someone to talk to and reassure you. I actually don't think the 'they don't think of you', 'they don't care about you', line of thinking ever helped me. It hurts and it brews regardless. Working on the dreaded self-love and worth is what helped me. We deserve to have room for mistakes. It's human and we're all clumsy humans navigating difficult interactions.

 

[noname223]

Thank you sorry much for this really lovely replies. That means much for me. I hope these feelings will soon decrease. I often tend to overthink my life and situations way too much. I think the lorazepam helps too.