I’m gonna keep this as brief as I can:
As I’ve grown older I’ve made pretty good progress with my social confidence but yesterday I hung out with a group of people I haven’t seen since school and for some reason I regressed into the same shy meek kid I was back then. I hated it and really felt trapped, unwillingly acting as a character of the past. Didn’t feel like myself.
I’m guessing it’s just me yielding into their image and expectations of who I am. Anyway it sucked and I didn’t have a good time. Kinda just wanted to vent but also ask if anyone else has experienced this kind of thing before.
4 comments
Don’t worry about it, it’s totally natural human thing to do to adjust to your audience in way that’s most comfortable. When it’s no longer comfortable it’s a sign you’ve progressed. Kudos to you recognizing this change! Recognition is key.
Once you ‘see’ it you don’t really have to ‘do’ anything to change it. stay in the process of recognizing how you feel and it will also naturally adjust yourself
For me it’s the opposite. We’ve all gotten older, fatter, aged. Have mortgages, kids, bills, responsibilities. The facade of being “cool” has long been exposed for the bs is. We’re all just aging millenials now, dealing with similar shit. Maybe just give it time.
True, I have been here. I will tell a short story.
I had this one friend who came into my life when I was really unconfident. He called his quiet friend. Well we stopped hanging out because we went in different directions. I started to work out and cold approach people to get better at speaking. I ended up changing alot about me.
Well I get around him again and I revert to a quiet version of me. I was frustrated because i really wanted to show the different me. At the same time, i was scared to change expectations. So totally get it.
It’s a very common thing – the term is *associative regression*