I was always quiet and asocial as a kid and throughout high school. When I started my first job I was expecting a literal nightmare. My anxiety was over the top and at first it really was. I thought that everybody hated me or had some hidden intentions There were a couple of times when I heard badmouthing towards me and it really felt like everybody just hated me.
Two or three months passed and I was just being myself only speaking when asked something and sometimes even hardly speaking to anybody all day. I had no problems doing my job and I was good to everybody no matter what.
But at some point after 4 months people started being overly nice towards me. To the point of being kinda scary. People that didn’t even notice me or care started to try to socialize with me. More people started saying “Hi” when they see me. People are just being overly helpful about work things. When I make mistakes they don’t get mad. A couple of times coworker of mine stopped her car during my commute to work and just drove me to work. And said that she can wait for me somewhere so I don’t walk to work. And I think I somehow guilt-tripped them into doing that or they pity me or it’s just all an act. Because I know that work gossips and badmouthing are a big problem there and I have no reason to believe they don’t do that when I’m turning my back.
Two female coworkers almost every day try to socialize with me. One is more on the jokes side and I see that she tries to loosen me up. The other one is always overly nice and always looking at me with these strange eyes and talking softly. And those two I feel like they got a whole surveillance operation on me. They always look at me when I stand and go somewhere. Always ask questions and try to know more about me. S Sometimes even I catch myself being cold to their niceness because it’s just awkward and I don’t know how to act but they still keep doing it.
I just don’t know. It feels like something is just off. Nowhere and ever in my life, people were this nice.
9 comments
What you’re describing makes me think that you’re on the spectrum. Have you ever been assessed by your doctor for autism?
You have social anxiety, which makes us register neutral social interactions as negative. It’s in your head, which is a good thing. You aren’t missing social cues– you are taking too many social cues in and it makes you hypervigilant to how people treat you.
You should be nice and friendly back. Smile at them, greet them hello and goodbye, make eye contact. Start there. You also need to make some friends outside of work, maybe go to meetups, book clubs, or volunteer.
You said you’ve been good at your job and good towards others so it’s probably just them warming up to you. They’re probably just wondering what you’re like because you’ve been there for 4 months but haven’t really opened up to anyone.
If you were actually disliked, your coworker wouldn’t be offering to drive you. From my perspective, it seems like you’re the youngest person there so they’re just trying to look out for you.
Just be nice to them and they won’t have anything bad to say about you. Even if it turns out that they dislike you or talking behind your back, you don’t lose anything by being nice to them and it helps maintain your professionalism on the job.
Sounds like basic social anxiety to me. If you are on the spectrum, which it doesn’t seem like to me, it is in the direction of Asperger Syndrome which is pretty common. Most people are not great at socializing at work. There are too many rules, and an HR department.
Why was, I’m phrasing this: “people are overly nice to the point of kinda being scary, overly helpful, they don’t get mad when I’m making mistake they drove me home and was I guilt-tripped them into doing it or is it just all an act they might be talking behind my back eventhough 2 female coworker try to socialize with me but this is overly nice almost like they are doing survellance operation on me, I’m often cold or awkward towards it don’t know how to act but they keep doing it, something felt off”
Do you want them to be nice and helpful and tolerating? So think of your favor guy/girl ever, if they were like that would you like them more or like them less from a scale of 1 to 10? how much do you want to not feel guilty(reciprocal) when they are nice to you, would being nice, helpful back be sufficient to make it better? If you were to relive the same situation, what would it take for this to not be so awkward, guilty, and overbearing like they are running a surveillance operation on you? cause people will look and talk can’t tell them to shut up and look away? why is this so important to you would you be able to tell us about?
I relate to this a lot and have experienced similar paranoia. I also relate to your pessimistic/optimistic switching attitude. Funny enough it was also suggested to me that I might be on the spectrum and maybe I am but for me I know my main issue is anxiety and stress.
I still haven’t found a full solution but I have experienced days in a row of eliminating this anxiety/stress (I hold it in my upper back so it’s easy to tell when I’m stressed as my shoulders are pinched and not relaxed).
What works for me is 1) getting enough sleep 2) making my breath deeper 3) most importantly consciously relaxing throughout the day by telling myself to relax and also comforting messages such as I am safe and I am okay.
I was so anxious before doing this that I had a way rescued sense of smell, never really felt hungry and was overall disconnected from my senses. Reducing my anxiety has connected me more to my body and made me feel like I’m actually living my life rather than just observing it.
It’s a long path (I’m months into it) and I still have anxious days but they are less and less and more importantly they are less intense when they do happen.
The biggest benefit of all is how it affected my social life. When I am relaxed conversation flows naturally, I can be fully present and funny and how I always felt I should be.
If this resonates with you feel free to DM me.
This feels like someone read my diary and is impersonating me. But no one has been acting nice to me like they are to you. Makes me wonder if they see me as creepy or unstable or just pity me. I don’t talk much or share much, but when I talk, I tend to overshare. I learned not to say much after a while and got comfortable not knowing whether they liked me or not. I have a severe trust issue, and I feel like you do too. Life is draining, man. Takes so much energy to just not stand out. I just stopped caring about what my coworkers think about me. If I seem rude to them. It’s fine. If I seem like a timid person to them. That’s fine, too. Anyway, I’m already here with enough mental wars trying to justify my existence, I don’t have enough energy to spend on what people are thinking about me.
Did you grow up in a hostile family environment? Because if you did, you would expect everyone in the outside world to be just as mean, as that is your baseline of what ‘normal’ is.
it sounds like they were just being nice. but it’s hard to tell what is actually happening without any context or knowledge of what you or these other girls act like/look like.