24F
Ever since I was a kid, I never really felt like I fit in. My family was harsh, tense, and rather cold. I used to be outgoing with other kids, but I never really “stuck anywhere”. I was always the subject of jokes and ridicule & it just got worse as I got older. No one even came to any of my birthday parties until I was like 16, and at school, people would only talk to me if they say next to me in class. Otherwise, like at lunch, they’d ignore me completely. I was still outgoing in HS, but I was smart and enthusiastic about school, so everyone made fun of me, especially popular kids when I was just minding my business. My friends never got this treatment, and they even apparently didn’t like me behind my back.
As an adult, I’m often ignored in favor for everyone else. No matter what I try or do, I’m always just kind of alone while everyone else groups together. At work, being quiet is the only way to keep peoples opinion favorable of me. When I quiet and closed off, people feel bad, I think, and try to be nice to me. When I’m being myself, no one likes me. They’ll talk to me, but exclude me from things like secret Santa or group chats. They steal my jokes and stick the hard work on me. I even overheard this one kid at my last job saying “I just don’t like her but I feel like I have to act like I do” even though I never did anything bad to him. The only time I hung out with them outside of work was at a work party, where the one guy who was semi-cool drunkenly asked to hook up with me, I said no, and he was deliberately rude and mean to me for the rest of my time working there. At another job, we worked with animals and every time I made a mistake, they’d chew me out extra. When I didn’t really do anything wrong, they’d find reasons to correct me. If I was excited about a cute animal, they always had comments about how what I was saying was so “obvious”.
I have a bunch of stories like that. It’s been happening my whole life. Everyone says to stop caring, but I feel so deeply hurt & lonely that I can’t form any connections with people. If I’m talkative, im annoying and everyone hates me. If I’m quiet, people either feel bad for me or assume I’m a total bitch/pushover and are mean to me as a result. Either way, I’m ignored. I’ve only had one real friend, and men all hate me/treat me like trash & get off on it. And even that one friend hasthe opposite life as me & it hurts seeing her have so much success with everything and love from people while I’ve never gotten it. This has happened at every age and no matter what I looked like (like when I was skinny & put effort into my appearance vs when I let myself go.) so I don’t know how much it has to w my looks.
My whole point is, I’ve been mistreated by everyone my entire life & it’s hard to be confident when everything I’ve tried has failed. So my question is: how do you find confidence when everyone you’ve ever known (other than maybe 2 people— my one friend and my grandma) has treated you with disdain? How do you know when you’re just not a likable person & need to change?
5 comments
Rejection is a really valuable, but hard life lesson to never look to other people for your happiness. It’s a humbling life experience. You are forced to really come to terms within yourself with who and what you are.
Don’t expect respect, acceptance or social validation from people who are unhappy with themselves. Be it jealousy issues, ego, insecurities, whatever personality problems or disorders they may have – instead of working on themselves, they are quick to put others down just to feel better about themselves. See them for what they are, flawed people of no importance. The problem is within them, not you.
It’s so easy to have the tendency to think of yourself as other people see you through their twisted perspective. But that’s not you. It’s just a projection of their problems. This is why you can’t take other people’s cruelties personally. Look into yourself, know yourself. Don’t accept someone else’s false narrative of who you are. Develop self value. When you develop self value, confidence will follow.
Over the past few months, I’ve felt just like you. I started working in a new department at my job, where my boss and colleagues are really nice. Being the new person in an established team was a bit awkward at first. Everyone was super welcoming, but they also set some boundaries, which made me feel a bit rejected. I ended up trying too hard to please them. I talked to my boyfriend about it, and he pointed out that they were just being nice and hadn’t done anything wrong. He asked why I was upset and reminded me not to have unrealistic expectations. So, I shifted my approach and kept things strictly professional. That change made a big difference; I started feeling better without any false expectations about them.
Regarding friendships, I once stepped out of my comfort zone and hung out with this girl from university. She seemed cool, but I didn’t spend much time with her. I’m a software developer, and I realized she was more interested in people for their money, not for who they are. When I saw her trying to use me financially, it was a real wake-up call. I blocked her on everything and realized that sometimes it’s not about me. Some people might reject you simply because they can’t use you.
Therapy with a clinical psychologist is how am doing it.
By being neglected, there were a lot of strategies you had to develop as a child to meet your own needs. The primary need being safety, but also food, shelter, emotional security (feeling loved) all matter as well. These strategies you figured out yourself helped you survive your childhood, but are now working against you. This is my story too.
Confidence has everything to do with how safe you feel in any given moment. If you draw your safety from the outside, your confidence is going to vary based on who is around you, how much you trust them, etc. You may even people please to try to control the outcome, so you remain safe. This was me until this year, but I had a huge breakthrough just yesterday during a therapy session.
I finally made the link I described above. I realized I unconsciously believed that judging my safety by the mood of the people around me *was the only way to feel safe*. There is another way to feel safe, and that’s by drawing your safety through internal means. I had this mental muscle, but it was very, very weak.
The whole thing can be summed up for me into the phrase “I am responsible for my own safety”. Something I didn’t “get” until now…thanks to dealing with major uncertainty my entire childhood.
Obviously I don’t know if this is exactly what you need to hear, but I know my confidence is absolutely wrapped up in this, so maybe yours is too? Anxious attachment style is the name for it if you want to research it. I’m only just beginning this path with my therapist, but he assures me that by the end of it I’ll experience that feeling of “wholeness” I’ve been missing and craving my whole life.
This is how people can say “just don’t care what they think” and just not get why it doesn’t work for people like us. For years and years during our development, caring what others thought was *crucial* to our survival, to feeling loved, to feeling safe. That’s the part we need to transfer to ourselves. You might be able to find self-help to get you through it, but find a therapist if you can. We all need the experience of others who accept us exactly as we are, and this is what they’re good at.
Just wanted to say your story sounds like mine. I wonder why a lot too but I think it is in the vibe you give off. When you are negative or have low esteem or are guarded, you gave off a ‘vibe’ that makes people feel uncomfortable or awkward. Similarly, when you are eager to please your actions and vibe give it off as well so some people take advantage of it. And even when you do want to change, if you’ve been in a group or job for awhile, their impressions of you are already there so will try to ‘beat you down’ to make you stay back at your place.
The keys are getting more social experience in a wider array of environments, and getting therapy.
For example, try church even if you’re not religious. Just go to a few different churches and stay for coffee hour for practice chitchatting with people you very well may never see again. You learn from this kind of thing, you really do.
Find Meetup groups for things you’re actually interested in. Go to events held at the public library.
If at all possible, take a college class or some kind of training or skill that you would learn in a group.
Therapy can help you talk things out, get detailed feedback, and even engage in some brainstorming and role playing about what happens in your day to day life and how to respond to it differently. The therapist can also help you reframe and reconsider some things you may never have thought of.