Fear of Offending Someone

[abcd1234]

I have a problem I thought maybe you guys can help me with. I have a thing where sometimes if I'm in a conversation with someone afterwards I dissect everything I said and then wonder if I said anything wrong.For instance if somebody I was attracted to wanted to get together on a certain day and I had plans that day I would break my plans just to be with that person.

But then when the conversation was over and I went home I would think to myself,"When he asked me to do something was there any hesitation on my face remembering that I had plans and if there was did he notice and think I was hesitating about him.Then on the other hand he acted as nice as usual and I was pretty confident that I didn't make a face."

Now my question is ,Why do I dissect everything and make a problem when there doesn't seem to be one.I know we're more hypervigilent when it comes to somebody we like but this is too much.Why can't
I just enjoy what's obviously a very good comraderie. Does anxiety or OCD cause this?

[MikeW]

So now you want to analyze your over analyzing, be hypervigilant about your hypervigilance?

I duno. We all have quirks. But you want us to tell you why you are the way you are?

Seriously?

[TwisttheLeaf]

I wouldn't consider this OCD, but anxiety? yeah. Possibly, specifically, anxiety spurred by social phobia? It's hard saying, but that would be my guess.

[East]

I know what I will say will probably shock you...but I actually know the way out of this one. I found out accidentally...it was an unintended side effect from something I did once.

You don't have to do anything as shocking as I did to get the same result.....but you do need to "let go" .....

I got past it when I was 21.... but it is never too late....

I still think about "stuff"....but not THAT kind of stuff. I used to...long ago....

Here's what happened....long story short..after a series of crazy events...I ended up giving a blow job to a guy I couldn't stand on a dare (which is also why I don't drink anymore...I am wild enough without any alcohol) ...it was on a sidewalk at a major intersection at 2:30 AM. There were probably over 100 bar patrons outside cheering us on. When he came in my mouth...I turned around to spit it in the gutter..and I found myself eyeball to eyeball with a car full of horrified people on their way home from Easter Midnight Mass...and yeah...grandma was in the back seat...and then I noticed a line of cars going waaaay down the street...stopped at the light....all looking on in horror....

Well...I was STUNNED ...and I felt my stomach turn inside out...I didn't even realize they were there. They weren't when I began....

...and the next day I woke up I started to play it over and it was too much for me to even absorb. I was dying. I started making plans to move to a town where no one knew me and just pretend it never happened...I was in a panic...I thought about becoming a monk...and then my BBF..a girl born on my birthday...came by and I blurted it out and she started laughing and told me not to worry about it...yeah...like THAT was gonna happen...

...but it was so overwhelming going over the details I made myself sick and then all of a sudden...it was just too much...and I said FUCK IT...and I went back to work...and I was fine...

..and...another thing happened... I stopped going over the conversations in my head...

Moral of Story: When you have to dissect an elephant...you realize it is pointless...and it doesn''t really matter....

..so just do something really BIG...and let the chips fall where they may. It really doesn't matter anyway...none of it...so it is a collassal waste of time.

My advice... find a way to embarrass yourself....badly...embrace your humility....

...and just in case you want to go real big...find someone to suck off on Easter Mass night and time it when they are coming home from Midnight Mass and when he cums...spit a mouth full in the gutter....

Hey...there are worse things ..like going over every conversation in your head...:biggrin:

[Rareboy]

There's a balance to be struck.

We all tend to go back over an interaction and worry sometimes that we didn't phrase something quite as we wished or weren't quite sure of the reaction of others.

Rarely have we been so drunk or horrible that we might need to apologize....but that is the only useful purpose of forensic examination.

For the rest of it...just let it go. I know from other threads and posts that perhaps sometime you struggle with just letting something go...but this is something you can condition yourself to do. I have managed to do it over the last 20 years very successfully.

You need to be firm with yourself as soon as you begin to fixate. Shut the brain off and move on to something else that deflects your concentration.

[MikeW]

You need to be firm with yourself as soon as you begin to fixate. Shut the brain off and move on to something else that deflects your concentration.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I do. No, it doesn't come natural to me. I *am* hypervigilant (or however it is spelled) and felt I had to be to survive my growing up years. But as an adult I had to begin unlearning some of that stuff… OVERthinking was one of the things I had to unlearn.

First you have to be aware that you're doing it; second you have to see how it works, how you do it, then you have to tinker with the software -- learn to turn your attention to something ELSE and notice when it 'automatically' slips *back* to where it was, then gently turn it away again.

This is how I stopped smoking cigarettes, too. The craving for one goes away whether you have one or not. Once you turn your attention to something else, its like the way everything else works, you just forget about it (craving, obsessing, w/e).

[Bowyn Aerrow]

If its only in the case of making sure you made a good impression on a potential mate - then welcome to the race - the human race.

If, however, you find yourself doing this toward most or all people, then you most likely have an underlying issue - be is social anxiety issue, self esteem issue, or you might be on the high end of Aspergers and are still struggling with the whole 'how to do the social interaction thing correctly' aspect.

I have a similar issue, I over think conversations and end up saying little or nothing at all. It took several years of therapy for me to uncover some of my issues and improve my social interactions slightly. Today I'm down right chatty compared to say 20 years ago. I still have along way to go before I will be able to be a real conversational person - meanwhile I do prefer to channel all of my unused words to the written form. :biggrin:

Knowing and understanding Self - what makes yourself tick, why it is when A happens you do B, knowing your particular psychosis and foibles will go a long way in resolving the issue.

There are a lot of tricks you can try on yourself to break through this barrier. Here are a few:

1. Talk to yourself in the mirror - this way you can look at your own face and see your facial expressions - mind this has to be a two way conversation - which is to say its ok to talk to yourself, and its ok to answer yourself - I confess though if you say 'Huh? What did you say?' then you may have attention deficit disorder. :tongue:


2. Watch the bloopers reels of movies. Why? because we are surrounded by scripted examples of human conversation which doesn't actually exist in the real world. As media has become so invasive a lot of TV/Movie "reality" has programmed us all to think that our day to day interactions should follow such perfection. Yes there are other reasons why they call it TV Programming. :eek: But seeing the bloopers reels will show you that to err is to be human, and humans can err a lot!.

3. Always remember that everyone, just like you, wants to impress those around them. This is why we got all those things like fashion and jewelry and other things for us to make our 'unique' impression upon the world.

Which in your example, you need to understand that just as much as you wanted to make it clear that yeah you were interested in him and make certain that he came away from the conversation feeling good about it, he two was (and most likely still is) sweating the details.

If you are seriously concerned about this, then you might want to take a few sessions with a therapist and see what s/he thinks. In cases like this, having a few sessions and being told that 'yeah this thing you are doing falls within nominal parameters of human experience' by a trained professional is all one needs to get over it and move on/accept it.

[LJay]

Wonderful, East! Too bad you don't drink anymore, but I would settle for a cup of coffee and some conversation. You sound like such fun.

OP, if you never want to do or say anything wrong, then enjoy a dull life. Otherwise, collect craziness. It is a great hobby.

[East]

Wonderful, East! Too bad you don't drink anymore, but I would settle for a cup of coffee and some conversation. You sound like such fun.

OP, if you never want to do or say anything wrong, then enjoy a dull life. Otherwise, collect craziness. It is a great hobby.

LOL...well...I am not that wild anymore ...but....I like to meet people... and talk:biggrin:... so anytime...you have an open invitation for coffee and conversation.....

I got stories though...lots of them...true stories of other things I did I don't want to say on here. You figure...I was "out and about" pretty much every day for 20 years ...kinda right in the middle of a lot of action...so I racked up a lot of...uh...interesting life experiences....

...and along the way...I put my foot in my mouth ALOT...but like I said above...you just have to be in the moment and make friends with humility and realize it really isn't even important in the grand scheme of things since we are all flawed....

...and not worry about what you said..it is already done and you can't un-say anything. No point in torturing yourself...it won't change a thing ...and letting it go is essential...so you can make room for the next "flaw"...

[Pix]

Reading the above reminded me of this: