On the outside, everything seems normal.
On the inside, my heart is pounding, causing me to sweat.
I can’t control myself from zoning out with the same consistent thought: “What are they thinking of me?”
It wasn’t until my junior year of high school, where it seemed like I could not get out of my own head, always worried about others’ opinions of me, but why? It became apparent that instead of being settled in my own thoughts, I felt drowned in them, like a place I didn’t know how to escape.
When I am at school is when it gets the most intense. I go through my day, trying to focus on each class and what I need to get done. As I am passing periods I see an old friend. I try to make conversation with him.
“Hey!” I say. He looks up, making eye contact with me. We have a small conversation and afterwards he tries to give me a fist bump, which I miss. I laugh after the interaction, trying to shrug it off.
Then the thoughts start flooding in. “Why did I laugh like that? Why did I miss his hand? He probably hates me now. Never again am I starting a conversation.”
Even though it’s just a small inconvenience my mind turns it into something that feels much more than that. I try to calm myself down and take a deep breath, switching my focus onto something else. I remind myself of a phrase that a friend once told me: “Take time to feel, but don’t let it consume you.”
Even though I am able to calm down my thoughts, it isn’t long until they come back. I am sitting behind somebody during lunch as they are on their phone. I look over right as they take the picture. *Click.* I am in the background looking directly at them.
“That photo is going to go around the entire school,” I think to myself. “Why did I look like that? Everybody is going to make fun of me.”
It’s gotten so bad that I realize I can’t interact or go through my day efficiently without getting into my own head. Eventually, I try to reach out to people about the feeling. As I talk to other people about it, I realize I am not alone.
The truth is, more people feel this way than we think, they just learn to not care. People are bound to dislike you no matter what. Everybody has the right to have their own opinion. I learned I was worried about things that didn’t need to be such a big deal. I shifted my focus to the people I cared about and the things that really mattered, and I realized more joy was flooding into my life.
