Naw, it ain't weird Von, or maybe we are all weird to some degree or another, but then that would make us all normal, lol.
Yeah I struggle with trying to figure out why it is I feel anti-social, even just flat out dislike most of the human race some days. But just watch a reality show or Jerry Springer, or get cut off by some a-hole in traffic and it's easy to figure out why, lol. Then again I try to keep reminding myself that the great majority of people out there are alright, they're a lot like me, or actually better than me in a lot of ways that count. Maybe that's part of it, in my case at least, I feel insecure about myself when I'm around others and because I feel that way I prefer to just avoid exposing myself and so avoid the feelings of insecurity as well. :huh:
Sometimes I try to trace those feeling back in time and find out when or where it all started, and I've concluded a lot of it may have stemmed from my childhood. I was small for my age, up until 11th grade when I finally grew close to my adult height. But before that I remember being teased a lot about being short, got in a lot of fights over it, so some trauma there, <sigh> yeah I think I need a couch to lie on, lol.
Ultimately it boils down to how you deal with it I guess. Constantly working at pushing yourself into social situations, and then dealing with the feelings that evokes, sort of trying to desensitize yourself a bit. Also it helps me to sometimes concentrate my attention on one or two people and try to get out of my own head and really take an interest in them, what they're doing/thinking, sometimes that works (but only if they're interesting and likable, lol, yeah NOT judging is another flaw I have to keep working on ;?).
Many years ago I attended an event, sort of a group encounter session that lasted for 3 days. This happened while I was living in Costa Rica, and was visiting the newly founded University for Peace. A lot happened during those 3 days, but long story short one of the things that stuck with me was how they talked a lot about the way we tend to judge people around us all the time. We'll could be sitting on a bus and glance over at a perfect stranger, and begin to tell ourselves some narrative about that person even though we don't have the slightest idea who they really are. Usually our thoughts are negative and judgmental, the point of which is to make us feel better about ourselves.
Even with people we know, when we are thinking critical thoughts about someone, like how dishonest John is or how lazy Sue is, what we are really saying is, look how honest I am compared to John or how much better a worker I am than Sue. That is more often than not what is at the root of our critical thinking about others. And it is this constant judging of others that makes us feel uncomfortable around them or untrusting of perfect strangers for no real reason.
And the key they said, was to try to really LOOK at people and to understand that the truth is that deep down, in the core of their very being, they are just like us. No different. We all have the same wants and desires, the same fears and the same aspirations. And they challenged us to take every opportunity when we were around perfect strangers, to look at them and see if we could see ourselves in them. And I found that, at least at that time while I was around a community of people/teachers who could support me and continue to remind me of this truth, that I could actually see that in others. And that made it so much easier to like them, all those strangers. In the end, we're all on the same bus, traveling together to our destinations and wrapped up in our own little worlds, getting on and off at different stops, but we are all the same, we are all one, we are all on the same journey that is life. I like that. I just keep forgetting, lol.
;?D
But I travel almost constantly so my environment changes several times a week.
