So, yesterday I was standing in church, singing a hymn surrounded by the choir, and a big voice in my head started chattering in my ear.
“Your friends are just pretending to tolerate you. In reality, they all find you annoying as hell.”
I had a hard time clamping down on that voice, and it came at the worst possible time, when I was lifting my voice up in worship of God. My landlady and my mother insist that it isn’t true, but of course they’d say that, right?
I guess I could use some reassurance that it isn’t true, and that other people feel that way about themselves from time to time.
Seeing you are a Christian, I will go ahead and call that the voice of Satan. Let the voice of God drown him out. Yes, many people hear that little voice at least occasionally. The real truth about what people think about you, is that people are almost always not thinking about you at all, because they are too busy thinking about themselves.
Of course I can’t tell you for certain what your friends think about you, when they actually are thinking about you, but it is very rare for your acquaintances to have a worse opinion of you than you have of yourself, unless you are a narcissist, which you clearly are not.
If it’s not a literal voice, that would be a form of “self-talk” to me. And that’s completely normal. There are ways of dealing with and challenging non-productive self-talk, but that’s beyond the scope. Rest assured, most, if not all, of us have these doubts from time to time. “Imposter syndrome” is a common form of it.
A literal voice? I may have a bit more concern and seek out more professional opinions about that.
And, yes, that’s a type of anxiety you are experiencing. And I would agree with Ulfreida, most people are simply not thinking about you because they have other things, like themselves, to think about.
No, it wasn’t a literal voice. It was more… doubts. (And I know the difference in that I have heard voices before, and am in treatment for schizo-affective disorder.)
Well then, definitely mention it to your psychiatrist. But it’s not unusual at all to feel the way you feel from time to time. Are there other things in your life frustrating you right now? Hell, I’d consider it exceptional if you didn’t have the occasional doubt about yourself. If they start consuming your thoughts and affecting your way of life and ability to function, they might need more immediate attention.
If you are also seeing a psychiatrist and if this keeps occurring, I would keep them in the loop, as well, as they would want to know about this and they may want to adjust your medication, as well. This is presuming you have full access to healthcare and the insurance to cover it which, unfortunately, is not the case for many, I understand. In the meantime, once again, I don’t think what you are thinking is necessarily odd; it’s phrased a bit strongly to me, but I think many of us have those thoughts at some time or another.
“Almost every night when I wake up the devil is there and wants to dispute with me. I have come to this conclusion: When the argument that the Christian is without the law and above the law doesn’t help, I instantly chase him away with a fart.” -Martin Luther
Just adding another voice to the consensus that everyone has these sorts of self doubts from time to time. The trick, not always an easy one granted, is to not allow them to overwhelm you and recognize them for what they are.
When i was a teenager I used to have horrible thoughts that no one liked me. I was fat, I was ugly, I was annoying, I was a ‘nerd’ because I liked things like computers and videogames. I buried those thoughts deep and rarely let them to the surface for a long time. I was probably in my early 20’s when my mind ‘clicked’ and I realized “Dummy, 99.9% of people in your own town don’t know you or think about you much less beyond that.” I honestly found it a very liberating thought.
Truth is most people dont think about anyone not in their immediate vicinity because they have their own lives to live. And this isn’t in a selfish way it’s just the way it is, for good and ill. I know I dont have the time or inclination to pass value judgements on 99% of the people around me much less people I don’t know or only in passing. I assume most people are the same.
No, self-doubt is not social anxiety. Social anxiety is just anxiety about the process of being social – finding it difficult to initiate conversations with strangers at a party, for example. Preferring not to go to a party for that reason.
There is probably a lot of self-doubt behind social anxiety, but I think the specific doubts are too well masked by fear for the anxious person to recognize them very clearly. At least in my case.
Eh, Luther had problems. He was a former Catholic priest who eventually married and had something like nine kids. He considered himself to understand the Pauline letters better than the the author, St Paul himself, and he was plagued with lifelong constipation. Fart jokes were probably the only bright point of his daily life.
