Filling in
Picture this: You are in a little coffeeshop or a restaurant somewhere. The weather is nice but you haven’t been feeling too good. You forced yourself outside because you want to be better and here you are, alone in some establishment trying to fit in the world like a functional sort of human being. You order something and wait for your order to be ready. Nearby, a group of teenagers is talking loudly and laughing. You try not to focus on it, but it’s hard. You can’t make out what they’re saying, but you’re starting to think it might be about you. They laugh… You try to look but you don’t want to be obvious if they are laughing at you! You probably did something stupid without realizing, or maybe you just look so absolutely ridiculous that people can’t help but laugh. It makes sense. You hear your number being called and you rush for your food. On the way out, you make awkward eye contact with one of the teenagers, who is probably wondering who you are and why you’re watching them.
Table Of Content
This sort of shit happens a lot to me. Pretty much daily still, even though this entire entry is about this happening less. Less is not never. AvPD has this awful little tendency to create a very believable false narrative by taking every little bit of sensory information and bending it until it somehow, in some weird backwards way concludes that you’re a piece of shit. It’s kind of ridiculous if you look at it, but still you listen to these delusions every single day because the voice still makes them sound so real. I mean, what else would they be laughing at, right? Has to be you.
Group therapy
This year I went to group therapy for the first time in my life. Well, I’ve tried some similar things before but never full-on, long term group therapy. It sounded unbelievably scary when my therapist offered it to me, which is how I recognized I absolutely had to do it. So I signed up and I went and I sat in a circle with strangers every single week for 18 weeks this year. And it was about as terrifying as it sounds… for the first few sessions.
This is because I was still believing the voice. It told me that everyone in that group hated me and was laughing at me the second I left the room. With the teens in the restaurant, you can keep up this lie pretty easily because you’re never gonna know those kids. You’re never gonna talk to them and ask them if they were laughing at you, so the negative voice has some plausible deniability. But as the group progressed, something happened to the voice. It started sounding more and more insane as it was still telling me these people hated me. Because I was talking to them, intimately, for 90 minutes every week. They told me about their deepest fears and issues and they said how proud they were of me and how they value my input in the group. Sure, they could be lies but there would be no sensible reason for them to be. It sounded absolutely ridiculous.
When I voiced in the group that I still had these thoughts and fears, they all told me again how much they appreciate me and I cried a little. It was extremely powerful because it broke this entire view of myself as an inferior, unwanted and unlikable human being. It somewhat changed my entire view of how I relate to other people. I felt physically lighter after that session and have done so ever since.
Not fixed yet
This doesn’t mean I’m cured of AvPD. I had my last session last week and everyone wrote each other little cards or letters. It was a very emotional moment and I now have some physical, undeniable evidence I can look back on that these people that were strangers just half a year ago appreciate me and love me.
I chose to not read my letter out loud because that was still a step too far for me, but I handed everyone one. It had my phone number and email address in case anyone wanted to catch up after the group was done. Immediately upon coming home from the last session, the voice was starting.
“Nobody has messaged you yet. They hate your letter and they’re laughing at you for being such a vulnerable little pussy. They hate you”. This went on for a while and then the first message popped up. Next day, the second and third came and I have now heard from the entire group except for one.
I felt sad that the voice was still there, but I’m trying to accept that it’s going to take a long time for it to truly disappear, if ever. What has happened over this past year is that it lost much of its power. It’s still there, waving it’s little arms trying to get my attention while I attempt to live a happy life.
“C’mon man, look at this! You forgot that you’re shit! I’ll remind you!”
But it’s becoming more of an minor annoyance and less a total crippling of the mind. More background music than noise-cancelling headphones blasting on full volume. More smoke signals than… Alright, enough analogies. It’s just not as present anymore. It’s that lightness that I was talking about earlier. The immense weight of my internal critic is lifting and it feels like I can sometimes almost keep up with life again… Or maybe even for the first time ever.
People don't hate me
People don’t hate me. They never did. It’s really nothing but a complex lie that I made up and believed in for an incredible amount of time. That’s a painful realization, honestly. It must be what it feels like when you’ve been in a cult and finally start seeing the truth that you were brainwashed and wasted countless years of your life. It’s a gradual process because the mind can’t just go from believing something so very strongly to believing the polar opposite.
Sometimes you want to go back to the version of you that you knew. To the familiarity of self-loathing. But you have to keep going, or drink the kool-aid. I made my choice.
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