I have ego problems, so I get tense around too many people. Trouble with balancing image-based concerns etc...superficial shit that somehow digs deep; except it has nothing to do with depth.
Most of my advice is for myself as much as anyone else, should probably keep it in there. But anyhow, yeah I prefer smaller groups I am comfortable with. Most probably are similar, though there is a loud minority who love meeting new people because it's a chance to image-boost yourself and others by presenting yourself as fresh while silmultaneously receiving that same freshness from new people.
I can get behind that. But I can't get behind (editor: move past) my own neurosis (sies? ses? plural anyway) and be comfortable in such surroundings. I can say with rare confidence that I have done a great deal towards putting myself into situations I feel uncomfortable with but want to learn from and grow in order to become more socially at ease.
Sure I've been loud on here/vent/tinychat but that's different. It's an ultimate comfort zone plus usually alcohol is involved.
This is just naval gazing of a negative form though, the real meat is reminding...reminding....ad nauseam (and I've definitely said this before on here many times) that most people don't really give a shit what you are doing or saying, no more than you do of them, and putting aside the more complicated breakdown of different interpersonal relations and ego stuff, most wont ever affect your life. It might be more to do with knowing yourself as someone who needs assistance, who despite spending most of their life being alone and trying to do/achieve on their own, that that person still needs allies of some kind. That's the larger picture for 'awareness' or at least a meta-illusion of it, that I know, underneath, I have certain limitations...that I think are informed by shape and form, which aren't going to just disappear because I wish it.
But emotions don't care about what is rational. In that way I'm more classically a 'feeler' and embarrassingly (hypocritically) so at times. I am sensitive to sensory input as well; people are loud, lights are too bright and the mere presence of too much living human beings is a pressure to me, no matter how much I want to ignore or diffuse it.
The thing is there was no choice, or illusion of, here. Just a social anxiety from internal and external sources.
TLDR: I have my weaknesses like anyone else and I need time away to recoup some form of energy.
