ANXIETY

 ANXIETY

I feel I suffer a lot of anxiety due to past experiences. When I write ‘triggers’, I mean flashbacks of something negative that has happened to me in my life. What triggers me the most is when someone mentions an incident which had occurred to me or the person’s name [the perpetrator]. I usually have bad anxiety if I know someone who has done wrong to me will be (or could be) at a particular location. I react by not wanting to be there or I try to get away from that location as soon as possible.

I don’t like people who are nasty towards someone for no particular reason. They target one particular person. Toxic people who throw questions at someone and even though the victim answers the questions they won’t listen to the replies. If they did listen, they refuse to acknowledge or care about the response. They then start to verbally attack their target aggressively and when the target stands up for themselves and then the toxic individuals make out that their target is the one behaving inappropriately. Then you have the enablers who are near the bullies who just sit and watch and don’t care how the victim is being treated.

                This is how Keith and Sharon would treat me whenever I went out with them. Keith and Sharon wouldn’t always mistreat me, obviously, but I had to endure their behaviour too often. Keith would attack me and Sharon would watch and get an ego boost from it.

I endured their bullshit for years, it happened more than once (too many times to count). Sharon always sat and watched everything her boyfriend did to me, and there were other times when sometimes she would also be nasty towards me. If Keith was having a go at me she would never intervene and she would stand by her boyfriend’s behaviour. She would sometimes smile, or smirk when it was took place. She enjoyed every second of her boyfriend mistreating me. When he verbally & emotionally abused me or when she bullied me, it was usually about the way I look – I never took anything to heart about what they said because I don’t think they have the right to criticize about how someone looks (they aren’t supermodels). I know I’m not the hottest woman in the world and I am awkward. I don’t rely on my looks for self-esteem. It’s not what they were saying about me; it’s why they were doing it and why they would want to belittle me like they did. That’s what I didn’t like and that’s the part that hurt me. They usually always looked me up and down and would always find something, anything to insult me about. It was all very superficial most of the time.

When it happened to me, I knew at the time how they were treating me was wrong.

I don’t think the toxic individuals who have done wrong to me, care that they’ve done wrong to me or care that they’ve intentially gone out of their way to do damage to me. Well they probably know what they were doing, but they don’t care, they wouldn’t apologize about their behaviour. They have no empathy.

                I just see their insecurity so deeply that even at the time when it was taking place I knew they were doing it just so they can feel better about themselves. I think that is why I was always so forgiving of them when it was happening and even if they didn’t say sorry because I knew it wasn’t about me. I felt bad for them. However, they have no empathy and they just belittle people to make themselves feel better about themselves. If they heard my name today, they would bitch about me and would make critical remarks about me; because that’s who they are as people.

                My fault was hanging out with them, trying to see the good in them instead of seeing the reality of them. It was my fault for associating with such people, however because I’ve mostly had that kind of people in my life – I really didn’t know any better. Today, I see other people having healthy relationships with others and realised I haven’t had that type of relationship before. I wanted it, I was good to them, well I tried to be – it just backfired on me.

                It doesn’t matter how you treat another person, it doesn’t mean they will respect you back. There’s a saying, “If you respect me, I will respect you” – that isn’t true, not from my experience. I respected people and they treated me like shit in return. These days I’m more vigilant when it comes to dealing with people. If I didn’t remain friends with them I wouldn’t have had any friends. I wasn’t hanging around them for that reason though, I always looked at the best in them and they all did have good side and their good side is what I dwelled on. Today I feel like I would rather be by myself than be around people who want to destroy me and hurt me.

I know there are good people out there, but the small handful of people I’ve had to deal with in life, haven’t been too good. However those people don’t represent society as a whole. Today it’s extremely difficult for me to open up to people and start friendships and relationships with new people. I suffer from social anxiety, I’m just vigilant and afraid of embracing them because I know they could end up doing the same thing to me as the others did and I don’t want that. I’m an introvert as well which just makes it so much harder. I also suffer from social anxiety. I’m too scared to say something or make a mistake because I’m worried the next person is going to hate me and mistreat me like all the others did. 

I don’t want any more toxic people in my future. I don’t think I could cope with any more of what I’ve had to deal with. I’ve had enough. I’ve had more than my fair share of bullshit.

 

#anxiety #bullying #abuse #emotionalabuse #verbalabuse