I’ve realized I have a story that nobody loves me and no one cares about me which I intellectually know is not true because I have some people who definitely do. I thought it was mostly triggered by guys I am interested in, but learned today that it’s triggered by people I’m not comfortable with yet too. I just recently started trying to be more social because I hid from the world due to a break up and am in a group that hangs out often and makes social events, but I saw a few people in that group at a pool today in their facebook story. I instantly reacted because I assumed it was someone I thought was my friends pool and I saw other people in our social group there and thought I just didn’t get an invite. Even though this friend has repeatedly told me that if it was his party, he’d invite me.

It’s embarrassing. I snap a lot and that behavior of course makes me feel even more unloveable because I intellectually know that I have people who care. I’ve been struggling with this for a LONG time and it seems to have gotten worse as I’ve gotten older and gone through more circumstances that triggered that same pattern.

I know we can’t change it over night but it feels debilitating because I find it really hard to focus on anything else when situations like this come up. I was trying to work today because consciously that’s what I wanted to do, but I think my heart wanted to be spending time with people and when I saw that event, it triggered all those old thoughts. I’ve been trying to practice feeling the feelings but I couldn’t do it. I ended up texting 2 other friends for advice and going for a 3 hour walk/jog at a nearby park before I felt calm enough in my head to come home and focus on work again, as well as embarrassing myself by accusing that friend of not inviting me, when in reality- he was at someone elses party.

I think that stopping these reactions would save me a lot of embarrassment. I also think accusing too much pushes people away which would end up self-fulfilling prophecy and proving that old thought pattern true, therefore repeating it. Yet I am struggling to stop it from happening. How to I get better at recognizing it before I send out my snap judgement? And how do I let a feeling be so I don’t have to go do something distracting for 3 hours instead of get work done?