@Typo-MAGAshiv Thank you for the information and corrections. Yes I'm professionally diagnosed by a highly trusted psychiatrist who's also my teacher and I'm sure about his competence.
I should've noted these labels don't consciously come to me. They're more like automatic thoughts that I only discovered after journaling. What I really love about your post is how it teaches to come up with an alternative and more realistic explanation for the situation. This is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy that I'm already incorporating but probably should do more of (journaling takes so much time).
30 Day Small Talk Challenge with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
I have always hated interacting with people I don't know well and especially hate making small talk. Unfortunately it seems like a part of building social status is by having plenty of social relations. My specific circumstances are as follows: I have generalized anxiety disorder and am introverted (socializing is fatiguing.) I tend to fixate on past failures and repeatedly beat myself over them. For example I still occasionally remember and feel bad (mainly worthless) for a oneitis rejecting me 6 months ago.
I have recently made more efforts to socialize (eg, talking to a cute girl at the library and installing Youtube Revanced for her; that was way out of my comfort zone and made me realize some mistakes, more on that later.)
My motivations for starting this challenge:
Two of my friends let's call them O and Z made remarks about my awkward social behaviors the former just spontaneously joked about me saying one day I will shoot up the whole college with an AK and the former criticizing me for not responding to someone greeting me (my rationalization is that I don't know the person so why would I greet them but I feel like the real reason is that my anxiety discourages me since I'm afraid I will sound awkward when responding [I don't like the sound of my voice] or I will be seen as pathetic [more on that later]).
On rare days when I happen to be in the mood to talk with relatively many people, I tend to ruminate less on my past social failures. I believe doing more social interactions dilutes the effect of the bad ones since they become a minority of my experience.
I'm officially starting this challenge today but unintentionally started it a few days ago (with the autistic Revanced Rizz). That experience made me realize that I physically react too strongly (ie, fast, sudden movements, exaggerated facial expressions, voice very out of control [too loud, too quiet, a sense of panic in my voice/stuttering]
Day 1:
I chatted with girl (super sweet person but not attractive) about her unusual name. What was special about this interaction: I was in a bad mood, my common vulnerable victim mood, that normally paralyzes me preventing me from getting anything done or being interested in ANY social interaction. Yet I forced myself to talk with her and talk about something completely trivial and unimportant. This interaction actually did help pull me out of my bad mood.
