Social Anxiety Blogs

I have a small mental list of things that I promised myself that I wouldn't do anymore on forums in general... like get personally involved in other people's lives unless.... I knew them more or less personally first or.... I felt a special connection to them first.

Well, I broke that golden rule yesterday. Someone was distressed about her marriage and needed to be heard about it. Since I had offered previously to be there for her in the event that she needed a shoulder, I felt that it would have been unfair to refuse her so...

Even though, as usual, anything about the topic of marriage usually stirs up a hornet's nest for me, I'm glad that I was able to give her a virtual ear to hear her.

The only reason why I have that little set of rules is that I've been burned before when I reached out to someone 'in need' before. Really now, I'm at the point where I'm really hurting myself by reaching out to anyone that I don't have a connection with. To explain (not that it matters much... no one really reads this so.... but anyway....), I'm in a really fragile state of mind lately and really low on emotional energy. It's not that I don't want to help people.... that's not the case at all. I've just found that when I'm in this state of being, helping others tends to sap me of any energy that I need to help myself, if that makes any sense.

I know that to most people, this would make me seem standoffish and aloof. Not that it really matters much to me how people see me. I think I'm pretty much over that aspect of SA. I can't control what other people do, say or think. If people think badly of me, so be it, I can't do anything about that.