Mindinpieces,
You are just 19, your life has not been for very long you know. I hear different 19 year olds saying they havent done enough with their lives, well, honestly 19 is still so young and most your age ARE confused and DONT know who they really are or want.'

You mentioned that at one point you were diagnosed with social phobia? Well if that is true there are children that are born with that tendency to be quiet and confused about how to interact. It has been proven that these children can get worse if family members or parents either pick on them or constantly make comments of "Oh he/she is always too quiet, constantly struggles, or anything that continues to tell a child they are different or not good enough in some way. They have proven that children who have this problem can be taught to overcome it rather than continue to form beliefs that they simply cannot learn to socialize like other kids. It is something that can be overcome in time.

I am curious about your upbringing and how your feelings about yourself were never correctly treated and may have somehow only been met with your parents not making more attempts to help you with this. This CAN happen if parents are not educated about what it means and that their child needs extra help to overcome this issue.

To be honest with you, most people DO struggle to understand other people and often wonder if they are interacting effectively. I myself was painfully shy most of my childhood right up through my teenage years. Many of my piers thought that it was because I was stuck up (I found this out years later) and they honestly didn't know how much I struggled. One of the biggest things that helped me was that I worked with so many children over the years and found myself understanding more and more by experiencing the different things children told me about how they struggled. I realized, that some of the issues children had were imprinted on them from their parents, or because they were dealing with divorced parents or an ill parent or a parent that was constantly directing their every move.

I taught riding lessons for many years and I worked with children that truely struggled to show their emotions and even talk back to me. I have to say it was a challenge for me because I honestly couldn't tell if they understood what I was teaching them, if they were afraid or felt ready to learn more. I spent a lot of time trying to understand these children and I ended up at the end of every lesson putting in a long walk to cool out the pony I would say. Then I would just talk and talk and talk, and I am actually very good at that now as some of my posts can be long. But what that did was it helped these children to finally talk back. And I would purposely repeat certain stories and I would hear some words, like Mrs, Open Eyes you already told me that story. And then I would laugh and thank that child for listening. It was not easy to get these children to talk back and express themselves, I found that I had to constantly tell them it was ok to let me know and ask me questions.

My main point in all this is that as a quiet person myself, I somehow understood the need to learn how to feel like I was communicating well with others. I gave children time and as I was teaching them, I was learning as well. And then along the way I realized that in each adult is a child that can worry about how they are communicating and if they are somehow good enough. I am in my 50's now and I am not an expert in every form of communication. I do have my weak areas where I do stress and even wonder if I interact the right way. But to be honest, every person wonders that inside you know, everyone. Communicating with others is a skill that we all learn and some take more time than others to learn this skill. Everyone wonders about their self worth to a certain extent, THAT IS VERY HUMAN.

You don't have to go through your life thinking that your never going to be worthy of others and constantly punish yourself with doubts that are in ALL HUMAN BEINGS TO A CERTAIN EXTENT. Honestly, communication is actually a skill that we all learn to slowly develope throughout our lives. At 19, the self doubt is at a very high level as well as a sense that it should somehow be accomplished and this skill should be second nature. This is NOT TRUE AT "ALL". There are plenty of people that struggle with their sense of communication skills JUST LIKE YOU. This should not be something that should drive ANYONE into truely believing that they are unworthy of life.

Mindinpieces you would not believe how many "SUCCESSFUL" Actors, Actresses, Artists, Writers, Inventors, Musicians and even Commedians have truely struggled with the feelings you talk about here. Elton John? well as much as he became quite the showman? He really struggled at your age and contemplated SI many times as well as Billy Joel who was really shy and troubled. Just these two Valuable Talented Musicians/Artists struggled, they DID finally overcome. Even Johnny Cash who gave us so many wonderful songs struggled. Even Elvis Presley who shined like a huge beam of light privately struggled. You would not believe how many COMEDIANS are actually some very troubled people. As much as you THINK your in your own failing world, there is actually a world FULL of people who STRUGGLE and it truely takes them TIME to finally overcome.

Honestly, you are not alone in your struggle, it is part of being HUMAN and that is the truth.

Open Eyes