@raging vortex

I feel you with all the points you made. My friends who are now therapists and officers in the military and otherwise all scare me now. I made friends with a neighbor who is a licensed counselor, and sometimes I wonder if she is analyzing me. LOL. Still, I try to see them as friends, but I always feel small.

Then there's the role reversal when my own friends who never went to college see me as scary, and I try my best to reassure them that I'm not; I'm like anyone else, just with a bigger vocabulary and some different ways of thinking. I reiterate to everyone that I believe in servant leadership, not dictatorships. And, I am terrified of the spotlight, even though it feels great to win awards and all.

I went through police training before, but I'm still afraid of police. Go figure. But given the news on police brutality or police misconduct or police mistakes, it's easy to wonder if you're all of a sudden a person of interest by accident.

I get tongue-twisted, shy, or small, and then I sometimes ramble. When I go home or cower somewhere in a corner, I nearly always tell myself that I made a fool of myself because of my fears of authority figures.

I want to do the chat thing. I forgot if it will be tonight for DocJohn, but I also get nervous. I admire DocJohn's posts on PC (the main website), but it's like meeting a celebrity. (Oh gosh, I wonder if he reads these things, LOL.)

Anyway, yeah. I get scared. We're all in this together.

I wonder if it has to do with our disability/mental illness statuses? Hmm...

I'm not sure that those with psychopathy or narcissism might struggle with this though, but then again, they aren't disabled; most of them, if in treatment, are struggling to taper down on their self-inflation, I think. So it can't just be mental illness. Hmm...

Why are we afraid of authority figures?