Ok so I had a looot of thoughts reading all this. Because I've gone through some of this experience myself. After years of observing these situations and experiences both inside myself and outside in the world, in my life, I came to some conclusions for myself. I will share some of them below in case it helps some.

Yeah, we won't be accepted for our true selves in most social situations. That's only for the inner circle, people who truly accept us. And that's actually ok, I mean why not be selective and enjoy the truly good relationships? And with others just enjoy the social interactions in the moment but not go deeper - is what I tell myself.

And yeah that's part of life's unfairness. Just how life is. I mean, having to rebuild ourselves from other people doing real bad sh**. But think of how it means you can build yourself up to be in a better place than ever. You will be more experienced, more aware of yourself, more aware of your true desires, your goals, visions, mission, and go for it all, all that.... Even if this world isn't perfect or totally perfectly fair and won't ever be.

I will be blunt....you don't have to agree. But I find, I've been to therapy for years, yeah, and I've read a lot of books, self-help, articles, whatnot, and I find those talk about the ideal, the perfect. The real world isn't like that.

There are even scientific experiments about how the Tit for Tat strategy works best for the prisoner's dilemma type of issues we often run into in the real world. You first act nice, your first move is fair and nice, but if the other person responds bad to it, not as nice, not as fair, .... then you immediately stop giving and don't give more than what they give.

Don't disclose anything personal to people you barely know. Let alone your weaknesses or flaws. Nothing can justify it, no vision of the perfect, moral, nice world can justify it. It doesn't make you a bad person either. You can let go of all obligation to be too fair, too nice, too giving.... You can let go of all the guilt that people in your past tried to shove onto you to make you act that nice and giving to them. This includes pacifying at your expense.... it's most decidedly not worth it in the long run. It will just make you anxious, depressed, stressed....open to more exploitation and selfish actions of others. Even if they are not even malicious people by nature, if you spoil them by giving too much, it's just going to be them getting used to it without even knowing what's going on, without it ever being intentional on their end.

BTW in the actual example, I wouldn't have said "Hey, don't project your kids diagnosis on to me, I'm just flakey". I wouldn't start psychoanalysing anyone without their permission or allow anyone else to do it to me either, or say negative things about myself ("flakey") or explain or justify myself saying "I'm just...", not even try to explain it like "I was just distracted".

You can just tell them it's not their business about analysing what you are like, and that you're not interested in their opinion of you. That they can keep their opinion to themselves. Simple as that.

And then focus on resolving the original issue, like if they needed you to do x, then ask them when they'd need x done, or whatever the whole issue was about. (Assuming you promised to do x. If you didn't promise, then it's not your problem at all)

Ah they don't even have to be cement thick all the time. Just don't get into drama and all those negative emotions basically or psychoanalysing it as "projection" and the like either. Because that's what I learned, therapy and all that psychoanalysing can't prepare anyone for engaging with the sh**ttier parts of the real world. You simply don't have to engage with it. You don't have to feel obligated to. You can value yourself higher than that.

Personal experience: I was actually OK with a lot of the cold, hard world until I was burnt about something (where I wasn't prepared for it), and then I tried out psychotherapy and all those books, articles, whatnot. What helped in all that was really just about going inside myself and understand stuff inside better and see more clearly about my direction, my life.... But none of it would prepare me directly for returning into the cold, hard real world stuff. None of it is meant for that. This is my own conclusions about therapy and psychology.

And that there, the freeze thing sounds like old trauma yes. I find that going through all the buried negative emotions about it helps. It helps go out there again without having to freeze so much. It's a very long process tho imo. Be patient with it. And part of that will be getting used to "fracas", conflict, all that again (I had to get used to it again myself in personal relationships. In business it was always easier for me and socially too, but close relationships wow no, not easy). The world and people out there just isn't always peaceful and it never will be all peaceful. Even in close relationships tbh. Even if those will have more of a sync between you and your partner than with most other people. Is what I meant earlier. But it's like, most of the conflict will not be blown up into extreme sh**, with most normal people. That's the good news. With most people, you can dare to go ahead and go through the conflict and find that it's actually fine.

Can't know what she really had in mind. Instead of all the psychoanalysis of both yourself and of her, get in touch with your gut instinct imo. The psychoanalysis is just a bunch of ungrounded theories that never end up fitting in reality because we never have enough information and don't even have enough understanding in psychology to have those theories really working.

I would again leave the theoretical psychoanalysis out of it and again just accept the reality and the moment as it is, even when it's a hard, cold reality. Yes, they do have the same flaws. Yes, a lot of people won't understand why you care, why you are sensitive about something. Most people won't have the time and the energy or even the capacity to try and understand how you are with it. Yes, some people will even try to reflexively attack if they are annoyed or even just tired or upset. But it's not about you, it's not actually personal. It's usually just interactions gone negative. Understanding others with cognitive empathy on this can really help.

And if someone's actually malicious (not the majority of people) then of course keep away from them.

There is science about this again. With social relationships, they are of course more superficial. But even in a close relationship, unless the partners both work on being more in tune, it's only about 10% of the time that the sync happens naturally between the partners. Because say, the other person is available for it naturally, spontaneously 30% of the time. Same true for you. (As a generality.) Then that means 30% of 30% is about 10% (less). Now it's probably even worse for a social interaction with someone who's not close with you.

Emotion regulation....I know DBT talks a lot about emotion regulation. I don't know if all that DBT stuff includes anything on how to avoid the paranoia of how malicious other people's intents may be. Trauma and even too much stresss can cause us to feel paranoid like that and easily lose trust and grounding in the world. But I would say one way to go through and past that is recognising all this for what it really is, it's paranoia, loss of trust, loss of groundedness, emotional flashbacks,.... That gives the chance for us to work through it and not have to be very sensitive and we can react less strongly eventually. As far as it as caused by trauma or stress, the sensitivity and reactions. Some of it is just personality traits like for HSP traits.

I'm not HSP so I wouldn't be able to understand that part fully. I also didn't have childhood abuse. I did have some bad experiences as a kid but no abuse at home. But I understand sensitivity and overemotionality after having gone through very bad experiences in close relationships or too much stress.

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Sorry I'm finding it hard to sum up my message in one short line. But I'll try. Accept the world and people for how they are, the good and the bad too, keep observing the situations without psychoanalysing and theories, and recognise your actual emotions behind that freeze and go through them, don't give up, keep going, and eventually you'll be okay.