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#1
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So I was recently fired from my job and since then I've struggled with making appropriate eye contact. I have social anxiety and right now I'm struggling to find a therapist but I was hoping someone in the community could help me.
I struggled with being socially awkward as a child and then I overcame it through practice and by making friends at University. My first interview out of college was four and a half hours long. I made appropriate eye contact, answered questions well, etc. I got the job which was a big confidence boost. However, now five years later after being fired I've struggled with maintaining eye contact with anyone except my boyfriend. I've lost all my self-confidence and I've been told I come off as both anxious and disengaged in conversations. I've had two interviews in the last week and was unable to maintain eye contact with my interviewers for longer than a few seconds which I know comes off as weird. I should mention some of that is as a result of the last weeks of my recent job where people commented I came off as creepy or aggressive (which I attributed to making what I thought was confident eye contact but maybe was too much eye contact). I worked at my previous employer for two years before being fired and I made friends and even had people over so it's not like I was creepy or aggressive before my departure. I don't know how to recover the mojo I had fresh out of college when I could come off as normal for a full four hour interview. Please tell me someone has some suggestions on ways to get my self-confidence back so that I can seem normal and maintain normal eye contact. I've searched the web high and low and haven't come up with anything that will help me specifically.
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------------------------------------------------------------ Medications: Prozac 20mg Vyalar 1mg No Longer Using Abilify 10mg (horrible akathisia) Celexa 30mg (no longer working) Lexapro 20mg (no longer working) Zyprexa 10 mg (extreme weight gain) Lamotrigine 50mg (no longer working) "I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday." - Lincoln "My past does not define me, it has enabled me to learn and grow into what I want to be tomorrow." -UNKN |
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#2
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"I've been told I come off as both anxious and disengaged in conversations." Wow whoever said that to you must not have cared how that makes you feel. Those types of comments can be extremely damaging to anyone's self esteem. Because even if that IS true, they should not have said that to you, they should have made YOU feel more comfortable while talking to them. If I'm having a conversation with anyone, and I sense they are feeling nervous, I won't say "GEE WHY ARE YOU FEELING NERVOUS" I will do my best to smile and make them feel at ease because I know how that feels.
Social anxiety, which I also have, is a fancy term for being shy. You might want to watch the youtube video "The DSM: Psychiatry's Deadliest Scam". Don't TRY to make eye contact. Do whatever feels NATURAL to you, this means not thinking about it at all. During an interview, mimick their eye contact, maybe for 5 seconds, if they look at you and look down at the paper, then look at their paper as well. But other than that, thinking about maintaining eye contact will just get exhausting and you don't need to do that. Tell yourself there's nothing wrong with you. Because I'm sure you've spent a great deal of time telling yourself that there is something wrong with you. Our perception of ourselves can have a great impact on us. The good news is that our perception of ourselves can be easily changed. Go into these interviews telling yourself, "There is nothing wrong with me. There's a lot of things right with me. I am an asset to any company. They are lucky to have me. I am intelligent. I get things done. People like me. My boyfriend likes me. I like me. I've been hired before so people have seen my potential. The interviewer will like me." "I don't know how to recover the mojo I had fresh out of college when I could come off as normal" - That's because you had a different self-talk, inner dialogue going on. It's that simple. One or two comments that careless people made, made you "lose" that mojo, but their opinions don't matter, only yours does. Theirs don't matter because they had no idea what was going on in your life and they didn't realize the effect their careless comments would have on you. I'm sure they're creepy in their own way too - they're creepy for calling you creepy and not having the human decency to ask how you were feeling. I would never go up to someone and be like, "Stop staring at me, you're creepy." I would feel utterly embarrassed if I ever said that to someone, even if they were staring. Inner self talk is the only way we can boost our confidence. I was called weird in high school and it demolished my confidence. I started acting very awkward after that. It was because I let one single comment made by a girl in my class who was jealous of me because I was dating the guy she liked, and I let that comment ruin me for years. Don't give away your power to other people.
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"Re-examine all you have been told, dismiss what insults your soul." - Walt Whitman "Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence." - Christopher Hitchens "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience." - Mark Twain |
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