[kitten16]

I have avoidant personality and generalized anxiety and a lot of other things. My self-esteem has always been low, but lately I've been seeing a T and making some progress on my own as well. I've taken up some new projects and forced myself to interact with people, both work-wise and socially, and am stretching myself in all kinds of ways.

So, being out there more, naturally I'm exposing myself to more risks. And the other night something happened that really got me down. A friend from work invited my husband and I to a comedy club. The two comics we saw were both great. As we were leaving, I saw that one of them was standing near the wall, waiting to greet people who felt like saying hi. At first I didn't want to talk to him, but I worked up some courage and we walked over and had a chat. We bought one of his cds, and he signed it in a funny way and it was all good.

Then I noticed that lurking behind him was the other comic we'd seen. He'd been hilarious, too, and I said hi and asked if he was selling any cds. He stared at me and said no. I said, "What about those tee shirts?" He'd used them as as a prop in one of his bits. "That was a joke," he said. I still wasn't getting it, I guess, and I was a little lit, so I kept trying to draw him out. "They were beautiful," I said, and gave him a big smile. He just looked at me like I was the biggest piece of drek on a stick he'd ever seen. We finally left, and it took a while to sink in that the guy had just been incredibly rude.

It was a minor event -- I mean I didn't need anything from that guy, don't work with him, he's not related to me, I don't need his approval, etc. etc. But I just couldn't shake how awful that interchange made me feel. Even remembering how sweet and gracious the first comic had been didn't jog me out of my funk. Actually I'm still bummed about it today, and this happened Friday night...

I guess my question (if there is one in all of this) is -- why am I so affected by people who don't matter to me? My husband loves me, my mother-in-law thinks I'm the best thing ever, they love me at work. Why doesn't this stuff weigh heavier in the balance?

For me self-esteem has always seemed like it's not really about external validation. Good things can happen to me, and I can look at certain of my accomplishments, and it's like they don't matter. I feel like crap most of the time. And there are times when I feel good, even in the midst of failure. Self-esteem always feels like something apart -- I missed out on it early on, so it's just not really available, no matter how much approval I can garner. And fresh rejections continue to sting...

[Perna]

Self esteem is not about the outside at all; it's about your relationship to you inside, all the time. Are you good friends with yourself? Do you see what your husband and mother-in-law see in you? That's the kind of thing that makes up self-esteem, being able to see, not that good things happen TO you, but YOU, yourself, the good and bad and all the other facets of your wonderful self.

When I read your simple story of what happened, I didn't see the second comic as rude, I saw him as perhaps jealous of the ease/manner the first comic had and of YOU for seemingly being able to chat with people easily. It's my understanding that lots of stand up comics have more than their share of personal problems :-) and/or rejection (it's very hard to succeed in that field) and I would feel badly for your second guy, that he might be feeling bad about himself (or thinking YOU did!).

But what other people are feeling about themselves OR you is not something you can do anything about or really care about, it's what you feel about yourself and what you are doing and thinking and feeling. Turn your negative feelings into "pity parties" and carry them to extreme; go to a joke/magician's store and get some rubber crap and slam it down on the table with a loud, "I feel like crap!" when you do :-) Our feelings are to inform us about ourselves and kind of steer us.

If you are afraid, you look at why and try to "fix" what is scary to you. When my husband use to go away on business trips overnight, I'd have trouble sleeping, sure that bad guys were going to break in and rob, murder, pillage and burn :-) For several years I struggled with going to sleep around 3-4 a.m. (after they had gone home and it was "safe" to sleep I guess) and took the next day off work or went in tired, etc. But I finally realized that if I kept the lights on in the living room and make it "look" like my husband was just up later than I was, reading, working on his computer, or watching TV, I felt better and could fall asleep because it was more like it "normally" was for me.

Look at your feelings seriously and see what's "really" there. Mine mostly come down to anxiety and feelings of helplessness (my mother died when I was 3). So when I have a feeling that doesn't seem to "fit" a situation, I look at what it really is about. My husband being away was what I was having trouble with, not the robbers and murderers. I worked to make myself feel better, more comfy and secure and did it myself. When I get road rage, not something I normally get, I look and see what is making me anxious. I don't like feeling anxious or helpless and get "angry" instead so when I catch myself being unreasonably angry or antagonistic, I look to see what I've "lost" or feel helpless about.

When you were talking to these guys you were "alone" in that you decided to talk to the first comic and approached him yourself, your husband didn't go up and you with him, following? I suspect you feel insecure in yourself, unsure that you'll say the "right" things or get a response you can handle, etc. (that is what I am like). If your husband or a friend had been with you, you might have said when you turned away, "how rude!" but you don't trust yourself and your own opinion enough to accept that how YOU feel is valid! You felt he was rude but you want the "world" to have a standard of this is rude/this is not, only it doesn't work that way.

Get to know yourself and what you like and don't like, what you believe and feel and that all of that is okay, it's "You". My favorite movie for that is Julia Robers in "Runaway Bride". The "egg scene" is what you have to do!

[kitten16]

Thanks Perna, you always make so much sense! I appreciate the additional insight into your own experiences too.

You're so right that strong emotions are so often about something other than the surface trigger...it's always a deeper thing. I have huge rejection issues, which my T is helping me see go back as early as infancy, when I was adopted. I always picture myself being punted like a football from my birth mother and sailing toward my (incompetent and selfish) adoptive parents, who tried to catch me but pretty much dropped me on my @ss...I survived, but not undamaged.

I think you can experience things in utero too. My mother was very young and she must have been full of anxiety, knowing she was going to give me up. I must have felt something, internalized those vibrations somehow...

Lots of work to do. Anyway, thanks for the reminder that this is all about me and the deeper issues, not so much what someone else said or didn't say to me on a particular recent night.