Quote Originally Posted by Kamangir
I'm not a psychologist, but I understand exactly how you feel about caring a lot about how other people perceive you.

What has helped me tremendously is knowing not everyone is paying attention to everything I am doing, and I just try to act how God made me, without putting up a false face or acting like someone I am not.
I've only very recently started to believe the bolded part. When I could basically say "That guy over there... he doesn't care about what you look like. He doesn't care. Look, look, he's not even looking this way. He doesn't care." And so, slowly... very slowly, it starts to sink in. Basically when LSE's and LIE's verbally remind me. But you're right, that does help tremendously.

And if there's anything that I would be relieved of through eventually getting through it it's not feeling so... fake? when I feel like I'm being something that I'm not when I do stuff like this. Ugh... I can't really put into words at the moment what that turmoil feels like internally. It just doesn't feel good knowing that I'm basically putting up a facade instead of just being me.

But, baby steps. It's progress.