So, 28M here.
To try to make it short: the thing is that during my puberty and early teens, I was a very shy guy (almost social anxiety), which made me feel isolated and left out during those days. So I was “in my world” the vast majority of the time (PC, games, drawing, etc).
Now, things have changed A LOT — I’m now much more social and very friendly.
So, the problem? I made a lot of mistakes around the people I love (friends): saying hurtful comments, expressing signs of affection in a bad way (like kindly slapping someone’s face, for example), being very touchy, and so on.
Friends got very angry in some cases and some of them didn’t want to talk to me for a certain period of time.
To add a little bit of context, I was in a psych ward more than 10 years ago because some of this happened back then too, and I was tired of making the same mistake over and over again (there were other factors involved in my hospitalization as well). I wanted to end it all.
So now, I’ve learned a lot from that past… but I’m scared of myself today. I can’t let go of the “over and over again” in my mind, because those mistakes were unintentional.
The fear of offending people, being a burden, or making people angry is what causes me to have anticipatory anxiety when I’m going to meet a friend or, in the case of sending a message, if I said something hurtful or annoying, I can’t stop thinking about it until my friend texts me to make sure everything is okay.
If something like that happens, I can tell you my heartbeat increases like crazy, I can’t stop crying, I keep checking the chat to see if the friend I annoyed sends me a message, etc.
It feels like some kind of trauma from my past mistakes.
I don’t know if this is the right sub, but I wanted to vent a little bit and see what kind of therapy might be better for my case.
Thank you!