8:37am September 4, 2014

“tI cured myself of shyness when it finally occurred to me that people didn’t think about me half as much as I gave them credit for. The truth was, nobody gave a damn. Like most teenagers, I was far too self-centered. When I stopped being prisoner to what I worried was others’ opinions of me, I became more confident and free.”

—

Lucille Ball (via kather0ut)

Agh! Yes

(via gardennnia)

When I do that people make it clear that they DO care.

what if you’ve had people specifically say ‘you need to worry about what other people think of you’ as a form of social-skills training (either formal or not)? for example that was one of the things our grandmother went on and on about to us. (she’s not that bad as bio-family members go, but she had her moments.)

~H.

(via plures)

This is what I thought when I saw this. Every time I forgot I was being watched in public spaces people reminded me by laughing at me or mocking me. I’m shy as a direct result of that. I’m not imagining that people care about how I act or look.

(via lichgem)

Yep. I do think people think more about themselves than about me, in general. But when I happen to be present, then yes, they are often thinking about me, and they often say and do nasty enough things to make it clear that they’re thinking rather too much about me.

It actually bothers me the degree to which some people think about me. Take my stalkers, for instance. I spend very little of my life thinking about them, because like most people, I don’t spend a lot of time being obsessively nasty about people I haven’t talked to for my entire adult life or seen at all since I was 15. But they sure do think about me, to the point where I’ve had them do things like email my webmaster 2 minutes after I put up my first webpage, demanding that I take it down. And other things that make it clear they’re putting way too much effort into thinking of me.

Luckily, I lack whatever it takes to notice I’m being stared at in public, unless someone else is pushing me in a wheelchair (in which case I have enough brainpower to notice things like that). So I only notice if people start trying to interact with me directly, or make loud remarks about me.

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