Talking To Myself
After some searching and trying to figure out where this would go, I decided this would be the best place for this. This (involuntary) behavior seems to relate most to my social anxiety:
Often, I will talk to myself in an angry voice and it only feels partly in my control. It's almost like a tic or contortion in how brief and forceful it is, and it is extremely mentally and physically jarring. It's like a spasm that involves obscene, hateful cursing to and at myself. When this happens, it causes an intense, brief tensing up of my whole body, like a fit of rage. This almost always happens when I am agonizing over a past social interaction, thinking about how I represented myself badly or embarrassed myself or felt judged by other people, and it's like this malevolent "critical voice" is waiting there to remind me that these mistakes happened and frequently I find myself verbalizing this voice to myself and I'm not sure why it happens. It's as if my negative internal voice forces its way to the surface. It scares me when I think back on it happening, but while it's happening, inside, I feel this cruel self-chastisement is correct. I always have had problems fixating on situations and experiences, but this angry muttering to myself only started happening in maybe the last 10 years. I have never seen a therapist or really told anyone about this before or any of my emotional problems.
Is this something anyone else has experienced, especially in relation to social anxiety? Thank you.
All of that is true. I do have very low self-esteem and self-worth; I know that must relate to why I do that. I suppose it makes sense that having bad feelings about myself affects how I interact with other people because I expect them to be thinking the same bad things about me that I think about myself. And maybe that really does change how people think about me because all the negative thoughts must affect how I carry myself and present myself. But I don't know how to stop thinking that way, stop this chain reaction.
@TheOvenBird. See what I do above for self-help but when you are in it, I still don't know how to immediately stop it. Takes time! It strikes like lightening doesn't it! It just happening less often for me so I will take that & keep working on it. Like Dr. Phil says (or close enough) it takes at least 10 "atta boys" or positive feedbacks to erase every negative thing you heard about yourself or thought about yourself.
Hi, @TheOvenbird, you're not alone with this! I've been having social anxiety for twelve years now, and I do this quite often (but it only started last year I think). Mostly when I'm using public transport, and usually dwell on social situations I think I messed up recently. I think things like "How can I act so awkward?" "Why don't I just ...?" I don't know efficient methods to stop it, distraction helps sometimes (start reading a book, playing on phone, etc), and sometimes I even say "SHUT UP!" in my head.