Subconscious School Epiphany
Hi everyone. I don’t know if that’s a good title or not. Today I had this mini epiphany at the gym. I noticed this old guy who was going into the stretching area and another old guy was walking out of it. He was in a hurry and didn’t notice the first guy was trying to get his attention. I genuinely felt bad for him. I didn’t fully understand why until I started thinking about my nonexistent gym buddy circle.
I notice some people seem to have no problem being social at the gym. I’ve always assumed everyone was too busy or focused to talk so I never tried to talk to people there. I’ll be honest, I can only recall people talking to me like twice in my whole life at the gym. Once someone was asking if I was done with something and another time when I had really bad leg cramps and an old lady was expressing concern or whatever. However I also started thinking about school.
My time in school was pretty awful to be honest. I was bullied quite a bit. It definitely seemed like everyone was against me. It definitely affected my subconscious. I have reoccurring dreams about being back at school. I have those dreams so much that I actually look forward to a legit nightmare. Give me ghosts, monsters, demons anything, but being back at school lol. I think the biggest reason why I’m alone here is because of the energy I’m giving off all the time. Which is a type of avoidant energy I developed to survive school. I wish I knew how to stop it. Im tired of being lonely. It’s not just a gym thing, it’s a life thing.
Feel free to share your thoughts.
@faithfulCoconut848
Hi, glad you felt comfortable sharing. 💜 I guess the experience with the two old guys at the gym resonated because you had one person who wanted to make a connection but wasn't able to because the other person rushed past them and didn't notice their feelings.
Sorry to hear about school and the dreams. (I'd say that those school dreams sound like nightmares!) I guess that was a prolonged experience of being in a completely inhospitable space where nobody cared and you were isolated.
I wonder what that avoidant energy feels like from the inside. Is it more distrustful/vigilant (i.e. expecting bad things from other people and feeling tense around them)? Or more withdrawn/hopeless (i.e. "nobody's going to like me or care about me so there's no point in projecting energy/friendliness or trying to be noticed")?
Thanks for replying. The old guy scenario resonated because of me being ignored a lot. With them I know it wasn’t intentional but I’m my case it was. It still made me ponder though.
The avoidant energy is a symptom of living in an unhealthy environment for 12 years for 8 hours a day. I did learn about human nature quite a bit over the years, in an attempt to understand my experiences better. I’d say the avoidant energy is more distrustful and vigilant.
@faithfulCoconut848
That makes a lot of sense that people would be difficult to trust and feel very hostile after literally tens of thousands of hours of experience showing that to be the case.
Something that comes to mind in terms of making people a bit more safe is, I wonder if the "people are awful" has different versions/flavors, and some are worse than others. For example, based on different things you've described, I can kind of create a hierarchy:
1) The worst-case scenario would be a repetition of what happened at school (i.e. people actively bullying you)
2) Most of the people at the gym seem like they maybe fall into an indifference/busyness that still feels unpleasant/cold and probably triggers anxiety but is better than #1 (i.e. they're not going out of their way to target you; they're just preoccupied and not really caring about/noticing you)
3) And then I guess there'd be a special/rare kind of person who is friendly at the gym or maybe feels less threatening
That 2nd group feels really interesting, because I'm guessing around 95% of people would fall into that group. So if it were possible for that group to feel less threatening, that might have a noticeable impact.
With the old guy being ignored, you mentioned "With them I know it wasn’t intentional but in my case it was." Do you mean when you were growing up people ignored you on purpose--or while you're at the gym in the present people ignore you on purpose?