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As far as I can recall, throughout primary school and secondary school, I constantly worried. My second class primary school teacher once told my parents in a meeting that I was a “worrier”.
Everyone worries sometimes. There will be parts of everyone’s life where they will be nervous or worried to an extreme extent. However, this behaviour of being a “worrier” as a child grew with me.
I found myself in secondary school spending hours and hours crying to my parents because someone I valued seemed a little off with me, a text message I received had a weird tone or that I simply made a mistake, and I couldn’t get over it. The constant need to make sure everyone was happy with me and that I was doing everything right all the time chipped away at me. To someone observing me from the outside, I was an extremely outgoing and sociable person who was always out doing something, had endless amounts of friends, and was doing fine in school. However, inside, I was suffering, and I didn’t even know it.
Throughout secondary school and college, I didn’t give my own self a minute to breathe. As I changed as a person and began to find myself as an adult, I held onto this constant worry that I was upsetting people. I made it my business to make sure I was giving 100% to everyone around me. This caused me to go into overdrive with socialising.
Anywhere I was invited, I was there. I was partying probably 3 times a week in college, meeting people for coffees every chance I had and I was definitely doing something every single weekend. I never sat down and had “me time”, and on the off chance that I did, I was planning who I was meeting next.
A lot of people may not see over-socialising as a major, first-hand problem, but it took over my life to the point where I didn’t really exist for myself anymore; I was existing for everyone else. I had nothing that brought me true joy that didn’t involve another person. I couldn’t be left by myself, with myself.
What I learned through seeing a fantastic counsellor for nearly 3 years now, and from the advice of many friends and family around me who noticed my patterns, is that I will make mistakes, say the wrong thing and leave people down for the rest of my life. Everyone will. The change I had to make was accepting all of my flaws and learning that the person I should care about the most in my life is myself.
I’m still working to accept that and I probably will be for many years to come. However, I try to take time to do things for myself now. Instead of worrying for hours and hours about everyone around me, I stop myself and remember that I should be making sure that I’m feeling okay and if I’m not, I try to take steps towards making myself happy.
Loving yourself for who you are isn’t selfish. You will be with yourself for the rest of your life, so you may as well be best friends.
