Coping with social anxiety moments

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So I still fairly frequently get moments where I feel like I may have made a misstep socially and come across as rude, arrogant, harsh, awkward, strange, annoying, etc. All of the negative words that used to be used to describe me when in truth I know that I'm a good person and I really don't mean to come across those horrible ways. But yeah, I get those paralyzing moments where it just feels like I'm being spun around and pushed down. And I just have the need to rock or squeeze my head with my hands or bite my knuckles while it just feels like thoughts and negative feelings are coursing through me-- "you're so stupid", "you f***ed up AGAIN", "this is why people don't like you", etc.
It's so overwhelming and I just have to stim and wait for them to subside so that I can resume functioning. And sometimes I have multiple of those moments in a row. I recover for a minute or two just to go back into another one. I just get so worried that I missed the social mark AGAIN and now people really dislike me and think I'm a freak. Again.
Have you found a good way to cope with those moments? They just feel crippling and do nothing to help my anxiety in the first place. I don't show that I'm having them in front of people-- I refrain from stimming until I go over the recap a bunch of times in my head later on.
But yeah. Any ways to circumvent them or talk yourself out of them quickly?

I will do my best to offer advice but I am going through this myself and am coping only partially with it all. What I do when I start to feel like this is, whatever I am doing, I take a minute out and tell myself constantly that I haven't made a misstep or, if I know I have, tell myself that whatever that mistake was I will be forgiven for it by whoever that mistake was made against or in the company of. I then return back to what I am doing and, if it comes back again, I repeat the whole process.

If the feelings have set in as they do in some situations for me, I revert to my coping strategies. If I get these in school, I will ask the teacher if I can either take a five minute break to stim or do whatever I need to outside to reset my mind or if I can listen to music. Music is underestimated in its ability to self reset people who get into states and, depending on your music tastes, having a playlist that you only listen to when stressed or having these feelings is a good idea.

As I mentioned at the start though, I am going through this myself and only coping to some extent with it all but if these methods help then great.

SRT

Hi Bearsandsyrup,

Seems to me that your beating yourself up, really punching your self esteem. Forgive yourself your mistakes. Learn what you can from it and move on. I have those moments where I F**K up again and again, I used only have a negative inner dialogue about them... Feuled by a lifetime of hearing about my mistakes. Im kinder to myself now, I follow the event with a more rational positive pep talk and I place less emphasis on my mistakes.

Try not to be so harsh on yourself. Everyone f***s up from time to time.

Just keep moving forwards.

i am always the boss of my world.

Sounds like you are getting too hard on yourself. Unfortunately, when you do beat yourself up over these things, another person can very easily take advantage of this and possibly induce more guilt in you.

My psychologist says that same thing to me-- that I'm too critical of myself. It's difficult because I've come to accept most things about myself, but there are still particular traits that I just want to drop and stop doing. A tendency to talk over people, a tendency to come off as arrogant, things like that. I'm happy having esoteric interests, being largely introverted, even being very direct and having less of a filter.

But I still get so angry with myself when I slip up and fall back into an old bad habit. I hate it. I always feel like I'm losing my progress and just going to end up where I started, depressed and alone. And rationally, I know that's not realistic-- I'm married and the incidence of those negative traits appearing is much less than it used to be.

It's just that I know those things are what drove people away from me for years and I've largely learned to control and minimize them. So when I don't stay vigilant about it or I get too excited and my guard slips, they all come back out. Because they're still there, despite my best efforts. I just want them to fix and not be a problem anymore.

I mean, the fact that I can't see how I come across to people and read their reactions very well-- I have read all sorts of studies on workplace dynamics and personality interactions, I've relentlessly studied other people's interactions around me to be able to simulate them, etc. But I still can't get those weaknesses to completely go away and it's just...ugh. I hate it and I hate it in myself.

Sweet Pea hugs