Generalising/personalising

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All my life I've had this problem but it's got worse with my social anxiety or maybe it was what caused it in the first place?

When I read things which don't actually apply to me but which are written to apply to me, or things I disagree with when I think about it, in that moment I internalise it. And if I'm at a low ebb 'that moment' isn't a moment, it's a long period of time.

I wish I knew how to stop doing that.

Examples will mostly make me sound like a bad person. But these beliefs are not things I think on any rational level, not thoughts that come from me, they actually kind of scare me cos often times they're opposed to my values.

And whenever that person knows I feel that way, I get told 'ooh hit a nerve I must be right'.

An innocent enough example is: when I was at school if kids in my class were naughty some of my teachers would say 'you are all guilty and will have to stay after school'. Even if I had nothing to do with it, I felt like my teacher had confirmed I was a bad child. Obviously only some of the kids in that class were naughty, not all of them.

What I want is to be able to put up boundaries between me and people I disagree with where my own thoughts/disagreements go.

It's like that in the army. If one person screws up, 50 people have to do 50 push-ups.

It's not fair that the entire class gets in trouble if one kid screws up.

Om Nom hugs

I don’t like this sort of thing at all....even if I “understand” it.

That might make sense if it's 2 kids in a family but doesn't make sense in a classroom of 31 kids.

It is possible the 31 kids do not all know what is going on with every single member especially if one of the kids is autistic. A class isn't a hive mind.

I don't think it's even great behaviour for you to impress on siblings. Maybe one of the kids is scared? Like I was? I wasn't going to pressurise kids I'm scared of.

In any case, this is only one example. The nicest one I can think of as to how my mind works because literally all the bigotry and assumptions in it are built up against 'the kids in this class' rather than for eg 'the Irish diaspora' or 'autistic people' or 'lgbt people'.

What I need to stop is having internalised bigotry just because I know the external bigotries exist. And stop taking people seriously if they speak in black and white terms about what 'everyone' should do or is - it is very hard to say somehting that everyone on the planet should do, shouldn't do is easier (nobody should be a murderer for eg), isn't is easier (no human has four legs) but 'is' and 'should be'? Those are the generalisations that stress me out.

It's like I need to stop internalising everything.

Trust myself & stop thinking everyone else is right, esp ppl who don't like entire groups of ppl and who don't personally know me.

But other people speak with such an authoritative tone.

Trump speaks with an authoritative tone, too....he caused a bunch of people to do a bunch of idiotic things.

Personally, if school taught me anything it was "if you mess up, don't get caught" and it caused a significant amount of anxiety. I remember accidentally breaking a binder folder and I was too scared to admit to it, so I put it back on the shelf. Someone else came along and opened the binder, which the teacher saw and she saw that it was broken so she yelled at that person. I felt some guilt for not admitting that it was actually me, but my mouth dried up and I just couldn't.

I learnt to hide my mistakes because being confronted scared the living daylights out of me. Granted, this was a trauma based fear based on the worry "what if my small mistakes cause someone to harm me or they lose their mind and it's my fault?" because I had some rough experiences early on. So I definitely worried about being a bad kid and I thought it was essentially something I was doomed to become or be. Which was definitely linked to my counsellor telling me that I was going to be a screw-up. The counselling just left me with bad anxiety about making mistakes and I had to relearn that it was OK to mess up and that it didn't make me a bad kid / bad person.

My internalising of remarks to either groups I am a part of, or groups I am not, tend to occur in the form of intrusive thoughts. Reasonably common, I've heard at least 30% of the population reports having intrusive thoughts. They used to bother me a lot, but I've learnt to deal with them. I acknowledge that they aren't what I truly believe, and sometimes mock the absurdity of them. Such as, seeing a mother and child and having an intrusive thought of "If I punched this mother her kid would probably cry", definitely not something I would actually do so I respond to myself "haha, as you do (sarcasm), intrusive thoughts are so strange" and continue on with my day. Likewise "Of course you'd mess up on this, you're *insert physical or emotional trait here*", "nah, I just messed up because of *reason* not because I'm *descriptor*". I find trying to block it out makes it worse, so I acknowledge it but don't let it rule over me. These thoughts can also be negative things about a group am I not a part of, but I don't actually believe.

Like I said, I “understand” it, but don’t like it.

No, it doesn't necessarily mean you have a mental illness---especially if you are able to "block" the intrusive thoughts and prevent them from interfering in your life.