Do you know the feeling of ambivalence?
Watching your friend getting married while you long for a partner too. That conflicting emotion is the feeling of ambivalence. Two opposing feelings that occupy you at the same time.
Wanting to be loved but scared of people at the same time. That’s another set of conflicting emotions. We want to understand why we are feeling this way, but we don’t want to stay in the feeling of ambivalence for too long.
The constant feeling of two opposite emotions inside us will drive us towards not wanting to feel anything at all and suppressing all emotions altogether.
Wanting To Be With People
It’s very normal to want to be with other people because we all need human contact. As people, we are built for community. We need to be in the community to be emotionally healthy.
I don’t have to tell you that one of the worst pains is the pain of exclusion.
From when we are little, it’s painful to not being able to play as part of the group on the playground. We might tell ourselves that we don’t need them, but deep down part of us still really wants to be loved & accepted as one of the members of the group.
We want to be apart of a community, and we need it. This leads to the pain of loneliness. If you have seen movies of people trapped on an island or a remote place, the hardest part for them is not having anyone to talk to.
Functionally, if we didn’t need people, we can just live by ourselves and feel just fine, but the feeling of loneliness drives us insane. That’s since we’re not wired that way.
It is normal to acknowledge the desire for community.
Wanting To Be Alone
The next part is wanting to be alone. Personally, I feel like it’s fine to want to be alone sometimes. Where it becomes a problem is when it interferes with our desire for community. If we want to be alone because we are afraid of social pressure, that’s a problem.
Being scared of other people and them judging us for every move that we make. That’s a problem. If we are at a point where we don’t like ourselves, we won’t expect others to like us either.
In fact, if we know and like who we are as a person, social pressure wouldn’t affect us as much. If we don’t like our own opinions, we won’t share them with others. We’ll feel boring or dull. That will probably make us think that we are not a fun person to be around and people actually don’t want to hang out with us.
This fear of judgment drives us to take a break in the restroom.
This anxiety makes us want to leave the party a little earlier.
Our self-esteem rises and falls with how others think.
Hm…yeah, not a good place to be.
This is why you probably have both of these feelings at the same time. You don’t want to remain in this position for a long time. You’re probably reading this because you want to find a solution.
The problem is you need to learn how to be emotionally independent from others. If you know how to handle social pressure, you will be able to become part of the community when you want to and be by yourself when you want to. social pressure isn’t bad. You need to learn how to manage your emotions.
You need a decent amount of pressure to pick up a piece of cake. Too much pressure and you’ll squish the cake. The solution is never to eliminate social pressure, it’s to learn how to handle it, because it’s built into every social community.
First Step -
What scares you most about social situations?
- Augustus
Losing Interests, Losing Relationships [Free PDF]
- Understanding the 5 CAUSES for an emotional wall between you and everyone else.