Please be gentle with me. I wanted to post this from a throwaway but it’s late and I’m exhausted. I am genuinely curious to know if I’m a bad person, being overly sensitive, or am just cursed over all. Yes I’m seeing a therapist, but it’s hard to take what someone paid to listen to you has to say sometimes. So here’s a quick timeline of interactions that have been weighing on my mind.
2015 coworker:
Was demeaning towards me and very angry about a comment I made lightly about how we had fun at her party when her dad got tipsy.
It was never meant to be an insult. She later told me no one at work likes me. It wasn’t 100% true but I quit immediately after that
2020 former coworker/friend
Fought about Covid shot (relatable I’m sure)
2022 road rage incident when I honked my horn at someone blocking the intersection. He punched my windshield.
2024 former coworker/friend
Was racist and would threaten violence on people with different ideologies. Eventuality turned that on me for not picking a side in the Israeli war. (I picked a side 🍉but I don’t like to talk politics unless forced to)
2024 friend through mutuals
I Damaged our friendship by disappointing her by being late and using a microdose to cope with anxiety. Ended up having a panic attack anyway and leaving early.
2024 neighbour told me my daughter wasn’t allowed over anymore because my child preferred to play with her son and wasn’t kind enough to her daughter as a result. Boundaries are healthy.
2024 got told by family I was helping out with dangerous chore, it was difficult and the tools were in antiquated for the task they said they would “get someone skinnier” to help them instead resulting in me over extending myself and getting hurt
By this time all of these events in 2024 happened in a very compact amount of time. I had an episode of what’s been described as “rejection sensitivity dysphoria” I had to quit taking antidepressants to cope with reality better as I because very confused about my existence and identity for about a month while recovering from a dislocated shoulder.
2024 neighbour walking their dog swore at me repeatedly while kicking at my dog after he had escaped when his collar slipped off he was 1 year old at the time. The man refused to slow down because I was injured (due to the fall listed earlier
) and said “not my ******* problem”.
2025 massive blow out when my young daughter was ditched at a movie theatre. We had to leave as a result. The Woman also said to my daughter “not my problem” 4 adult and several children involved. It was the result of poor communication between the parents involved, but my child’s friend literally got a ride with us and then left to sit with other kids excluding mine entirely. It is a nightmare I have been reliving since it happened and I haven’t been able to sleep since. I didn’t handle the situation as well as I wanted to.
Is this a Normal amount of insanity to have happen? Am I being too sensitive? Again please be gentle, I’m really struggling with my identity right now.
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Can you explain how these incidents are causing you to doubt your ‘identity’?
It’s a lot, but within normal range. Looking at your timeline suggests that you just happened to have had a really shitty year. Of course you’re reeling! But it doesn’t mean anything about you as a person, it’s just that sometimes events bunch up together. That’s where sayings like “when it rains, it pours” come from.
Try reading through your list again, but imagine that this is a friend telling you that this happened to them. How would you react?
This is normal and it’s not you. It’s just how people are. You’ve come across some rude strangers, so upsets with friends and acquaintances, it’s so frustratingly normal to have these kinds of run ins.
Although, idk how normal it is elsewhere to have road rage resulting in property damage – that one hasn’t happened to me but my country doesn’t do road rage as intensely as some other places.
Yes this is pretty normal. I’m sorry. Sometimes life can be really hard.
So this is a decade of upset you’re listing.
What positive things have happened to you in this decade? Can you recall every good thing that people have said? The time a stranger held the elevator, the time a friend said you looked nice, the time someone let you go in front of you at the store because you only had one thing?
It can be hard to focus on or notice the positive and even harder to remember it.
But there’s no such thing as being “cursed”. It simply sounds like you’ve been a bit rude or mean to people (sometimes deliberately, sometimes not) and likewise people have been a bit rude or mean to you (sometimes deliberately, sometimes not). This is what being in a society surrounded by people is.
Look at 2015. A decade ago, you said something to a coworker and they thought you were making fun of their dad. So they said something mean back and you quit. What would you say to someone who told you that story just like that? Do you think the coworker is still dwelling on it a decade later?
Look at 2020. Five years ago you and someone you know had a vax / antivax argument. Well… you and the rest of the world! What would you say if someone came up to you and said “I had a vax / antivax argument with someone who was a friend… now we are not friends, am I cursed?”
In 2022 you beeped your horn at someone. Let’s face it, you didn’t need to. But you did, and they responded by punching your windscreen. Did one justify the other? No. But who knows what was happening in the life of the person you beeped at? It’s easy for us to think that people should make allowances for us… without doing it for others. Congratulations- you met someone who was either horrible, or having a horrible day. Does it need to living in your head three years later?
2024 – someone who wasn’t nice to anyone wasn’t nice to you. Would it be a bit weird if the violent racist was horrible to everyone else but not to you? It can be hard to walk away from a conversation and I don’t know if it was possible to do that here. Perhaps your therapist can help if walking away or resisting pressure to get involved in things you don’t want to is hard for you.
And then in 2024 you upset someone you weren’t really friends with by talking drugs before meeting them. Yes you can justify it here but can you see how it may have been upsetting for them? Much depends on what you were doing, I suppose… but okay, so what? You didn’t understand her and she didn’t understand you. That’s often what happens in human interactions.
Then a parent wasn’t nice to your daughter. Or your daughter wasn’t nice to her daughter. Would you want a child in your house who wasn’t nice to your daughter? Or maybe your daughter was fine, and this parent is just horrible? We don’t know, and all we can say is – just like you did – boundaries are healthy. You don’t have to have someone disrupting your family in your house, and neither did she.
And your family needled you about your size – when really you feel it was that they wanted you to use tools that were inappropriate – and you decided to do it anyway and hurt yourself. Well, I don’t think there is a person in the world who hasn’t thought “right, I’ll do it myself and show you!” … and then hurt themselves as a result. Whether it’s pushing a car, walking a dog or moving the shopping, we’ve all done this! Welcome to the wonderful world of shooting ourselves in the foot.
RSD is not a formally recognised condition but it sounds like you felt a bit weepy and sensitive after a bit of a crummy year while you were also in physical pain. Not a curse, not a bad person, just a normal reaction to a bad time and physical pain. It doesn’t need to make you doubt your identity but it can make you decide that you’re going to need to consider how you react and interact with people.
Someone kicking your dog is out of line – although there isn’t much detail here. I own dogs and if a loose dog came running up to one of mine and I was scared it might attack mine – or vice versa – I might try and kick it away to protect both dogs. Either way, this person was under no obligation to “slow down” – it’s not a rejection.
I don’t follow what happened with the “blow out” – but parents arguing amongst themselves over outings has been a thing since… forever. And again, you don’t know what’s been going on in their heads and their lives.
It’s easy to think everything is about us because we’re there. But often it’s not at all.
Just an off the cuff comment and it’s hard to judge when I don’t know you personally but you need to back yourself. It sounds like you are a really lovely person with good morals and ethics and having anxiety is not a weakness it can also be a superpower. Meaning you are empathetic and compassionate.
Step into your power girlfriend honestly. Assholes aren’t losing sleep over you because maybe they view you as weak? When you step into your power you earn more respect. That is not to say you have to be confrontational or aggressive but stand true in who you are and celebrate all the positive things about you and don’t give anyone’s rude comments a second thought. assertively let people know if they wrong you but don’t take it personally. If you align yourself with your true self and are unapologetic people WILL dislike you but the strength of the genuine connections you will build will give you so much strength that the other dickheads won’t bother you.
The two experiences that I would find it hard to accept were a colleague saying that no one likes you and the encounter with the friend ditching your daughter at the cinema. If you think to yourself – thags not acceptable and I’m not accepting it and stand in your power then people will get the vibe.
It is normal to have shit encounters in your life. Not often but once every now and then but I think you need to move on and forget it. Try and move with positivity and gratitude and strength. You can also ask the universe to guide you towards safe people who will love you and fill your cup.
I think its probably below normal amount, spread out as far as it is it isn’t very much at all. You seem to really dwell on things.
We all have bad encounters with people once in a while. The best thing to do is just forget about it and move on. It sounds like you’re just overthinking about these things for years while the other person probably forgot all about the incident that same day. There are very few bad encounters with people I still remember. I just live in the moment.
I think that these incidents are mostly a normal amount of bullshit that everyone deals with – sometimes you just get a bad run. Also important to remember that you experience each of the incidents through the lens of depression and maybe anxiety. That heightens the emotions involved.
The year before I was diagnosed with both depression and anxiety disorders, I felt cursed, like bad shit with people just kept happening. After I got on meds I had about 2 months straight of just everything rolling off me like water off a duck’s back: eg our washing machine flooded the kitchen and I was so chill about it, like “well this sucks but it’s done, now I just gotta clean it up”, when 8 weeks before I would’ve been having a full on meltdown. Unfortunately that peaceful streak didn’t last but also it didn’t go back to being nearly as bad as before.
RSD is so rough – my husband deals with it and it can be debilitating. There is medication that can help, and therapy would be ideal but if that’s not available to you right now, even something really simple like a gratitude journal and using a mindfulness/meditation app might give you at least a little bit of relief.
There’s an old saying if you meet a jerk then you’ve met a jerk, but if everyone you meet all day is a jerk then you’re the jerk. You seem to be stuck in the place in-between where you feel like you are meeting an above average number of jerks to the point where you’re wondering if you’re the jerk.
The problem you’ve described has a definite pattern, in that the frequency of jerk encounters is increasing. The part of the formula that you seemed to have overlooked is that our society has been under increasing pressures from political division, financial trouble from end-stage capitalism, and the conflicts between the wholly incompatible vertical vs horizontal systems of morality.
As a society we are coming apart at the seams. This is dialing up the insanity to unsustainable levels. It will probably get worse before it gets better, but what keeps me going is knowing the crazier it gets the closer we are to things getting better. I also try not to take it personally that other people aren’t dealing well with the fact that most of what they’ve been taught about how life works was a mix of misinformation and outright lies.
I also make a conscious effort to show a little extra grace, and not escalate situations.
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October 2024 my sister died. I wanted to die. I was so fucking miserable.
A month later I was at a concert, seeing all of my friends in a circle chanting the chorus, a couple next to me hugging and dancing, and some high schoolers screaming and recording the main singer. All I could think of is how beautiful life is, even between the shitty things.
Life fucking sucks. Earth and humans suck. It’s full of awful, dehumanizing things that occur naturally or by the hand of man.
But it’s also full of so many beautiful moments… strangers smiling at another, a parent watching their baby take their first steps, watching a community come together after a storm to rebuild homes, the sunset on a beach… it’s so beautiful.
These events you listed happened within a decade, instead of focusing on minor negative details every once in a while fill in the gap on that timeline with the positive things you’ve seen or been involved in.
Our brains like to try and blame bad things on ourselves. It’s a defensive move. If it’s our fault, we are in control. We can change whatever it is that attracts these people to us. But that’s not reality. There’s not something we are doing that makes people be dicks to us. Some people are just dicks.
What does stand out to me, and I think stood out to others, is this idea of keeping score with the world and noting every slight against you. I’d strongly recommend engaging with a therapist to see what coping mechanism you can learn to make this not all feel so big and to learn to let stuff go. It’s hard. Things definitely build up and stick with me. And therapy hasn’t gotten rid of that. But it helps. I’m less angry at the world and I’ve learned to let go of things. I don’t feel the need to react to everything or keep score. That’s a thing that happened and now it’s over.
Seems pretty normal to me. Give yourself some leniency. You can’t get along with all the people all of the time. I’m sorry you were insulted and injured. I honked at a bad driver one time, and he lifted up a gun and pointed it at me. I never honked at anyone again in that state!
Well, I’ve never had someone punch my window but I did have someone threaten to kill me because the video they wanted to buy was out of stock.
My point is that I think most people have a lot of stuff that happens to them. I mean…imagine there is a certain amount of weird things that happen in the world everyday. Why shouldn’t one of them happen to you? The difference is that you are ruminating on them and taking them as being a portent of some larger thing. When it is just life. You are going to have good days and bad days.
I think it helps if you assume other people are not doing things maliciously. Imagine you are the other person in these situations if it helps. Take your former co-worker. Imagine your father is an alcoholic and told you that he wasn’t going to drink at your party, and then he does and someone talks about it. You assume they are mocking you (they aren’t, but this is a sensitive area for you) and so you tell them nobody likes them.
From their perspective you were teasing them about their father’s alcoholism. From your perspective they were attacking you for no reason. In reality you were just miscommunicating and brought certain assumptions into the conversation that didn’t actually exist. Which, by the way, is NORMAL. This is the struggle of just being human and interacting with other humans who all have things going on with them that other people don’t know. In the same way that the dog owner doesn’t know that you have rejection sensitivity or all your struggles, you don’t know what that dog owner was going through that day. Maybe they just found out their dog has cancer. Maybe they were attacked by a dog as a child and get scared by any dog off leash. If you assume everyone around you is going through the same stuff you are it becomes easier to brush off these conflicts and see that it isn’t the world attacking you. It’s just a lot of people all going through a lot of stuff and all trying the best they can.
I’m not quite sure how to answer this in some ways. I do think you’re the problem, but not that you’re a bad person. Just that you are very sensitive to these things and your brain has gotten used to the fact that you accept that you’re always wrong. The first incident you did and I will admit I didn’t read all of them. You made a light offhand comment that okay may have been unadvisable but certainly that person immediately went into defensive mode and the result was you quit. You ran away. They said nobody liked you and everybody wished you’d quit and although you were sure it wasn’t true, you quit. Anyway, you immediately tucked your tail between your legs and ran away. I have a feeling you’ve always done that in your heart and in your mind. You have become everybody’s victim and everybody’s punching bag and it’s going to take effort to get out of that mindset. You have to start concentrating on the good things that happen and I don’t mean saying well. Nobody told me I was a horrible person. Today is not a good thing, although it’s good it doesn’t count as good I’m talking about. I was at the store and I was going out and I held the door open for the next person coming in and they actually said thank you. Now that’s a good thing.
I can’t cite textbook but I can tell you I watch quite a bit of TV and I do pay attention to whether something is researched well or not. Certain shows because they talk about things that are very common to a certain extent, but the deal with human psychology very often have people on staff with the writers who know the difference. Who know this identifying factors and things like that? And one of the ones that has been very careful on research tends to be law and order and I’ve gone in and I’ve done so admittedly minimal internet research on a few of the things that they’ve said and found that they are pretty dead on with things
So I’m going to use an example from one of their shows and I can’t even tell you which one anymore. It’s been a few years since I watched it. They had a woman who had been a victim of sexual assault and a couple years later it happened again and the psychologist psychiatrist that was on staff for the police and the district attorneys. I said to her. Unfortunately there are people out there who recognize someone who has been a victim and are able to play on that to make them a victim again. And I actually saw another episode of one of the law& orders and I won’t swear which one it may have been SVU because it was another case involving a sexual assault in this time it was a child who had been molested being molested by a totally different person several years later. And again, it’s the fact that something traumatic like that leaves an imprint in your mind and your brain and your personality. And there are people out of there that are smart enough to pick up on these invisible cues the small things and know how to take advantage of it. Know that there is a weakness in you somewhere
I’m pointing this out because whatever has caused you to look back and view all of this. You may actually need to go to counselor and sat down with that list you gave and how you feel about it and maybe learn some strategies to protect yourself. Learn some strategies to make you stronger and maybe figure out what you could have done differently and can learn to do differently in future.
I don’t think most people online have the training to help you with this one. It’s easy to say you’re probably a good person who’s had really bad luck. But if you can go back through incite as many things as you did and I admit to not having read them all, I think that people who are very strong are recognizing that you are easy to bully or intimidate or threaten. And that’s your reaction is to just take the blame and get out of the situation. Taking the easy way out makes you an easy target for people like that. And you’re looking to change your basic personality. You have to change the way you think and you may need professional help to do it.
I don’t think the fact that bad things happened to you makes you a bad person, but again I didn’t read everything. It just strikes me from what I read that somewhere in your own mind. You’re always the victim and there’s got to be a reason for that and professional help may be required for you to figure it out and change it
Hey there, I have pretty severe social anxiety and remember stuff like this from as early as kindergarten. My earliest memories are people saying or doing mean things to me in a social setting.
The reason I say this is, the problem is it’s not that you’re experiencing an increased amount of cruelty, it’s that you are sensitive to it. Your brain is wired to hold on to those interactions because it is trying to protect you from them happening again. Fear is a survival instinct that keeps you from getting hurt, but it also takes up a lot of space mentally. If you aren’t seeing a therapist, I think you should. Working out the thought processes that cause you to focus on these moments will help you restructure them and give you some relief.
There is nothing wrong with you that makes people act like this towards you. You aren’t broken. It isn’t your fault your thoughts turn to these moments over and over again and you feel guilt and shame about them and try to come up with a reason why. You may not be experiencing depression yet, but these kinds of thoughts can spiral out of control and take you to some dark places. Be careful OP! I am rooting for you!
There’s a quote I encountered somewhere that “people aren’t against you; they’re for themselves.” This is happening all around you and for various reasons. I don’t know what’s normal any better than you, but I can validate you and say I don’t think you’re enraging people with your mere presence. 😉 You can only control your response to it and you seem to be giving yourself a hard time over it. You don’t deserve that.
Focusing on this list of things sounds like “ruminating” which can happen with some neurodiverse brains. Your brain gets “stuck” on something like an argument, a situation where you were treated unfairly, a time when you were awkward, something like that.
Might be worth researching and seeing if it resonates with you!
https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-stop-ruminating
This is something you can work on in CBT, either alone or with help! I find this worksheet to be really helpful:
https://livingcbt.com/forms/Free_Self_Help_2/dealing_with_unhelpful_thoughts_(rumination).pdf
I think you’ve experienced a normal amount of crap from others over the course of a decade. It may be worth mentioning that, IMHO, you seem to dwell on these negative experiences. 95% of these things deserve nothing more than a shrug and a whatever because they were mostly about the other person and had very little to do with you. We never know what’s going on with others, so it’s a good general rule to let that shit go
I can’t imagine how horrible life must be when you hang on to every little perceived slight for 10 years and ruminate on them.
Hello OP
First I am very sorry you are going through all of this and have experienced so much pain.
If anyone tells you “you are too sensitive” they might ponder if perhaps the reverse might be true, of them. It’s a standard dismissive thing to say and it’s very mean in my opinion — and not only inaccurate but misplaced.
People are different, and it is good there are sensitive people in this world.
As far as the number of events, well I would like to ask for an age range, and also if you can tell us a country or region or culture [edit: it’s OK on this part, I see in a later comment you said Canadian], so I can give a more informed answer, it’s hard to explain why but I have reasons and typically ask for more details before reacting fully. I only know what is in the typing and I don’t want to presume. You do mention a child but people have children at all ages.
I will say though that it unfortunately sounds about average to me and that the world itself seems to have gotten to be a much angrier place. I don’t want to say too much more until I hear back. Thank you.
Have you checked your perception? Sometimes it can really misrepresent things
It sounds a bit like you take a lot of things personally that aren’t. It might help to start asking people what they mean and to learn to say no. Like with using the tools that were too heavy or whatever. Know your limits. Know your worth. You are a worthwhile person.
Also most people’s behavior has nothing to do with you! I’m currently dealing with a coworker who treats me unkindly and I know it’s her problem, not mine, although it’s hard not to take it personally sometimes.
As a person who is the problem- You would know if you were a problem