That’s definitely a hard part. This is probably a non-sequitor but I always felt like others had their shit together and assumed them to be valid when they talked and my own thoughts/emotions to be subject to that validity. But that just leads to an internal unwillingness to communicate those feelings out of fear of invalidating them and the faulty logic that i must be invalid when in reality both people have real, immediate experience and emotion. So i would beat myself up instead of pressing them to meet on the same level.

Bleh, anyways, theres a nugget in there which led me to be more willing to assert my own validity. That helped a lot with my anxiety. But i still walk away from every social interaction over analyzing everything and being critical of myself. I’m just learning to be a little more critical of others too, that they made a choice in how to interact with me, and that i either appreciated it or not.