Why do I shut out everyone who cares for me?

By Bel Mooney for the Daily Mail

Published: 17:52 EST, 24 July 2015 | Updated: 18:08 EST, 24 July 2015

DEAR BEL

I am incredibly shy. I have zero self-esteem, zero self-confidence. I hate meeting new people and get very uncomfortable in any social occasion, even something simple such as shopping.

I hate the phone — it scares me witless, so I ignore it if it rings. I hate asking for anything in a shop or restaurant. 

Even with close friends and family I can get tongue-tied, embarrassed, talk over people or say nothing at all. I know I appear rude or stand-offish, which isn’t my intention at all.

I have few true friends as I find it very hard to open up and trust. Those I have, I love dearly. Clearly I have big issues that I should address and get help for, but I need to be brave enough to make that step.

I think I may have social anxiety, but the treatment for that seems to be counselling, which I would definitely not feel comfortable with. Just telling a doctor is too daunting.

'Even with close friends and family I can get tongue-tied, embarrassed, talk over people or say nothing at all'

But I know I need to do something. In the past 12 months two friends have decided they no longer want me in their lives. They just stopped answering messages, cancelled arrangements at the last minute and stopped talking to me.

When they were going through difficult times, I was there for them as much as I could be. They were friends I could open up to — something I find so hard to do.

My initial reaction was to feel used and think they were in the wrong, but clearly that is not the case and the problem is me.

I look back and try to think what I did or said wrong, but can’t find anything. I wish they would tell me what I did or didn’t do. I tried asking when things started getting funny between us, but was fobbed off.

So I guess I just have to get on with life without them. But my already low self-esteem is even worse. I feel totally unlovable and am obviously a truly awful friend.

Trust is a huge thing and I feel as if I want to shut myself away with my little family and never go out, drive away the few close friends I have (and probably my boyfriend and the children, too, as I clearly am not a nice person to be around) and fester in my own horrid company. What shall I do?

SUE

When I read your email, naturally I felt huge compassion for your unhappiness and yet at the very end I had to smother my feelings of exasperation.

At first you sound like a desperately solitary person who could even be agoraphobic or suffering from depression. But then it becomes clear that you have loving friends, as well as a boyfriend and children. (I wish you knew how many lonely readers would be giving heartfelt thanks for such blessings).

So, though those relationships do not rule out my first fears, they do widen the horizons of your life.

The normal advice about seeking counselling (oh, how easy it is to suggest that — though I really do believe it can help) will be a waste of time as you have ruled it out at this stage. So, let’s try to pick through what you have said.

First, being dumped by two friends has clearly triggered a pernicious lowering of an already low mood, and so I am wondering if you can enlist the help of one of the good friends you value so much to help you work out what happened.

You can’t do this on your own. Your friend can also help you start a necessary process of contradicting all those negative thoughts, starting with: ‘The problem is me.’

Do you know that for sure? Of course you don’t, because it is impossible to know such a thing. Who’s to say that the friends didn’t have problems of their own, which meant they had to withdraw from your company? It might well be their ‘fault’. Or (more likely) nobody’s — just one of those shifts that happen within relationships.

You’ve clearly been looking online, which is why you have given your mental state a name. Was it a relief?

Whether or not you are right, I’d like you to look at this useful American website: www.helpguide.org/articles/anxiety/social-anxiety-disorder-and-social-phobia.htm

Read the section very clearly, working through every single one of the suggestions, including the slow, deep breathing. This is your quest: to discover more about the truth of why you feel as you do, and so do something about it — all by yourself.

Do you need therapy? Yes, I think so — because you need to trace your zero self-esteem right back and learn new ways of changing your mindset. But you will need to teach yourself how to seek help.

You really do need challenging on the damaging self-pity that makes you call yourself ‘horrid’ and visualise your boyfriend packing his bags and taking the children away. 

Have you ever talked to him about that scenario? Do you think he would be wounded by your negative perception of who he is and how he would behave? Never mind your self-esteem, what about his?

I’d like you to do a little exercise, which is to ‘flip’ every negative thought which places you at centre stage and make a conscious effort to come up with a different view of each of the situations you mention.

So, ‘the phone scares me witless’ becomes ‘the phone is a nuisance sometimes so I choose not to pick up’. ‘I come across as rude and stand-offish’ becomes ‘other people must feel intimidated by me, so I must put them at their ease’.

‘I’m nervous of shops’ becomes ‘shop assistants are often treated rudely, so my task is to be friendly and treat them well’.

Starting with your letter to me, write down the negatives, then come up with positive thoughts instead.

You can do this.

‘Shut myself away’? No — open up the door of your own prison and set yourself free.

My drug-taking ex wants me back 

DEAR BEL

Almost three years ago, I fell pregnant to a man I barely knew. We weren’t a couple and he was in favour of an abortion as he enjoyed his weed-smoking, womanising ways.

He eventually came around to the idea of a baby and I allowed him to be involved. However, his behaviour has never changed.

After our daughter’s birth, we did become a couple and he was devoted to me and the baby, but drugs were still a problem and he was terrible with money, so we always struggled.

We broke up when our child was nine months old, after ferocious arguments. I did not want her to grow up surrounded by hostility.

Fast forward two years and my daughter and I are living with my parents. She’s in nursery and I work in a law firm and have a contented life.

We’ll have our first holiday in September with my best friend. I’m also due to begin training for a better job and am saving for a deposit for my own place. My daughter’s father never has her overnight because he rents a room and lives with other men.

He’s still terrible with money: he never has any and doesn’t give me any for her (though I’d be reluctant to take it anyway).

I think he still smokes weed (I’m not certain), but I spend most of my spare time with him so he can see his daughter.

He’s desperate to give things another go. But I’ve begun seeing a man who has been a close friend for six years and I think we are falling for each other. I see a future with him, a happy one, but feel tied to my child’s father.

Guilt makes me reluctant to move on. I do care about him, I’m just not in love with him. I’m scared that if I tell him, he’ll fight for overnight access and he isn’t responsible enough. My daughter has never spent a night away from me.

At the same time, am I not entitled to pursue my feelings for this other man?

TANYA

My first question is going to be very blunt, I’m afraid. Are you still sleeping with your daughter’s father? I hope you can see why this would be a bit of a game-changer.

You see, I’m puzzled by the clear implication that he thinks he is still in with a chance and doesn’t know you don’t love him. Really?

You must have done something to give him such hope, more than just spending time with him so that he can see your daughter.

So I can’t help but wonder what. It boils down to this: if you are (even occasionally) sharing his bed, then you are being culpably dishonest.

And if you are not, then what can be preventing you from levelling with him about your feelings — other than the dishonesty that stems from cowardice and fear of confrontation?

You sound as if you have done so much to get your life sorted out. You deserve congratulations for that.

How right that you encourage the relationship between your ex and your daughter. But your haziness about what you actually are to this man is (a) deceiving him unfairly, and (b) preventing you from continuing to develop the life you want. You have to do something about this.

Of course, you can ‘pursue your feelings for this other man’. You wouldn’t have to ask if you had been clear-minded about the old relationship.

At the time, you wisely judged it bad for you and your child because the man showed no signs of being able to play a strong role within the family and your relationship was horrible and hostile. What’s changed?

I’m astonished you don’t know if he still uses cannabis, because surely you’d have asked. You must also be aware that a court is unlikely to grant the drug-using father of a small girl overnight access when the accommodation is shared with other men. Surely you should consult a solicitor about that, rather than just being ‘scared’.

Honestly, you have to shake yourself out of this strange apathy and continue the good work you’ve begun.

Have a crisp, adult, frank talk with your ex. Tell him you have met someone else. Say you will never do anything to harm his relationship with his daughter, but that it would be entirely inappropriate to have her stay overnight with him at this stage. 

If he gets nasty, get a good solicitor. There’s absolutely no need for you to feel guilty, so start thinking clearly and move on.

And finally... No, I do NOT think all men are beastly

It’s important to engage in debate, so I must take up a point made by a reader. He quotes me talking about a wife screaming abuse at her husband when he called to pick up their child: ‘It goes without saying that he’d been unfaithful and broken up the marriage.’

My reader (let’s call him Mr S) threw his newspaper across the room in a fury! He asks why I ‘persist in the notion that only men break up marriages’ and says that my ‘bigoted attitude against men’ astounds him.

I wrote back begging him not to ill-treat this newspaper! Mr S does me a grave injustice because, again and again on this page, I point out that women as well as men break up marriages.

Indeed, last week’s lead letter was from just such a woman who still feels guilty.

Women can behave as badly as men — especially when it comes to with-holding access to children. 

It always breaks my heart to hear of a man whose wife calls time on the marriage and deprives him of love, his home and precious children — sometimes because she has a new squeeze, who gets the lot.

Irresponsible passion knows no gender (though it knows plenty about sex).

I could have given Mr S very many examples of my impartiality, but just sent him an extract from my forthcoming book.

The quote comes from a few years back, when I wrote to one chap: ‘It’s good you read this column every week because you will know it to be even-handed.

‘Unlike some women, I have never subscribed to the “all men are bastards” prejudice — despite the fact that, very often, some are!

‘For every woman abandoned by a husband, I can show you a man whose wife has packed her bags.’

'Oh, but you know about that side of things, don’t you? It’s only human to construct a world view based on our own experience; the danger is that it can be pitifully one-sided.’

As I try to be fair, so I ask readers to be fair to me.

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