From having no friends to loving everybody

Until my early twenties I was the shyest person on Earth. As a kid I thought other kids were strange and cruel little monsters. Later I still saw others as dangerous. When someone talked to me I got very nervous and tried to hide it. I thought I needed to protect myself from them. After all, I was getting mobbed a lot, so I thought if I let them know me or see my weaknesses, then they'd use the opportunity to hurt me. I was terribly scared of others, and socially isolated.

I was asked how I transitioned from having such social anxiety to my current mindset, which is basically that nobody can hurt me and that I love everybody. (See How to Connect with Strangers and Do you Love Killers? ) Such a fearless mindset makes it very easy for me to build connections and to have lots of lovely people in my life. But how did my beliefs change?

So here is the story. Please keep in mind that this post is not a how-to, it's just my personal story. I don't necessarily recommend to do the same. There are better ways to reach the same goal.

Courage

I remember the first steps very well, because I made a conscious decision to improve my social skills and I remember how I chose to do so. First, I decided to get rid of my fear of rejection. To do so, I grabbed a banknote. I chose a street with many shops in the city center, and in each of these shops I asked one of the salesclerks to change my note. Of course most of them said no. Every time, I replied "Thank you", smiled and left. This was a great exercise in hearing no! I knew it wouldn't hurt me in any way, it was just a game. But this way I got used to having plenty of people say no to me, and it made me realize that a no doesn't hurt.

I trained myself this way for a while. For example I picked a very crowded street on a Saturday afternoon and played being a beggar, asking everybody for some change, politely and nicely. The goal was the same as before: hear no and be fine. Later I switched to exercises with a more uncertain outcome. For example I smiled to every person I met. Then I said hello to every person I met. Then I started small conversations with random strangers. Etc.

Of course I got rejected a lot. Many people looked at me with an incredible disdain on their face when they thought I was a beggar. Many didn't return my greeting when I said hello to them, some said ugly things to me, and so on. But that was the goal. It taught me that no matter how bad others treat me, it doesn't affect me as long as I don't think bad of myself. I didn't think bad of myself, because I knew I wasn't really a beggar, I knew it was just for training purposes. And so they couldn't hurt me. I knew their disdain changed nothing about me. I got used to being rejected and not give a damm about it. My mindset went from "Others are dangerous and I need to protect myself from them" to "Others are potentially dangerous, but I'm strong enough to take it!".

For months and years after that I kept building courage, approaching strangers, talking to people, putting myself in exactly those situations I feared most.

Responsibility

These experiences proved to me that my own mind and nothing else has the power to hurt me. This was the next step. I found a book in a library which opened my eyes about this. It was a book about behavioral therapy. The author explained that not the situation itself but our judgment on the situation causes the feelings we have about that situation. What a big insight that was for me! I realized it was true. So I began paying attention to what I was thinking about the situations I was feeling bad in.

For each social situation that made me feel bad, I wrote down what I was thinking in that moment. This wasn't easy, for most of my thoughts were subconscious. But with time and practice I got used to become aware of them. So I wrote them down. Then I wrote down what I would like to think instead. More positive and empowering thoughts, which would make me feel better. My negative thoughts often sounded like those of a little child. For example in the beginning I wrote things like "Others are dangerous. They're evil. They want to hurt me." I replaced it with "Everybody is my friend. They're all friendly and mean well." Every time I caught myself thinking one of the "bad" thoughts, I consciously repeated the "good" thoughts. I also repeated the positive affirmations every single day ten times in front of the mirror.

From that moment on I decided to take responsibility for my feelings. For many months I spent countless hours working on my thoughts, and covered several big exercise books with old (in red) and new (in green) beliefs. Over time I addressed many of my issues this way, and solved many of my problems. Of course this wasn't enough to stop hurting altogether. I knew it was possible, in theory, not to get hurt if I didn't allow it, but I still lacked the power to deal with my emotions appropriately. However, alone this theoretical knowledge helped a lot. I just knew it was up to me. My mindset changed to "Others aren't dangerous. Nobody can hurt me if I don't let them! It all depends on me."

Self-Love

When I started working on my social skills, I had very low self-esteem and used to hate myself. So I worked on learning to love myself. I struggled a lot with this one. I said to myself in the mirror "Rosine, I love you very much exactly the way you are" - ten times a day as well. At first I felt totally stupid doing this! And I felt I was lying. But with time it became more and more true... I also progressively took better care of myself and did more nice things for myself. I believe self-love is extremely important. If you don't really love yourself, you cannot really love others.

Learning self-love gave me a lot of strength in dealing with others. When you know you always have yourself to love you, it's like you're never alone in front of others: you always have an invisible friend at your side. Others also respond much better to you when you love yourself. They mirror your self-love back to you. Their esteem for you generally is proportional to your self-esteem.

When I got a bit better at loving myself, I started getting friendlier feedback, making friends more quickly. Talking to others became much easier. I wasn't so nervous anymore. Loving myself more, I was better able to accept that others might love me, too. My mindset changed to "Others are friendly" and also to "How I feel depends on me, but no matter what happens, I always have myself in my corner!"

Taking off

At this point, I don't remember exactly what happened, how and in which order. My progress was exponential: at first it took a lot of practice and conscious effort. I had many setbacks and sometimes thought I'd never succeed. But my willingness to learn self-love was the catalyst. I didn't learn it overnight(!), but alone wanting to learn it changed everything. Things began moving faster and faster, and at some point everything just happened to me and I had to let go of control.

Emotional Mastery

At some point I met a fabulous energy-psychotherapist, a wonderful woman who taught me EFT. EFT helped me a lot in dealing with particularly negative or strong emotions. It also helped me get rid of some deeply rooted negative beliefs about people. I wouldn't recommend to you the method I used with my notebooks alone. Such a purely intellectual, psychological approach is a big waste of time. The idea definitely is good, but it's way more efficient to combine this technique with EFT and with visualizations. But I'm digressing, I just want to relate my story here.

So this lady taught me EFT. She also helped me understand, accept and love myself more. She taught me how to get better at dealing with my emotions. This gave me much more Power. It especially helped me not to get hurt so much anymore. I got a feeling that "I'm safe".

Connection

I have always been highly sensitive and empathetic, but my fear had prevented me from opening up enough to other humans. All those walls I had built around myself out of fear made me feel lonely and disconnected. After working so much on myself, my thoughts and my emotions, I got way less scared. I knew I would be able to deal with it, should I get hurt. Once the fear didn't force me to shut down anymore, I became able to feel other people's emotions very strongly just by being near them, and to deeply connect with them emotionally.

Later this applied as well to people who were not even around physically. For example I could physically feel what someone who was thousands of miles away and whom I was chatting with was feeling. Or I knew how someone felt that I was thinking of without even seeing them or talking with them. This showed me that we are all connected in some way. I didn't know how this communication took place, but I added to my mindset the belief "We are all connected".

Oneness

With the therapist I mentioned above, I talked about this amazing experience I had when I was a little kid, where I felt that I was being the whole Universe.

I had never forgotten about this feeling, but when I talked about it with her, it suddenly really made sense to me, for the first time in my life. I realized that we are not only all connected, but all one. I am everything that is, which means that what I call "I" is much, much more than just the little physical person called Rose.

This insight felt more like a big spiritual breakthrough than like an improvement of my social skills... but it made me much better at socializing! I was already able to connect deeply before, however my mindset still had been that we are separate persons. My default state was to be disconnected. After this breakthough, it was the other way around: I was still losing the connection very often, but my default state was to feel connected and one with everybody.

Another difference is that before this breakthrough, the connection I had with others was essentially emotional. Now, it's not only an emotional connection anymore. It feels more like a deep emotional and spiritual connection. We're not just two separate beings incidentally feeling the same. I really feel that this other person or animal or object in front of me IS me, that I AM the whole world. New belief for my mindset: "We are all one Consciousness."

Love, Love, Love

To sum it up, the beliefs I adopted in the last years are:

Nobody can hurt me if I don't let them. I'm safe.
How I feel depends only on me. I'm responsible for my own feelings.
Others are friendly
I love myself and always have myself in my corner
We are all connected
We are all one
I love everybody

Now please don't get me wrong. I am in no way claiming that I totally master all this. I still lack Courage sometimes. Sometimes I still blame others and don't take responsibility for my feelings. There are still aspects of myself that I don't love unconditionally. I still have issues with some emotions, especially with Anger. I can get quite choleric and violent! It still happens to me that I disconnect from others, that I'm scared or that I forget how we're all one. I'm far away from being perfect at all this! It took years for me to learn it and I'm still not done with it.

However, since I got so much into Personal Development and am progressively getting better at loving and accepting myself, at staying in the here & now, at making conscious and deliberate choices, etc, this mindset is becoming more and more true in my life. I feel more and more safe, connected and in love.

I feel very much in Love with the whole planet now. I feel very much in love with you :-)

I still have no friends!

As you can imagine, I have no social anxiety anymore. I don't think others are dangerous anymore, I don't think I need to protect myself in any way. I'm not scared anymore. I can talk to any stranger, have no problem opening up, and I can connect with others easily. I never feel lonely.

I'm saying that I have no friends because for me now, a friend is not something one can "have" in the first place. There are many adorable friends in my life, but having friends is not something I explicitely want or do intentionally. I don't consider socializing to be an action anymore. It's a way of being. The friendships in my life are simply an external manifestation of my inner state of mind, they're an expression of who I am.

As a consequence, I don't fear to lose my friends. No matter how many people disappear from my life, the Love and Connection I feel inside will always manifest as loving and interesting people to connect and have fun with.

People like you. I love you. <3