I get in my own way more often than anyone else ever will. I can never explain exactly why, but all of my hesitating, doubting, and revoking participation can be boiled down to having made completely unsupported misinterpretations about social situations.

I always tend to paint myself in a negative light right off the bat: the things I do and don't say are always taken the wrong way. The way I answer questions in class. I mean, even the things I tweet aren't immune to my own overanalysis. Dumb, right?

But the complete truth of the matter is that those who aren't already going through this straining process in their own brains would certainly never spend the time doing it to you. In the best way possible, they don't care… about the silly things, of course.

Though this certainly and unfortunately doesn't hold true for every single person you'll engage, the majority of people aren't actively looking for what you (and only you) perceive as "bad." Maybe I'm just an optimist in saying that I believe people are good at heart and naturally want to see that in others before anything else. To be perfectly candid—and frank—it's just exhausting trying to do anything else.

And you know, maybe I really am the only one who is this inhibited. My intuition tells me that there's absolutely no way this can be true, but isn't that the exact thing I choose to ignore every time I question myself? This self-isolating feeling only becomes stronger when we fail to see the humanness of other people who we hold highly in our lives.

It's hard to imagine that they could also ever feel insecure about anything so seemingly trivial, but it's likely they're thinking the same thing about you. I can't say that this more astute social awareness is going to sweep unjustified self-consciousness and insecurity from the individual's mind so effortlessly, but it makes for a more understanding, empathetic, collective consciousness that tends to be more forgiving to oneself.