I went through treatment for social anxiety.

I got into the mindset: I'm going to be living for myself and not for anyone else. I want to enjoy this life, and I want to find people who enjoy me because I'm lovey - or I'll do it on my own.

The first step is awareness:

About yourself, your self-esteem and what you like

• What do I want to be like?
• what do I like about others/what do I consider likeable traits?
• what do others like about me?
• What do I dislike about others?
• What do I want to do / live like?

About behaviours

• Which behaviours of me do I like?
• Which behaviours do I do to protect me?
• Which behaviours do I like from others?
• which behaviours do I consider unacceptable?

In the moment / reflecting about situations

• How do I feel right now?
• What has hurt me before?
• How do I react to positive or negative behaviour towards me? Do I feel these reactions are ok?
• How do I react when I'm afraid to be hurt again?
• When am I afraid? About what?
• When do I suppress behaviour? Why?

Those are many, many questions.

It helps trying to focus on them in chunks. If you consider yourself to have good self-esteem, you may want to skip the "likeable" part.

But those are, often, easy to start with. You can just write that down (yes in this case a journal is great). Or have others write that down. Considering others helps a lot, too. On the one hand because it eases finding your crowd, on the other hand: if you don't like behaviour X and actively avoid it - that's something you should like about yourself!

Checking behaviours is then a big reflection, but it helps find yourself. You could add "What is a behaviour I'm not doing anymore"? Often not doing them anymore is self-protection, but self-protection is also "I don't talk about my hobbies to not risk running too long". You won't find all of them, but you should also write those that you remember down.

Reflexting on situations and working in the moment is the tricky part. You're not writing this down for itself, you're writing this down to be able to apply it later on. So your brain can go "Hey! Hey you, that, that is a behaviour you like about yourself! Yay you!" Or "You're acting protective right now."

If you're able to do that great. If not? Normal. Try making a reminder or getting someone to ask you once a day about one or some of these questions. You'll step by step learn to have more answers. Try "today, yesterday, last week, any time that happened".

To actually get our of this, the in the moment questions help(ed me). What am I feeling? Or what was I feeling in that moment? Do I want to feel this way? Does the feeling align with what I think is good behaviour, or is it protective behaviour? Or was my initial judgement of? Did I suppress a reaction/action I would have liked to do?

If you can do that for a few every day situations, and maybe can do it at the end of an evening some days and sometimes in the moment, you have a good base to successfully start changing.

You have now a chance to be aware when you acted afraid or suppressed. You can decide if you liked that, and that you don't want to do that again. Sometimes that means going back into a situation and "correcting" it. E.g.: if someone tells me off for talking too much or being too loud after I have been talking for a while / we have been talking, I'd stop, be silent, and consider it. And I'd come to: yeah, I shouldn't talk too loud. But I really can't hear it. Im not bothered by it and can't check baxk. It's your job as an adult to communicate your needs and not be a douche while doing so - I do that all the time as a neurodivergent. And then I'd take that to the person and tell them. By now, I tell them in the moment. But that took a while training to recognise the momrnts, how I feel and what I would have wanted.

It also helped me to realise what I was afraid about and prepare, in advance, countermeasures or detail how I could handle it.

E.g.: I'm afraid they would laugh about my t-shirt and I couldn't be comfortable afterwards. So, I'll take a second shirt or a jacket with me.

I'm afraid people would exclude me from activities again. So, I'll bring it up when it happens for the first time, and when the reaction should be negative, I'll either expect to not be included but will still enjoy myself, because my joy isn't less just becaus I'm not a favourite person and it's not my problem if theirs is, or I'll move and find others to hang out with.

It's a long way. And the process is way less forward then I make it seem. It's really muddled, going through a situation that you realise felt bad may bring you back to what you like or don't like.

But uncovering yourself is a lot about first realising where you buried yourself - and why.