Is it normal to feel like i am living a lie and hide everything from everyone?

52% Normal
3 Comments

I feel as though my whole life is a secret. It's gotten to the point where I freak out and panic if someone is walking past my bedroom. I say in my head "don't go in, don't go in please!". I don't have anything to hide, at least I don't think so, yet I feel as though one day someone will discover something about me and my life will be over. I can no longer lend people my belongings. I refuse to let anyone touch my phone. I hate when people say to me "I have something to ask you." or "Guess what someone told me." I don't understand. Every day I feel so much stress and anxiety about everything and anything. Am I living a lie? I have no idea, but I feel like I'm hiding everything from everyone.

Is this normal? Can anyone else relate?

Voting Results
52% Normal
Based on 31 votes (16 yes)
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Comments ( 3 )
  • admirer
    12 years ago

    From the time I was around 11 until I turned 18 or 19 I felt this way.
    I'm the oldest in my family & so I was the first to hit puberty, the first to become defiant over everything, the first to become sexually active, the first to start thinking for myself -particularly in terms of religion & philosophy- & so on.
    Because my mother didn't have a real childhood to speak of & had no prior experience dealing with these things before me, she treated each one like something that had to be eliminated rather than accepted as normal teenage experiences & growth & worked through.
    As a response to this, I hid everything.
    I had constant anxiety that she or anyone who so much as had an occasional conversation with her would learn anything about me.
    I left the house the morning of my eighteenth birthday & it was only after I got away that I finally began to feel comfortable in my own skin.
    It was easy to learn to be zen & the art of not giving a fuck about pleasing anyone other than myself once the person whose opinion I valued most, my mother's, wasn't there to wave her finger & tell me "shame, shame".
    I have a good relationship with her now & it's understood between us that I'm going to do what I feel & she can express her approval or displeasure all she wants to my open ears but if she wants to pitch a fit because I did it anyway, she won't hear from me until she starts minding her own again.
    She's only done that once or twice since I left her house & now she doesn't do it all.
    The answer to anxiety?
    Learn to please yourself. If the well thought out, final preconceived outcome of everything you do is to make yourself happy, you can't lose. You can't be wrong.

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  • Sweetcakes18
    11 years ago

    I used to feel really messed up about hiding my dark, sick, or just weird thoughts and urges from everyone. I used to cut myself to relieve the stress, but then I had to hide my cuts from everyone too and it just started all over.
    I don't cut myself anymore, but sometimes I still get the urge. I still hide my real thoughts and feelings from people . . . But I guess I've accepted myself and my abnormal sexuality. Or maybe I've just gotten used to it . . .

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  • [Old Memory]
    12 years ago

    As silly as it sounds, not being confidant with your own self breeds this kind of fear.

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