When everyone you know wants to change you...

Hi, everyone. So this might be a long post, but I just wanted to get everything out after months of what I've went through. (Just for extra info, I'm a 19 year old girl.)

I guess it all started when I got my first job in October. For the environment I'm in, some of the coworkers were very hostile towards me because I was quiet, even though most of them made that decision within a few seconds of meeting me. One coworker in particular called me "very difficult" because of this. Somewhere along the line, the director of another department somehow got involved in harassing me because of this. He would do this jolting thing at me in the hallway, command me to "say something," and ask the other coworkers, "have you ever heard her talk?" just to get some laughs. They don't seem to understand that I haven't been there as long as they all have been (newest member besides me was there for 2 years). It also doesn't help that they mostly have conversations about things I wouldn't know about.

Then my parents get involved, and sometimes we don't agree on certain things. I don't want to get too much into this, but this has ended with me being told that neither me or my opinions matter, that I would get punched if I spoke my own mind (on my opinions, I should add that I talk about them in a non-hostile way), and they do let me know, either in a passive-aggressive or confrontational way, that they don't like that I'm different from them.

My boyfriend jumped on the bandwagon the following month. Basically, we had a disagreement that caused him to get very defensive to the point where he made me cry because it personally struck a nerve. He didn't understand this, and kicked me out of his house for "crying over nothing." We broke up after this, and he contacted me in January when we decided to be friends. Even now, sometimes he'll criticize or make snide comments about my thoughts and opinions, which especially hurts because early in the relationship, he explicitly said he didn't expect everyone to have the same opinions as him, and he wouldn't judge me if I did. And for a long time, he didn't.

In that sense, that feeling of "you won't be treated right unless you're just like me," I feel lonely. (These are only some examples.)

I try to raise my voice, but my environment instead raises my silence.

A silence that restricts me from having my own opinions, thoughts, and even feelings.

Thank you if you read this.

I read this.

*hugs*

Can so relate based on my experiences at graduate school.

I read it. You don't deserve that kind of behavior, Wallflower.

I read this

Most people find pressure to change at some point in their lives, whether it be from family, friends, coworkers or society as a whole. Often it is a reflection of their own insecurities rather than a specific "problem" with you.

You must never, ever, be someone you are not. That is probably the one thing that makes people unhappy the most; living a lie. I am currently in the process of leaving my wife - ten years of being told that my clothes, hairstyle, sense of humour, manners, values, morals etc are "wrong" and I should change them to be like somebody elses. I am now 150 miles away from that life and I have never felt happier.

just be true to yourself. It's all we have.

First of all, welcome to our forum, Wallflower. I do hope you will stay with us.

You do not deserve to be treated so appallingly.

Hi Wallflower-you shouldn't have to go through this sort of thing. Noone in your life is valuing you properly at all and you deserve to be surrounded by people who respect you and who cherish your differences.
Sadly many people feel threatened by someone who doesn't fit into their narrow parameters of what is normal. As a fellow introvert I was also badly bullied in several workplaces because I didn't talk 'enough' and others have remarked on my quietness as well. If we turned round and asked others why they talked so much, we would be seen as rude, but for some reason it isn't considered rude to remark on someone's quietness.
Your parents sound appalling and do not deserve to have you in their life. Could you take steps to moving away from them and making a life of your own?
It sounds as though your boyfriend has picked up on your lack of confidence and is taking advantage of it. Hurting you and then saying you were crying over nothing is so uncaring. And picking at you with snide comments is not the act of a friend. You need to work on yourself, to learn to love and respect yourself, so that you can rid yourself of people who treat you badly.

First off, welcome Wallflower. I hope that you can find something to make you feel better here.

You should never have to change yourself for those around you, especially when those changes are not something that you want or would feel comfortable about. The people that you choose to spend your life with should be supportive of who you are instead of making you feel bad for it. It's a relfection of them, not you, that they choose to treat you this way.

You don't deserve to be treated like this at all. *hug*

That's the most hardest part of life. Being accepted for what and who you are not for what you can be, will be, should be, could be. If people don't appreciate and don't accept your identity then they don't really need any kind of attention. Being different is not a curse and never will be. It's their mentality of closed boundary that don't want to see anything different from them. It's like...Hey, be like us or we won't give a honeysuckle. No body deserve that kind of attitude. Nobody. A little adjustment is understandable but complete change to appease them. They won't be happy no matter what you do. Their mind has already decided. Definitely not worth even a thought. Look for someone who can appreciate you the way you are, for what you are and I'm sure there are lots of people like that you accept people for what they are not the other way around. I hope things work out for you.

Thanks for sharing it with us.

Wow, it must be a nightmare to have to work in an environment where the people expect you to be one of the "Bros". I've had a couple jobs in my past where my co-workers were anything but interesting to me, and I didn't care to even speak with them. Mindless drones.

I've never fit in anywhere, still consider myself an iconoclastic outcast of sorts. Hair, clothes, musical preferences, none of it jives with the masses. Especially my personal views and opinions.

I know it's probably out of character for you, wallflower, but the next time some co-worker doofus asks if you can talk, I'd retort with "Perhaps...if someone here had something intelligent to say that warrants a response" .

Geez, that's harsh. Treatment like that is for no reason. So what if you're a little quiet? They would be upset if someone made fun of them for talking. If you're comfortable being quiet and keeping to yourself, then f*** 'em. Don't change because they want to throw a fit someone won't talk to them. I think it's quite fine if you're not talkative. That doesn't give anyone the right to be cruel to someone.

It's a tough place to be in, among somewhat shallow people. Though we'd have to step back a bit and realize that their behavior (at least the co-workers) is pretty normal - natural. Think about it if the situation was reversed. If you had been there for two years, you have your circle of friends and some new person just started working there and happens to be super shy, what would you do? You know that in order to work together properly there needs to be a form of comfort in communication. If you can't speak to this new person because all they do is... hardly respond, what else can you do? You try different ways to open them up to help them feel like they are part of the work place. Now, would you rather them have said "Have you ever heard her talk?" "No, I have not," with no laughing and with serious concerned faces. Should they have just ignored you? Well that causes problems too. So, what solution would you want?

As for your parents and ex-bf. They're just self centered hypocrites. It's not you, unless there are details that we're missing. I do understand that you're opening up, and opening up takes time. We're not expecting you to share anything outside your comfort zone. Just know that we can only work with the information given.

I very much relate to your experiences, it sounds like the way people are with me. I'm very sorry you are treated this way.

TheWallflower said:

Hi, everyone. So this might be a long post, but I just wanted to get everything out after months of what I've went through. (Just for extra info, I'm a 19 year old girl.)

I guess it all started when I got my first job in October. For the environment I'm in, some of the coworkers were very hostile towards me because I was quiet, even though most of them made that decision within a few seconds of meeting me. One coworker in particular called me "very difficult" because of this. Somewhere along the line, the director of another department somehow got involved in harassing me because of this. He would do this jolting thing at me in the hallway, command me to "say something," and ask the other coworkers, "have you ever heard her talk?" just to get some laughs. They don't seem to understand that I haven't been there as long as they all have been (newest member besides me was there for 2 years). It also doesn't help that they mostly have conversations about things I wouldn't know about.

Then my parents get involved, and sometimes we don't agree on certain things. I don't want to get too much into this, but this has ended with me being told that neither me or my opinions matter, that I would get punched if I spoke my own mind (on my opinions, I should add that I talk about them in a non-hostile way), and they do let me know, either in a passive-aggressive or confrontational way, that they don't like that I'm different from them.

My boyfriend jumped on the bandwagon the following month. Basically, we had a disagreement that caused him to get very defensive to the point where he made me cry because it personally struck a nerve. He didn't understand this, and kicked me out of his house for "crying over nothing." We broke up after this, and he contacted me in January when we decided to be friends. Even now, sometimes he'll criticize or make snide comments about my thoughts and opinions, which especially hurts because early in the relationship, he explicitly said he didn't expect everyone to have the same opinions as him, and he wouldn't judge me if I did. And for a long time, he didn't.

In that sense, that feeling of "you won't be treated right unless you're just like me," I feel lonely. (These are only some examples.)

I try to raise my voice, but my environment instead raises my silence.

A silence that restricts me from having my own opinions, thoughts, and even feelings.

Thank you if you read this.

Click to expand...

Hey, TheWallflower, do you have any ideas or thoughts on how you are going to overcome this situation?

I sense that you are actually quietly confident in yourself, it's just that you've been treated poorly.

I think you would feel more lonely trying to become someone you are not - so as hard as it may be - you have to try and not listen to all of the negative voices and be true to you.

You will either learn to thrive in solitude and/or begin to find people who get you. Not to mention that you will grow and change in positive directions and life will get better.

A few thoughts that I hope help...

I basically have this problem, too, and I'm rather older than you. I don't think there is really any solution to it. Sorry to say. There only seem to be ways to 'deal with it', as far as I can tell.
Most people have certain ideas of how things should be and when you are just someone who doesn't fit those expectations they will always want you to be different. You have not done anything wrong, they just don't understand.

For your coworkers, the only thing I can suggest is talking to the HR department. The problem with that is that they will probably know it was you and certain types of people take that the wrong way. (Although if you got fired for talking to HR you could sue them for wrongful termination.) Though, almost everyone has things about their jobs they don't like, so it's usually assumed to be a lot of compromising in the workplace. It sucks but that's how things work right now. So your options may be only to basically just to find a place you think you can tolerate and move on to somewhere else if you find you can't tolerate it anymore.

For your parents, I can't say for sure, but some of that might get better once you've established yourself in the world a little better. Once you've got a more steady life, and have 'settled down', they might become a little more accepting. But it all depends. I know that some people eventually just have to cut off ties with their families simply because they were the root of many of their problems. Some families are truly dysfunctional, and others sometimes only appear that way.

As for your ex, many people will often say they are open-minded, but saying you're open-minded is easy while actually being that way is very hard, especially when it's someone you're seeing every day. It's like making a promise you can't keep, basically. My only advice for that is to keep in mind people cannot fulfill such a promise.

Personally I have opinions that the whole world wants me to change, but that means to change who I am.
If I were to state those opinions in my workplace I would be fired. If I told them to anyone I know they would stop talking to me (and this has happened before).
If I were to state them in public I don't even know what would happen... I'd probably be arrested.

So I definitely know what you mean when you say that you want to raise your voice but the environment only makes you more silent. I live that every day. I've lived that every day of my life since I can remember.
I have always been known as "The Quiet One". It's almost a nickname.

If anyone has better advice I'd love to hear it myself.

Hi,
Sorry to hear you're going through such a rough time. When I was in my late teens and early 20s, I had very little self-confidence and I was very quiet, especially around people I didn't know well. I got endless comments about my muteness, mostly in a joking sort of way. When I did talk, I always heard the same comment "So you're coming out of your shell". The only thing that helped me was doing a kick-ass job at work and in my college classes (so people respected me) and occasionally forcing myself to smile, make eye contact and say a cheery "hi". This especially helped when seeing coworkers at the start of work shifts. I remember to this day people responding positively to that and it made me feel good. It was a big life lesson for me as my parents didn't teach me good social skills. I had to learn them on the fly.
Give it time and I think you'll be ok. Poke your head out of your shell every once in awhile like I did and see what happens.

-Teresa

Ugh, I hate how people can be so ignorant and aggressive. The best way to counter that in my opinion is to learn to not care about their childish behaviour and their opinion about yourself. And that includes anyone who would cause discomfort or make you feel offended. I know that some people are indeed too shy to do that, so you can use this forum as an escape from their hostility. I'm pretty sure you'll receive all the support you need from this fine community, myself included. If you need friends, feel free to add me, and best of wishes!