Afraid of being a burden and unaware of it

[Tsun]

I haven't been diagnosed with any OCD related things, although I'm very obsessive with certain things, most notably achieving absolute perfection in video games.

Anyway, before I derail from the subject, there's one thing that keeps disrupting my mood and/or relationships with other people: I'm terribly afraid of being a bother.

I'm always questioning myself whether some negative moods or thoughts or reactions etc. in other people are because of me. Even when I express these feelings and then get told that I'm one of the nicest people they know and that I've done nothing wrong, I just can't shake the feeling that they're not telling me everything. I always think that nobody would tell me about these subtle annoyances in me, and that they would rather be quietly annoyed and pretend nothing's wrong because it would be rude to let me know. And then that would lead to avoiding me.

Whenever one of my closest friends posts a blog entry which implies any type of negative emotions in them, I always wonder if I could be a contributor to any of it. I'm just so uncomfortable with it that I want to make them feel better, and it gets to a point where I want to question them forever until they'll tell me the truth, even if it has actually nothing to do with me and they already told me so. Because I can't shake the feeling.

Almost the only way I can give up these thoughts is some kind of very genuine sign of affection towards me, which in my case, being an artist along with most of my friends, is usually a drawing of us both which radiates a good feeling. But even then my feelings return by time if I don't get such a thing again. Whenever I'm having a really fun conversation with a friend, I feel like everything is cool. But if the next day we won't talk at all, the feeling comes back immediately; "did I do something wrong?"

Not only do I keep thinking that I am an unlikeable person, I also probably bother my friends with this even more, not believing they care and all.

I don't exactly have very good friends in real life, nor much in my timezone either thus I don't get to talk to them all that often. (mostly some weekends and very late evenings) So could it be this is simply from the extended absence of their presence? Even if there's an obvious reason for it, it just causes these feelings anyway? Or why am I like this?

[JGF25]

Just be yourself.  People are either going to like you or they are not.  What we cannot go around doing is be something we are not.  Way to exhausting mentally.  Who cares if certain people like you or not.  The analogy I can come up with is relationships.  There are going to be people you really, really like and they are not going to like you.  Then there is going to be that person that really, really likes you and you don't like them.  It is a two-way street.  We move on.  

The next time you are talking to somebody, why don't you end the conversation.  "Well I'm really tired, thanks for talking, I'm ready for bed."  Don't sit there over-analyzing everything.  Remember, if they didn't like you to begin with, they would never even have talk to you in the first place.  

Lastly, it might not hurt to set up an appointment wth a therapist to talk about this.  That way you can get a better understanding of what is going on and he/she can help you to come up with strategies to overcome this problem be it insecurity, self-consciousness, or something else.

Take care!

[Tsun]

I can't recall anything that would've directly been said at me or anything. Although, those happy convos with my friend relatively often just end so abruptly, where they imply (by words) that I should go to sleep or that they must do something else now. But from the way they write it, it sounds more like they completely stopped caring about me at all and just rush to end the conversation asap whether I had more to say or not. And then close the IM or whatever even if they're not actually going anywhere. It just gives an image something like "my real friend just logged in/I'm not bored anymore, so I don't need to pretend to like you anymore."

The only negative thing said about me that I can remember, was when my old best friend got really mad at me (although it's more complicated than that) because I was being too sensitive or something. But I'm sure I was more or less like this before that incident.

I'm also generally afraid to be disliked by the people I like, and I always try to make it clear that if there's a problem with me, then they should let me know because I'd love to fix it and/or because it's probably a misunderstanding.

[JGF25]

It sounds to me as if you are just very self-conscious.  Has anything happened in the past to make you feel this way?  Did you hear that somebody said something negative about you?  Usually these things are precipitated by a trigger.  

I'm self-conscious about talking.  All my report cards when I was younger said I talked to much.  If I am in the car with somebody, it bothers me if there is silence and I feel compelled to talk.  Then I get self-conscious because I think I am talking too much.  I try to make light of it.  I always tell people "you know if I drink this beer I'm going to be talking your ear off" or "You know I don't like silence so get ready to hear me talk."  

If there is an opening, make light of the situation.  What you don't want to do is constantly say "am I bothering you?"  It would be like me saying "Am I talking too much?"  Trust me, if you were bothering them, they wouldn't be talking to you in the first place.  They talk to you because they enjoy your company.