Little mouse, little mouse

I have been told by my dad that I was a chatty child when very young, but soon after he and my mum split I seemed to learn that being noisy was bad. This was probably to do with my step dad who to put it mildly sometimes most of the time was not a nice person. So I became quieter I would still talk to people but maybe not so much and very quietly. Then when I started secondary school the teasing that we (me and my sis) had put up with went up a notch or seven and became full on bulling. So I took from that, that people were not to be trusted and that making friends was really hard.

When I hit Sixth Form I am sure my classes thought I was a functioning mute. Literally the only people I talked to there was my tutors and my sister and later her boyfriend. So when I hit college I realised I could not really function like that and made an effort to talk to people. I got to be able to say hi to classmates and even know most of their names. Also we joined with a group through the LAN network and ended up playing D&D properly for the first time with a group of three guys. My sister kept in contact with one of them (He became her partner later, what happened with him I will cover in a later post).

So I've got better over the years at talking but still find it really very hard. Every time I think of something I will go over it in my mind and make sure that there is nothing it what I say that someone can use against me, because I've learnt that I shouldn't speak up or if I do bad things will happen or at least that's what my brain tells me. So I shall head to CBT to try and change my behaviour patterns because even if it doesn't make me a chatterbox (I don't think so!) it will be nice to be able to talk to strangers or even people I know a bit without fear.