Thank you for taking the time to type all that out. I do appreciate your words and effort. I am in real life one of those people who doesn't say much and that translates to my online discussions as well, so I apologize in advance if my response seems short or brief by comparison.
I have done some soul searching (for some reason I hate that phrase but use it anyway) to try to get to the bottom of why I find this kind of thing so distressing. There is the very real disappointment in not getting to do the activity that I was really looking forward to doing but I know that that alone is not enough to cause me this much stress so there must be more to it. I am still mulling it over but I am fairly certain that it is something along these lines. I come from very harsh and critical parents so I struggle mightily with self doubt. So like in this case, instead of just thinking "oh well they got busy, didn't feel like going anymore, or whatever" I will start obsessing about what it is that I did to cause them to reject me. It feels like a rejection instead of just a fluke change of plans. I tend to get kind of obsessive with my thinking so once something is in my head, it's really hard for me to just let it go (this is some of the reason I have a lot of trouble sleeping). So I go over and over and over it in my head struggling to figure it out until I exhaust myself. It is also difficult for me to trust people so when I do trust someone to do a certain thing and they don't do it, it feels like a slap in the face and a betrayal of the trust that I put in them. As far as talking to them about it, I did talk to one of my friends briefly about it and she was really helpful but I tend to not talk about this kind of thing and instead I just retreat into myself and internalize it. I don't even really talk to my own husband about it when I am hurting. I will mention it to him briefly also but will always down play it and act like it's really not a big deal even if it is. I find it much easier to bare my soul to strangers on the internet than to real people. This is something I am working on. I try in very small steps to talk to people about stuff that is bothering me. Like in the above example, me talking to my friend about it at all and letting her help me out, even though the conversation was brief and I downplayed it to her as well, was a huge step for me. In the past I wouldn't have mentioned it at all.
I have done some soul searching (for some reason I hate that phrase but use it anyway) to try to get to the bottom of why I find this kind of thing so distressing. There is the very real disappointment in not getting to do the activity that I was really looking forward to doing but I know that that alone is not enough to cause me this much stress so there must be more to it. I am still mulling it over but I am fairly certain that it is something along these lines. I come from very harsh and critical parents so I struggle mightily with self doubt. So like in this case, instead of just thinking "oh well they got busy, didn't feel like going anymore, or whatever" I will start obsessing about what it is that I did to cause them to reject me. It feels like a rejection instead of just a fluke change of plans. I tend to get kind of obsessive with my thinking so once something is in my head, it's really hard for me to just let it go (this is some of the reason I have a lot of trouble sleeping). So I go over and over and over it in my head struggling to figure it out until I exhaust myself. It is also difficult for me to trust people so when I do trust someone to do a certain thing and they don't do it, it feels like a slap in the face and a betrayal of the trust that I put in them. As far as talking to them about it, I did talk to one of my friends briefly about it and she was really helpful but I tend to not talk about this kind of thing and instead I just retreat into myself and internalize it. I don't even really talk to my own husband about it when I am hurting. I will mention it to him briefly also but will always down play it and act like it's really not a big deal even if it is. I find it much easier to bare my soul to strangers on the internet than to real people. This is something I am working on. I try in very small steps to talk to people about stuff that is bothering me. Like in the above example, me talking to my friend about it at all and letting her help me out, even though the conversation was brief and I downplayed it to her as well, was a huge step for me. In the past I wouldn't have mentioned it at all.
