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I understand that I am a sensitive person and can get offended easily. I want to work on this flaw of mine and grow into a better person. Last night at my boyfriend's birthday dinner we went to a hibachi place with his brother. We'll call the brother BB and his fiancée is JJ.
BB has a bald spot on the top of his head and was trying to show us at dinner. I honestly couldn't see it so I tilt my head to the side and lean forward, knocking over a lot of my martini. BB then goes on to make fun of me saying, "Have you ever been to a restaurant before?" And some other jokes I can't remember exactly because I was so embarrassed.
I took that on the chin and tried to stay cool. But then JJ , the fiancée, spills a bunch of soy sauce all over my dress. No jokes from BB, which I understand bc he actually cares about her, but it was just super annoying. So, the whole night just kinda killed my mood and from then on I was just being quiet trying not to really cause any more attention to myself. I was just pouting like a baby, and I hate that about myself.
Looking back it would have been better to have made my own jokes back at him probably about the bald spot. My boyfriend said he would talk to his brother for me, and that his brother likes to troll everyone including waiters and just random people so it wasn't targeted at trying to make me feel bad. I noticed BB made similar jokes to my boyfriend as well. So in all honesty, I don't want him to talk to BB. I want to get better at dealing with these kind of situations.
So, how do you guys save face or recover from social mishaps? I don't want to be the annoying person that can't take a joke. I know that I am confident and secure around the people I'm closest to, but how do you handle it with strangers and acquaintances? After the soy spilled on my dress I just felt drained from the social situation. Maybe I try to hard to be perfect around ppl and when that inevitably fails, I take it super hard especially if exacerbated by jokes at my expense? How can I learn to laugh at those situations too and not let it get to me? Writing this out has already helped me kind of understand what I can do better next time. I think just getting more and more exposed to his family is probably the only way, and this incident wasn't a big deal at all just that in the moment I was taken out of my character and wasn't able to let the best part of my personality show.
Are you neurodivergent? I ask because this kind of stress about ultra perfection behaviour resonates hard with me. Not to mention how you described becoming overwhelmed and shutting down when the situation turned too 'chaotic' and emotionally distressing.
Anyhow, whether you're neurodivergent or not, you're going to have to let go of this desire to be absolutely perfect in your behaviour, reactions and other's perception of you. You can be perfectly yourself without this much effort. It's obviously not easy, because it requires entirely new coding, re-wiring and re-organizing your inner self and subconciousness, but that kind of re-structuring is definitely worth it long term.