I have the same problem and I made a lot of progress this year and the last. A few things that help in no particular order:
- Write things down. Over time you start noticing patterns that help you diagnose and fix the issue. I particularly love the post-mortem when returning from a house party, and how batshit itsane it reads 5 days later. I also have a play-by-play diary of me thinking I was misreading a person's intentions and agonising over every interaction. We've been together for a few years. It's fun to rewind the tape and laugh at your own irrationality.
- Treat your overreaction to social cues as irrational, and deal with it accordingly. Every Spring, my body tells me that grass pollen will kill me (hay fever), but I just ignore that signal as irrational. I now handle my hasty conclusions the same way.
- Indifference is the default. Most people won't be excited about you, but they're a very long way from disliking you. A lack of enthusiasm does not mean anything about you.
- Talk to others about it. When I started talking about my insecurities to close friends, they told me just how wrong I was, with lots of backing evidence. They were genuinely surprised that I thought any of those things. It's a bit like how a friend of mine was super self-conscious about something on his face, and a year in, I had never even noticed it.
> Treat your overreaction to social cues as irrational, and deal with it accordingly.
This is so smart.
Even broader, take your overreactions to most things as irrational. I am using this recently to rewire myself on all sorts of things and it's quite transformative.
Journaling helps a lot with that because you catch yourself writing about the same emotions in the same contexts. The predictability of it makes it easier to process rationally.
- Write things down. Over time you start noticing patterns that help you diagnose and fix the issue. I particularly love the post-mortem when returning from a house party, and how batshit itsane it reads 5 days later. I also have a play-by-play diary of me thinking I was misreading a person's intentions and agonising over every interaction. We've been together for a few years. It's fun to rewind the tape and laugh at your own irrationality.
- Treat your overreaction to social cues as irrational, and deal with it accordingly. Every Spring, my body tells me that grass pollen will kill me (hay fever), but I just ignore that signal as irrational. I now handle my hasty conclusions the same way.
- Indifference is the default. Most people won't be excited about you, but they're a very long way from disliking you. A lack of enthusiasm does not mean anything about you.
- Talk to others about it. When I started talking about my insecurities to close friends, they told me just how wrong I was, with lots of backing evidence. They were genuinely surprised that I thought any of those things. It's a bit like how a friend of mine was super self-conscious about something on his face, and a year in, I had never even noticed it.