gregarious canid. avatar by ISANANIKA.
seriously it's like a fucking super power, how do you roll with the weight of judgement looming over you
there are people who can and do do this and it astounds me every time
the fact that someone is judging you means they're a fool whose opinion is worth less than nothing
being able to just dive into your honest and genuine heartfelt feelings is something truly worth celebrating, and cringe pushes you away from that.
So let your whole heart enjoy celebrating those things and remember that the "judgment" you fear is just a theoretical fear that doesnt help you, its a warped mental model that's layered on you and tries to burden you, its not productive and not based on what's real and what's best for you. Its a patchwork mess of everyone's anxieties bundled up collectively over each other, made partially because of the ambiguous gaps between people. Remember that your feelings, especially your joys, are more important than any such fabrication. Give yourself the empathy that you would give to a friend who is talking to you about worrying about particular cringe things.
I don't know, but from experience, I can say it's 100% possible. Like 5-6 years ago cringe hurt bad, and today I don't notice it. I mean I think for me personally quitting reddit helped, as did explicitly training myself to accept unironic enjoyment of things, as did changing the communities I hung out with, as did finding more self worth.
All of those probably helped, as did a ton of other things - accepting neurodivergence, hanging out with a ton of trans ppl, idk. the specific thingn may or may not help you. But regardless it is possible to change.
Really though, for me the biggest thing that started it all was probably quitting reddit (and not migrating to similar sites like hackernews). It's really, really hard to embrace legitimate love for things when you're immersed in one or more communities of people whose self worth is propped up on being too good to enjoy the world as it is.
