Basically, I was at the movies, and I decided to go to the restroom afterwards. At the movie theater, the men’s restroom and the women’s restroom are right next to each other and they have the signs for which bathroom is which obviously. The bathroom I walked in, I legitimately thought I was walking into the men’s restroom. I am a male. I was walking into the bathroom and obviously the first thing I was looking for was the urinals, I couldn’t find them anywhere and I just kept walking inside the bathroom to find them, but I never could. It was just straight toilets. And then I hear this woman walk in and and then I see them around the corner and she’s with her daughter. So out of the awkwardness because I was still kind of confused, I asked her something along the lines of which bathroom it was and she said “I think it’s the women’s” but then I apologize to her, and then it was another woman behind her that walked in and I apologize to her as well I think. And so then I went into the men’s bathroom which again was right across, saw the urinals in there but ironically, they weren’t even accessible because they had the yellow tape across so I use the stall. And then it was a guy in there as well that I just brought the whole situation up to him because I figured he was with one of the women that just walked into the bathroom and I apologize to him and just told him I legitimately thought the other bathroom was the men’s bathroom. And then I walked out, and they were behind me, and I held the door for them and I apologize to them one last time. I believe the woman just smiled and the guy just said “you’re all good man.” I feel like you can imagine anybody would feel embarrassed about that interaction, Like I legitimately did not go in there with bad intentions I just had to use the bathroom and I’m just hoping none of them think I was being creepy. Any advice will be helpful. I’m 22 I’ll be 23 in less than a month.
Oh, 100%. I promise you that the people you encountered have already put this incident out of mind.
*flicks water over each of your shoulders * In the name of social anxiety relief, I, a random woman on Lemmy, hear your minor faux pas and absolve you. With this blessing, may you find relief from overthinking and forgive yourself for any perceived transgressions. Amen.
It’s just when you see all of these posts on social media and like headlines on the news about women sharing stories about creepy guys. In this case, there was a mother with her child you know it’s just one of those things. But
At the risk of projecting, it’s sounding to me like you are currently experiencing a larger anxiety issue that I, as someone who has struggled throughout her life with anxiety, am very familiar with. Specifically, it sounds to me like you are catastrophizing.
What this means is that you have experienced a stressful situation that, for whatever reason, has triggered an intense stress reaction for you. Because of this, your body is experiencing stress symptoms, and your brain, recognizing the level of stress, is spinning trying to find possible threats that would match the intensity of the reaction, convinced that surely there must be a threat your conscious mind has missed that is causing this. As a result, your brain ends up overthinking everything about the scenario and coming up with catastrophic interpretations. This then causes further stress, resulting in a self-sustaining cycle where the brain stresses out the body and the body stresses out the brain, causing you to ruminate on a situation for much longer than would usually be expected for the situation.
Frequently, the first and most effective way to deal with this is to try to address the stress reaction itself. Activate your parasympathetic nervous system, whose job it is to calm the body back down after stress. Here is an article with some breathing exercises that help: https://www.katiepotratz.com/post/5-deep-breathing-techniques-to-activate-your-parasympathetic-nervous-system
It is my personal experience that, when dealing with catastrophization, the divide between the rational brain going “I’m overreacting” and the anxious brain and body going “AAAAAAAAAAAAA” can result in further feeling ashamed and embarrassed. It is not a cause for shame or embarrassment. It’s your system reacting to something in a way that you did not choose. If you eat a strawberry and have an allergic reaction, your brain knows that it’s not a threat, but your immune system has ideas of its own, and yet having an allergic reaction is also not cause for shame or embarrassment.
I could go through and soothe each individual fear that could possibly arise from this scenario, but if I am correct, none of it would be as effective as calming the nervous system down first and then seeing if the problem is still bothering you.
Finally, because I often have an experience where I freak out due to anxiety and then feel very embarrassed towards the person I was talking to and have a follow-up anxiety spiral about whether they are judging me for it, I want you to know I’m feeling zero judgment towards you, just recognition of an experience I have and sympathy for someone else experiencing it.
Or I could be totally projecting and off-base, in which case I have made a social faux pas, myself. I hope you can not only forgive me, but experience your own forgiveness and realize that the other people in that scenario are extending that same forgiveness to you.
I do have ocd tendencies so
Yeah, OCD and anxiety often go hand in hand, as they do in my case. Do some breathing exercises and, if appropriate for your timezone, go to bed. Throw on something to listen to to take your mind off of things, like a podcast or audiobook or music you enjoy. You will very likely feel better for having done so.