I feel like not fully grown up/mature

Does anyone else feel like this? It’s so hard to regulate emotions after someone screamed at me or I had a misunderstanding and feel like a total idiot and loser for not understanding or asking questions. Strong light, sounds of scanners, people talking and laughing loud, strollers being moved on the floor and many other sounds that usually don’t make me feel disregulated today made me crazy and crying I had to hide so no one sees me crying. It was so hard to calm down and soothe myself. I pressed my forehead with my hands and sat for few minutes. This is why I feel like a child in an adult body. Terribly embarrassing. I’m high functioning- I’m a child functioning in adult world and trying to cope. Does anyone have any thoughts, advice, experience, stories to share, I’ll be happy. 

Parents
  • I had a moment like that this weekend. Nobody yelled at me or did anything bad towards me, I just felt like I kept making mistakes and that people were judging me and were annoyed by me. I had to take a moment to be by myself and breathe, hold my head in my hands and remind myself that everything was okay. I removed myself from the situation and made myself useful elsewhere and everything was okay in the end. 

  • Yes! That’s totally me. I press my forehead with my hands or book if I have any and it helps me somehow. I’m totally embarrassed and afraid that someone will see me crying or soothing myself my own weird way. I never yell back, but I cry. Sometimes I can manage it better but often not. And then till the end of the day I feel like everything is wrong out of place, everything annoys feels bad and I’m bad etc. there are many noises at work that I dislike but I can handle them just fine if I’m fine. If I’m not, then I wanna hide in a cave then even speaking to someone is hard and painful or if someone asks me a question I have to hold myself hard to not start crying again. 

Reply
  • Yes! That’s totally me. I press my forehead with my hands or book if I have any and it helps me somehow. I’m totally embarrassed and afraid that someone will see me crying or soothing myself my own weird way. I never yell back, but I cry. Sometimes I can manage it better but often not. And then till the end of the day I feel like everything is wrong out of place, everything annoys feels bad and I’m bad etc. there are many noises at work that I dislike but I can handle them just fine if I’m fine. If I’m not, then I wanna hide in a cave then even speaking to someone is hard and painful or if someone asks me a question I have to hold myself hard to not start crying again. 

Children
  • Holding my head in my hands is something I do as well whilst covering my eyes. I never thought of this as soothing myself but I guess it is. 
    The same regulating myself as you do HyperHommie , I go into my garage with the lights off where it’s very quiet and minimal light and I love it, that’s my safe space. 

  • Yes! I used to hide under my desk like this. It’s so lovely you had your cozy space! I dreamed of it. I wanted to have such a place at school to hide from the noise that other kids made. For some reason teachers were obsessed to have me playing with them and used to force me. The result was opposite to the desired. 

  • I wanna hide in a cave

    I feel this so much. When I'm having a meltdown I tend to find the darkest, smallest, safest place that I can find. I even did it as a child but I didn't realize it.... my mom always brought home these really huge boxes from work for me and I put them in my room and made my own little cozy space with just some dim lighting (Christmas lights) and lots of blankets and pillows. I think that's the general idea of what we are trying to do by putting our heads in our hands/hiding our faces. It helps block a lot of the external stimuli.