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Many socially anxious people carry a buried sense that they are missing something inside.

The thing that’s actually missing is a full connection to their own emotions.

It feels like a flaw, but it’s just a feeling, and it often traces back to emotional neglect.

"We're invited to the neighborhood barbecue!" Donald's wife Barbara says excitedly to him. They just moved into the area, and she is happy about the opportunity to meet their new neighbors. "Oh, that's nice, honey," Donald says back. But in fact, he is cringing inside. Secretly, he is making a plan to schedule a long meeting at work that afternoon so he will not have to attend.

Do you recognize something of yourself in Donald? Have you ever built a small, quiet excuse to avoid a room full of people?

In my psychology practice, I spent years with people who did exactly that, and almost none of them could tell me why. They were warm. They were liked. And they walked into gatherings certain, in some deep, unnameable way inside themselves, that they were the only person there who did not belong.

There is a name for what they were carrying. I call it the fatal flaw, and it is a deeply buried sense that:

Something is wrong with me. I am missing some vital ingredient that other people have. I am set apart, different. I don't quite fit in anywhere.

Something is wrong with me. I am missing some vital ingredient that........

© Psychology Today