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If you’re frequently the person who is literally tripping over themselves or sticking their foot in their mouth saying things they don’t mean to say, you might feel as though you’re socially awkward. And often you’ll make things even more awkward by drawing attention to how awkward you are. Social awkwardness can be a vicious cycle.

But, what does it actually mean to be socially awkward?

One study looked at narratives of socially awkward situations to find the common thread. In most of the situations, the awkwardness involved some sort of perceived moral or social transgression that intensified the social situation and directed perceptions of the social behaviors.

The awkwardness was sometimes sudden, but often it is from something latent—some kind of tension that has been building. Those behaviors displayed awkwardness through anxious, hesitant or avoidant actions or body language cues.

Now that you have an idea of what social awkwardness may be defined as, here’s some tips to help you overcome your fear of it.

How to Overcome Social Awkwardness

Social awkwardness may come and go, but the following tips will help you deal with it. However, if you feel like your perceived social awkwardness is profoundly affecting your life, you may want to talk to a therapist.

Stay Present With the Discomfort

Your urge may be to check in with yourself, says Joel Minden, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist. “Accept that—and then redirect your attention and behavior to the other person. Socially effective people show interest in others and their interactions.”

Often in these situations, people want to resolve them immediately because they are so uncomfortable. However, all feelings—comfortable or uncomfortable—end, and ruminating on it will only extend the feeling longer than sitting with it would. 

Decide How to Respond

There are two major ways to respond to social awkwardness. One way is to just play it off like it never happened. The other is to laugh at yourself. Might this draw more attention to it? Maybe, but so what if it does?

Science shows that people who can poke a little bit of fun at themselves are generally more resilient and that, in awkward situations, addressing it can often restore the relative level of comfort that was present before.

Don’t Let It Define You

So you tripped over your own feet and fell while you were on a date with someone you were really interested in. OK, it happens.

Find the Source of Shame

Often, feelings of social awkwardness come from a source of shame—that one is not handling themselves as they “should.”

Consider yourself an investigator—where is this feeling of “should” coming from? Does it go back to your childhood? Is there a certain teacher or boss’ voice you’re hearing in your heard? 

Examine Your Perfectionism

Your (perceived) social awkwardness may stem from a deep-seated feeling of perfectionism, where you feel like you should be able to handle yourself in any social situation.

Look At It as a Learning Opportunity

You can look at it as a learning experience, says Minden. “Is it driven by how you think or feel about a situation? Or does it have more to do with the way you conduct yourself?” He suggests thinking about what a more comfortable social experience might feel like. 

For example, maybe cocktail parties with people you haven’t seen in a long time make you feel anxious. Some things you might be able to do to prepare yourself are to think of a few topics to bring up in conversation, such as how you know the host or your involvement with the organization.

“A person might also sense that an interaction is awkward if there’s a clear disconnect between their own and others’ styles of interaction,” says Minden, so if you often find yourself in these types of situations, you might want to examine if your interpersonal communication style is effective or if there are some skills you can work on to get your thoughts across clearer.

Take Into Account Cultural Differences

There may be cultural differences at play. If you’re speaking with someone from another country, their social cues and behaviors may differ from yours and vice versa and it’s possible that each of you just naturally communicate differently.

Embrace the Awkwardness

Because of social media, we see more curated photos than ever—and some people aren’t afraid to embrace their awkwardness. In fact, the hashtag #sociallyawkward has been used more than 115,000 times on Instagram!

And plenty of celebrities have owned their awkwardness, from Jennifer Lawrence’s infamous fall up the stairs at the 2013 Oscars to Mindy Kaling’s book “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” which pokes fun at herself.

Celebrate the Wins

Whether you feel as though you were socially awkward in a given situation or not—celebrate yourself. You’ll either celebrate yourself for feeling confident or celebrate yourself for reminding yourself that you got through it. Sure, it felt awkward, but the world didn’t end.

Whether you feel like you’ve had a particularly socially awkward situation or you believe yourself to be a socially awkward person, try to have self compassion for yourself. You are a human, and humans aren’t always perfect—what fun would that be? 

Many people experience regret, even when making everyday decisions. Making mistakes is part of life, but sometimes these regrets can leave you wondering if you are a bad person.

The good news is that examining your actions often means that you care about treating other people in positive ways. It also indicates that you have the self-reflection, insight, and awareness to make a change if you aren’t satisfied with who you are or who you’ve been in the past.

However, for some people, wondering, “Am I a bad person?” isn’t a fleeting thought or existential question—in some cases, it can be a sign of a mental health condition such as depression. This makes it important to be aware of the symptoms to watch for so you can seek help.

Here we share what you should do if you find yourself thinking, “I’m a bad person.” We also provide some signs that suggest you might have a deeper issue, along with actions you can take to get over your regrets and start to feel better again.

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What Does “Bad Person” Mean?

There is no single, simple definition for what it means to be a “bad person.” One person might define it as someone who engages in harmful or destructive behaviors. Another person might define a bad person as an individual who doesn’t care about others, regardless of the type of actions they engage in.

Labeling yourself as ‘bad’ is often a judgment that stems from your value system. These values arise from beliefs you’ve formed through your upbringing and experiences but are also heavily influenced by culture. In other words, the expectations for what it means to be ‘good’ can vary depending on the society in which you live.

The Dark Factor of Personality

According to some researchers, there is a certain pattern of traits that make up what is referred to as the “dark factor of personality” or D-factor. People who exhibit these characteristics often engage in actions that are harmful to others and include traits such as:

• Entitlement
• Immorality
• Neuroticism
• Psychopathy
• Sadism
• Self-centeredness
• Self-interest
• Spitefulness

These traits are all focused on pursuing one’s interest at the cost of other people’s happiness, health, and well-being. People with these traits often do whatever it takes to fulfill their desires and wants, even at the expense of others.

Signs of a Deeper Issue

Again, feeling like a bad person may be due to regret over something small that you did or didn’t do. But it can also be an indicator that something bigger may be going on, causing you to consider how you treat others. Here are a few signs that you might need to evaluate your actions further.

Lack of an Apology or Remorse

When we feel angry, our natural tendency is to respond aggressively. This can cause us to lash out, act thoughtlessly, or say things in the heat of the moment, leading the other person to feel hurt or experience emotional pain. How you respond afterward can say a lot about who you are as a person.

If you have feelings of remorse when you hurt someone and can apologize for the pain you have caused, it indicates that you care about the feelings of the people around you. It also means that you are willing to reflect on your actions and make amends when needed.

Conversely, if you are not willing to do these things or struggle to admit that you’ve harmed others, it may be a sign of a deeper issue.

Self-Centered Behaviors

There is nothing wrong with putting your own needs and interests first at times. Taking care of yourself is crucial as neglecting your personal needs can lead to unhappiness and poor well-being.

That said, if you’re always thinking about yourself and your own needs, never considering the feelings or welfare of others, it may indicate an issue that needs to be addressed. Self-centeredness can be particularly damaging if you neglect the needs of the people you are closest to, such as your partner, children, other family members, and friends. 

Manipulation, Exploitation, and Dishonesty

Putting other people down and engaging in gaslighting is a form of manipulation and exploitation. People who engage in exploitive or manipulative behaviors typically have no problem lying to get what they want.

If you lie regularly, it may indicate that you need to evaluate your behavior and make a change. While almost everyone tells little white lies from time to time, it can signal a more serious issue when lie-telling is chronic, pervasive, and does not lead to feelings of remorse or regret.

Why You May Feel Like a Bad Person

If you sometimes feel like a bad person, it can be helpful to consider some of the factors that might be contributing to these feelings. Possible influences might include your personality, experiences, and mental health.

Personality

Certain personality traits can affect how you feel about yourself. For example, neuroticism is one of the core dimensions of personality. People with high levels of this trait tend to feel negatively about themselves, others, and the world in general. 

Individuals with a D-factor personality also often have traits that can make them feel like a bad person. Traits that research has associated with this personality type include narcissism, spitefulness, egoism, psychopathy, and sadism.

Experiences 

Our upbringing and life experiences also play an important role in how we perceive our own actions. Our earliest experiences in life involve watching our caregivers and other adults. Their behaviors and the value systems they raised us with serve as a model for how we feel and act today.

Other experiences and influences also play a role. Peers, social pressures, culture, media influences, and our individual experiences shape how we relate to other people in our life. Adverse experiences can contribute to an overall negative outlook, ultimately impacting how we engage with others. 

Mental Health Conditions

Some mental health conditions can lead to problems with empathy, relationships, behaviors, and self-perceptions. They include:

Feeling like a bad person may also be an indicator of depression or anxiety. Symptoms of depression include feelings of guilt and lack of self-worth. In some cases, people with this condition feel fundamentally bad or that the world would be better off without them.

Sometimes this feeling is accompanied by other symptoms such as low mood, decreased interest in activities, loss of pleasure, fatigue, irritability, social withdrawal, and a lack of motivation. In that case, it is crucial to seek help. 

If this is how you feel, talk to your healthcare provider or a mental health professional about what you are experiencing. These experts can assess your symptoms, make a diagnosis, and recommend treatments to help relieve your symptoms.

How to Get Help If You Feel Like a Bad Person

If you’ve been struggling with feeling like you are a bad person, there are a few steps you can take to get help and make a change in your life. Start by talking to your healthcare provider or mental health professional.

This type of professional can evaluate your symptoms and help determine if there may be an underlying problem, such as a personality disorder, which may be contributing to behaviors that make you feel bad about yourself and your interactions with others. 

If feeling like you are a bad person is accompanied by other mental health symptoms related to depression or anxiety, it is vital to get help. A mental health professional can recommend treatments, such as psychotherapy and medications, that can relieve your symptoms and improve your beliefs in yourself.

Additional Steps You Can Take to Feel Better

Feeling like you are a bad person can be distressing. In addition to talking to a mental health professional, there are steps that you can take to begin to feel better about who you are and how you relate to others.

• Treat others with respect: Work on showing kindness and respect to others. Being nice to people can be a great place to start. Approaching others with kindness can also lead to more positive interactions, which can be helpful for forming new social relationships.
• Find ways to help others: Research has found that helping others helps people feel better about themselves. You can start by doing good deeds in your daily life or volunteering to support an organization that you care about.
• Practice forgiveness: Being able to forgive isn’t always easy, but research has found that people who can forgive experience more positive emotions, less stress, better relationships with others, and feel a greater sense of purpose in life. Don’t forget to show yourself compassion by learning how to forgive yourself too. This can be a positive first step toward improving how you feel about who you are as a person.
• Think positively: Maintaining a more optimistic mindset may help you interact more positively with others and feel better about yourself. Pay attention to the types of negative thinking that contribute to feeling like you are a bad person and look for ways to replace those thought patterns with more positive ones.

It is important to know that labeling yourself and others can have negative consequences. Additionally, if you believe that these self-labeled qualities are innate and unchangeable, it can limit your ability and motivation to make positive changes in your life.

Even if you have moments where you feel negatively about yourself, avoid labeling yourself as a “bad person.” Everyone makes mistakes, has bad days, and has things they’d like to change. Show yourself compassion.

Thinking about getting back together with an ex-flame? Let’s pump the brakes before making any big decisions. That partner who dumped you could still be the same person. The reasons you broke up with them may still hold true. Or we may simply be thinking about reconciling for the wrong reasons.

Why We May Feel This Way

After we experience a relationship breakup, we probably feel disappointed, sad, and in emotional pain. We might even become depressed.

As time passes, we likely find ways to get over that person and finally accept it wasn’t working. Or we realize both people need to want the relationship.

Despite those reasons, you may be second-guessing yourself. It’s possible you think you’re still in love with your ex and are ruminating over the breakup. Maybe you were reminded of the happy times you spent together and reminisced by scrolling through photos on your phone. You saw your ex, remembered the fun times, and now see the relationship through rose-colored glasses.

Also, If you still find your ex very attractive and believe they’re looking better than ever, that could play into your desire to be with that person.

4 Reasons Why Reuniting Might Be a Mistake

Couples split up for a reason. Some people confuse missing someone with wanting to get back together. Here are four red flags that tell us rekindling our romance could be a bad idea.

Loss of Trust

Let’s say your ex cheated and you forgave them. Forgiveness allows the person forgiving to move forward. But because you remained suspicious even after the incident and never trusted your ex again, you grew apart. You couldn’t share your own worries or fears; you couldn’t open up and be vulnerable with them.

While couples can rebuild trust in their relationships, true intimacy needs trust as its foundation. You want to be with a partner who is empathetic, someone you trust who also trusts you.

Problems With Communication

Communication fosters connection. If your ex brushed things under the rug, avoided difficult conversations or became aggressive and yelled, recognize that you deserve a partner who cares about you and communicates respectfully.

If you or your ex-partner have not become better communicators, these problems can just as easily impact a rekindled relationship.

Confusion Between Lust and Love

If it’s hard to distinguish the difference between lust and love, just think back a moment: Do your memories of your times together revolve around amazing sex?

• Sexual chemistry is about physical attraction and not necessarily about a close emotional connection.
• Intimate sex, however, does combine sexual desire and sexual experiences with a deep, enduring bond.

While it might seem impossible to define love, it is possible. Love can be characterized as a caring, devoted, and deep emotional attachment. Scientists have gone one step further.

Conducting a substantially large intercultural survey in a recent study across 25 countries, scientific analysis evidence showed that three key components of love characterize romantic relationships: intimacy, passion, and commitment.

Lack of Friendship

A good friend accepts us for who we are. They offer affection and trust. Friends enjoy being together. If you didn’t have a friendship with your ex, something important was missing.

According to The Gottman Institute, friendship is key to the vitality of a long-term relationship. Though the movies usually depict strangers falling in love, according to scientific research revealed in a 2022 study, most couples begin as friends.

Research published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, comprised of four different studies on relationship initiation, found that two-thirds of people began romantic relationships first as long-term friends. LGBTQ+ participants had even higher rates of friends-first beginnings than those in heterosexual relationships. However, the sample of LGBTQ+ participants was also smaller in these studies.

Signs of an Unhealthy Relationship

For those who grew up in dysfunctional families or with domestic abuse, being with someone who doesn’t treat you right might feel familiar.

Gaslighting, stalking, bullying, not respecting your personal space, and even talking about their previous relationships in a derogatory manner can be warning signs that a partner is abusive.

Here’s a list of questions to ask yourself about your previous relationship. Take a moment to sit down and answer each question truthfully.

You deserve to be in a healthy relationship that consists of trust, affection, good communication, and intimacy. If you’re not dating anyone or feeling nostalgic for the good times with your ex, take some time for yourself. You might not actually want to get back with your ex. Maybe you’re just feeling lonely.

There are ways to stay inspired after heartbreak. Give yourself compassion, remember ways you can make yourself happy, return to your hobbies and passions, and look ahead to a wonderful future.

Everyone wants to feel like their significant other appreciates them. When your partner doesn’t acknowledge your efforts or makes you feel taken for granted, feeling undervalued is upsetting. But the relationship can still thrive, and you can work things out with your partner if you’re both committed to it.

One expectation in a relationship is to feel supported. That’s a valid and reasonable expectation. You want to feel that in any circumstance, your partner has your back. When your partner ignores your needs and doesn’t give you the respect you deserve, you want to question if you’re in an unhealthy relationship.

Signs of Feeling Unappreciated

If you’re feeling like your partner doesn’t appreciate you, put away the social media. That pair you consider “couple goals” might look happy barbecuing in their backyard, but you don’t know their true story.

Rather than feeling sad or rejected, see if you are experiencing the following as part of your romantic relationship.

Common signs of being unappreciated include:

• Your partner is acting emotionally unavailable or doesn’t consider your feelings at all.
• When you bring up what you’re upset about, your partner dismisses you, stonewalls, or gaslights you.
• Your partner doesn’t ask your opinion or for your advice. Maybe they’re good at waxing the car and want to take care of it for you. But if they decide to relocate to a different city, they need to discuss their decision-making with you.
• Your partner doesn’t consult you about plans. For example, your partner arranges a weekend trip to visit college friends and you learn about it that morning.
• Your partner doesn’t acknowledge birthdays and anniversaries. If you explain the situation and your partner then makes too big of a deal the next time with overly-grand gestures, they could be love-bombing you. 
• Your partner doesn’t do their fair share of the household chores.

Dangers of Not Feeling Appreciated

While your partner can’t meet every need, there has to be a give and take. Appreciation is critical in a relationship so you feel comfortable and safe. Otherwise, lack of appreciation could cause these outcomes.

Mental and Physical Health Concerns

Healthy, nurturing relationships foster good mental health. Furthermore, social strain and stressful interpersonal relationships can lead to chronic diseases like heart disease.

Blame

If you’re hurt and don’t feel like your partner cares, you might blame your partner and choose to pull away. You can put the relationship into a downward spiral. Or you pull away and you blame yourself for the problems in the relationship.

Resentment

Before long, you might hold a grudge. Because he didn’t tell you he was going away for the weekend, you’re not going to answer his question about where his basketball is. If you’re filled with bitterness, you’re still ruminating about the negative situation.

Emotional Damage

You don’t want to be in a one-sided relationship where your significant other doesn’t appreciate you. But if you withdraw emotionally and isolate yourself, you might develop a sense of worthlessness. The emotional damage has negatively impacted you and compromised the relationship.

What You Can Do If You Don’t Feel Appreciated

Rather than have these negative outcomes, there are steps you can take with your partner to get the relationship back on track. Here are some things you can do:

Open the doors of communication

Maybe your partner is dealing with a problem at work. Bring up your feelings of being unappreciated and actively listen to their response. Maybe there is something going on that you didn’t know about. Don’t forget to pay attention to the nonverbal communication. Are you responding by rolling your eyes and shrugging your shoulders?

Talk about the problem with your partner calmly and honestly. Ideally, you can work together towards resolving the issue and figuring out ways your partner can make you feel appreciated. They could be very small actions like kissing you good morning or thanking you for doing the dishes.

Model appreciation

Maybe neither one of you is appreciating the other. Re-focus on the positive things your partner is doing. By giving more energy to what your partner is doing right, like sharing the story of how he helped carry groceries for the elderly neighbor or brought home your favorite flavor of ice cream, you can focus on ways to make your relationship better.

Express gratitude

Gratitude strengthens and enhances our relationships. Also, gratitude makes you happier. When you appreciate, you acknowledge or recognize something. When you show gratitude, you’re in affective mode and you feel thankful.

In a recent study, scientists asked 120 newlywed couples to report their feelings and expressions of gratitude for their partner every year for 2 years and their marital satisfaction every 4 months for 3 years. Results suggested that low gratitude in one partner acts as a weak link that is capable of disrupting both partners’ relationship satisfaction.

Look objectively and evaluate

Maybe your partner shows you his appreciation in actions not in words. You’re wanting to hear that he noticed you woke early to clean the kitchen, but your partner’s love language is touch. So, he touches your shoulder and smiles at you without saying the words of acknowledgment

You might ask yourself how you show appreciation to your partner? What is your own motivation for giving? Is it for recognition or because you feel like you owe your partner? Once you objectively evaluate the situation, you might realize that you haven’t been very appreciative either.

Make yourself a priority

You might have noticed you’re more upset with your partner when you yourself are overwhelmed. Get into the right mindset and give yourself self-care. You might choose to establish some new boundaries and prioritize yourself a little more.

Seek out professional intervention

If you two cannot find a resolution by yourselves, consider going to couples counseling. Online therapy is another way to benefit from counseling in the comfort of your own home. Being counseled virtually can save you time in driving to appointments and also save you money.

Couples counseling can help you reclaim your relationship. This type of counseling can strengthen your emotional bond and give you the tools that will help you both cooperate and communicate better.