Hello Archie!

Could it be that you’re intellectually mature enough and aware of yourself and your surroundings, but since real confidence comes with experience, it leads to a situation where you’re not quite that confident yet in your assessment of other people (and how to handle the situations), but you are still aware of the potential threats? You have to trust yourself to be able to really trust other people, and you’re still growing into being you. Trust takes time to develop. The more you are true to yourself, the more you trust yourself and the more confident you become. But it also requires exposure to other people and different kinds of events. So give it time and be patient.

I disagree a bit with your theory. You can have high expectations, but they should also be based on reality and you shouldn’t be terribly invested in the outcome. What is reasonable to expect also comes with experience. That said, I know that some people are naturally cynical. I’m not one of them and I’ve never really understood why anyone would be, but that doesn’t mean that it’s “wrong”. Then again, aren’t cynical people always expecting the worst to happen, so if you expect the worst and you end up getting hurt, then there might be a connection there as well 😉

Regardless, even if you do end up getting hurt, it’s not the end of the world. Our inbuilt defense mechanism might tell us that we’ll die if we are rejected by other people, but that’s not going to happen. It is painful, but there are also ways to deal with pain and move on.