Originally posted by Stuck_in:
Everyone sees me as a happy, cheerful person, but I'm not. Everytime when my friends were feeling down, I cheered them up, but when I am, nobody knows, even if they know, they can't do anything to cheer me up. It's just so unfair.
You are a nice person. That is why everyone perceives you as a happy and cheerful person, and a person whom everyone can go to when they are down. Well, perhaps you are sensitive enough to detect when your friends are feeling down, but others are just not as sensitive. But it could also be you are always clearest about how you yourself feel - nobody else can be clearer. And feeling down seems to be more frequently occuring to you than to your friends, so it does seem that when you feel down, hardly anybody notices and cares.
By the way, when you bring that smile to your friend's face when he or she feels down, did he or she feel you did enough to cheer him/her up? So likewise, when your friends did try to cheer you up, you may feel it's not enough or their actions were not even noted as 'cheering you up'. So it is about management of expectations. You must understand that you know yourself more than anybody else does - not even your best friend. I know how some people claim that their friends and families know them more than they do, but it's just a matter of what is more obvious to who. (For example, your friends and families are actually your 'mirrors', seeing things that you wouldn't be able to detect immediately for yourself.) At least in terms of your own inner feelings, nobody knows better than yourself. So it is
not fair to expect others to be able to read what's on your mind, and what you need in order to really make you feel better.
Well, I choose to take the possibility that you are a more sensitive person while your friends wouldn't be able to tell that you need to be cheered up, or what effective methods to use in order to cheer you up. As such, the first breakthrough is to tell your friends when you feel down -
explicitly. And during opportune moments, do let them know too, how they can cheer you up when you feel down. You can bring this across in a more jovial manner when there's the chance.
Meanwhile, love and care for yourself. You cannot expect others to love and care for you when you cannot even do it yourself. For one, how are you going to tell your friends how they can help make you feel better if you cannot even identify the ways and methods that are effective to you?