I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one struggling with this! Maybe it also is an age related thing, Dee.
I always assumed that once I get to a certain age I would start liking and enjoying the same kind of things as most people that age and that certain things would just get easier for me.
And while it seemed to go like that for me throughout the last year or so, my life got really normal. I more and more started to feel like a trained monkey. My therapist is very pleased with me, thinking I am doing great. And if fitting in is the goal, then I am getting very good at it. The more I train it, the easier it gets and the less it exhausts me to pretend or to deny myself certain things. But I don't think that I make progress in the true sense, not getting over any traumas or stuff, I just get better at knowing what is expected of me and how to present just that. I get better at acting, better at controlling my feelings.
She has this outlook that everyone can live a normal life and no longer struggle with things if you find out which fears are behind it and then learn other ways to think about it. Which generally I agree is a good outlook.
But I also feel like there are just certain things that I struggle with in life, that always were problematic for me and I don't think that there's necessary a trauma or fear behind everything.
For example I am living with a room mate now. It looks like progress on the OCD and social anxiety front. And whereas I made my peace with her not putting things where I expect them to be and leaving the occasional mess in the kitchen, I still "suffer" from it a lot, feeling very stressed. I just got better at keeping myself from having meltdowns about these kind of things where I end up making a big scene.
It takes so much energy to constantly calm myself down again.