I'm in my 3rd week at university and I'm convinced everyone hates me, including all of the students, all of my tutors, and my mentor. A few of them seem to put up with me, but I'm sure they see me as an irritating hanger-on and will get fed up with me soon.

Rationally I know I'm a nice person, and people do sometimes come to like me once they get to know me, it's just that it takes so very long for people to get to know me because I am so shy.

I've had bad experiences in the past, just as I'm getting to know people and they get nasty with me about following them around. And other times when people have misinterpreted my shyness as not wanting to bother with other people because I felt myself superior. I don't want to "attach" myself to someone if it's annoying them, but it's hard to know whether they're putting up with me because I haven't upset them too much yet, or whether they really think I'm OK and want to get to know me.

I'm really shy and quiet because I think everything I say is stupid and will make people laugh at me. I'm autistic, so every once in a while I do say something stupid that makes everyone laugh at me, but not all the time. I don't want people to realise how weird I am.

Today some people were talking about another student who got very upset about a test we did in one of our classes. She is a mature student and they were saying it was stupid for her to be upset and she should be able to cope with life better because she should be more grown up and have handled more adult situations than a difficult test before. I wonder if, when I'm not around, they say I should be more grown up and not be so shy, because I am a mature student too.

I also had a bit of a run-in with my mentor today, because she is supposed to be helping me and all she does is tell me to have more self-confidence and that I will settle in soon, when I feel she should be supporting me to settle in and she isn't! Doesn't she realise how much self-confidence I've found to manage to come into college at all? Some days I think it's enough to manage to get out of bed in the morning and put my shoes on the right feet, but she expects me to just manage stuff everyone else does and it's all too much. I don't know how much more of this "support" I can take, it's really doing my head in and making me angry.

I don't know if I can manage this for 3 whole years.

I know this is a classic anxiety cycle, but I can't break myself out of it.