I am working on dealing with my issues with anger and self destructive thoughts.
I had a chance to reflect today and noticed a recurring theme for one of the reasons I often get angry at other people in my life.

I frequently find myself upset, enraged even, at people in my life who I believe do not take interest in my life. I have noticed a repeating pattern of becoming upset with friends/family because they are self-absorbed and do not ask how I am doing or seem to care about what is going on in MY life.

I am realizing that I am responsible for at least part of this behavior. I grew up feeling like I needed to downplay my own accomplishments and focus on other people rather than myself. Perhaps I am afraid that if I stand out or if other people view me as 'better' than them, than they will pick on me. Perhaps I am afraid of jealousy and therefore try to minimize my successes and focus on other people.

Whatever the reason, the end result is that it is often I who shifts attention
away from myself to other people. Or I am constantly asking others about what is going on with them, rather than make statements about what is going on with me.

Bottom line, people follow suit and focus on themselves, and then I leave angry at what I see is their being 'self-absorbed' or disinterested?

Now, the question is: what do I do about this. The answer, at least for now, is I will experiment with making statements about myself rather than ask others about themselves and observe how/if people treat me differently.

Will see what happens...

I went through something similar when I was younger. I realised that I had a pattern of expecting my bosses to "mother" me to some extent, and felt that people dismissed me as unimportant. My remedy was a few years in therapy, where I realised that I had to be my own cheer squad and number one fan and helper, I couldn't expect other people to fill this role. People have their own lives and their own stuff to deal with, and they are not mind readers. You do need to look after yourself in this regard, and not depend on other people to be able to give you this support. Affirmation and positive feedback is always nice, but not always forthcoming, but you always know yourself when you are OK with something, so give yourself the affirmation.

Walking, you have figured out quite a bit about yourself, congrats! You actually answered your own question here also. I had to learn this exact thing and it worked for me. I had to recognize the self-centered people from everyone else (I had to learn this! I couldn't recognize self-centered people naturally because I was subjected to my self-centered mother my whole life and I was stuck in this pattern). I kicked the self-centered folks out of my life. Let us know how your strategy works out.

thanks for the feeback. Good stuff.

I went into a few conversations today with the following plan in mind:
introduce statements about myself, rather than ask questions of the others.
The result, people were happy to speak about me. Not to say that there aren't a lot of self absorbed folks out there. But I am realizing that I am playing a big part in the way I am (mis)treated by others.

I am taking responsibility in the direction of the conversation, rather than just being a victim, giving others the ropes, and then getting angry when the conversation doesn't go in the direction I want.

I also am realizing that I need to make fundamental changes in myself so that I HAVE interesting topics of conversation, and won't be AFRAID to lead. But this is an entirely different topic.......

Wow Walking, good work! Keep us posted.