I am a 20 year old male turning 21 this month. Not exaggerating the ‘Very’ in the caption. I have a problem, I can’t talk to people. Be it interviews, or my social life, I seem to always find a way to screw them all. I get extremely nervous and suddenly I lose my words, I start to blabber. This has taken a hit on my confidence, and hence I become a target in my social circle. This isn’t new I have always had this issue and it has kept me down. I want to break free. I am a porn addict, is it because of that? Please help, can’t take it anymore. I don’t want to lose any more opportunities.
Edit: I tend to lose myself during interviews and exams, is it because of anxiety?
20 comments
Takes practice. Do it more. It gets easier.
I have no idea on how to help about your communication skills, but being a porn addict ain’t helping you.
Try r/NoFap if you want to stop.
I have same , I try to interact more with humans
Are you ashamed to talk about your porn use to your current friends and family?
If you are, you probably are likely to be subconsciously ashamed of yourself for that hobby of yours. This makes you anxious and think more about what others think in public because you don’t like yourself.
Try nofap my dude. Trust. It makes you more confident in yourself as you have nothing to hide
Keynote: Nofap isn’t the solution to your problem. Nofap is a catalyst. It’s like the keys to the chains that are holding you down. At the end of the day, it’s your choice if you want to stay in the same place or chase excellence.
putting away porn will increase your energy and confidence in the short term, I guarantee. You can read more about it in the nofap subreddit. In short, it creates a shame feeling that decrease your social attitudes. So the less porn, the better.
When you say “I become the target in my social circle”, that for me reveals a big part of the reason you become anxious. You think that everybody is judging you all the time, but the reality is that you are the one who is caring the most. Being too self conscious is making you freeze in social situations. If your social circles are making fun of your struggle, they are not aware of your problem or they are being jerks. Good friends is a key part to become more social.
You are also worrying about losing opportunities. That shows ambition on your side, but it’s bad if it increases your anxiety. So just know that you’re still very young, and have plenty of time to develop this area of your life
Take this the right way but your still very young. 20-21 is the time to mess up and hone your skills.
And I’m going to go against the grain here a bit: you can absolutely indulge in porn and have a satisfactory productive social life coincided.
So long as you keep a healthy balance and don’t jerk all the time. If your fapping constantly then you need to take a look at that and work on getting it down to bi weekly/monthly.
My advice for you to develop communication skills would be to listen to podcasts and observe how other people talk and socialise on subjects of interests.
You’ll learn an awful lot about how people communicate and when to converse and when to not converse, eventually over time these skills and attributes will filter into real life conversations.
Practice makes perfect.
Have you considered therapy for anxiety? There’s both medication, MANY types of classes and methods, and cognitive techniques to moderate it.
First of all what I am going to advise is not easy and it won’t happen in a day think of it like a lifestyle you have to live.
Do exactly what I have said, without any changes
— Go to sleep at 10 pm wake up at 7am
— Meditation, yes sit silently atleast for 2 min focusing on your breath don’t complicate it start with 2 min every day
— Do some stretching cus it is good for metabolism
— Exercise daily, if you can’t go to gym 50 then do push ups 50 sit ups and 5 pull ups daily without miss
— Optional but you can journal about each insecurity and try to get to the core of it
Repeat every day and eat clean don’t eat fu*king junk what you eat is what you become
Don’t masturbate daily
And now the most important part do some meaningful sh*t if you want to gain confidence you have to do something worth being proud of, don’t expect that you gonna press a switch and boom unlimited confidence gained. Nope it doesn’t work like that you have to do something worth bragging about, for eg. Ace in tests, sports, music, etc.. Build a business.
Look at your self without being too arrogant or humbling analyse what you are good at, is it a skill people will pay for if not learn skills people will pay for.
But before you do all this go look in the mirror and say to yourself you can do anything you want to, that you are a capable person that your ancestors didn’t struggled for a piece of sh*t
Most important thing is self believe what you believe becomes true
From this day you won’t complain about anything
You won’t think negatively,
You will always think you can do it however arrogant it may sound but you will do so
People will tell you to go to therapy etc… What what I have experienced is in most case it is a waste of time now, you thought you were different right, nope you are not just put your down do what I have said and report to me I was right
Do this and report to mee after 3 months
I know it’s easier said than done, but have you tried to talk to a family doctor about this? I have pretty bad social anxiety, I couldn’t go into stores without sweating like no one’s business. I couldn’t speak up in classes, I would basically be having a panic attack and trying to keep my shit together enough to get through the hour. Effexor helped me a lot, and I’m taking a low dose at that. I mean, it’s not perfect now, but I feel a lot more ok out in the world. When I deal with people, it’s a lot easier. I’m not saying you don’t need to practice and force yourself, but there are things which can maybe help you get to the point where you feel you *could* get out there and actually begin to feel more comfortable interacting with others…
Read Susan Cain.. you are an introvert and nothing about is wrong. ^^
im you but 26
Hey, as people have mentioned. Try watching podcasts, not just male podcasts but mixed podcasts too. It will help you observe how to talk to people and be relaxed when doing so! If you want suggestions for podcasts who you can relate to age wise. Let me know and I’ll send you some.
Must feel like being on an island all the time. No escape from reality.
But, reality isn’t just your thoughts. They collective. Vibing be important.
Me. I’m learning to love the process that i go through when i feel the exact same thing. I get more talkative, which I sometimes regret later.. but based on past statistical data, I’ve never actually had to deal with anything bad.. I’m a mediocre hooman, earning good, needing the least, wanting nothing.. “gates opens, c,mon in” kinda person.. i feel happy all the time.. and the only sadness of having 80% of my needs.. 🥲
here, take 1/2 of my perspectives on life.. I’d still make my 50% of happiness..
Very very poor communication skills like this.??🧓🙈
Your mind has over the years become programmed to be just the way it is. Full of shitty ideas. That’s where your nervousness comes from. Get the book Hypnosis for Dummies. Learn self hypnosis to hold right attitudes towards others. You will be reframing your personality and mind. If you don’t do that you will forever be battling your own dysfunctional self. Keep in mind that you are not your crappy personality, you are the mind behind it-but right now with your present understanding you believe that to be the case. In a deeper sense we are not our actions but the witness of them with our consciousness.
I was like you at that age. You mellow out over the years if you do nothing but why wait? More than once I was called a babbling idiot. Girls would shake their heads and walk away.
Yeah stay away from a lot of porn as it will subconsciously compel you to look for sex opportunities. and so you will be anxious for them and make yourself look bad. Same with alcohol and weed etc.
You’ll get better as you practice more, I used to work in retail and would have to speak to customers and staff frequently that’s where a lot of it developed although I still have my struggles.
I am a language instructor and many of my activities require that you interact with me. I am autistic, so maybe my methodology is the byproduct of having had to o learn these interaction things. This is my YouTube channel https://youtube.com/channel/UChW8lyKcmO4lLRiBs7dPz2Q and @meuteacher is my Instagram profile. Reach out if you want guidance
I can’t address your entire situation, but I’ll give you my 2 cents on one thing that you said, “I start to blabber”. Blabbering does not imply a lack of social competency. I stutter all the time. As I’m writing this, I’m mentally stuttering on how to write it. You go on YT, find a public intellectual, and their talks are full of ums and ahs. Do you think that they’re nervous? Or don’t know what to say? Nah, they’re just taking their time to express their thoughts in the best way possible.
I know this isn’t gonna be lifechanging, but you could potentially find solace in the fact that you’re probably wanting to move faster than your mind is capable of, and that you don’t need to. If the most intelligent people of our society need to take time to frame their thoughts, then why should you feel bad that you need to as well? If you can accept that it’s fine to take your time to say what you want to say, even if it means seconds of silence, then you’ll feel more comfortable in conversation.
Social groups and public speaking classes really helped me feel more confident when doing presentations. Perhaps try something like that too, where people engaged already expect nervousness to be a factor?
The problem regarding communication is one a lot of guys face at some point. I was one of them. If you’d like to work on it, i’m open to sharing some of the tools, techniques and psychology that i found helpful.
If youd like to chat about it and make a way forward, drop me a dm some time.