So I (34f) have moved around to different parts of town and even to different countries in my life and I’ve always had a hard time making friends. I was a very shy and introvert kid and this hasn’t changed much. I have also self-diagnosed social anxiety.
My motivation to move places was often the wish to start over, foolishly thinking it’d be easier to create a social circle in a different place, instead of telling people I met that I’d been living there since forever and was still without friends. I felt and still feel a deep shame for the fact that I don’t have a social circle.
I always thought it was just me, though of course I’ve come to realize that there are many lonely people out there.
I’m in a long-term relationship and it’s covering most of my basic needs for human interaction, which is a blessing and a curse. I struggle with consistency when it comes to efforts in making friends and maintaining contacts. I find it exhausting having to reply to texts regularly. I’ve had people block me because I didn’t reply fast enough to their liking. So now texts are a source of anxiety, because if I don’t reply fast enough, people might get mad, but if I reply quickly, they will reply again and I’ll have to get back to them.
I also feel that I’m not very likeable and when I went to some meet-ups in the past, I feel like other people connect so much more easily with each other.
Nowadays, I feel too shy to even go to a meet-up, but even when I meet someone one on one, I feel stressed because I fear they might find me boring or awkward.
I also have issues setting boundaries out of fear I won’t be liked and therefore often get exhausted by people that want to chat during hours or drag me to places I don’t like.
On top of that, I don’t care much about just meeting people for the sake of meeting them, I only care about meaningful and deep connections and those seem difficult to come by.
I also struggle at work because I’m unable to connect with people easily. I struggle with smalltalk since my life is so uneventful and lonely.
I feel I don’t know how to human properly, as if I’d been poorly programmed. I’ve been reaching out to therapists multiple times, but I feel they don’t understand me.
Is there any book or something that could help me to become a better person?
3 comments
I can definitely sympathize with alot of what you said around social anxiety, and being afraid to set boundaries.IMO the really unfair thing about socializing is that you kinda have to be confident (or at least have a baseline level of self-acceptance and “comfort in your own skin”) – in order to make the *right kind* of progress socially.
Until you learn to communicate your needs clearly, and draw your boundaries clearly – you won’t attract the right people for you, or turn away the wrong people for you. You also have to understand yourself really well in the first place to know what your needs and boundaries even are.
And what sucks – is that in the beginning of you starting to communicate needs and set boundaries is when its gonna be the *hardest* for you to make progress with friendships and feel fulfilled socially. You’re gonna find a lot of bad-fits before you find the good ones.
But – I also think that if you do start to communicate your needs/boundaries, and you already have some decent people around you – you might find that those connections get deeper now that you’ve shared more of yourself with them. You might find that people are more than happy to accommodate your needs/preferences/boundaries, and that they can enjoy some of the things you enjoy.
You just need to give those people the *chance* to accept you for who you are – if you never share that – you’ll never really know how deep of a connection could have been there.
I was like this in high school. I didn’t know how to set boundaries, hated small talk, and let people walk over me.
Now in college, and I still hate small-talk, but the other things have improved. You need to know this even if it’s cliché. You need to set boundaries, or you’ll slowly lose yourself to others’ approval.
One book I recommend is this – Feel the Fear… and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers
It’s not necessarily about social situations specifically, however, you can learn a lot about conquering your fears. And personally, I think this relates a lot to our fear of others’ opinions.
I’ve had difficulty making friends for many years myself, and a lot of this is stuff I could’ve written.
It’s normal to feel drained, tired, and apprehensive toward trying with people at this point. It is a cycle that gets harder as time goes on, more negative experiences are had, more attempts are made, getting your hopes up only to have things blindside you.. I think in your case, the stuff you have the most control over are 1. learning to like yourself, 2. learning to overcome your shyness at meetups, 3. learning to set boundaries.
*Feeling* shy isn’t a choice; shaking, mind going blank, etc. are automatic. But you 100% can learn to push through that. Same thing about setting up boundaries. Neither one is a fun process. But it gets better. I’m at the point where people can go fuck themselves and drive off a cliff if they don’t respect my boundaries. And you can, too x)
And it’s the same thing with liking yourself. What helped me was catching other people lying, being rude, being stupid & acting stunted, and realizing I’m *not* the worst person out there. I’m actually pretty damn great in some ways. And I also deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt, and so if other people don’t do that, then **I’m** doing that for myself. So fuck anyone who can’t see that.