I’m currently a sophomore in high school, and while I’m not too bad at communicating now, back in middle school after an incident occurred I started to develop pretty bad social anxiety. I would go through great lengths to avoid people, sometimes going to the bathroom just to escape certain situations that involved interactions.
At some point I decided to force myself to talk to people gradually, with the mindset that I might actually start to make friends again if I can re-learn how to be more social. I wouldn’t say it has gotten easier for me these past couple of years, as I still don’t really have friends. Actually, I think for a majority of my life even before having social anxiety I never really had what you would call true “friends.” I’d have people who I occasionally sat with during lunch and played with at recess, but they were also people who asked me for money, who never prioritized me as even their top choice in group work, and who would end up completely forgetting about me if I wasn’t the first one to reach out.
My social anxiety is manageable enough now to the point where I can go to clubs and I can socialize when participation is required, but I just can’t make friends. I can’t keep people interested for long enough, and even when I feel like there is a connection there, people slowly start to drift away and it’s hard enough trying to reach out, let alone put up with the exhaustion of feeling like I’m the one putting in more effort, despite the fact that I wished people would start to put more effort in me sometimes. I wish people were interested enough in getting to know me. It’s not like I don’t have no friends at all though, it’s just been particularly difficult to make friendships at school. I’ve had it pretty easy finding people with similar interests and views online. I just don’t know honestly, what makes people think of me as so boring and unloveable in real life. It’s not too hard being myself but sometimes the loneliness gets too me. I see people hanging out with their friend groups all the time, I feel slightly jealous whenever people get excited when they see their friends approach. I occasionally, well more than occasionally envy these people and wish I had the life they had. The hardest part is I lie to my parents about having friends because I know how they’ll react if I lied to them and I just want to know if it’s really worth trying anymore.
1 comment
Simply my opinion here, and based on personal experience. As someone fairly introverted I am quite familiar with the struggle socializing. However for your growth and potential work opportunities having people who can help open doors for you is essential. You don’t need close friends that you spend everyday with, however you do need those people who might randomly offer you work; you never know when you will need it. It also helps to know people who can offer you assistance on things not related to your chosen profession. Need you taxes done, maybe betty from home room becomes an accountant, need your car fixed, maybe john from math becomes a mechanic. It is a bit frowned upon to express the thought of having people just so you can use them, but if you want to go far you need many doors opened to get there. Make casual conversation with those you sit around in class, be friendly and open to doing things if the chance occurs. Invite people to hang out once in a while. Choose school activities you enjoy and participate in those, this will help the most in making friends that will last longer.
You’ll have more opportunities to meet more people as you end up in different places, jobs, college, so on. But the best time to practice is early and if you fail at it now, no big deal, it is just learning how to do things better in the future.