I’ve always found it hard to find groups where I’m accepted. I’ve always been an outsider, and when I would make friends they’d be with other awkward and shy kids. There’s nothing wrong with this, but eventually these kids would find a group of their own and I’d be alone. Only place I’ve had any success is sports teams, though I haven’t had much time in college.
Otherwise, people seem to take one look at me and decide I’m not worth talking to, not someone they’d want as a friend. It’s like people act like I’m invisible. Most of my social experiences have been feeling unwelcome. I just don’t know how to fix this. In college, everyone is so confident and they’re too confident to like someone like me.
It’s easy to say “you don’t know they don’t like you,” when the same thing has happened for years. I’m worried I don’t have enough to offer, and if I’m just really unattractive, I feel horrible knowing that people have to strain to look at me.
Mainly just venting, but any advice would be helpful.
1 comment
I’ll tell you for starters, they are faking that confidence. It’s something that is very hard to see when you are feeling a strong lack of confidence, but if you could see the way they talk and act with perfect impartial clarity, you would see how brittle their confidence is as clear as a thousand watt bulb.
Knowing that, and I mean really knowing it, puts you in a position of trying to find ways to put other people more at ease. And that kind of thinking and acting helps take you out of the poisonous environment that is your own head and thoughts. And helps you take things less personally.
I’m not saying it solves everything. You clearly have a fair amount of self esteem and social issues and those take work for any of us, but it’s a good place to start.