Most of my life I’ve been very quiet. I have like one or two friends at max, but I don’t see them often.

I don’t have any hobbies or interests. I hardly go outside or do anything. Mostly because I don’t know what to do where to go because I wouldn’t have anyone to really invite to go with me.

I’ve struggled most of my life with talking to people. I’m not good at speaking at all. In fact I do a lot of self talk when I’m alone which I find embarrassing. Now I somehow learned how to hold very basic conversations which I was not able to do before at all but that’s about it.

I mostly ask people some questions and try to react or something like that. The only problem is we end up mostly talking about themselves which would be fine until they try to ask me something and I just don’t know what to say.

So I somehow steer the conversation back to about themselves. Which works sometimes, but when someone asks you what you do in your free time, I have nothing to tell because I sit at home waste my life away because I have no life.

And it’s so embarrassing for me to even admit it, so I mostly come up with some excuse or something.

I’m really lost. I really don’t know what to do. Please help.

3 comments

  1. Dude I know exactly how you feel, I used to be the exact same way a few years ago, and while I’m still “mostly” the same ave as I am now, I’ve gotten better with it. A few things I can recommend to you as a start point:

    – 1 If you havent already been doing it, practice by just interacting and chatting with people online. There is a lot less pressure to immediately respond right away as opposed to if you were face to face with someone without it being super awkward. Involve yourself in something like a game/discord server/livestream community and you can chatting with people in general, or move to DMs where you can be a bit more personal. This help me a lot personally just chatting with more and more people.

    – 2 Next to step after that is voice chatting, now you are moving closer to the barrier of actually talking with people and where it can/is prone to get more “awkward” sometimes. It’s a big step and it’s okay to be quiet- if possible I recommend to vc in a group with multiple people so you can listen in, and then chime in with things once in a while if you are have something to say. Then over time you will say more and more over time as you become more comfortable. 1 on 1 is the best ‘practice’ that you will just get more use to over time. If you’re afraid of not knowing what to say, ask about something you have in common, or taste in music/hobbies/etc. It’s easier if you are doing something together such as playing a game or something because that is something you have in common no matter what and can always back to talk about that if you really dont know what.

    – 3 Then comes speaking to people irl, when you get comfy with vc, speaking to people irl is kind of like just voice chatting but with body language & closeness involved. It’s important to just be natural and not force yourself to act a certain way that you “think” will make you seem normal (with reason). You can make an observation, ask questions about their day, etc.

    For topics wise, it’s okay if you have no hobbies or don’t do anything interesting, but having “no life” is pretty much impossible. When you have free time you are definitely doing SOMETHING. Can you really say you are doing absolutely nothing like sitting in a chair staring at a wall for hours? Then describe that wall, the color, how it made you felt or think about, etc! When we spend time, we are always doing something is my point.

    I will say try avoid small talk if possible, cause personally I always feel “trapped” when I use small talk, like it’s something to fill the space but is a dead end cause nothing comes to it. Every conversation needs depth to it, such as what do you like lately? Anything happen recently? You can chat about something you’ve been doing lately or just ask questions and go from there.
    As for your second point of always gravitating to chatting about the other person and have nothing to say about yourself personally.. I’m also stuck in the same exact boat so unfortunately I can’t give advices on that there hahaha. I hope some of this helps and make some sense, I feel like I am brambling too much in this here right hand

  2. I’ve been in the exact situation! It was such a puzzling question for me, and I actually still haven’t fully gotten out of it yet. But I’ll share what I learned, because it was really a complete shift in understanding where we are naturally meant to think from.

    So the big shift that started to let me have things to say, is that we are supposed to naturally express from positive feelings.

    So if you’re like me, tons of positive feelings that would be giving you infinite impulses of awesome and perfect things to say and do in flow with the interaction, are instead shut down and you have nothing naturally coming to mind to say and do.

    So the direction where conversation will be natural and make sense is in the direction where you start opening up and expressing from those good feelings, instead of logically thinking what to say.

    I’ll give you an example, if you focus on feeling like the person you are talking to is your best friend, you might notice that from that warm best friend feeling some friendly things to say and do might open up to you. Things that you wouldn’t have been open to if that feeling was not active.

    And so from those positive feelings, fun and humorous and friendly things to say open up, and surprisingly you find that you don’t need past experiences or hobbies to talk, you become an interesting person just because of those feelings. And it doesn’t matter if you haven’t done much in the past, or had hobbies, if you can become interested in planning to do something in the future, it’s just as exciting conversation talking about where you are headed and what you are working on in life.

    And also don’t be embarrassed about doing self talk alone, I’ve done tons of that, because it’s CRUCIAL to figure out how to socialize so seriously if anything helps you improve DO IT.

    u/SelfIntelligence commented some really good ideas to build your skills up in a less pressure environment, I’ll be trying some of those myself!

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