Looking back on my childhood I see that I’ve always struggled to make friends and when I did have friends I was the “filler friend” and always felt excluded. I could say after the pandemic my anxiety has worsened and I don’t really leave the house or stayed in contact with anyone. This all made me have a depressive episode at the end of last year and I decided to cave in and contact old friends which went positively now I’m back to ghosting them again because the comfort of having them on standby gives me less anxiety.
However my mum always told me that I could make new ones and she always encouraged me to make friends etc, but I find it scary without having any connections (I’m due for university soon). But now I figured there’s no point sitting around waiting nearly everyone has moved on and no one is behind like me (despite having issues with mental health).
I’d always compare myself to my neighbours who are around the same age as me and they don’t ever have any friends over and that gave me comfort. But slowly I started seeing them with friends and that gave me fear and now I feel like I’m the only one like this and my anxiety got in the way. I backed out of university for a year due to anxiety
3 comments
I think before you go and tackle this problem you need to come to terms with whether or not it is an actual problem. Do you want friends? Or is your draw to friendship due to comparison to other people, and you deducing who you *should* be?
What’s there to be embarrassed about? Nobody is tracking your friend count except yourself. You can make friends just like anybody else 🙂 everybody is human, we all want genuine connection and a strong relationship with other people. Be yourself and break free from your habits of staying inside and you’ll slowly start changing and making friends. There has to be some kind of communication (body language or talking) or else you want really be able to get that close with someone.
Also try meditating, that will help. It’ll change your brain for the better. The meditation I do is called EFT tapping and really helps a lot!
As an introvert I have only two friends. It wasn’t intentional. Life brought us together for long enough to build a relationship. Now I just gotta make time to gather for some event once in a while.
Uni is good way to male friends. You don’t have to force yourself to speak a lot. Just have a little conversation with everyone and maybe you will find someone who clicks in with you.