\[22M\[ I’ve always had an avoidant personality. I’ve never engaged with people around me, always inundated with social anxiety and feelings of inadequacy, and as a result I have no friends at 22 years old. The past 4 years of university went to nothing. 2 years of those were completely remote anyway. I’m extremely lonely as a result, and I couldn’t hate it more. I’m leaving for a MSc degree in Barcelona next summer which I’m truly excited for. Moreover I’m healthier, fitter, and more successful than I was 4 years ago. I want to take the opportunity this time around and make up a brand new social life for myself. I’m as far away from my older self as possible, so that’s great. Would genuinely appreciate any advice, doesn’t matter how broad. Literally everything should help
5 comments
Do you work?
Get out of your comfort zone and embrace failure. Do more stuff in social settings, use [meetup.com](https://meetup.com), if there are opportunities to present something in class for example, do it. It worked for me, I don’t know if it will work for you. The point is you need to take control of your life and mould it into what you want it to be instead of avoiding it because of fear of failure, failure makes you learn which in turn makes you grow. Otherwise you will be stuck in the background, watching others live the life you wish you had. Therapy can help too. Whatever you do don’t expect instantaneous results. It is a marathon not a sprint. Focus on enjoying the process and the results will come.
im probably not qualified to give you advice since I’m younger and I’m not social at all, but I need to share what I’ve learnt from my mistakes: in order to make friends you must push yourself a lot especially in the beginning. When I started a new school this year i thought I was finally gonna be able to make friends, I started making conversation with people before class and smiled at them whenever i saw them, i would hold the door for random people and be extremely nice; I thought that by doing those things I would magically make some friends. It’s only now, right at the end of the year that I’ve understood that it was never going to work. I haven’t made a single friend. If you want to make friends you need to first of all start when everyone is trying to make them as well (don’t start getting serious at the end when groups have already formed like I did). I’ll get to the point: ask for contact informations, ask if they want to eat lunch together, ask if they want to hangout outside of college. Go out with them and do fun things. Most importantly try to be your true self once you get to know them (I don’t know if it makes sense or if you experience this too but when I’m around people, i always feel like I’m acting). I hope this helps
Checkout a game on Amazon called Chickenshit. Go out with a friend and play this game until you train yourself to change your social habits
I’m in the same boat as you. I’m in my early 20s, trying to reinvent and completely flip my life around. I’ve always been more anxiously attached but halfway through life, flipped to being avoident and now I’m discovering I’m more disorganized. Going from having 20-30 friends to entirely zero social life and again trying to make friends at my 20s have been extremely hard.
Self evaluation lead to some awareness and mental clarity but I’m still trying to dig deep. I noticed only two major shift for myself, maybe they’ll help. I don’t know.
Being anxious, preoccupied, detached, scared whatever it was the only way I ever made any genuine connection to someone was when I forced myself to become honest. Brutally honest. Sucked it up and Never tried to hide anything even though I was scared to lose people and feared being alone. It came with some side effects, started to become vulnerable and trustworthy. Gritted my teeth and tried to keep my word and promises every single time.
People started trusting me. Even made new families. Took a lot of time and efforts though.
Next, I started swearing. A lot. Don’t know what or how it did. But it did do some.