Hi r/socialskills, I badly need your help! In a nutshell, I’ve had a struggle for months with a stress-induced mental breakdown. I stopped going outside and lost my hobbies and personality. On top of all this, it has left me looking rough which has impacted my self-esteem.
I want to return to my normal life but I feel like I am dull socially now. For the past few months, I’ve just sat in bed or sat in my garden with my dog. On the (very few) occasions I’ve managed to meet up with friends I’ve felt as if I have nothing to say and when I do it is nonsensical/boring.
How do I make conversation when I’ve not been up to anything and I’ve lost my hobbies/passions?
It – pardon the expression – has been driving me crazy. I feel like I can’t get back out there without knowing how to do this.
What do I do?
Any and all advice is appreciated.
9 comments
You can ask about what they’ve been up to/their interests and ask probing questions about those topics. It’s okay to be in a place of more listening and letting them chat away for a bit. Let them have the heavier lifting in the conversation. This might also serve to provide you with something new to become interested in.
Make friends with extroverts! They can talk away and you won’t feel the need to add anything. It will distract you from what is going on inside you and start to pull you out of your state of mind. It will help in getting back into the swing of things. Take care.
Keep taking those baby steps in getting out and enjoying yourself more and more often. Sometimes even a small visit to a park or walk around your local area gives you something to talk about with a friend.
I can’t give you a real advice, because I haven’t figured out. Nevertheless, you are not alone. You need to realize it: the world’s full of people just like you, in that same situation (me included), and many of them were like that in the past and got through it. Maybe that mindset could help.
Good luck.
I’m glad to read this. I mean, I’m not glad that it’s happening to you, but I am going through exactly the same thing.
I have literally lost all of my hobbies, mostly because I pretty much feel that anything that is at least moderately associated with myself is repulsive. So not only have I lost all the hobbies I once had, but I actually cannot, by definition, have a hobby at the moment, as associating myself with it kind of “contaminates” it and it is not longer possible to enjoy it.
So um, literally the only thing is talk to the few friends I have (excessively…I honestly message them a lot less than I would like to, but I am aware that it is still too much an they are essentially being very patient with me because they are nice people and aware that I’m going through an awful time at the moment) and read about my psychopathologies and other related ones – it is genuinely of interest to me (I studied psychology at university) and then it is obviously of greatly added personal interest at the moment, the idea being that knowledge is power. And while the knowledge itself likely won’t do much, given the vast volume of texts I read, most weeks I do have a couple of new things I’ve learnt that week that are genuinely constructive contributions to my therapy sessions, especially as my therapist is a Gestalt therapist and I tend to read more psychoanalytic literature – so between us we cover a lot of ground and can pick the stuff that is most applicable to me
But yeah, I guess this is about as productive a use of my time as I’m currently capable of right now, but it really causes problems with socialising for the same reasons you say. I mean, I would happily chat to my friends about whatever interesting theories I’ve read that week – I am not a particularly private person so I’m fine sharing my experiences and stuff too – but they simply are not interested in that to that extent. Like we do talk about it every now and then but since I suppose the beginning of this year, I have really been relying on them to lead the conversations in a major way. It’s extremely disappointing to me because I’m like an extreme extrovert but I spend so much time isolated because I know I am boring right now 🙁
>How do I make conversation when I’ve not been up to anything and I’ve lost my hobbies/passions?
It – pardon the expression – has been driving me crazy. I feel like I can’t get back out there without knowing how to do this.
If they are close friends, be open with them and tell them this. On more than one occasion I’ve let my friends know when I wasn’t in a good mental state just as you described and that I might not be my usual self but they were still happy to include me and it helped feel more normal again.
Most people would rather talk about themselves than listen to what you’ve been up to. Just be interested in them and be excited for their shit.
This is just my opinion, and I may be wrong, but I think you need to stop worrying about trying to fit in socially and more about your mental health.
It’s basically asking “how can I be Normal socially when I feel dead inside?” Well… you won’t. You need to take care of yourself because nomatter what bandaid you use, the root issue will bring up new problems.
If these folks are real friends they’ll understand if you’re going through something heavy. You won’t need to have a face. You won’t need to pretend to be something you’re not. You don’t even need to make good conversation. Just feel what you feel, work on your mental health, and let the social thing take care of itself.
Stop having mental breakdowns.