Social phobia

[Littlediamond]

Hi,

I’ve had trouble socialising for a long time now, maybe 10 years and I’ve never reached out for help. I’m ok at small talk but anything deeper and my mind goes blank. I have trouble being myself around others and speaking my mind when I need to stand up for myself. If I’m put in the spot my heart races and I feel breathless which makes everything worse.

Every day I leave work and uni feeling more insecure and upset because I can’t connect with people and it hurts to see how it comes so naturally to others while I’m struggling. It hurts to see people happily making friends when it’s so hard for me. I’m turning 30 this year and still have no friends since the ones I made during school and I haven’t spoken to them in years either because my anxiety made me act weird around them so they stopped asking me out. I never date and if I’m being honest I don’t like going anywhere because I feel so disconnected from the world.

I’m just not sure what I can do or where to begin. I want to change but at the same time I don’t because I’m more comfortable being alone where I know I won’t feel this anxiety. I’ve tried eating well, exercising and fixing my sleeping habits but I always fall back into the same routine of just doing nothing on my days off and it makes me feel like a loser, but I know if someone asked me to go out I would probably say no because I’m my own enemy. Just looking for some advice because I’m tired of feeling this pain everyday. And I’m frustrated with myself for not even wanting to try anymore.

[Sammy]

I feel you

dont worry. Everyone is different and yes it hurts when we compare others

run your own race

Therapy and journal helps

find friends who understand you even online support 

try to stretch your boundaries and try new things 

already you’ve doing well

[Caity88]

Comparison is the thief of joy.

It's so hard to find connections with people when we suffer from anxiety. But try to remember that there are so many other people that feel the same way you do and you are not alone in feeling this way.

I would strongly recommend getting a referral from your Dr to see a councillor. That is what I did when I first started experiencing anxiety. I also went on medication for a little while just to help while I worked on myself. 

Also I will note that with anxiety we quite often convince ourselves of things that quite often aren't true like "people think I'm weird, people don't like me etc" but I think that's mostly in our heads and we have to try push through those voices and reach out for connection even when it feels so hard 

[Littlediamond]

Thanks, it helps that I’m not alone and I really do have to stop telling myself that I’m weird and unlikeable because I’m just hurting my own feelings 😞 but it’s hard to stop and it’s hard to believe in myself.

[Littlediamond]

I’m going to try, thanks for your advice 🙂 

[sbella02]

Hey LittleDiamond,

Thank you so much for reaching out to us, welcome to the forums. I admire your openness here, it must've taken so much strength and courage to post. I'd take that as a sign that you might be better at deeper conversations than you think you are. 

I've struggled in the past with conversations, as I've often thought I come across as awkward or that I sound disingenuous - I've since realised that people are generally too preoccupied with how they come across in a conversation to notice these kinds of things.

The first thing I'll say is that my advice depends on whether you'd like to have better, deeper connections with specific people/make more friends, or whether you'd just like to be seen by colleagues and peers as friendly, personable, and great to talk to. The latter may be more a case of finding common ground with people, and learning how to listen with the intent to understand rather than listening to respond. There's a great resource I'll share on this, it's a Ted Talk about how to have better conversations. There are some great tips in there that could be very useful.

With regards to finding and maintaining deeper connections with people, there are several things you can do. Would you feel comfortable having a look around for any clubs or groups based on your interests? If you have a search on Google or somewhere like Facebook, there may be local groups for sports, crafting, reading, board games, any hobbies or areas of interest that you have. This is a good way to meet people who already have common ground with you, which can be a good segue into forming deeper connections. If you would be interested in the idea of being a solo-traveller, staying in hostels and joining tour groups can be good ways of meeting people who might be around the same age or have similar interests and experiences.

I'll ask you this, are there any topics of conversation that you really like? Anything in the world that you feel you could talk about for hours and never get bored of? If you find that running out of conversation topics tends to be something you worry about when interacting with people, having a few topics that you like discussing can be a good short-term way of mitigating this worry.

I hope this helps, and please feel free to keep chatting with us if you'd like. We're here to help you.

Take care, SB