overwhelmed and ineffectual / cowardly and shit at making friends

[belenen]

icon: "distance (two hands (from two people) just barely apart, facing each other palm to palm)"I've been so overwhelmed this week; social without a break and a lot of that social was stressful. Last night I had planned to read for class and write and LJ, but instead I just watched hour after hour of Netflix. I couldn't get myself to stop, until an

Comments

[rubyelf]

When I worked and was busy out in the world working with people, I had friends. Then that stopped and now I have nothing, except my husband and people here on LJ.

[siduri]

I don't think it is you. For whatever reason, it is becoming harder and harder to make friends these days. I can't put my finger on the reason why. People I meet will be friendly and chat you up but that is the extent of it. No one seems to want to put any more effort into establishing a friendship.

The friends I do have are slowly moving away and that means the people I know locally are becoming less in number. This is really discoursing, of course. I am very grateful for LJ because really, I would not have too many people to talk to otherwise!

[jupitercornwall]

[belenen]

for me it's not about rejection. I put myself out there all the time and get rejected at LEAST weekly; I'm comfortable with that. It's more that I fear making people feel pressured. If there is distance due to it being online, people can say no with WAY less difficulty than if it is in person. So I suppose my fear is about people not rejecting me even though they would like to.

But I know that fear is not worth avoiding it, because people can always cancel later if they're really not into it. The bigger fear is the one caused by ADD and social anxiety (which comes in with strangers, especially ones I meet in a 'professional' environment): the fear of not being able to string words together in a coherent way that actually expresses me. A friend who read this post suggested I make little cards to carry with me that explain my lack of ability and my interest in friendship, and I'm DEFINITELY going to do that, it's a perfect idea that fixes the problem and reduces it from impossible to difficult.

[raidingparty]

Oh goodness... re-reading this entry, I was just thinking about how cards would reduce the response pressure, and here you are saying just that!
Spot on.
... I also have to admit I just like cards.

[gobbolina]

I also have troubles finding friends, kinda. Usually my friends find me. I don't know, I'm just bad at keeping contact. Most of the time I don't even want contact at all, though the people are nice.
I wouldn't have yvonne as my best friend today if she hadn't been so persistent at texting me and coming over. (In fact I didn't like her that much when we met first.)
I even woudln't have my current boyfriend if he didn't ask me several times if I wanted to go on a date.

I'm also afraid of groups of new people. Like, I was in roller derby training for almost 2 years, and I mean, the other girls were nice, but I just couldn't even talk to them properly. They seemed so "normal", and normal people scare. I always think they can "smell" that I'm different, that I have mental issues.

(mental hugs)

[raidingparty]

Keep breathing. You're doing good.

There was something about strangers: Almost everyone reported having an enjoyable experience most of the time when people they didn't know started up conversations with them, but almost nobody felt good about starting conversations with people they didn't know.

Re: (mental hugs)

[belenen]

that is a good thought to keep in mind about reactions to strangers striking up conversation.