Struggling to Make Friends with Social Anxiety

Find your people. People who embrace you & support you. You are an amazing person, you deserve to be loved for who you are— even if your conditions are an “inconvenience” to some people. The right people won’t be like that. As long as you love you, that’s what matters. I lost a lot of friends due to my celiac disease. Even more with my chronic pain. But I went from having tons of shallow friendships to finding my ride or dies. College can be scary for sure, but it’s a great place to make friends & find out what type of people you enjoy being around 🤗

The best ways I've found are starting small, compliment a coworker or friend of a friend and they'll usually open up more. Join a club or go to events like farmers markets, conventions, music shows where you'll find people that already share some interests. Look at online spaces where you can join something recurring or long term, like a book club or game league.

I have autism, anxiety, ADHD, and sleep disorders that all work together to make my social life/skills… not good. After high school, my friends eventually stopped talking and responding to me. Since then I’ve been trying to figure out how to make friends nowadays. I think I have some helpful suggestions and recently I think I finally found a potential friend who could be more than just an acquaintance. 1. Think about how you identify and nouns used to describe yourself. Make a list of these. Like interests, beliefs, gender identity, sexual orientation. Example: Writer, artist, realist, non-binary, queer, perfectionist, procrastinator 2. Think about what you struggle with specifically or what makes you anxious. Do you feel like you don’t know what to say? Is it hard to start and maintain conversations? Do you fear being judged? Do you feel that awkward silences are unbearable? Are you self conscious of things like having a quiet voice or physical features for example. 3. List your interests, passions, skills, hobbies and maybe your current/past occupations or dream jobs. Many people find that the best and easiest way to make friends is by finding someone who has stuff in common with you! 4. Now, based on the things from #1 and #3, it’s time to find somewhere to meet people. Start with online communities that are local, domestic, and global. These can be forums, support groups on social media like groups on Facebook, reddit, Neighborhood app, social networking apps/sites. 5. For online communities with people who are local, you can develop a relationship that reaches a point where you can talk privately using text or audio or video chat, and then meet in person

I go thru that as well,and I have no idea how to fix it

it’s hard, but reaching out is the best way. talking to people helps. it’s hard to make friends when you don’t talk to anyone 😅

I have social anxiety as well, and my social life sucks because I'm bed-bound to an extent due to severe chronic pain. I'm always looking for new friends online.

I've been using dating apps or just apps where you can chat with random people for friends haha. I've met some pretty cool people. Currently trying to get more involved in some communities I can join but there doesn't seem to be very many around me. Maybe you can also ask your current friends to introduce you to their friend groups :)

My suitemate has social anxiety, and she had to find group partners because the professor wouldn't assign them, and she loudly said "oh no. How will I ever find a partner?" And someone turned to her to be her partner. Which is the person she wanted. So sometimes you have to set the trap for extraverts

I completely understand this, it can be so hard. Joining clubs or sports can really help. It will help you get out of your comfort zone and meet people! Be confident and put yourself out there, its scary at first but so worth it. Here for you❤️

As scary as it is, sometimes you just have to talk to someone. I was a new student at a high school for my senior year and it was horrible trying to make new friends I have anxiety like that too. But I would just try to talk to people around me and I actually met some great people. Work up to it, practice what to say and stuff and try to build confidence. You got this ❤️