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Usually I just talk about some random shit to them and if they feel like participating they will. You’ll be surprised how often this works. Obviously try to think of something you’re both interested in which is generally pretty easy to figure out. If you’re both at a concert just ask who they’re there to watch. If you’re in a video game lobby just use voice chat until someone cool joins in and then send them a friend request after. The key to all this is you need to be actively participating in the whole friendship dance. The other key is overcoming your anxiety if you have it, literally just say fuck it and say hi or whatever. Also if you’re anxious find someone who is also anxious and say something like “this fucking sucks huh?” If you’re at a party. Making friends is easy if you just be yourself as long as yourself is not a cunt
Oh yeah it’s also important to get the fuck out of your house. If you tell me it’s scary outside I will tell you I don’t give a fuck. Why are you letting your anxiety control you, you control your anxiety. You will always have anxiety if you never run at it and scream loud, teach your anxiety to kindly fuck off. So go do shit, go to the local community center, go to a bar, go join a club, so much stuff you can do. Oh and if you tell me there’s nothin out there in the big green world that you like to do other than sit at home? You’re a liar and you’re a dumb dumb. There is at least one thing you can do to get you out of your house and out there with people, I guarantee it.
This comment has a lot of gee thanks I'm cured energy. Anxiety doesn't work that way dude. So you can fuck off with that
They are right though, you have to say fuck it and make yourself do it. That first step is the hardest.
It's really not right though. If you have a lot of anxiety and try to just get over it this way, it could lead to a negative experience and reinforce the anxiety. The proper response is seek professional help.
I have OCD, it’s giga anxiety, I know what I’m talking about. The standard for therapy for OCD is exposure response prevention (ERP), you straight up do (or don’t do for the compulsion) the thing or expose to the thing that makes you anxious until it doesn’t. Which is what I mean by run at your anxiety. You would obviously do this in steps so say you are anxious about being trapped in public and having an episode (agoraphobia, common for OCD). You might first start by stepping outside your house and going for a 5 min walk, next 10 min walk, next drive and sit in the parking lot of a Walmart, and so on. This also obviously takes a lot of time, however over this long time your OCD (anxiety) symptoms will lessen until you can control it.
Also if you have OCD DO NOT do self directed ERP, get a professional to direct you. Check out NOCD.com if you’re interested in learning more or need a professional.
I have OCD as well. You literally said just say fuck it and go do stuff. Then you switched back and said, "do it directed by a professional". You see how that's inconsistent?
Yeah I’m not really good at communicating, but I was trying to say if you have OCD that is a higher level of anxiety don’t try to self therapy yourself. ERP when boiled down is just saying “fuck it, let’s go bitch” to your anxiety and doing stuff that makes you anxious. Again there are steps to that and should be directed by a professional. However, if you’re a person with low-moderate social anxiety or low self esteem you can probably just say fuck it. That’s what I’m trying to say. The OP sounded like the second group of people so I was directing my response to them.
omg I just saw Howie Mandell doing the ads for NOCD! that shit blew my mind, I'm so glad he can finally get the word out cause I fucking hate being plagued like this and not being taken seriously about it.
my anxiety didn't go away entirely but I did work on it and it did get better.
Surely people can try to get better. Nothing wrong with that..
Giving people advice of "just go do it" is irresponsible.
Sometimes it does. No advice can ever be one size fits all.
You apparently have no idea about what anxiety is. Or even anything about people who don't go out much.
I do though, check my other comment above. I understand introvert is different from anxiety. I wasn’t talking to the introverts, this was help for the anxious people. I’m not an introvert so I wouldn’t know how to help introverts become more extroverted.
Don't listen to your anxiety isn't particularly helpful and is much easier said than done. If you can just say "fuck it" and do it, then great for you 👍 but don't pretend that's viable advice for the general anxious population. When talking to people and being overstimulated gets you so anxious you start hysterically crying and vomitting saying "fuck it" and doing it anyways isn't going to help.
As I said above, you need to do this in steps depending on severity and being as comfortable as possible. ERP does work and is clinically shown to work very fucking well for anxiety. It is viable advice because within 3 months of ERP data shows the average % reduction of symptoms for people is 70% with a standard deviation of 5%. That means 95% of people will fall in between 60% to 80% better with their symptoms and a further 99.7% of people will fall within 3 standard deviations of the mean (55-85% better). But if you don’t want to get better and you want your anxiety to control you I don’t care, but if you do, come back to this comment or (ideally) go seek help from a professional to help guide you through ERP. ERP is hard and overcoming crippling anxiety is incredibly hard I know, I’ve dealt with it, but I’ve put a lot of work into getting better and I think others deserve to know how to do it. If you have autism on top of anxiety idk how to help you this is only for anxious people as I have said before.
You also seem to think that because you did it anyone can,and that's not how it works. Do you think people like living this way or something? Of course people want to get better,but getting help certainly isn't as easy as "fuck it, let's go". Who can even afford to do any of those things?
That is how it works, I just gave you the stats with success rates, maybe it was confusing let me know. Affording it is another thing. So for me I am working from home (huge help for this) and have insurance that is okay at best. I have my therapy completely covered however because I have it in my medical files as a disability certified by 3 docs. It’s a process I know, and I also know some people are too young to do this on their own and need their parents to help. And we all know parents can be… difficult. There are resources though, check out NOCD, or NAMI. NAMI is a religious affiliated organization, but it doesn’t really effect it. If you need more help/advice DM me. I will do my best to direct you. I don’t know if DM are available on lemmy lol but give it a shot
I get what you're saying but you know it doesn't hurt to try things right? I tried lots of different things to help with my anxiety before I got somewhere with it.
I never said it did, I'm just saying that that bar is a lot harder for some people to reach and it very obviously isn't as simple as "fuck it". Some people need outside intervention before they are able to get the help they need. And again, there's the fact that all of the things that help cost enormous amounts of money or are completely unavailable. The original commenter makes it sound as if anyone can just go and get help as long as they themselves can gather the courage but that is simply untrue.
Also, I'm not someone who can't go out, I have a job that I attend daily and people I interact with regularly.
I mean, I helped myself and that didn't cost me a dime and I certainly never got much help from any therapists I actually paid.
Like I said, people should just be more open to trying things.
Playing online and chatting is one thing I gotta get used to lol I do play often tho never with voice chat , I’ll start on that for sure lol
I totally get that last part about anxiety and all lol it’s making deeper connections with people that I struggle with I think , strengthening the connections and actually meeting up with them every once in a while lol I’m not bad at conversation or terrible with talking with new people I don’t think it’s really just putting myself out there and trying to actually make a friend instead of letting it all come whenever
I personally hate online/multiplayer games for the most part. They don't allow you to become immersed and require much more skill than single-player games
So the deeper connections come from hanging out a lot and the stuff that comes with that. So a tip for hanging out a lot is say you’re going to go out to eat, invite people. Text them “hey I’m gonna be at x to eat at x time if you want to join me”. I eat out at least once a week so that’s once a week I have chances to make deeper connections. The people that consistently say yes or try to make time for you are people you’ll want to hang out with more so this will weed out the friends from the close friends.
This is what worked for me, I thought I was an introvert but turns out I was an extrovert burdened by mad social anxiety, I made some of my best friends over talking about breaking bad shitposts in a summercamp few years ago (I am a highschooler) than after relizing people apreciated who I was rest came naturaly. I became a lot more social person in general