this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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Socialanxiety

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A safe space for people to discuss their experiences, feelings and thoughts on social anxiety and socialphobia.

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How to improve social skills? (lemmy.fmhy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I need help. I'm completely socially isolated and inept. I have been for the majority of my life. I'm in my late 20s now and I've never had a friend, or any kind of relationship. I feel I'm too depressed to begin extraciting myself from this deep chasm I've drifted into now. I work as much as I can, never turning down a shift, but if I'm not at work I sleep or lay on the floor at home, crippled. No energy or motivation to do anything, even eat. Work is my only chance to socialise. I'm grateful my coworkers are nice to me, and they're the only good thing in my life. I'm far more attached to them than they are to me. They're not friends. They just put up with me.

I can't do this anymore. I've sold all my possessions of any value, and I'm ready to go. I've already attempted suicide and ended up in the psych ward before. I don't know how to form relationships. I'm too fucked up. I want friends, but what do friends do? How do you know if someone's your friend? I've been isolated for so long I don't know how to be with others. I'm past the physical symptoms of social anxiety. I used to shake, sweat profusely, stammer, feel like my clothes were choking me, etc., but now I'm just numb all the time. My mind still goes blank when I attempt to converse though.

I'm miserable and repulsive. I know that. No one wants to be around people like me, but I can't fix this alone. I don't know how to fix this. I'm too ashamed. I can't face people.

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[โ€“] qW7xXbu5J 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds good, but it's complete nonsense.

[โ€“] Cris_Color 2 points 1 year ago

You can think it nonsense if you'd like, but its literally how I pulled myself out of my hole. I used to have such severe social anxiety I couldn't walk down my stairs to feed myself in my own home because downstairs was shared space with my dad and his wife. These days I go out to an event with like 70ish people every Monday, and give a hug to pretty much everone I meet or interact with. I repeatedly talked to my neighbor when he played his music too loud, even though he was super shitty about it all the time. I just had my first job interview (a major hurdle for me) in the past month. And social anxiety isn't the only issue where I've dug my way out. You can doom and gloom yourself deeper into the hole, or you can work on accepting how hard mental illness is to deal with until you get to a point where youre ready to try and do something about it. Acceptance comes first, but change is definitely possible, just really fucking hard.

I still have progress to make myself, and spent a long time in a place of complete dysfunction and distress, but that state isn't intrinsically permanent.