I find it really hard to initiate anything with friends. Text messages, phonecalls, meet-ups. I think it comes from social anxiety, a fear of rejection and worrying people don’t really like me or feeling they will obviously have better things to do than see or talk to me. I am single and it means I spend most of my evenings and weekends on my own without talking to anybody and feeling quite lonely.
I feel sad and jealous
when friends mention they met up with someone on a weekend or had a social phone all because people never really phone me or arrange to do things with me, however I fully understand that is probably because I don’t ever initiate things and likely give out the impression I don’t want to be sociable. I can see the problem and I sort of recognise the issue is my thought patterns and that it’s probably not true that my friends don’t want to hear from me or see but i feel very low down on other people agendas and feel stuck in my thoughts and don’t feel able to change. As an example my friend told me this morning if I fancied doing something today I was welcome to pop over and just to let her know. I am at home feeling lonely and suicidal and like I would like to see someone but I feel totally unable to say to her can I take her up on the offer to come around. I ended up in A&E last night following self harm and she asked me why I didn’t talk to her but I feel so unable to send a text or pick up the phone to talk to people out of the blue without an obvious purpose. I feel like I am going to be interrupting something important and ruining their spare time. But at the same time I feel like I am craving social contact and I feel jealous of people who have friends they can just pick up the phone to for a chat, I don’t even feel able to pick up the phone and call any of my family outside of birthdays and Christmas. I don’t feel able to be spontaneous in how I talk to people or reach out when I’m low.
I feel so stuck inside my head sometimes because I live on my own so if I have a bad day there’s no one to talk to and reaching out to someone feels impossible. Even when my mental health is good I still feel lonely and detached from my friends and I’m sad I never get to do things I fancy like go out for a meal, see a band, comedian or film etc because I don’t feel able to ask anybody to go with me. I’m so jealous of people who have the confidence to invite people to do things with them or even to just call up a friend. I do still talk to and see friends when they initiate things but understandably that’s not very often, I expect from their point of views things feel one sided and I come across as distant or disinterested and I get it is probably frustrating to feel like they are making all the effort. I don’t know how to change or even if I can, the thought of calling somebody or arranging to do something on the weekend literally makes me feel on the edge of panic and want to burst into tears at how hard it feels which I get probably doesn’t make sense to most people. I am in a particularly low place this week but even when I am doing well I would still feel complete panic at the thought of needing to initiate contact.
Does anybody else feel like this? Is there a way past it or something I can do to reach out to people in a way that won’t make me anxious? I think I often sit at home longing for some contact and wishing someone could read my mind and realise how lonely I am but obviously that’s not going to happen but I can’t see how I could ever get over this anxiety.