Making friends

[Sausager]

Chances are, it is very likely I am neurodiverse. DF, Dsis & both my DC have been diagnosed as ADHD. I've been strongly recommended by those assessing DC that I should go for assessment. Having looked online at the diagnostic criteria, I definitely meet the threshold but so far in my 40 odd years of being alive, I have just been diagnosed with anxiety & low mood etc.

My question is, how do you make/keep friends? I'm dead lonely but then I struggle with crowds. Last night I was at a Christmas party, it was so loud. I couldn't filter out the noise, I couldn't concentrate on what people were saying & just felt awkward and uncomfortable and that I didn't fit in. I was home by 1015. Is it harder for ND people to make friends?

In my experience people don’t want to be friends with you if you’re ND. They can smell that there’s something “not quite right” about you so they reject you. I don’t think it’s necessarily that you’re doing anything wrong. A NT person could do exactly the same and people would want to be friends with them. It’s not something about your behaviour that you can change - it’s fundamentally YOU that is the problem.

I guess there's not really much hope then? 😕

I think it is much harder to make friends but I do think there is hope! I think the trick is finding the situations where you feel happy and comfortable and able to socialise.

I love the idea of a Christmas party and I want to be the person who thrives at a party but in reality it is hell and exactly as you described. The issue with ADHD is that we crave dopamine and still put ourselves in uncomfortable situations in the pursuit of it, if that makes sense?

I think figure yourself out first within the context of this new knowledge that you might be neurotypical. What do you love? What do you hate? Where do you feel comfortable? What do you need to stop forcing yourself to do? Try and find something that involves socialising that works for you and eventually you might bump into someone who is on your wavelength!

I am probably making it sound simple and I know it isn't - I am trying to get my head around it all too and managing friendships when I don't know who I am really and how much I'm masking. However, I think there is hope and the more you learn about yourself, perhaps the more hope there will be?

IME it's definitely harder. My only "true" friends are also neurodivergent in some way (some are diagnosed; others aren't as we're middle-aged so flew under the radar as kids/younger adults, but I strongly suspect they are!) I've found that very few NT people are interested in being friends with me, and tbh the feeling is mutual - I don't mean that in a horrid way, we just don't click. I've made plenty of friendly acquaintances over the years but it rarely gets past that stage. There's definitely hope - you just need to find your tribe (which we all do to an extent, not just those of us who are ND). I found having my own midlife diagnosis really helpful in terms of self-acceptance - I now don't beat myself up as much for not enjoying the things I previously felt I "should" enjoy.

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep40700

This says it all. NTs don’t want to interact with us. They make snap judgements which have nothing to do with what we actually say, and everything to do with how we say it. In a matter of seconds they decide they don’t want to be friends with us, and that doesn’t change no matter how many additional times we interact. We can say the exact same words as NTs but it makes no difference - it’s our fundamental selves that they dislike.

I personally think the reason I scare people away is I try too hard and seem to keen. I’m working on it. I think it scares people away though. And I never seem to know the right thing to say.

I need friends like you, my life is suddenly making sense