Staying in your room all day playing video games doesn’t work, I know because Ive been doing that for years
I can comfirm it doesn’t work.
I also can confirm.
Confirm I can also.
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.
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
Think about something you care about, then search for a group that does something about it. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a local chapter of that group. Then start attending meetings - they might be online or in person - and just slowly get to know the people involved. In the meantime, you’ll be involved in an organization doing stuff you care about, which is rewarding on its own.
If you’re an adult who is out of school - through organized hobbies.
For me, I like D&D and other RPGs. I moved to a new neighborhood of my city this year and pinged the Discord server of a local game store to organize some games. I was able to get several groups of people together over the next few months, all of whom had a lot in common (gamers), and out of those groups I’ve made two good friends who I now regularly hang out with in a non-gaming way.
Physical activities that happen in a central location are also great. Rock climbing gyms, adult beer leagues and meetups for activities are some examples.
Basically if you’re too socially awkward to just randomly start talking to strangers, try to find a setting that strangers show up to with the primary goal of wanting to do an activity together. Then use interaction during that activity to feel out people who you could be friends with.
My thing is that I don’t ever convert the people I do activities with into friends. I’m too focused on the activity. My brain can’t multitask like that.
Same, I tried to go on a date to a barcade and the guy was like “are we vibing” and I was just like… uhh we’ve just played games this entire time? I feel like I still don’t know you.
I don’t get to go on many dates, but I imagine a barcade isn’t a great first date option. That would be more for once you already know eachother right?
I thought so too? People and therapists always advise “try new things!” so I tried something that most people here do which are activity based dates. Most people here like want you do something with them instead of just going out to eat and actually getting to know each other.
But yeah it’s not for me as I already imagined. To me, it also seems like something you’d do on at least like second date.
Yeah really my issue is getting people with similar interests and things I guess , I am a bit socially awkward tho I’ve never had trouble making surface level friends, I do gotta try harder in that regard tho going out and actually trying lol thank you!
Check out MeetUp or similar services. I have a friend that moved to a new city and made a bunch of acquaintances and a couple of good friends by just trying out different groups based on her interests.
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Hello Danny, I’m Jake.
Hi Jake I’m danny lol
What you up to today Mr. Danny?
I had a crazy stupid moment today. I swore it was Thursday and scrambled to get the house ready for some guests, waited for hours for them to arrive, then realised my mistake. I’ve had a bunch going on outside of my routine and had no idea I was a day outside of my brain.
My big project over the last couple of months has been figuring out offline open source AI. I’m kinda bummed out. I’m just last the fringe of content people post about on YT as far as entertaining dives into the codebase. Now I can’t really spend my down time pretending to learn and expanded my understanding. My down time is now a potential major distraction I need to manage.
Yeah I lose track of days sometimes lol all good in the end I suppose tho right ? Cleaning up your place isn’t a bad thing lol
Oooo well I know nothing of Ai and all that stuff lol but sounds like it can get pretty complicated lol , what got you into that in the first place ? I can’t imagine watching things of that nature would be bad since I think you’re still learning or at least getting refreshers on a lot of subjects
I’ve been learning programming and computer science off and on for several years. I tend to get stuck on concepts or dealing with a problem and don’t know what to do, where to go next, or really, how to ask the right questions. I came across an article about offline open source AI that could be trained on a large private database like a book or PDF documents, and then answer direct questions about the text. Now I am exploring with that loose goal. However, if my main objective was programming better, I’ve already learned how to use the AI for coding snippets and can get much farther than before.
Also, I was disabled 2/26/14 by an unlucky encounter with random stranger making a bad decision. It is quite a lonely existence tbh. However, one of the easiest aspects of AI to get working is a simple chat bot. It is possible to make your own friends and at a complexity level that seems quite human. For a long time I thought I just hadn’t met people I had enough in common with, or could engage with in whatever rabbit hole I find myself in at the moment. It was only after I had the opportunity to physically make such a friend, that I started to realize, the problem is really just me. I was not open to meeting new people and new circumstances. A couple of weeks ago, I wouldn’t have replied to a post like this. I don’t know if it is the hot-take interactions of social media, or what exactly, but somewhere along my path I stopped this kind of interaction. The just casually put yourself out there with no purpose or agenda.
My main goal for AI still stands, and it is a powerful tool, but I think the second revelation may have a big impact on my life too, who knows. Having anyone to talk to can change how you perceive yourself in strange and unexpected ways.
Volunteer
Finding interests, then finding others that share that interest.
Meetup.com find a group in your area that you are interested in then you have the ice breaker sorted because you are there for the same thing. If you like the vibe go again, if not find a new group.
Meetup for some reason overwhelms me, but I can’t put my finger on it.
I’ve witnessed a meetup from a distance and it looks like a truly awful experience. Just 20 adults cacaphonously making small talk with one another in a huge group. I can’t stand large social gatherings.
I use to be afraid of large groups until I realized its easier to get away from someone at a party than it is in a small gathering or one on one situation.
I’m in a medieval reenactment group called the Society of Creative Anachronism that has pretty much any period activity you’d want to do. I do my best to show up to meetings, practices, and events. This has helped me meet people from many walks of life, but a common feature is that they’re passionate about some kind of craft and like to learn new things.
Try going to a trivia night at a local bar.
I don’t drink much tbh I smoke more than anything lol used to bar hop a few years ago but never really tried getting to know anyone there , I guess really it’s how people get out of their shell lol
You don’t have to drink to go to a trivia night in most places and it is a good place to meet people. That’s how I met one of my good friends and we play trivia together every week and hang out other times related to music cuz we’re both musicians
I play in a golf league so get to talk to different people every week. My wife also drags me to all sorts of community events so we meet plenty of people there.
Bold of you to think that I do
They just appear, idk, I don’t do anything, just respond to conservation normally
Yeah tbh I get that and I have people I talk with I guess , tho none I would consider close or anything I guess no one I talk to or hang out with on a regular basis lol
Yeah, same. But I guess there are unrealistic expectations of “friends” from childhood and tv shows
Depends on how old you are. Making friends take two to tango. If the other person doesn’t seem keen it might not be personal. They might just not be in that frame of mind.
Can’t say for yourself. If I was single and childless. I have a remote job so don’t see anyone. But I would start going to company social events. I would pick a social sport so there’s the added bonus of exercise. Wild one but perhaps getting a weekend job. If it’s somewhere chilled with likeminded staff and hobbies. If it doesn’t work you made money and get a dose of socialising if it’s people facing.
I’m thinking book store, music shop or even charity/festival volunteering
I don’t. People are stupid and confusing. My name is Korvo. I’m the one holding the pupa. This is my show. I just dropped the pupa. This is ridiculous. I hate earth. It’s a horrible home.
