I’ll give some background in the next paragraphs. You don’t have to read them if you don’t want to, the actual question is summarised in the title and the more elaborated version is given in the last paragraph.

I lost all my friends from school due to my shyness. We don’t even keep in touch anymore at all. Over the period I was applying to uni I got really depressed because of that fact because even though I couldn’t describe anybody in our group as my “best friend”, they were good enough to hang out with and I made a decent amount of memories with them.

I tried to make friends again in Uni but my tries to gather up together ultimately failed and I don’t even know why. Most of the people aren’t from the city our uni is in, so I suggested, multiple times, going on a walk together to see local landmarks, architecture etc, maybe go in some cafe together.

The biggest friend circle inside the group formed without me with people who lived in the dorms and some random guys who got into the circle in god knows what way. All events they throw they post in some own group in a messenger, which I’m not a member of.

So I stopped trying to become friends with them since it is really hard to break into an existing friend circle. Basically, I was too late to their “party”.

I did become friends with one guy from the group, though, but he is not really interested in hanging out together outside of uni, since he already has his group of good friends with whom he does hang out and did since middle school. This isn’t much, but at least I’m not all alone at uni now.

I try to go to events in uni as much as my shyness allows me to, but they never pay out. Nobody there is interested in making new friends and everybody seems to go there with their existing friend groups. Being a loner forces me to go through the cringiest ever process of trying to find a group that is welcome to outsiders and I end up being ignored most of the time.

I often find myself wanting to go to some festival, or pub, or non-uni event, but I have an immense fear cringing from my shy self and messing up. Overcoming shyness is already hard and every time it doesn’t pay off and everybody ghosts me I get depressed for a day or two.

So, do you have any tips on how do I make friends? Maybe any tips for making myself more approachable? Are there any places shy people can go to with the goal of meeting new people?

  • BudgieMania@kbin.social
    3·
    7 months ago

    I had some difficulties like these in the past, and what helped me was looking into amateur theater. There are part time (2 to 4 hours a week usually) amateur theater/drama schools that form closed groups and that group stays together over the years as they progress (with some inevitable degree of turnover obviously). I still talk to and meet with some of the people I met through that even though I left a bit after covid hit.

    These kinds of spaces are good for people in our situation for multiple reasons:

    • It puts us in an environment in which everyone is a newcomer, which helps when you struggle with that feeling of being the outsider.
    • A lot of the people that go to that kind of space are people that struggle with shyness, loneliness or difficulties opening up, which means you are dealing with similar people to yourself.
    • It inherently helps with shyness and closedness because the activity is all about opening up and being vulnerable. It’s very shock therapy because you don’t get any time to be nervous or second guess yourself, if it’s anything like mine was, they throw you out straight into the water.
    • You meet people of all ages and walks of life, which enriches you if you open yourself to it.

    You will however have to look into the details of what kind of options are in your area for that and how they work and when the groups are formed and what levels there are and all of that jazz because I can’t assume that it will work the same as it works here. If any of them are like my school was, then they offer smaller experiences (like a weekend or a month in the summer) so that you can dip your toes and get a feeling of how things work.

    With all of that said, you should still look into regular therapy sessions while you are going through this. For people like us, our own brain is our worst enemy in this situation, and we need an external, specialized perspective that recontextualizes things for us. It will help more than you can imagine if you stick with it somewhat regularly.