mikeyboy24 said:
Well to put it simply I have no friends. Was always the shy quiet dude and lost touch with all my old friends from highschool. The last couple good friends I had moved away recently so now I spend my days completly alone. I know it isn't normal not to have any friends and make every day a pass time by yourself. There is no reason to ever go out or do anything really if you have nobody to keep you company. Aside from my wish to have a small group of friends id love to meet a girl and have a relationship but thats a dream far from being accomplished. I was only in one relationship my whole life and the girl hated my guts so im not sure if that counts as a valid relationship. Being shy makes me always too scard to talk to girls. I tried sometimes when I was at work and could have done better I think.. but anyways im out of a job right now. I was teased and bullied a lot in school which I think might have a bit to do with my shyness and especially towards girls. Id give anything to make a couple friends just to have somebody to share my thoughts with, go bowling, go see a movie, grab a few drinks you know but im not gonna do those things by myself. I have no one, girls don't seem to be into me and im just a total waste of life. Maybe if I found a job I could meet some new people, its just so depressing and ive never been this alone in my life. In school I at least had a good group of friends despite the fact that I was bullied a lot.
Hey mikey,
You sound a lot like me a couple years back. School ******* sucked; I had a few outcast friends, but we were together mostly out of convenience because we didn't fit in anywhere else. If not for that, we'd have never talked to one another, and we all got picked on quite a bit. You need confidence, and you need it fast; but you already know that.
Confidence is best found through success, and success comes from effort and experience. Effort only happens if we make ourselves do something, and experience only comes when we trip over ourselves and learn from the failures. I speak from experience when I say the best way to learn social confidence is to trip, over, and over, and over again.
At least for me it was.
Start with a job, or with volunteering. Or start with working out or studying something out of the norm (Norse mythology, ancient languages, a subject in biology maybe?). For the best option, pick two or three of those and do them all at once.
This will make you knowledgeable, get you out -experiencing- the world in all its frequently-honeysuckle-tacular glory, and this will help you feel more confident because:
1. You will build your own character and knowledge and have more to talk about and interest people with
2. You will be on equal grounds with others in terms of lifestyle, social capital, whatever you want to call it; you will be
relateable.
From being a many-year social recluse and all-around wimpy kid, I started with volunteering in emergency services and clearing brush on a crew full of
rednecks, AFTER my parents moved me to a state (Idaho) that generally hates people from my old state (California). I honeysuckle you not, it was like being taken out of a nice, safe, warm hot tub all by myself, and thrown in to an arctic wasteland, naked, surrounded by ravenous, hungry savages....in more ways than one. I was shy, I was physically weak. I got a lot of comments about how quiet I was and I was out-run at work quite frequently. But you and I both know, inside, that it's the only cure; the only solution that will work. We HAVE to do it, or NOTHING will change. I gradually worked my way out of both predicaments. It took 2-3 years to see a real turn-around, and after almost 5 I am still climbing the ladder to what I consider total success in my goals for myself.
The forum is here to provide support in the process. I wish I'd found this place sooner than I did.
I hope this helps,
Brian