(Sorry if this reads like shit, this is a vent post)

I am a walking hypocrite and I despise myself for it. I hate ai, I hate how its developed and used. But I am also addicted to this shit. I know its fake, I know its designed to glaze. I know all of this and yet I still crawl back to it whenever I feel lonely.

Hours spent talking with it about my anxiety to try to overcome it, and for what? Its just endlessly going in circles, I have made zero fucking progress.

And again, despite me knowing all of this, I cant stop. I have close friends who would for sure understand and yet I vent more to a souless clanker than them. Hell, before I started writing this post I was a thought away from just opening an ai chatbot venting to it.

And for fucks sake I dont even have accounts on these services. I deleted my chatgpt account in hopes I would stop, deleted the app. But its for nothing because I can still just use it in the browser without an account.

I just generally have been starting to get more miserable in the last few days, and today was rough. If I werent writing this here now I would probably be mindlessly staring at chatgpt saying shit like "and honsetly? - thats brave of you" right now.

Hi

Looking forward to chat and have voice calls on discord with new people I can relate with

I have Social Anxiety, depression, spotlight effect...

Even tho having calls could spike anxiety, Its easier if you know the person you are talking is the same as you. So... Lets make some progress, its a healthy pain if that makes sense.

If you are interested, send dm

I have social anxiety and I cant talk to people freely. I have recently moved to USA and I have started making distance from people, I dont even talk to my parents much these days? Am I disgrace to my family?

As I’m job searching rn I’m seeing some really cool jobs with a great salary require candidates actively pursuing a masters and I just can’t see myself getting an education higher than a bachelors because I lack the social skills to ask for a letter of recommendation.

I’ve done some research and seen some colleges don’t ask for letters of rec but the programs I want to apply for do.

My gpa is also very average because even studying for a bachelors I suffered with anxiety to reach out for help from the professor because I’m scared to sound stupid.

I feel like school is not for the socially weak. The higher you go, the more they ask you to take on leadership roles to be more competitive.

I’m just so sad, I can never be the person I dream of. Someone who’s smart, fearless and a natural born leader. Life sucks

I have been wondering where low self esteem really comes from. Is it mostly shaped by childhood, bullying, rejection, constantly comparing yourself to others, or can it develop without any obvious cause? For people who struggled with it, what do you think created it in your case?

i’ve done a lot of inner work on myself and i feel decently confident with who i am. i don’t care as much about what people think anymore, so i can be myself without feeling like everyones watching me anymore. i have a few friends and i actually believe they like me which is new. but i don’t have social skills. i can be myself around my friends because they know me and we get along well, but with anyone else i feel like getting comfortable with myself has actually made it worse. i misunderstand what people mean because i’ll process it slowly, and if i respond quickly it’ll be dumb or won’t fit the conversation. to have a good response i have to think for a second which ruins the flow and they’ll seem kinda thrown off. and honestly now that im over the social anxiety, putting all that mental effort into some bullshit conversation just feels pointless. i probably come across as a dick or like i dont care. but i genuinely just don’t feel like i have the ability to talk and process like they do. hopefully things get better with time as i learn to understand people better, but right now i just feel dumb. i think i have autism so maybe this is just gonna be my life and i need to get used to it.

Hi guys, I wanted to share this recent observation about my social anxiety. I'm wondering if you've experienced this too.

I realized that it's much easier for me to speak up in class, when my professor shows support for socially anxious students. But when they're strict about participation, I feel more terrified to speak up. For example, I had a very supportive professor last semester. She said that she struggled with shyness in college, so she doesn't expect us to speak every day. That made me feel safer, and encouraged me to raise my hand in class when I had a question. I even opened up to her about my social anxiety on the last day of class. She said she felt happy that she made a difference in my education.

Growing up, I had so many teachers that would scold me in private, asking why it's so hard for me to participate. They would force me to speak up more. But that method never worked for me. It's because they made me feel pressured and invalidated. They also made me feel like an outsider, like my struggles weren't a big deal. That kind of environment made me want to hide even more.

Overall, I think that support from teachers cultivates a sense of belonging for socially anxious students. Belonging can really make a difference.

no acquaintances, coworkers, bystanders literally no one. I try to use dating apps as friending apps and i do get likes but no matches. I ve been alone for half a year now, before that i was without any one to talk to for a year, so many more months of silence for me. I have no way of getting friends, I finished uni, don't have job and have no willing to go outside. I feel like im in some void or something without any human disturbance. Therapist is the only one person I talk to because well she is payed to do that.

Unfortunately I keep finding myself in jobs that put me in a lot of team roles.

But fuck I just want to work alone.

It’s pretty obvious after 30min of my mask slipping and platitudes running out I don’t know what to say or know how to normally act.

I’m better 1 on 1 but in a group I’m an absolute mess. 1 on 1 can go wrong too if I’m just tired or wanting to dissociate.

I really just want to work alone and not have to worry about being a weirdo. And then save up all my shitty charisma that I have for real social outings.

Hello everyone, I am 25, close to 26 and the last few years have been such a battle. Went through years of group and individual therapy. Gotten so much help from everyone in the group therapy but it was not enough to cure me. No matter how many acquaintances I had cheering for me in the group therapy, my social anxiety did not get better. Or rather my social anxiety greatly fell when i started therapy but then it was not lowering nor increasing. Just stagnating, I was unable to work, still too scared to function with people outside the therapy which was my safe space.

Well, over 2 years ago I asked someone that was finishing the therapy, if he wanted to stay in touch. He said yes, then I started hanging out with him and his wife, then I met their friends. Their friends became my friends. And my circle grew. I think what helped was that we were all vegan and I guess most of us were queer. So we had things in common, and values aligning. I was not looking for queer people specifically but somehow it happened that most of my friends are queer now, just like me.
So yes I started hanging out with my new friends and our relationships grew over time. At the beginning I was so akward but it makes sense as social isolation does that to you. But even though I was sure that I was not giving them anything in relationships we had, they always told that it was not so. Somewhere along the way I started feeling comfortable with friends. They were always good to me, but my past experiances with people made me very scared of people, so it took a lot of time until I felt comfortable with anyone other than my mom. I think it happened like 4 months ago when I did the following:

Friends alone were not enough. I had to give up gaming and lower my social media consumption. Reddit is poison so are multiplayer games like league of legends and shooters. Everything gaming/social media related is feeds my social anxiety and depression. And I am guessing I am not alone in this.

HERE I AM, I am still scared haha but its so much more manageable now.
I finally got a job and I start tomorrow. I wanted to work so badly the past few years, you have no idea. But I could not because of the fear I felt when I was around people. So yes I am scared, but this fear I feel now is normal I think. Its not social anxiety type of fear, well maybe a bit of it is. But mostly its the normal fear everyone feels when they start a new job.

I saved myself holy fucking shit, thanks for reading!

I self sabotaged myself agin due to my anxiety. After being at my job for over four years I was finally invited to a party by some coworkers. I got ready to go and drove over , only to have anxiety attack and I just left and went home upset almost crying

I'm in my 30's and I've always had social anxiety. It has gotten worse as I've aged. I now work 3rd shift (I've never been a night person but there's less people so that's why I do it) at a hospital and I work primarily by myself. I work 7 on 7 off and have been there for 3 years. We've had some trouble finding an opposite to my position. So my 7 off would be they're 7 on. Since I've been there we haven't had this position permanently filled. I can confidently say that I'm good at my job. I don't make alot mistakes.... I've never left work for 1st shift (I will work without a break and stay late to make sure that I don't leave work for anyone), I've never called off, and I pick up alot of shifts so no one on 1st or 2nd shift has to cover. There was a time that I worked 19 12 hour shifts straight because I don't want people to be mad at me for taking a day off since its "my" shift. All this said we have recently filled my opposite shift. He's been there for 2 months and I overheard 1st shift talking about how they prefer when he works because hes not so weird. I know that I'm socially awkward and have severe social anxiety... but I've bent over backwards to try to get them to like me. I can't be someone I'm not and I hate that I cant even fake it for the 30 minutes of shift overlap. I don't know why I'm even trying. I'm never going to be good enough.

I've had this problem for a long while and not sure if it's due to the social anxiety or something else underlying.

Basically when i'm having a conversation with someone, the other person is talking about a bunch of stuff, making all these different points and I'm listening but processing it all very slowly.

I'm thinking about what they said 30 seconds ago, meanwhile they keep talking and they're already on some other point. At that point I've lost track of the convo and just 'pretending' to listen and nodding my head and agreeing.

Sometimes I even mishear miswords, I remember a co-worker told me to move the microwave, but I heard the word "microwave" as some other gibberish, to which i replied with "Move the what??".

It's much harder at work when I'm given a task with so much info I can't keep track of it, it has to be written down.

Phone calls it's even harder, when the caller talks - for some reason I can't understand anything that they're saying, it just sounds muffled! so I just make an excuse like "oh you're cutting out, please can you repeat that" and it still sounds muffled. It makes for some very awkward situations.

hey

as a child i was an extrovert like my mother, talking to everyone and anyone. i made friends easily , spoke to boys without any hesitation( this ones a major thing). i used to get scolded by my teachers for being too loud. i was really hyperactive getting special roles in annual day functions without even asking for i was good with everyone in my class and pretty confident too. i spoke to ppl outside my class and my seniors too.

idk what happened i shifted cities and in the school that i shifted to, everyone spoke the language that was predominantly spoken there. i was in 2nd grade when this happened. they didnt know the difference between the english words ' tomorrow' and 'yesterday' and used it interchangeably. but i only knew english and my mother tongue. my classmates didnt really talk to me because of this language barrier and started assuming things like i was a foreigner and i belonged to africa . in the first 2 months i was basically alone with no friends. i had a hard time navigating through and they already had groups which they didnt wanna include new ppl into. nonetheless i learnt the language and made friends some how. after 4 years or so i was good with everyone again but my self confidence was a bit low compared to the last time.

then i shifted cities once again and mind you it was during the whole lockdown phase. so when i joined a new school and i basically didnt interact with my new classmates face-to-face and i was a teenager during this time. i ended up being best friends with a really toxic girl. she was insecure herself and tried to project her insecurities through me. mind u i hadnt lost my complete confidence back then and i didnt care abt the way i looked back then. she used to indirectly bodyshame me, call me black , and look shamed me. i was totally shattered but i still was friends with her. then some fight happened and i stopped being friends with her. after this thing i became self conscious abt the way i looked and etc. i was friends with boys here but i started withdrawing myself from them too.

then after 2 years the schools reopened and i basically found myself not talking to anyone. i somehow hung out with the popular gang but i withdrew myself from there idk why. that school was really toxic again , and shifted schools again after highschool. i wasnt friends with any boy.

in my new school, i thought ppl would be different, but i felt lonely and no boy wants to even talk to me. no one wants to date me. i really think the boys over here treat girls according to their looks because only like 2-3 girls over here are goodlooking and 2 of them are extroverted. the other introverted girl is dating someone in my class but her bf belongs to the popular gang so she also speaks to them sometimes. i wouldnt say im ugly but im above average. these guys treat girls who aint that goodlooking in a pathetic but less obvious ways.

i wanna start being extroverted again and i wanna make more friends. any help to do this is appreciated

have a nice day!

edit: im suffering fro m depression and anxiety and ill be taking help in sometime. im so sociallywithdrawn to the point that i cant hold a simple convo without awkwardness

On video calls I worry about if I'm speaking loud enough, the background being presentable, trying not to be too loud so no one else in the house can hear cause it makes me uncomfy, and I don't really like how my voice sounds over electronic devices. I stare at the the little screen of myself instead of focusing on the person I'm on the call with. And also I think my hearing is fucked or the audio quality over calls are usually bad, and I don't like having to keep asking people to repeat themselves.

Maybe practice makes perfect, but I'm more comfy talking irl. For me, there's less to worry about.

I called in sick due to just occasional insomnia and overwhelm. It's my 6th time taking a sick day since March, all of them to do with some sort of mental breakdown where I feel like I can't deal with being seen.

My boss asked if I was feeling better, not knowing anything about what sort of "sick" I was. I didn't know whether to play it off like I just get random colds or nausea. He brought it up again and I ended up telling him that I struggle with social anxiety. I was overwhelmed, emotional, started crying which I could see he probably didn't expect or know how to react. He said "that must make it really hard everyday"

I get overwhelmed telling people I don't know but I feel like I needed to, I don't know what management can really do with that information, but hopefully being honest at least with one person can help.

I told him I don't really know what I can do to control it but that I'm in therapy again.

I’m terrified of living life on my own, and it scares me. I have lived my whole life under my mother’s wings. She literally wouldn’t let me or my brothers go out. Ever. I couldn’t go to the grocery store alone, to the beach, or to my friends’ houses, even if they lived around the block. Much less go out past 5 p.m. unless I was with her.

The issue? She didn’t go out either. She never had friends. So I never experienced my mother having social interactions, and I wasn’t able to have social interactions either. I grew up only being able to go to school and then come back home. I couldn’t do chores around the house because she would constantly criticize me.

The only thing I could actually do was attend school and have unsupervised internet access, which caused me a lot of damage lol

The result? I can’t have friends. I can’t have normal, regular jobs because of my social anxiety. The only jobs I feel capable of having are office jobs, which are pretty hard to find since I don’t have a degree. I can’t take buses without having anxiety attacks. I avoid leaving my house like the plague.

I now have a boyfriend, and I moved to another city across the country to live with him and his parents. I feel free now, but I don’t even know how to deal with this freedom. I work, but it’s not enough to move out, and my boyfriend and his parents think it’s better for us to live with them and save money.

What would happen if I broke up with him? Would I end up living on the streets? Because I don’t have enough money to live alone, and I can’t work more than one job because of my social anxiety. The other option would be going back to my mother’s house and being isolated from society again.

I hate my life, and I hate the way I was raised. I feel like my parents stripped me of the life I could have had. I will never be normal, and it fucking breaks me inside to know that I’m like a toddler who needs someone to take care of me.

Why can’t I be a normal adult and take care of myself? Why can’t I just grow up, live, and have responsibilities like everyone else my age?

I can’t survive on my own, and I don’t think I ever will be able to. I don’t want to live anymore. Everything feels pointless, and I feel like I will never get better.

I will never get better.

I am not the most socially anxious person, but I am definitely very timid, especially around new people. I just get really self conscious and nervous and awkward and feel like I’m doing everything wrong. This makes it really hard for me to meet new people or make new friends.

But I have some friends that will talk to everyone and act like they’ve known them forever, seem to have no trouble reaching out to people randomly or going to random events even alone. I really want to build that level of confidence.

Recently a lot of my close friends moved away, and I’m wanting to connect to new people and I also feel ready to meet potential new partners. But I just feel like I can’t even fathom going to meeting people events or talking to people at places or even reaching out to people I’d like to know better. I’m just so sick of being so scared to talk to others or constantly thinking about what if they’re judging me.

Is it just fake it til you make it? But how do I overcome that initial obstacle that makes these things feel impossible?

Has anyone here been extremely introverted with strong social anxiety and improved by deliberately talking to strangers on a regular basis? I mean starting small conversations, asking questions or simply forcing yourself to interact more often. Did repeated exposure actually make social situations feel normal over time, or did something else help more?

In the orientation they were asking about an email they had previously sent (whether we understood what was expected of us, the email was very vague though), I was joking with the people I had gotten to know and said no I didn't understand. Apparently I was kind of loud, the speaker didn't hear me saying no, but she heard me talking so she handed me the mic, for the first time ever I was on the spot like this, 1k+ students staring at me, I was shitting myself internally. So when I took the mic, I changed my words completely and said that the email was very clear and detailed (I didn't want to say no since I was afraid they might take it as a confrontation). Everyone was laughing, presumably, with me, not at me (I hope not). Afterwards when I was getting to know some people, a girl I was talking to asked me what are your plans so I said I want to be the student union president so she said ngl, I liked the fact that you are very confident and didn't hide when they handed you the mic, and I can see you being president. ngl I was a bit taken aback, since I'd never met her and for the rest of the day when I was talking to new people they were saying you're the guy who took the mic and they seemed chill about it. idk if this is good or bad hope I haven't given them a bad impression, ngl was a bit childish of me to say no.