[synchro]

Now I'm back home I do feel really lonely. =/ I never really made friends at school (bar one guy, who now lives in Bristol) as I just couldn't get myself to open my mouth to speak to anyone. And the longer that went on (years), the more I felt I had to fulfill that non-speaking and non-interacting. I felt it would be such a shock to people if I was to suddenly start communicating with people, start being like them, that I just never really could bring myself to do so. So when I am back home I have *literally* no-one local to do anything with. My younger brother (15) is constantly having friends round and going into town and I just feel such a loser. And with people I know having had house contracts start from July 1st, and a halls contracts potentially for me starting from September 7th, it's gonna be a looooong time back home.

I was finally able to meet someone my age who lives in the same town (found him on the internet) and we had fun, spent 4 hours just chatting in the park. But when he was talking about places he used to go in town when he was in senior school, the groups of mates he had, the things he did at college, how he's made loads of friends at uni (he wasn't bragging or anything, this all just came up in general conversation), it made me feel really down about how I've had none of that. I just sit here at home wondering what have I done with my life? I know I have (hopefully) lots of years to live, but youth is supposed to be a time of happiness and fulfilment and having fun. For me it was just being an outcast and isolating myself further into a kind of cocoon in my room. The internet became some kind of outlay of desired sociality, devoid of any kind of proper human interaction and all the judgements and problems that I thought would obviously arise. I even blame that for my ridiculously short attention span now - I would be clickclickclickclickclick on websites in a gazillion browser windows/tabs and every minute I was reading or viewing something new - I now can't bare to even sit through a full tv show, let alone a movie because of the hours I would spend clickclickclick and developing this necessitating craving for constant changing of what I see through my eyes. And this gets worse in the summer because I have nothing to do - I just spend most of my days on my laptop doing nothing at all in particular.

(sorry this is a massive rant haha)

 

[altspoon]

The way I see it, its natural to feel that way when someone starts talking about having so many friends. I just figure everybody is different, they might be social as heck, but still end up feeling alone. I guess I just try not to stress about it, people like us just aren't incredibly social, which doesn't mean we shouldn't be out their trying to make friends, but even if we were out their doing our best to make tons of friends, we probably wouldn't end up with ALOT of friends, I guess because it doesn't come natural. Those are just the breaks, at least thats how I see it.

And man... yeah the internet can really screw with you, it like always gives you instant gratification, like a drug or something. I'm definitely with you on that one. I can only sit down and watch like 2 TV shows because they REALLY interest me, everything else just gets so boring. I tend to surf the net while watching movies... so there ya go. I guess its so easy to get so much of the interactions/entertainment from the internet.

 

[ratbag]

use your free time well to develop mad skills and become famous. that probably wasn't helpful...

 

[KumagoroBeam]

I know how you're feeling... I'm trapped inside my room for the summer. It's no fun. When school starts again everyone will be talking about what they did etc. and I will have nothing to say.
I feel like I'm annoying the rest of my family because I'm at home all the time.

use your free time well to develop mad skills and become famous. that probably wasn't helpful...

Exactly... That's what I should be doing.

 

[Ezakimak]

I have the same problem. I have pretty much no friends, and the only people I have really hung out with are family or in-laws. I guess it doesn't help that I married my one good friends' sister and so now he is family as well.

The worst part for me this whole summer is the weekends. I just picture all the people out there having fun being social and hanging out with friends without much trouble and I am sitting here at home with my wife(who has social anxiety as well), trying to figure out some way to get the hell out of our house and be a part of society. So far we have come up with nothing. It's kind of depressing.

 

[Zeddicus]

use your free time well to develop mad skills and become famous. that probably wasn't helpful...

You mean like video game skills? In all honesty, I actually have developed mad video game skills as a result of my SA, and I actually once ended up on the winning team during a world tournament for an online game. I'm not sure whether or not Internet fame counts as the real thing, though.

 

[synchro]

The way I see it, its natural to feel that way when someone starts talking about having so many friends. I just figure everybody is different, they might be social as heck, but still end up feeling alone. I guess I just try not to stress about it, people like us just aren't incredibly social, which doesn't mean we shouldn't be out their trying to make friends, but even if we were out their doing our best to make tons of friends, we probably wouldn't end up with ALOT of friends, I guess because it doesn't come natural. Those are just the breaks, at least thats how I see it.

And man... yeah the internet can really screw with you, it like always gives you instant gratification, like a drug or something. I'm definitely with you on that one. I can only sit down and watch like 2 TV shows because they REALLY interest me, everything else just gets so boring. I tend to surf the net while watching movies... so there ya go. I guess its so easy to get so much of the interactions/entertainment from the internet.

Haha yeah instant gratification was the phrase I was looking for. It's like a vicious circle - I've got nothing to do over the summer, so I spend time on the internet, which then increases my lack of attention span etc. I just wish I could read books, I can barely get past 5 pages of one before I think "oh I'll just check my email" and then another hour is waster on my laptop. =/

 

[bluebluesplayer]

I found that playing online video games actually helped my social anxiety. Because I have a lot of time on my hands (no job, not many friends), I've been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead (you work with others on a team to defeat zombies). It's a lot of fun. Some players have a mic and you can talk to them in the game or you can use the type-chat feature if you don't have a mic.

While playing video games with others online might not be considered a great substitute for friends you see in-person, it can still definitely help your SA A LOT because you're still interacting with people. You can add them to your gaming friends list (it's like MSN Messenger) and talk to them outside the game.

I wish you the best and I hope you feel better soon

 

[synchro]

Only three weeks to go till uni now... *twitches* haha