I advise you leave the pressures to be something you’re not alone. You are going to become something more capable than your current self over time… and it’s actually attained more wholesomely when found sought in patience.
Hah! Though… I feel exactly the same in crowds. I prefer one on one… or maybe 4 to 5 at most.
Making new friends is tough… I made a whole lot of them in the last couple years, but a lot of them were just discomforts I was entertaining for their sake. I did receive a whole lot of compliments and appreciations… one of the dudes would give me 5$ all the time and tell me to get a beer… Real nice dude.
All in all though, it was exhausting… They all lacked a lot of mindfulness and the levels of communication that come with it. My sense of self was jeopardized coming out of most situations. People thought they were being helpful, but they were only confusing me and putting unnecessary pressure on me… In a lot of cases it proved more important that they be helpful instead of me being helped.
I gotta say I’m still lost. I do feel I’m better off just maintaining my own sense of insight into the world… and I’m pretty disheartened that out of everyone I met… only two seemed appropriately grounded and wise in character… and most all the others I don’t care to see… and the ones I do care to see is more because they actually seem to need me. A strange pillar of a friendship, a really strong one, but I don’t so much need them… they were too abrasive to my understanding.
@Tupac I listened to some Alan Watts… Really woke up a side of me that I didn’t know in years. I gotta apologize for not supporting your fandom for the dude earlier… He is a great thinker… I forgot that I used to like the sort of perspective.
@Jesspresso getting social exercise can be as easy as finding a favored shop and then maintain a weightless character until the employees open up to you. Not all of them will… but that’s how I filled the void. I’d wind up chatting with self-employed business owners about their operations and things of that nature. It had a good formality, even though it was all based and built upon me shelling out to be a customer. Wasted a lot of money…
Truth be told, and I suspect you’re in the same dispositional category, real fulfilling friends are hard to come by… people might seem close to it at times, but that can easily be a short term fluke or a charade.
I haven’t spent any time with personal friends in 3 months… unless you count chatting over xbox live.
Was looking to make new friends down here, but I’ve got to figure out how to maintain the right backbone from the get go… so they don’t wind up dependent… I’ve always met most of my friends by drinking. A lot of subtle dependency issues and eggshells in that game.