Hi, albb! I’m really familiar with what you’re feeling, this sounds exactly like the situation I’ve been in! In retrospect, every time that I have shied away from people or activities because I was scared not feeling good enough, the insecurity that drove me to isolate myself was the very thing that limited me! In my experience, it always turned out that people were willing to get to know me, that I had no reason to be jealous, and that just being scared of all these things caused me to miss out on everything. Basically I was just psyching myself out and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that I had no friends of my own and that I felt so miserable!
I remember I was in between places to live so I stayed at my boyfriend’s house, and it felt like I was just living in the background of his life. I would talk to his friends but feel too shy to go out and make my own. I would be jealous of friends he had that were girls because I was in such a rut in my own life that I didn’t want to be around anyone who was actually doing something with theirs! I’m sorry you feel how you do because I know how badly it can gnaw away at you. But just know that when you feel bad about yourself, you’re seeing yourself through a warped lens, and not in that way that people who know and love you see you. Sometimes I have to straight up ask my friends or boyfriend to say something that could boost my self-esteem and remind me of the positive things about myself because it’s so easy to get caught up a wormhole of feeling bad about yourself.

As far as meeting people, work could help out a lot–your coworkers might be really cool people! I think one thing I realized for myself and my partner was that he is just quicker than I am at making friends and getting comfortable in situations. So maybe you just need a bit of time before you find yourself comfortable in your new environment. I’ve always been bad at making friends but when I look back, whenever I did have a good friend group going, it had just happened out of the blue when I wasn’t even looking for that!

Good luck, I hope things look up for you!

• This reply was modified 9 years, 9 months ago by Jamie.