Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. Anxiety makes life in general a lot harder than need be. The worst part of it though is the fact that making friends is a lot harder than without anxiety. And keeping them? Even worse.
First of all, having anxiety means contemplating for until no end whether you should go up and talk to someone you might want to be friends with. Anxiety makes it hard to be alone and when you're in an unfamiliar place where you need to make friends, that pretty much makes it a day for faulty breathing and shyness.
Anxiety means meeting a new person and when they have a view you don't agree with you shut your mouth and don't say anything because you're afraid that if you have a different view they won't only not like you but they'll see mean things about you. We're all heard "Who cares what other people think?" but truly you won't understand this feeling unless you have anxiety. Please don't try to make someone feel bad for worrying about what others, whom they don't know, might possibly think about them. That's a huge part of anxiety and making a person feel bad for it, makes it ten times worse. But at the same time you can't say this to them because then you feel like you're being annoying and being a burden. It makes you uncomfortable and feel like you're just too much to handle for anyone.
Now keeping friends? That's even more of a struggle. When you're the one constantly asking to hang out and they aren't your anxiety makes it feel like you aren't important to them or they don't want you in their life. Especially if the person you've been asking to hang out with keeps saying no and that they can't and then they're out with someone else later.
It's a vicious cycle. It's a cycle of worrying whether someone likes you, whether they care about you, and whether they want you in their life or not. My heart truly bleeds for anyone else with anxiety because it can be so uncontrollable sometimes. Nothing hurts more than getting blown off and losing a friend because you begin to part from them because you think that they don't want you in their life and they don't tell you any differently.
I hope these people do know that it will be okay and the people who want to stick around, will stick around. It gets so hard and the loneliness is sometimes suffocating but you'll find a few people that want to be around you no matter what. You don't need a huge group of people to like you to feel less anxious, you only need a few. Although this hasn't happened to me yet, you'll also find that special someone who will be able to help you deal with your anxiety and help you overcome the struggles that come with it.
