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Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?

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Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?

#21

Post by SoleilAbsolu »

rootsudo wrote: post #9

You need to lead, talk, make friends and be outside your comfort zone. You need to make an effort.

This 1000%! Two of the most important relationships I've made (my wife, and a boss who hired me, and later became one of my dearest friends) arose when I decided to act completely differently in the moment than I habitually would. In my wife's case, this meant immediately introducing myself to a woman I found attractive, in the other when I faced a financial crunch and resolved to apply for better-paying work even if I wasn't totally qualified instead of losing hope and going on a bender.

Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?

#22

Post by roflburger »

Join a club or professional fraternity (highly recommend). You'll make lifelong friends. You have to get out there and make it happen and don't bail if it seems daunting or makes you nervous.

If you live on campus (you definitely should if possible), make friends with the people who live in your dorm. Keep your door open at all times and be friendly to everyone around. People will just drop in. If your uni has college basketball or football, become a fan of the team and go to the games or watch em in the dorm.

In college you have tons of people around you with all sorts of different backgrounds. Rest assured, someone will have common interests with you and will find you fascinating. You don't need a lot of friends in this life, just a few good ones. Not everyone will like you, that's okay.

I'd also recommend talking to a professional, you might need to practice your social interactions. They have groups for this sorta thing if they deem you ready, but there's something more going on that has put you in this situation I'd wager.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?

#23

Post by mips_avatar »

I’m sorry you’re feeling so isolated. It’s really hard to be in a situation where you feel like your attempts don’t go anywhere. But the good news is things can get better really fast. Finding your people in college is one of the best things. I’m not really good at faking a lot of social stuff so I relate a to your frustration. The good news is people respond really well to people who have a genuine interest in them. So it sounds like you need to go find some people you find interesting and interact with them. I was trying to make friends in Seattle recently and I thought that one of the most experienced scuba divers in Seattle wouldn’t want to be my dive partner because they had so much more experience, but my interest in what they were doing closed the gap and now they’re a close friend of mine and I’ve learned so much about scuba diving.

Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?

#24

Post by sxp »

One option is to find a good doctor/psychiatrist/therapist and try to get diagnosed. (You can also try to self-diagnose via the Interne, your favorite LLM, or just skimming the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5, but that's a risker option due to false positives and noise.)

If you do have a well-studied issue such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder that interferes with socialization, you can find support groups and people who have been able to succeed even with those issues.

Some of these social problems (e.g, ones caused by missing childhood socialization experiences) are curable through practice, but others will require you to learn enough about human social behavior to mask until someone figures out a cure. It can be exhausting, (just like physical exercise can be exhausting) but it's a useful skill to have in order to do well in life.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?

#26

Post by terminatornet »

> People find me funny and when I do talk to people we have decent conversations (though small talk tends to bore me). > However that doesn’t lead anywhere and doesn’t bring me any kind of comfort or fulfillment

You have two good things going for you here:

- you're able to hold a conversation with people, even if it might not be as deep a conversation as you'd like it to be.

- you're funny and can joke around with people.

It sounds like you might have some surface level relationships and want deeper connections with people, which is totally understandable. Small talk can be boring at first, but it often opens the possibility of deeper relationships. I'd recommend low-stakes/activity based social interactions and seeing where they take you.

Some ideas:

- If you're on your way to the dining hall to get a meal, ask your dorm mates if they wanna join

- Colleges have a movie night on weekends to see a movie for free, ask class mates, dorm mates to go.

- Does your campus have like a rec/game center (think pool, air hockey, games etc). Another thing to ask people to.

You might have to suffer through a lot of rejection before you get takers. After that you might have to suffer through small talk about the weather, where someone is from, what their major is, etc before you get to the deeper connections.

Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?

#28

Post by _lvbh »

neuralkoi wrote: post #7

Start with the low hanging fruit: your family. There was a period when I put space between myself and my main friends which resulted in loneliness, but I found this created a new space to connect with my siblings who were really interesting and had grown in ways I hadn't noticed. Also, as Charlie Munger always said: "Invert! Invert! Invert!". Try doing the opposite of what you normally do. This requires of course pay…

> Start with the low hanging fruit: your family.

Not always a good recommendation. A huge reason I was isolated before university was because of excessive control from my family. I'd personally say sports or other common outdoor activities like hiking are a great way to meet people. No strings attached and much more natural than randomly hugging strangers.

Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?

#29

Post by satvikpendem »

yresting wrote: post #12
satvikpendem wrote: post #4

You focus on others talking to you, why don't you talk to them? I don't mean just one conversation but making plans for hanging out next time too, or joining hobbies you'd like to do. One thing I've learned is that you yourself must make an effort first, even if you think it's unfair or if it's a lot of work, otherwise you'll be lonely forever. Do you know if you have any sort of neurodivergence? That may be a part o…

Thank you for responding! I do talk to people, in fact Im always the first to bring up events that are happening at school, around town or just in general asking to hang out and chill. It works for a bit, but then I either stop getting responses, or getting told they are free at X time but when X arrives they don’t show up or couldn’t show up, and then at the same time it’s depressing to always know you aren’t ever i…

Your comments are showing up dead by the way, probably because yours is a new account.

How are you asking, do you have a specific time or event? If you're just saying it generally, that "we should hang out sometime", it's just them being nice rather than having concrete plans.

People will only ask you if you're actually good friends with them, until then you must keep asking if you want to keep the friendship alive.

There is also a possibility that you might be coming off weird but I doubt it as many have ADHD and have friends fine.

Re: Ask HN: Loneliness at 19, how to cope?

#30

Post by thomassmith65 »

The standard way to form a friendship is to be around someone regularly with whom you share a common goal.

This happens in some school environments (eg: long-term group projects), many work environments, team sports, certain vacation environments, etc.

Join a language class, or a sports club, or find employment somewhere, or go on a hostel vacation.

Make sure it's something you want to do for its own sake - enough so that you're not obsessing over befriending people.

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