Why is it so Difficult to Make Friends When You Lack Confidence?

Most people find confidence to be an attractive quality, because when you're confident you tend to be more outgoing and approachable. If you lack confidence, it can be difficult to express your opinions and to converse with people. Consequently, it becomes more difficult to make friends. Unfortunately, if you do lack confidence, it may be previous social interactions which have undermined your confidence and left you feeling less inclined to socialise. If you have been bullied in the past, for instance, you may be worried that you will be judged negatively again for the way you look or act, and so you do your best to avoid meeting people.

However, if you're unhappy with always trying to avoid social occasions and find yourself craving human company, you have to get over your fears so that you can put yourself out there and start making friends. You have to try not to be overcome by anxiety or let what other people think about you stop you from trying new activities and socialising. At the end of the day, everyone is fundamentally the same, even if some people are nastier than others! You just have to make sure that you surround yourself with positive people, so that you don't get dragged down by other people's negativity. This is the only way to build some confidence.

You need to be making more of an effort to get out of the house and meeting people, so that you have an opportunity to get to know people and to make friends. If you hide yourself away all the time you may find it more difficult in future to establish relationships and to be able to actually talk with people. You won't improve your social skills by avoiding all interaction with other people and so you need to look for ways to meet new people, especially people that you may have something in common with, as this will make communication easier. Thus, it might be worth taking up a sport or some kind of hobby where you have the chance to spend time in other people's company.

It is going to be tough overcoming your confidence issues, but if you want to make new friends, it is worth doing. Of course, you may be able to make friends even without much confidence, but being a confident person can certainly help you to establish friendships and to keep these friendships going. The trouble is when you lack confidence, your thoughts can be rather negative and you wonder why anyone would want to be friends with you. This is when you may avoid going out with people and pushing people away, which can make it hard for other people to actually want to be friends with you. Thus to improve your social life, it could be worth trying to increase your confidence.

Making Friends When You Lack Confidence

It can be extremely challenging to make friends when you lack confidence in yourself. For one thing, you may be inclined to avoid social situations, so that you don't give yourself an opportunity to meet people. This can make your problem worse, because if you avoid social interaction it only becomes more difficult to force yourself to talk to people. If you don't practise your social skills, when you finally do try to interact you may find yourself behaving in an awkward manner and your confidence plummets further. Even when you do manage to chat to people, you may not have the confidence to develop the friendship further.

Consequently, it can be a very lonely life when you lack confidence. Not always, though, as you may be one of those people who is able to hide the fact you don't have very much confidence. To everyone else, you may seem to be outgoing and charismatic when the reality is that you question yourself constantly and often wonder why anyone would want to be your friend. At least you are able to put yourself in a position to meet people. If you lack confidence and also suffer from severe shyness, you may really struggle to socialise with others. You may be lucky enough to have a small group of friends who you feel comfortable being around, or you may not.

It is when you have no friends at all that you can find yourself growing depressed. Unless you happen to be a loner who enjoys your own company more than anyone else's, the chances are you want to fit in and be accepted. You want to be able to go out with friends and have a good time, but without the confidence to meet people and open up, this is obviously difficult. It doesn't help when everyone else you know seems to have lots of friends. You come to see yourself as the black sheep of the family – the person no one else understands or can relate to – and so you withdraw deeper into your shell.

People are generally drawn to other people with confidence, because they don't want to have to constantly provide reassurance to their friends. Of course, offering reassurance is part of being a friend, but you don't want to have to tell your friend that she is attractive, slim and flawless every day when she is complaining about being fat, ugly and stupid and is evidently none of those things. It therefore helps to be confident when you're on the look out for friendship, but at the same time, you have to put yourself out there and risk rejection so you can actually gain the necessary confidence to make more friends.

Besides, everyone has certain aspects of themselves they are not particularly confident about, so you just have to try to get past your lack of confidence and instead focus on what makes you great!