Have you heard about the hedgehog’s dilemma?
It’s a analogy describing how hedgehogs want to be close to one another, but because of their sharp spines, they hurt each other in the process.
Personally, I feel like this analogy fits social anxiety like a glove. How the heck can we make friends without hurting ourselves in the process? We most definitely want friends. It’s just painful to get close.
But let’s look at how an individual that suffers from social anxiety is preventing himself or herself from having intimate relationships.
The foundation for why someone with social anxiety can’t form intimate relationships is the incredibly low sense of self worth. This isn’t to say there aren’t other emotional problems that are stopping this person from making friends, but just by this factor alone is enough to make this person a relationship repellent.
How does low self worth affect relationships?
If you are trying to make friends, your mind is constantly occupied with negative thoughts about yourself (I’m so useless. No one cares about me.). Just the mere action of getting yourself in front of a person takes like SOOO much effort. Then not to mention, because you are so negative about yourself or awkward when talking to someone, the relationship doesn’t work out as well as it should.
In any case where you do make friend, you either become so attached to them that they need more space or you subconsciously push them away because you don’t want them to find out how “worthless" you actually are.
This is not a fun cycle to go through. =(
Because of this cycle, the you go through countless rejections and start to doubt the goodness of humanity.
Then to make things even more difficult, good friends are hard to find.
Let’s Not Get Too Hopeless Yet!
The first step to change is always education, and now that you have understood how low self worth has majorly affected our ability to make friends, we can change!
The first step we take here is to eliminate your negative self talk. Every time you speak negatively about yourself, you reinforce your negative self image.
That is not good for you or your future friends or actually anyone that comes in contact with you.
How about start right now? Do a 7 day challenge of no negative self talk. I promise you after that you will see change in how you see yourself.
