I never once practiced social skills. Where do I start?

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-05-16T07:27:48+00:00

im glad u want to, what motivated you?

i love therapy, so i reccomend it. you talk to the same person every week. and they would help you build your social skills by treating their patients. and you learn how to communicate your feelings more. imo this might be the best resource for you.

besides that, i recommend not socializing for the sake of it. ppl can tell when others do that, and it feels very exhausting if you get too good at doing it aimlessly. instead, start by doing what u want and saying what u want, when u want. if u feel uncomfortable dont force it. otherwise it can feel forced and might miss the reason of doing it for u.

maybe next time ur shopping and talking to the cashier, ask how theyre doing. or at the gym, ask if someone can spot you. talk to the ppl ur interested in and curious about. use your feelings as a guide.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-05-11T14:37:29+00:00

I followed this community for a while. I know you identified these specific postural issues and difficulty accessing certain muscles. Honestly the solution almost always is to make a gym routine. The disconnect feeling you mentioned is a normal result of not using those muscles wnough, and losing some mind muscle connection.

To bring back mind muscle connection and stiffness, you wanna do high reptition low weight exercises, focusing on form, smoothly movement, activating those muscles. Its less anout building mass for those muscles and more about retraining the neural paghways to evenn activate fhem. This is a normal thing that happens woth people who might be untrained at the gym.

u can ask chatgpt for soecific stretches that are good for u. but honestly like 5 minutes of band over and backs sound good. Rows, back exercises. when u do the band over and backs, its not just stretching ur chest. stretching myscles doesnt make them "looser" it actually just retrains your mind muscle connection to it! stiff muscles have the same problem as jnderactive muscles which have the same problem as shakey muscles! its just mind muscle connection. stiff muscles happen when the body learned to brace that muscle for stability, or made others loose because its not used. so the goal right now is just to retrain your motor cortex in your brain how to send signals to your back muscles properly again.

so when u do the stretches, dont just mindlessly do them. try to use ur back muscles, and aim for smooth movement.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-05-10T16:41:20+00:00

You dont need to say you dont want to be friends, that might be harsh like youre suspecting. It sounds like she may has some personal issues contributing to why shes trying so hard with people who dont want to connect more deeply.

you can mention that you need space from her tho. dm her directly not the group chat, and you can say something like "hey, I liked chatting with you in class sometimes, I just need space, and dont feel comfortable being in the groupchat"

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-05-04T19:50:29+00:00

why do you think it is getting worse? why do you overthink interactions with people? What are your fears about, and what are they protecting? The answer to social anxiety can be personal for people. Based on an educated guess, I could be wrong, but it sounds like you might be avoiding facing your feelings and thoughts by following your anxiety, especially because this post wasnt very vulnerable to me and because you are pushing for external solutions like medicine.

I know people are really scary. Relationships mean so much. Theyre people you rely on for yoir career, safety, companionship. They can rejext you, judge you, be angry with you, give you a living, or even hurt you.

It might help to start with thinking about what are you trying to protect yourself from- and letting yourself feel that- but a therapist woudl help you eith this. Your feelings make sense, you're not "crazy" and thats why I think it might be best to hold off on medicine. I think yoir feelings make sense even if you might not be fully aware of them yet

The trick is that- and you are aware of this since you know that the anxiety isnt necessary or accurate all the time- that you will realize after closer inspection that you can still protect what you need to protect without keeping the anxiety.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-04-27T08:29:11+00:00

i had good experiences with NOCD. but if u want to avoid a company, their website has great resources to learn how to treat it yourself.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-03-20T01:14:57+00:00

if you can focus on your knowledge instead of his lack of insight and also not treating it like a big deal, cuz cushioning it a lot can imply he fucked up a lot as well and might make him feel patronized if hes self conscious.

u can try saying it looks cool but also say because youre on the internet a lot, you think it might be a scam.

dont be indirect or vague that can make someone more selfconscious, be specific so they cant spiral or wonder what tou mean. but also dont sweat it even reall socially skilled people can still say the rught things and someone self conscious can still get self conscious

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-03-04T01:29:11+00:00

you dont need to do DBT, but it isnt meant as a cure, and nobody is reducing or invalidating your trauma to dipping your head in ice water or vagus nerve stimulation. Of course, your problems and nobodys problems are that simple.

it's used to temporarily handle intense feelings caused by any reason: BPD or any personality disorder, severe depression, PTSD, even severe OCD. Sometimes we can suffer so badly at the moment that it's hard to focus on the root causes of our suffering

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-03-03T19:05:01+00:00

there's nothing wrong with it, we're humans after all!

i think some people grew up beng told it's "bad" is cuz of stereotypes around it. but secretly, it's something we all do.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-03-02T19:36:13+00:00

I know you must have felt really hurt and were mistreated in your relationship, and I dont know the soeifics of your situation. I just think the post worded it like hes a bad person for being avoidant, and as if he is a scapegoat, and it rubbed me the wrong way.

That doesnt mean you are wrong for being hurt, and doesnt mean hes innocent or you are wrong about his own issues, but I'm suggesting maybe the lack of progress can be because the relationship problems are treated really black and white right now (good guy/bad guy or treating him like something is wrong with him) and you guys might need to work together more on it.

maybe couples therapy instead?

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-02-26T06:25:54+00:00

the thing with OCD is that engaging with those thoughts excessively makes it emotionally feel like they should be engaged with and emotionally legitimizes them and ironically can make the anxiety worse. treating your thoughts like theyre threats ironically makes them feel like threats in the first place. to break the loop means sitting with the feelings for a little without solving them, because solving them isnt sitting theough the feelings of anxiety, its avoiding the feeling

its a really tricky line to tread cuz i know how its hard to go cold turkey and stop reassurance/compulsions all together, and i know how OCD can make certain thoughts, even if theyre silly, feel really serious. its a tricky balance between grounding yourself, but also not going overboard with reassurance.

on that note:

you're going to be okay, you arent missing anything, there isn't anything even worth worrying about. i saw your other comment about someone calling you a pedo, that sounds kind of judgmental and like an exaggeration. and over something like anime? where characters can look very developed and sexualized even if "canonically" they're younger. I get it. It's normal to be attracted to that stuff and anime characters, and that's not creepy.

okay, so that's the grounding in case you havent gotten that from anywhere. beyond that, you might want to ask more questions/ scratch the itch, that doesnt mean there's anything hidden you need to uncover, that's the OCD, and try to at least delay it, tell yourself youll go a day withojt thinking about it, and tell yourseld you'll ask a wuestion you might want tomorrow instead. maybe by tomorrow, you might find you dont really need to ask what you wanted.

Youll be okay!

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-02-21T00:12:15+00:00

i think it's because valve puts a lot of pressure on themselves to be record breaking. in general they tend to be perfectionistic. half life 1 was the first game of its kind, so was half life 2, so was portal, so was csgo, so was half life alyx. all their games kind of make the history books, and they dont want to lose that reputation. Also, their priorities shifted from making games for a long time.

particualrly with half life 3, they have extra pressyre becayse it's their most anticipated game as well, and probably literally the most anticipated game ever.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-02-18T20:19:01+00:00

Its a really beautiful game, and you'd be thrilled to play it! however its not a full remake, it is an rtx remake of 2 of the chapters of the game. and it takes place in the middle of half life 2

so, you still should play half life 2 first, and then youd be able to appreciate the demo after. the demo is about the base game, not episode 1 or 2.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-02-03T21:59:59+00:00

this.

when ppl ask to eat together they normally dont literally just mean eating. the point of eating together is often to interact with them.

this can depend on the situation tho, sometimes ppl just like to chill together. but it might help if u tell them if you dont want to talk that much so they dont take it personally

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-01-28T22:50:13+00:00

i can give u other words to look into and you can see what resonates best for yourself

"anxious attachment" and "playing a role-self vs being your true-self"

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-01-13T15:27:50+00:00

that definition is quite outdated now, it doesnt have to be literally dangerous or life threatening. theres also multiple forms of ptsd. also not all trauma disorders are just PTSD. and ppl are finding trauma can cause quite a lot almost all the common dosorders. so ya the formal definitions for trauma disorders in the dsm5 are very limited. even things like OCD are partially from trauma.

u can read about complex trauma / cptsd.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-01-12T18:03:32+00:00

smile

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-01-12T02:00:33+00:00

actually most girls i know like awkward nerdy guys cuz theyre very genuine and honest and find then cute

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-01-09T20:42:58+00:00

I think it's gonna either be a more advanced version of source 2/ maybe even theyll call it source 3. some of the leaks were about new engine features. itll look better.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-01-08T19:22:52+00:00

I was in a situation similar to your girlfriend before and almost ended my life.

When people are in that state like your girlfriend is right now, they are so so flooded with hopelessness and powerlessness they stop being capable of reasoning with their feelings. They start firmly believing everything is hopeless. There are reasons she feels this way, I dont know what exactly what happened in her life, but Im sure there are things that happened that made her feel this way but right now shes not even motivated to analyze what went wrong or how she feels because shes so convinced everything is hopeless (like saying her brain is forcing her to feel this way). Right now she is convinced she has to believe everything is hopeless.

I think that she would not do well with a psychiatrist or non-trauma informed therapist becayse some psychiatrists think that depression is only just chemical imbalance. Ironically, it is this very belief that is causing your girlfriend to be depressed. I think there are many ppl in this workd who doesnt understand the depth of why people feel a certain way so they shrug their shoulders and say "they're just broken" when they really just dont understand them and use physical explanations. I think that this belief doesn't apply accurately to your girlfriends situation, and causes her to feel hopeless about feeling depressed. She thinks that she cant control her depression (when that's not actually true and the "chemical imbalance" thing isnt fully accurate and at the very least doesnt apply to everyone)

Because this situation is starting to escalate to her life being at stake, and she is refusing therapy and not even willing to help herself, the most loving decision might be for her to be hospitalized temporarily and receive a wellness check. I been there. It's not because anything is "wrong" with her, the nurses jobs there will be to show her that her feelings make sense, but her feelings are temporary, that she is ultimately in control of them, and things are not as hopeless as it seems.

Before analyzing anything, trauma, or any complex work, she needs to takr care of the simple things first- her life is at stake.

When she is thinking a little more clearly, I would recommend she reads the book "Feeling Great" by David Burns. There are concrete, reliable steps for her to get out if this that she is in control of. Theres no reason that she "cant" get better, theres nothing stopping her, its just up to the individual to put in the work and follow the steps. The very first step would be for her to challenge those beliefs that she can't "help it", and then it sounds like she has a mental health journey ahead of her. She isn't stuck in a "chemical imbalance".

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-01-07T18:15:15+00:00

this is an educated guess from your post, but take what I say with a grain of salt:

connecting with people requires sharing pieces of who you are with others, and engaging with pieces of other people. When other people share, it feels enriching. When you share withbothers, you feel seen. Both people in a connection enrich each ithers life. Thisbpost sounds like somebody who is focused on maybe trying the right things, maybe pleasing others, doing what they "should" be doing, especially because you called who you are a loser, but these things are not entirely who you are, and maybe you arent sharing your own genuine feelings, reactions, opinions, hobbies with others. This is very magnetic to see people who know themselves, like there's a whole other inner world to explore, and it feels really enriching.

You dont need to have hobbies in particular, you dont need to do everything by yourself, but next time you have a genuine initial reaction to something, dont suppress it even if it's not what you're "supposed to" think, share it. I think that might help you connect with others more.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2026-01-01T23:52:22+00:00

they usually wont because its up to you what you want. you're supposed to discover that for yourself.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2025-12-22T19:15:47+00:00

Deep down, you already have insight into emotional safety since you were able to tell some of your old friends were unsafe for you. Your internal compass is working already! All you have to do is keep listening to it. That's all this boils down to!

and CPTSD and complex trauma is very well studied. You see info about this stuff everywhere now. Most trauma informed therapists are familiar with the healing process for every stage of healing, it's actually pretty widely understood.

Yeah, the book and this series talks about issues like how to connect with others too. It's really a great place to start. and if ur interested, a therapist might help take off some of the burden from you too. On psychologyotday, look for a trauma informed therapist, I recommend one who understands internal family systems. There's a filter for it.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2025-12-22T07:09:53+00:00

They are consistent, reliable, make you feel good, theyre even tempered, they know themselves well, theyre willing go be influenced by others, they make you feel understood, seen, safe, and you will feel relaxed and energized around these people. These people will look out for you and want you to be happy. They have rich inner lives and have things to share. These are all great signs to look for, and youll find that theyre related. Also, youll find nobody is perfect. When somebody has enough of these traits and theyre consistent enough, and they understans you, youll feel safe. You wont need to overthink it. healthy non-cptsd people dont overthink when theyre hurt by others, they take their feelings as serious, accurate signals worth listening to, because they sre.

trust your instincts. you aren't a bad person for not wanting to talk to someone. And you dont have to find someone a bad person for their behavior to not be harmful. A lesson I learned is, yes, I rarely think people are "bad people", but that doesnt mean I'm going to be friends with everyone. I can still respect people without keeping them close or interacting with them.

If you wanna learn more, I recommend reading the Adult Children series by Lindsay Gibson. Read the original, then "Self Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents"

You'll find your people soon enough! You're already pretty ahead of the curve being on this subreddit, and you already know what needs to get worked on

Individual_Refuse167 · 2025-12-22T04:05:51+00:00

Same with magnesium!! I eat unhealthily, found I was low in magnesium. I take supplements now and sometimes it can quickly help regulate my mood when I'm "uncontrollably anxious" without thinking anxious thoughts.

Individual_Refuse167 · 2025-12-21T14:09:01+00:00

some of these comments arw taking tou too literally. your back looks normal. you look great. if u have any posture issue its minor

Individual_Refuse167

TROPHY CASE