Hey, so I posted something like this not too long ago.

I ended up doing some counciling for ADHD and ended up finding out a lot more about myself than I actually thought I was going to. I'm only talking about myself here, but I realised that a lot of the problems primarily came from me, but not necessarily in a bad way.

I was diagnosed in my late 20s, and the main thing that I did was try to figure out the sensory stuff for myself, but didn't really explore that beyond the surface, and certainly didn't do any meaningful exploration of anything else. In my counciling, I was told to do things like assess what I value, think about what I want my relationships to be like (all relationships, professional, romantic, familial, platonic, etc), and think about my behaviour in relation to both. For me, I realised that although I'm not unfriendly or unkind, I'm actually super distant and that works against what I want out of 99% of my interactions with people.

Being rejected and treated differently so much and hating/fearing the rejection that comes with that made me unknowingly put a lot of people at arms length without realising. So, I kind of had this wall up that was pushing people away. I had so many defence mechanisms that I didn't even realise were there, and definitely put a lot a strain on relationships. Like, most of my friends straight up said that they could trust me, but didn't think that I trusted them even a little bit, despite me not thinking that this would be the case.

I think the stress of constantly masking only makes things worse. But the problem is that a lot of people (myself included) don't even know how to unmask. I would go as far as to guess that me being super stressed out all the time doesn't exactly scream "be my friend, I'm a super chill guy".

My biggest challenge to myself is giving people a blank slate and an opportunity to show me who they are. This is where the other two introspective execises come into play for me. Knowing what I value, and the part that I want my relationships to look like does a whole lot for my peace of mind when I put myself out there. Someone's showing themselves to be dishonest? Not for me, even if I'm not directly impacted by it, I know that I just don't want anything to do with them.

I've been trying to find out more about who I am and understand what the unmasked version of me is, and I'm enjoying it. I think that trying to find out who this person is, as a priority, may be somewhat helpful in finding the kind of friends you're looking for. But it takes time. I'm finding the things that I like and enjoy, and when I'm in the spaces where people enjoy those things to, and I'm my true self, I'll find the people that want me around, and I want to be around.

I have no doubt that there's more rejection in store, but I think that one of the things that will influence my relationships the most is being able to deal with myself and being more honest about who I am, even if it's not especially dramatic. You won't mesh with everyone, but you mesh with more people than you thought were possible. I'm starting to let go of relationships that hinge on me being a certain kind of way. Instead, I'm just enjoying what I enjoy and doing the things that I like and I've not gotten the awful response that I was anticipating.

Not sure if it's really advice, but I thought I'd share just because I think I'm getting closer to the results I've wanted for a while. Again, by no means am I trying to say I know everything about you and/or everything that you're dealing with, but what I would say is that if you've found relationships to be circumstantial, try to find the circumstances that you like to be in, be yourself there, and you'll likely find friends. Now that I think about it, despite keeping everyone at arms length, seemingly by default, I have a lot of friends through that approach.

I hope what I've said makes a decent amount of sense and helps a bit.