How to Make Friends as a Socially Anxious, Introverted Adult.

Everyone says making friends is harder as an adult, which is understandable in some sense. After all, when you’re an adult, you no longer have play dates, school clubs, semi-regular birthday parties or breaks in the workday to run around a field and play games with your peers. You go to work and sit at home in the evening, and all your free time is taken up by responsibilities you never had before, like dependents, children, health and fitness, relationships or work deadlines.

Some people are natural at making friends, whereas many other adults oftentimes rely on maintaining the friendships they made at school or university. But what if you’re not one of those people? When I was at school and failing miserably to fit into any friend groups properly, adults assured me my shyness, awkwardness, and social anxiety wouldn’t last forever. Sadly, the extroverted, confident adults in my life weren’t correct about that. If anything, as my world became bigger, I became more insular and introverted, and I discovered the hard way that I didn’t enjoy the usual adult social settings such as after-work drinks, parties, or bars and pubs.

Yet, despite being a shy introvert with debilitating social anxiety, I somehow managed to make more friends in my late twenties and early thirties than I ever made in the entity of my childhood…