Introduction:

Here’s a post about How Anxiety Affects our Friendships. How anxiety can affect our social sphere, specifically in the area of friendships.⁠
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When your mind and your body are constantly telling you that something is wrong and desperately trying to search for a nonexistent threat, this inevitably affects your friendships as well.
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It can be extremely frustrating, annoying, and downright painful to know that anxiety is holding your friendships back from their full potential.⁠
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And when this happens, we often feel disconnected and separate, even when our friends are amazing people.
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However, this doesn’t mean that anxiety will surely ruin and destroy your friendships. In fact, the opposite can be true. In my case, a solid group of friends in my college years helped to break me out of the shell of social anxiety that I was in for most of my life.⁠
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The key thing is this: please be kinder and empathetic to friends (including yourself – you are your own friend after all!) who have anxiety. It’s already beating them up enough as it is

Anxiety Affects our Friendships

1. Overthink:

Anxiety causes us to overthink every minor detail, gesture, or even emoji in our conversations

2. Thinking to Ourselves:

Always thinking to ourselves, “Am I a good enough friend?” or “Do they even like me?”

3. Feel intimidated in Group chats:

Group chats and group meetings often feel intimidating and even tiring to people with anxiety.

4. Harder to Trust:

It’s harder to trust and be vulnerable with people especially with social anxiety or if we’ve been betrayed in the past

5. Seek Reassurance:

Some, constantly seek reassurance from their friends to the point where it gets annoying or rude

6. Prioritize their Friends:

Others might also prioritize their friends’ needs above their own, leading to people-pleasing and being taken for granted

7. Having to pretend you’re not Anxious:

Having to pretend as if you’re not anxious or put up a poker face so that you don’t ‘ruin the mood

8. Neuroticism:

However, it’s not all bad. Having anxiety is linked to higher neuroticism, which could lead to higher empathy and a tendency to plan meetings in a more detailed manner (not always).

Conclusion:

If you have a friend who has anxiety, please be kinder to them — their anxious mind and nervous system are already beating them up enough without more judgment being piled on them.
A safe space filled with safe people might be enough to help them get out of their shells– which is what happened to me.

Note:

So in This Post, How Anxiety Affects our Friendships. What other points can you think of/have experienced? Let me know in the comments.

If you found this helpful or feel free to share your experience if you can relate to these points and if you are comfortable share

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