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, teenage years and time at university. 95% of the friends I have today are ones I made after the age of twenty-seven. How? Well, here are my tips on how to make friends as an adult, the neurodivergent edition.

1. Identify what settings you feel most comfortable in, then attempt to make friendships within those.
   By my late twenties, I knew myself pretty well. I knew what environments I felt most comfortable in and those I wasn’t. I am not comfortable in casual social environments, such as pubs and clubs, sports centres, gigs or parties, but I am comfortable in formal settings, such as classrooms, lecture halls, work environments, and rehearsal spaces, so those are the ones I put myself in with the hope of meeting likeminded people I’m not a confident or extroverted person, so to give myself the best chance of making friends, I negated my social anxiety by only socialising within contexts and environments I felt comfortable in, which were primarily bookish, theatrical and academic environments. There is no point going to a pub, joining a sports team or yoga class if you’re not comfortable in those environments, as you won’t feel confident talking to others in those settings, so identify where you feel most at ease and start there.

2. Connect with your interests, including your childhood ones
   When I moved to Edinburgh almost a decade ago, I knew no one. While friendly with many colleagues, I didn’t make any friends at work until after a few job changes, so I couldn’t rely on workplaces for networking and making friends when I first moved here. Most of the friends I have today came from me trying new things or returning to old interests I had as a child: I attended over five evening courses at the university, including graphic design courses and a course about dark fairytales; I returned to acting and auditioned for a Fringe show; I joined a book club; I went along to random board games nights by myself; started a writing club; attended bookish evening events and talked to booksellers in bookshops I frequented.
   We all have activities we feel comfortable doing, usually because they tap into a core passion that we’ve had from childhood. Though it may not eliminate your feelings of social anxiety, staying close to your core passions when exploring social settings as an adult is the safest way to break your state of introverted isolation, and it gives you the highest chances of meeting potential friends with common interests or shared values and mindsets.

3. Use apps you feel comfortable with.
   Over my years of using them, I made a couple of friends via dating apps, and I made more friends by meeting their friends. My friend Michael and I, for example, met on Tinder. Through him, I made friends with people he met on other dating apps and Discord. Never underestimate the very cool network you can make via apps, whether they’re friendship apps, dating apps or discord servers. For most introverts, meeting people online is the safest and most comfortable way to introduce ourselves to others. With my degree of social anxiety, I would never have gone on a single date in my life had I not used dating apps, and the same rule often applies to introverts for friendships.

4. Become a regular somewhere.
   Even if you don’t make friends at places you frequent, if you’re struggling with loneliness, becoming a regular at a spot you love will help ease any feelings of isolation that come along with it. After becoming one of the regulars at some of my local bookshops, not only did I make friends with the booksellers who worked there, but I also made friends with other regular customers, some of whom are now my closest friends.
   You can become a regular anywhere, from a cafe or bookshop to a place of worship, boardgame shop, library, gym, cinema, theatre or restaurant. The benefit of these locations is that I have never once needed to initiate a conversation with someone; in these casual environments, there’s usually always a more confident, extroverted person who broaches conversation, and once you make contact with one person in a regular, comfortable setting, others will follow.

5. Be honest and discuss your social limits
   Introverts have limits on how much they socialise in a week or month, and the sooner you embrace those limits and open up to others about them, the happier you will be with your social life. Some people can socialise once a week or more. I, on the other hand, tend to only manage to see my friends once every few months and text once every few weeks.
   When I was younger, I was incredibly embarrassed by how limited my bandwidth was for socialising. I was afraid people would think I was being rude, neglectful or a bad friend, but nowadays, I only surround myself with incredibly kind, understanding, supportive people who respect my limits because they know my intentions and have fulfilling lives outside of our friendship. I also benefit from most of my friends being introverts, so my limits match their social bandwidth quite neatly.
   Social limits are not just related to how often you speak or meet up with a friend, but they also relate to the environments in which you hang out and the activities you do together. I will always make the effort to go outside my comfort zone to meet the wants and needs of my extroverted friends, such as going to a pub, but they also respectfully accept that I will only be able to do that once or twice a year.

Final thoughts

Being an introvert is valid, but if you’re struggling to make friends or suffering from feelings of loneliness, that’s your sign to challenge yourself and not become defined and limited by your introversion, shyness or social anxiety. People don’t just appear in our lives; we will always have to make the effort to put ourselves out there to meet others and build amazing connections, be they platonic or romantic. I would never have met any of my friends had I not taken the initiative to talk to the girl sitting next to me in the class and ask for her number, to ask another girl if she wanted to study together at the library, to ask that guy if he wanted to meet for a coffee, to audition for that show, to sign up for that class, to compliment that stranger, to ask that other stranger if the book she was reading was any good.

I didn’t put any pressure on myself to make friends with the people I took initiative with. I started small, and I took risks, and they almost always paid off. I remained within the realms of my comfort zone; I didn’t start partying or signing myself up to text every day or hang out multiple times a week, but I took an interest in those around me and took the time to get to know others. Making friends is easier when you stop focusing on making friends and instead prioritise being curious about those around you and their lived experiences. When you take the pressure off yourself to socialise and reframe your approach as being more curious about the world around you, you’ll settle into a more manageable, less lonely lifestyle, which may also bear the fruits of friendship.