How To Make Friends

Why Learning How to Make Friends Can Help Ease the Feelings of Emptiness Caused By Abuse

 

Watch a 5 year old kid learn how to ride a bicycle and you'll see a lot of skinned knees and bruises at first. Come back a few weeks later, and if that kid has been persistent, you'll see a 5 year old whizzing down the neighborhood street. He's full of pride because he knows he's mastered the art of riding a bicycle.

Making friends as you're healing from abuse is a bit like learning how to ride a bicycle.

You may be unsure of what to do at first. You find yourself constantly plagued by doubts or anxiety, and you may not feel like doing it. But the short-term rewards for doing it outweigh any short-term pain.

What are these rewards?

Learning how to make friends as you're healing from abuse helps heal the two key areas of your life that were most wounded by the abuse. They are your sense of self-esteem and your sense of trust. A big part of healing is creating a network of positive relationships in our lives. These relationships help us feel loved and connected, which helps boost our self-esteem and our trust in others. Not only that, they also help alleviate the feelings of emptiness we may have carried around for so long. So what do you need to learn?

3 skills for learning how to make friends

1) Overcoming low-self esteem. When you first start out healing and forging new supportive relationships and friendships, you're probably not going to have the highest level of self-esteem. That's ok. The only way to raise your level of self-esteem (in my experience) is to go outside your comfort zone and overcome the "not good enough" factor.

2) Dealing with rejection. There are times you will feel like you're not progressing as quickly as you would like or not making any progress at all. You may feel like nobody in the world likes you. That's why I'm always a big fan of getting a therapist to help support you in the tough times, as well as keeping yourself motivated (download a free motivational tip sheet by subscribing to our newsletter).

3) Persistence. Above all, you have to keep encouraging yourself as you learn how to make friends. Don't stop trying. You will eventually get there. Before Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he "failed" 10,000 times. When asked by a young reporter about his failures, Thomas Edison, replied "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

I realize that learning the above skills and trying to make friends at the same time is easier said than done.

That's why I wrote All You Need Is One, the step-by-step guide on making friends after being abused. I can't remember how many times I stopped and thought to myself "I wish there was some kind of guidebook that would help me catch up socially and teach me some ways to make friends when you're starting from scratch."

Fortunately, my therapist was a good source of support that helped me as I tried to improve my social skills. I can't emphasize enough how helpful it was to have feedback and support as I was working through some of the issues in my life that were preventing me from making more friends.

That's why I encourage all abuse survivors to go into therapy if they can. Still, I think I could have progressed a whole lot faster if I could have read a step-by-step guide from someone who had been through it before. And when you "feel behind" your peers in terms of where you're at in life, it can be quite frustrating and you want to learn how to "ride the bicycle" now. So it's helpful if you can find someone or something that will lay out the process for you.

Learning how to make friends is a bit like riding a bicycle.

You may have trouble at first, but once you do learn, it's a skill that you carry for life. The 3 basic skills you need when you're just starting out as you're healing from abuse are overcoming low self-esteem, dealing with rejection, and persistence.

 

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"I expected it to be longwinded, full of testimonials and possibly boring, not very practical either. A lot of internet publications are that way."

"It was to the point, with illustrated examples, using small analogies (eg child/squirrel) to help you stay focused and maintain the right state of mind. It was so straightforward, even if someone had all this knowledge to give you, it would be unlikely that they could set it out so clearly as Adam has here.

I expected it to be longwinded, full of testimonials and possibly boring, not very practical either. A lot of internet publications are that way. [But] it was extremely concise!

It's a really effective how-to manual which I will refer to as I progress. I was able to identify the components of the process I have begun, understand quickly what I need to do next e.g. - making time for friends was particularly helpful - and the author's tone is reassuring throughout.

I think you would have to read it once you were open to improvement, genuinely, but that's the same for any help - no one can receive it unless they really want it." --Alex, a ZenTactics reader

Next step: Are you struggling at making friends because you don't know what to do? Read how All You Need Is One can help you...

 

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