, 5 min read
3 Lessons I have learned since recording my "No Friends" viral video
I just read a comment on my “no friends” video that said,
“I was 20 when I first saw this, and now I’m 23 and still have no friends, so all the more reason to give up.”
And I want to address that quickly. I just felt a burst of passion. I want to share some things that I learned on my journey of having no friends or growing up and struggling to make friendships.
You can choose to start on a journey of self-discovery and healing and figuring out your issues, and you can start right now. And if you make that decision to get to know yourself and understand why you are the way you are, and why you’re having the issues that you’re having, and you look at it with curiosity and optimism, you will just naturally make the steps needed to progress in a positive direction over years.
And I know that because that’s what happened. I, for the last like three or four years, I’ve been on that journey of figuring myself out and figuring out why I was struggling so hard to form connections. Because you have to think, if you have no friends, you have to accept that you’re the common denominator. It doesn’t mean that something is wrong with you, per se, but it does mean that there’s something about you, that you have to figure out and change, even if that means just, “Oh, you’re not taking enough action.”
Attachment disorder
So the most important thing I learned over these years is that I have something called disorganized attachment. And yes, I’ve totally self-diagnosed, but it is just so accurate.
I’m sure that somebody else would diagnose me with this. I feel excited about it, because it explains absolutely everything about my struggle. And I feel like if you could relate to the video that I shared, maybe, maybe you have it as well. At least look up attachment styles, and look and try to figure out which one you have because it’s going to explain so much about who you are and how you attach to people, and it gives you a starting point that you can work off of. So that was extremely helpful to me.
Authenticity
The other thing that is equally as helpful, the, the thing that it all came down to is you have to learn how to be authentic. I know for a fact that I was not authentic, and I still struggle. When I try to make friends, I always put on, it’s just a natural, persona of myself, which is a very agreeable, nice, goody-two-shoes, doesn’t swear, person, just a total people-pleaser with almost no personality, a very good listener, as I described. So I was not being me, and to be honest, I didn’t know how to be me, because I had learned to be that way growing up, because that’s what was expected and accepted and, and loved, especially with a Christian background.
You’re trained to be agreeable and nice, and people love you for that. So it took me a lot of time, and I’m still on the journey of getting to know who I am and what I stand for. And this last year, I have learned so much about what my actual opinions are. So if I can give you a first step, it is to start figuring out what you actually think about things, what you actually believe, who you are. Think about every single topic you can, and figure out where you stand on those topics. And it’s totally okay if you change your mind in the future. That’s part of life. That’s good.
But you do need to figure out if you have opinions and start to even communicate your opinions, or at least not be afraid to say something that you think others will disagree with. Because the best thing that I learned is that the more you share of your opinions and your thoughts, the real you, and the more you offend people, the more you’re going to get rid of all of the people in your life that you never should have had in your life in the first place. The people who don’t actually like you, and then you will attract people who are like-minded and who actually love and embrace who you are. I made such a mistake making friends or trying to make friends with people who I did not align with in any way, and I faked myself and pretended to be something I was not, and that was just awful for all of us.
So be yourself, but even deeper than that, start today on a journey of figuring out who you actually are, and then begin to communicate that to the world. Express yourself. There’s kind of an awesome byproduct of this, which is the more you express yourself and the more you embrace the most authentic version of yourself, the more confidence you’re going to feel. You’re going to feel self-confident and self-accepting, and you’ll be like,
“Wow, I’m actually, like, a self-actualized human being, and I know what I stand for, and I have self-respect.”
And that’s going to give you more confidence to actually pursue friendships with the people that you think are so cool. Because I said in my video, the initial one, that I thought I would see people, like, far away and be like,
“That person is so cool. I want to be their friend, but I’m not good enough. I can’t. There’s no way that they would like me.”
And I mean, I, some people misunderstood what I meant when I said “cool,” but what I meant, when I said “cool” is, that it was somebody who I felt like I actually aligned with, somebody who I thought was authentically themselves, and somebody who was exactly how I wanted to be, but I was always intimidated by that kind of person. So the more you are that kind of person, the more you feel confident to actually pursue friendships with the people that you should be friends with.
That’s all I’m going to say for now because I’m out of space, and I’m for sure going to record a new video on this topic because there’s so much to say, but I had to share some of that.
Start on a journey today, and I swear to you that you will get to a better place in a few years. It takes day-by-day action, and you don’t have to fix all of your problems right now. If you just make the decision, that’s all you have to do is make the decision that you’re going to start on a journey of figuring yourself out and working on your issues and, um, going on a journey of self-love and self-acceptance. As long as you make that decision, you’re going to make progress. I promise.