Why You Need to Know Yourself to Make Friends

If you're someone who's single, if you're someone who's struggling socially, or if you're just generally someone who's like me and you get a little bit anxious sometimes, I would love for you to follow my page and let me know what else you would want to see in my videos, in the comments. Okay, fam, it is time to start talking about ways to make friends as an adult. I'm Rachel Havocost. I'm a mental health writer and advocate, and in this series, I'm talking about ways to build friendships as an adult.

I explained in my first video in this series why you might struggle to make friends as an adult, both based in research and also in my own experiences. In this video, I'm going to explain the first way to start building friends as an adult. The first thing you're gonna have to do if you wanna make friends as an adult. This might seem counterintuitive, is know yourself. A lot of times, the reason we struggle to experience meaningful connections in life is because we're afraid of rejection, which means we put on masks or we act like somebody we're not, or we try to just simply camouflage in order to fit in.

But fitting in is not belonging. So in order to experience meaningful connections and friendships, we need to know who we are. Some ways that you can do this at home without therapy, although I do believe therapy is one of the best ways to do this, is doing some values work. Figure out what your values are, what do you care about the most in your life, and what is guiding you in your actions and your behaviors. Number two, develop a hobby. So trying something new, like painting or a craft, or going out to nature and starting to cultivate an idea of what are the things that you like to do.

Get in touch with your feelings. So instead of numbing your emotions, which is what I like to do a lot. I know. Okay, sorry. You can start to answer questions like, how are you with things like, you know, today I'm feeling really joyful because x, y, and z happened. Or you know what? I actually am feeling a little bit anxious because I have this big test coming up tomorrow. The more you know your feelings, the more opportunity you have to be truthful and vulnerable, which creates intimacy, not just in romantic relationships, but in friendships.

Once you know yourself better, it is a lot easier to put your true self out there. Which, yes, means you'll probably get rejected more often. And also means you're gonna meet people who are gonna really know you, which means when they like you and accept you it's you that's accepted, and there's no mask to take off. I hope you found this helpful, and I will share another tip for making friends as an adult in my next video, so make sure that you subscribe to my profile.