It can be a negative spiral. You feel depressed. You don't feel like being social or you don't know how. But your lack of social abilities leads you to be more isolated. And the isolation makes you all the more depressed. So what can a person do who suffers from depression and doesn't want to live life as a total hermit?
I am going to highlight two major issues I feel impede social connection and some suggestions of how to overcome these challenges.
Low Self-Esteem
Poor self-esteem can sometimes go hand and hand with depression. Our depression can tell us lies about ourselves such as "I am no good" or "Nobody likes me" and it can even generalize to thinking that one is entirely unlikeable or unlovable to the entire human population. I am not saying this to make you feel better but if you are saying such things to yourself, you are basing your self-concept upon illogical inaccuracies.
If you go out into the world thinking of yourself as totally unlikeable then you will find a verdict which validates your assumption. In every person you meet you will see judgment and dislike. But if you turn it around and say to yourself, "I am not so bad" and "I am not perfect but I am still likeable" then you open the door to seeing possibilities for connection.
Not everyone is going to like you this is true. Nobody on this planet is liked by everyone. But this doesn't mean that you are a bad person. This does not mean you do not have value and purpose. It means it is sometimes human nature to be fickle and to judge people on superficial qualities which do not matter. When someone does not like us without even getting to know us, it usually is more of a reflection upon that other person than it ever is upon us.
The trick is to stop looking for self-esteem from other people. You are thereby giving all of your power to others to deem you worthy or not. Don't give others so much power over you. You are the one to decide how to feel about yourself. If you believe you are likeable and worth getting to know then others will too. Connecting with others begins with having the idea about yourself that "Hey, I am worthy of getting to know."
Trusting too little or too much
Trust is a huge issue for a lot of people. Trust is one of those fundamental elements of relationships. If we learned early for whatever reason not to trust others, this has profound implications for most of our future relationships. One of the results of having your trust broken and especially in childhood is that we don't understand proper boundaries. Many of us will enter relationships with extremes of not trusting at all or else trusting too much and giving far too much too soon.
There are levels to building friendships and connections with other people. So you meet someone for the first time. What do you do? You might begin to engage with some small talk. I despise small talk myself but it is sometimes a necessary ritual to ease into getting to know someone. If you enter into things trusting too little then your wariness may hinder the conversation because you don't feel okay about saying anything about yourself.
