After avoiding it for quite some time, two months ago I finally managed to seek for professional help with university psychologist. After telling her which were my problems and my circumstances, we figured out what should I do in order to improve my life. To keep it short, we arrived to this conclusions:
I need to get a job (that doesn't interfere with my studies, of course). That will allow me to gain the resources and a bit of the independence I need in order to build a social life. Once I'm no longer worrying about not having money even to take a bus to go someplace different than the university, I should start to looking for groups of people with common interests on my area, and join them. By doing all this, I must take those chances of hanging out with people for improving my social skills, specially when it comes about expressing my feelings. Also once I start building a social life, I must learn that as long as I do it responsibly, I must not hold back myself and not worry if my parents aren't happy about it, basically, that I must live my own life and enjoy the things I like regardless of what others may think. That's if for what I should do, and I'm now looking for the job and willing to do the other things.
What's the problem then?
That I'm not very enthusiastic about it. Despite I'm doing it, right now I don't have any motivation. Not having a miserably lonely life should be enough motivation I guess, but that's not working. Is sad but I feel that at some point all that effort is pointless. I'm not getting any validation (or well, may be a little, but surely not as much as I'll like) on my life, in the sense of getting a hope that some day someone will like to be something more than a friend. And for me that's the purpose of improving my social skills. I know I'm jumping into conclusions, but is very discouraging to see others get that validation spontaneously (even if they may not notice it themselves) while I don't.
I told this to the psychologist and she said that unfortunately there is not a real external source of motivation, that such will to get the things we want is something we build from the inside, to the point that we'll only get something if we really want to do it. After that, we didn't scheduled an appointment for next week, so I guess the tacit agreement is that she has already told me what I needed to know, and now is all up to me.
But there's the problem, I have no motivation, I feel the effort is pointless, and probably my self esteem is at rock bottom (something that unfortunately academic success doesn't fix). I am going to do the things she recommended, but I don't know what am I going to do to feel better about myself.
I need to get a job (that doesn't interfere with my studies, of course). That will allow me to gain the resources and a bit of the independence I need in order to build a social life. Once I'm no longer worrying about not having money even to take a bus to go someplace different than the university, I should start to looking for groups of people with common interests on my area, and join them. By doing all this, I must take those chances of hanging out with people for improving my social skills, specially when it comes about expressing my feelings. Also once I start building a social life, I must learn that as long as I do it responsibly, I must not hold back myself and not worry if my parents aren't happy about it, basically, that I must live my own life and enjoy the things I like regardless of what others may think. That's if for what I should do, and I'm now looking for the job and willing to do the other things.
What's the problem then?
That I'm not very enthusiastic about it. Despite I'm doing it, right now I don't have any motivation. Not having a miserably lonely life should be enough motivation I guess, but that's not working. Is sad but I feel that at some point all that effort is pointless. I'm not getting any validation (or well, may be a little, but surely not as much as I'll like) on my life, in the sense of getting a hope that some day someone will like to be something more than a friend. And for me that's the purpose of improving my social skills. I know I'm jumping into conclusions, but is very discouraging to see others get that validation spontaneously (even if they may not notice it themselves) while I don't.
I told this to the psychologist and she said that unfortunately there is not a real external source of motivation, that such will to get the things we want is something we build from the inside, to the point that we'll only get something if we really want to do it. After that, we didn't scheduled an appointment for next week, so I guess the tacit agreement is that she has already told me what I needed to know, and now is all up to me.
But there's the problem, I have no motivation, I feel the effort is pointless, and probably my self esteem is at rock bottom (something that unfortunately academic success doesn't fix). I am going to do the things she recommended, but I don't know what am I going to do to feel better about myself.
