So you’re mind reading here about other people not wanting new friends. Mind reading is an unhealthy habit and as you can see it’s making your situation worse. Try to stop that first when going to events, you don’t know if they don’t want new friends. I sure as hell never go “I’ve got enough friends”. Look up mind reading as a cognitive distortion, you’re doing it a lot even in these paragraphs

I also think we might be missing something as to why that original friend group formed without you, but you might just be that shy. They might not even know if you want to hang out with them or you seemed really uncomfortable so they assumed you didn’t want to hang out. Either way you can try again with them or move on it’s really no big deal.

Finally you’re in uni and most unis have free therapy provided or other assistance for people. The university wants you to thrive and branch out so seriously look for the help they’re providing. I do highly suggest therapy just for the social anxiety you’ve built up even a few sessions will go a long way for you I bet.

You’re trying which takes a lot of courage - that’s the right attitude for sure. I’d suggest joining activities not just gathering places in subjects you’re passionate about or interested in. By that I mean like games, sports, arts etc - a class or club means you share similar interests (something to break the ice) and social context to interact. It’s more likely you’ll click with others that share your interest.

So go to tour your local town in an organized group. Take a painting or pottery class. Join a recreational sport club.

Good luck!

You have built up stories for what’s going on in other people’s heads. My wife does this too. Give that up. You can’t know what the story really is, and it’s harmful to your cause to guess.

My advice is, don’t go out to try and make friends. Just go out to talk to people. Friendship will happen or not, and AFAIK is mostly based around frequency of interaction and proximity. So be nice, be there frequently, and eventually you’ll enjoy talking with those people and know a bit about them. That’s friendship.

If you’re looking for people to do specific activities with, then do those activities and talk to people doing them. If you want friends that go on walks, go on walks, or join groups about sightseeing.

Also, your local library and other groups will have events you can go to.

Look for activities you enjoy on an app like Meetup. It’s a great way to find people who share your interests.

I had some difficulties like these in the past, and what helped me was looking into amateur theater. There are part time (2 to 4 hours a week usually) amateur theater/drama schools that form closed groups and that group stays together over the years as they progress (with some inevitable degree of turnover obviously). I still talk to and meet with some of the people I met through that even though I left a bit after covid hit.

These kinds of spaces are good for people in our situation for multiple reasons:

• It puts us in an environment in which everyone is a newcomer, which helps when you struggle with that feeling of being the outsider.
• A lot of the people that go to that kind of space are people that struggle with shyness, loneliness or difficulties opening up, which means you are dealing with similar people to yourself.
• It inherently helps with shyness and closedness because the activity is all about opening up and being vulnerable. It’s very shock therapy because you don’t get any time to be nervous or second guess yourself, if it’s anything like mine was, they throw you out straight into the water.
• You meet people of all ages and walks of life, which enriches you if you open yourself to it.

You will however have to look into the details of what kind of options are in your area for that and how they work and when the groups are formed and what levels there are and all of that jazz because I can’t assume that it will work the same as it works here. If any of them are like my school was, then they offer smaller experiences (like a weekend or a month in the summer) so that you can dip your toes and get a feeling of how things work.

With all of that said, you should still look into regular therapy sessions while you are going through this. For people like us, our own brain is our worst enemy in this situation, and we need an external, specialized perspective that recontextualizes things for us. It will help more than you can imagine if you stick with it somewhat regularly.