{"id":28,"date":"2012-02-26T23:02:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-26T23:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/2012\/02\/26\/friendship-feelers-on-forums-the-results\/"},"modified":"2015-02-18T14:18:38","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T14:18:38","slug":"friendship-feelers-on-forums-the-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/2012\/02\/26\/friendship-feelers-on-forums-the-results\/","title":{"rendered":"Friendship Feelers on Forums – The results!"},"content":{"rendered":"

To Recap: Two weeks ago I was attempting to meet new people via social anxiety internet forums. Did I find the support buddy I was looking for?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Short answer: No.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Across 7 or 8 different forums I had about 20+ replies welcoming me to their online communities, and I really appreciate it. However, the idea of meeting up ‘in real life’ wasn’t a goal many others shared…<\/p>\n

One forum member cynically suggested I’m wasting my time in attempting to be proactive and meet. He\/she was probably right if my conclusion is anything to go by. I had an older lady offer to meet for a chat if she was ever in my area. That’s great! Although can I relate to her? I couldn’t help feel I’d probably have more in common with her teenage children! A few people said they might meet if they were closer, but that’s not much good.<\/p>\n

The Social Anxiety UK Forums<\/a> proved the most promising. There was even a section devoted to UK meets! Frustratingly they mostly only sparked interest from members living in bigger cities like London, Manchester and Glasgow.
\nI contributed my interest to a meet up within my county of residence. There was only a few other replies offering to meet, but that was all I needed for now! Although obviously not everyone was as keen to make the meeting idea a reality as the thread is slowly sinking to the bottom of the pile with me as the last poster having done my best to arrange a time and place to make something happen.<\/p>\n

In addition to forum replies, I received a few private messages (mainly on the SAUK forum)~ A few people could really relate to my situation and where I was coming from and it was great to find people wanting to chat to me despite not living around the corner like I’d hope for. I’m not sure if I will make any lasting internet buddies out of these PMs though. Despite several PM exchanges with 2 or 3 members, it’s all gone a bit quiet and I’m yet to receive replies to the last messages I’d sent. Its a shame because we all seemed to have a lot in common and had our internet conversation continued for a few more weeks, I might have suggested I visit them. In such a scenario, we’d both get to meet which I’m sure would do us good plus I’d look at is as a mini weekend away with my own personal guide to show me the local sites \ud83d\ude00 Likewise I’d do the same for them if they wanted to visit near me.<\/p>\n

Making friends is tough! I’m obviously going to need to put in even more effort. It’s seems so odd, because the people I’d chat to have a lot in common with me and I’m always polite, friendly, try to be positive, try to be funny when I can AND all while doing all the standard “good email communication” tactics like volunteering info about myself for them to reply back to and asking 2-4 questions per email so they’re never be stuck when it comes to thinking of something to write back with.<\/p>\n

I really did give this approach my all and although I got a lot of positive feedback, I was ultimately unable to finish what I’d set out to do- to find like-minded, fellow anxiety or depression suffers on the net who also wanted to meet locally.
\nI’ll give it a bit more time and perhaps someone new will read my posts and something pro-active will eventually materialize from this? Time will tell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To Recap: Two weeks ago I was attempting to meet new people via social anxiety internet forums. Did I find the support buddy I was looking for?\u00a0 Short answer: No. Across 7 or 8 different forums I had about 20+ Continue reading Friendship Feelers on Forums – The results!<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-positive-action"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p68SmO-s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"https:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benkrefta.com\/transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}