How a Shy Mum Made New Friends
A psychologist’s personal take on addressing shyness to overcome loneliness during the pandemic.
I recently surprised myself by signing up for an app to help me make new friends. Typically shy and introverted by nature, I barely post anything on social media to be viewed by my own family and friends. What made me put myself on a platform where I had to take the initiative to build brand new relationships with total strangers?
Motherhood can be Lonely
If you’re feeling isolated, you’re not alone in feeling that way.
I felt physically and psychologically separated from the people I was used to interacting with. Most of us have current friendships that have existed for years, beginning in our school years. Relatively newer friends often come from work-related interactions. But what happens when you’re physically separated from others? My extended family lives in a different country, my old friends are scattered across the globe, and I no longer see friends from work because of the pandemic. On top of physical separation, becoming a mother added an element of psychological separation as a I entered a different phase of life from many of my friends.
I am not the only one with this experience.
Surveys of mothers around the world, from the United Kingdom to Hong Kong, have found this to be a common experience. Reasons for this isolation may include the inability to engage in previously typical social activities, lack of empathy from others, or unfavorable self-comparisons. The pandemic also brought about restrictions which further stifled a mother’s ability to engage socially. A recent Italian study examining the psychological well being of expectant and postpartum women during the pandemic found that a higher percentage of women in their sample endorsed depression and anxiety than that typically reported by pre-pandemic samples. They identified the lock down restrictions which prevented women from connecting with their usual sources of social support as one of the main reasons for this increase.
Importance of Connecting with Others
It takes a village to raise a child, and I would add, support the mother. For a lonely mother, connecting with others can help to assuage sadness, helplessness, and hopelessness. In other words, social interactions cheer us up! (Caveat: social interactions need to be meaningful, as opposed to cursory engagement in social media, which can instead increase anxiety.) Beyond cheering us up, the broaden and build theory of positive emotion suggests that when we are in a calm or happy state, we are better able to learn and utilize skills. And as we all know, being a new mother requires learning many new skills very quickly. Plus, our children also benefit when we feel better.
I needed to find a way to have meaningful interaction with other women in a similar stage of life. This is where Peanut came in, an app for meeting other mothers located closeby.
(Note: One downside is that if you live somewhere with few users, you’d be shown the same profiles repeatedly. Peanut is also currently only available in the United States. Other options might be Mush in the UK, Social.Mom, or sending a direct message to another mum in a Facebook group.)
What Helped Me Take the Leap?
I chose this app over joining mummy groups because I was looking to make one on one connections. Once I downloaded the app, I was assailed by the same worries that gripped me when starting at a new school or workplace.
“Would anyone contact me? Will others judge my profile? What if no one talks to me?”
I wondered what I’d recommend if I were my own therapist. And then I worked through the steps, cognitively, and behaviorally.
Adjusting my mindset
One of the reasons I was so nervous about engaging with Peanut was that many of my thoughts were inaccurate. I found myself making negative predictions and judgements about how things would turn out. These unhelpful thoughts are called cognitive distortions, which all of us experience in one form or another.
These were a couple of mine:
- Nobody is going to want to chat with me (jumping to conclusions).
- My profile is boring and unattractive (labelling).
(For a list of various types of cognitive distortions, see here.)
If I were to believe these statements a hundred percent, I wouldn’t make any progress toward making new friends because I’d be so discouraged from trying. At the same time, challenging this thought process is not as easy as just “thinking positive”.
I needed to counter the statements with realistic statements that I could easily believe:
- Not everyone I say hi to will respond, but maybe one or two will.
- My profile may not be the most exciting looking, but perhaps it’s because the app’s template limited how much information I could display. This would be the same for other users as well, and my profile does look similar to several others that I came across.
I kept this more realistic perspective in mind as I engaged with the app.
Taking action
In cases of social anxiety, therapists often help clients develop and work through an exposure hierarchy or ladder, which is a list of anxiety inducing tasks. The least anxiety inducing task occupies the lowest rung and the scariest task the highest rung. A person begins with the easiest task on the list. The level of anxious distress is rated before, during, and after each task in order to build a person’s awareness of emotion (affect labelling), and ideally realize that perhaps something was not as distressing as expected (expectancy violation) by the time the task was complete. Successful completion of a task reinforces each effort and a person then feels confident in tackling the next successively scarier task, until the greatest fear is faced.
I may not have a specific anxiety disorder, but I do feel nervous in novel social situations. I found a simplified and informal version of this exercise helpful. If you’re in a similar situation, perhaps you’d find this useful too!
This was my ladder after I downloaded the app, (ranked from easiest to most difficult):
- Opening the app and understanding how profiles are created.
- Creating my own profile.
- Interacting with the app in general.
- Waving to someone.
- Sending someone a message.
- Meeting up in person (Not necessarily possible in these times. But, even if we did not meet in person, it felt good to connect virtually with someone in a very similar situation and know that one day we might get to meet because we lived close by! It was an element of hope and something to look forward to when the pandemic ends.)
Before and during each step, I acknowledged how nervous I felt (affect labeling). After each step, I asked myself how difficult it was compared to what I expected. Each time, I realized it was not that bad (expectancy violation), and that helped me continue on to the next step and the next, until I’ve exchanged cell phone numbers with a handful of other mothers in hopes that we might continue to grow our friendship.
(For more information about enhancing the effects of an exposure exercise, see here.)
Make the Experience “Stick"
In therapy, after a client has implemented an activity, there is typically a debrief. This conversation serves to consolidate recent events into meaningful memories. A person can then incorporate the meaning of those memories as positive aspects of their identity.
This conversation can be prompted with questions such as:
- What did you learn about yourself through this experience?
- What sort of person would engage in an experience like this?
- Might this trait be a positive part of yourself you’d like to keep cultivating? How else could you exercise this ability?
In my personal reflection on using an app to make new friends, I realized that I am capable of stepping out of my comfort zone. The experience also made me hopeful for the future because I now see a way out of the loneliness enforced by the pandemic. Though nervous at first, facing the anxiety paid off and I now count 3 women I met through the app as new friends. We are in a similar stage of life, facing similar lock down and familial situations, and it’s been comforting to know I’m not alone.
If you’re reading this and find yourself struggling, you’re not alone! New mum life is tough! I encourage anyone struggling with the trials, triumphs, and changes that emerge with motherhood to seek consultation with a professional.
Resources for perinatal and postpartum depression:
This essay is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Seek the advice of your mental health professional or other qualified health provider with questions regarding your own condition. Do not disregard professional advice or delay seeking it because of something you have read here.
