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Comment by _olsk | Hacker News Reader

Funny enough, I used to be depressed for almost my whole life and now I'm not. Two and a half years ago, I dropped out from an average university to be admitted in Harvard within one year. At that time I also had poor English, struggling to differentiate present and past simple tenses.

In just two years, I ruined relationships with my relatives, lost all friends, don't talk to anyone, got a horribly loose skin, had a mini-stroke and got tinnitus. Also, I became fluent in written English, lost more than 50 kilograms, and right now 70% done preparing for applying for SWE positions. It's tough, but I've never been happier. Never had so much progress before.

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Man that is a crazy story. Congratulations on the English, wouldn't second-guess your fluency one bit. But I don't understand how you went through some social catastrophes and still manage to level-up in the rest of your life so well? Please allow me more vague details or in private for such an amazing turnaround.

The reason I ask is because I have been struggling with socializing my whole life. While not autistic, I have lots of shyness and anxiety ever since I was a kid, got a bit bullied in high school, cared too much about what other people thought. Even in my early 30s now this is still a huge problem, because I have become a pretty avoidant person and other people perceive this as lack of initiative, bad work ethic, etc. I also wake up every day replaying any 1 of 100s of bad social experiences in the past, where I said something I shouldn't have impulsively and made things embarassing or awkward, or how I mishandled some friendship.

So its as if I base my whole identity off how well I'm maintaining my personal relationships, literally rewrite Whatsapp messages the more I am not close with someone (should I end the sentence with a period or 'lol'? Is the frequency of these emojis too much? Yeah its that extreme).

When I read your comment, I just get the impression that though you lost all of it, you were able to somehow transform yourself after. How?! If I were in your shoes, I would literally be watching YouTube videos about social skills, and think that "if I can't get this social thing down, I'll never be able to survive at a job". Please break my brain.

Check this out

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hiyzl/24_year_old_who...

It’s an AMA with a lot of practical action on facing social anxiety.

Hey! Thank you very much for your warm words!

I am really sorry for what happens in your life. I too have social anxiety as well as dyslexia. In my early childhood, I was bullied everywhere I go because of my lack of social skills and inability to keep up with peers. I even had multiple suicide attempts because of it.

How did I solve my social anxiety? I didn't. I go through the same struggle as you do. I did a lot of research and even tried to visit public events like clubs of interest, but it's incredibly difficult to talk to other people. Interactions with others are very exhausting and just within an hour of doing them I am emotionally dead. Right now I plan to start visiting them again after I get a job since I don't know any better place to meet new people I would want to be friends with. At job and public events, I will fake like I am normal until it becomes a part of me.

A small tip on how to stop caring about the past: Awkward and unpleasant situations happen to everyone, even the most successful people have them. Focus on what you have right now and what you will have in the future. I forced myself to not think about my past and only focus on the future. When I think about what I can achieve if I just do my best every day, my past stops to matter at all and my current situations becomes much better. The thing that is important for me is to give yourself a little break every day and have a day every week when you can do whatever you want.

Lastly, I haven't yet "level-up my life". I've made progress and I am very proud of it, but I still have no job and got a ton of other problems. But if I continue to work hard, I'm sure I'll get somewhere. And so do you! The struggle can't last forever, nothing can. You can always try to fix your life and if it doesn't work, you just try again.

I hope this helps and wish you to solve all your problems and get the life you want!

P.S. I watched a lot of videos on social skills and thought the exact same words, but if I want to succeed in life, I just have no other option then to just face it and do my best to fix it :)

I've had a lot of what you're describing, down to the exact events. What worked for me was no trick, just deciding to lean into social interaction more and more. When I needed to I would remind myself that more good than bad has come out of me putting myself I'm vulnerable positions, and that "no one really know what they're doing", and we're all socially awkward and trying not to be.

It gets easier - think of the hockey stick curve. Nothing happens for a while, then it seems like it's all happening at once. At this point I have what I'd describe as short-cut mechanisms in my head - where at one point I'd have to talk to myself and convince myself that taking that meeting or saying hi was a good thing with tons of reasons, these days it shortcuts to "just do it" because I've had that conversation with myself so many times. What it's resulted in is me actually responding right away to things, being more open to social interaction, and I'll wholeheartedly say I was right - it's led to more good things than bad, every time.

Hope this helps!

If you don't mind me asking, the loose skin is from the weight loss or did you get hit by an illness on top of the tinnitus/mini-stroke?

Just weight loss

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