If you worry excessively about your platonic relationships it could be a sign of “Friendship Anxiety”. Friendship Anxiety is not a medical term but its a phrase that describes feeling insecure and anxious about your friends. This is not usually because of what your friends are doing, but because anxiety is making you think and act in a certain way due to a fear of rejection or abandonment. This blog will explore Friendship Anxiety symptoms in depth, explain the causes and give you tips on how to stop it.
Friendship Anxiety Symptoms: 6 common signs
Below are common symptoms that could be a sign of Friendship Anxiety. Bear in mind that everyone worries about their friends from time to time and nobody wants to be rejected. But if the symptoms below are affecting your mental health, then it could be a sign that insecurity is negatively impacting your platonic relationships and causing friendship anxiety.
You overthink situations because of worrying whether friends are mad at you
You send a friend a text and they take a few days to reply or maybe a friend seems in a bad modd when you meet. Rather than thinking there may be things going on for them, you’ll automatically assume its because of something you have done. This can make you overthink your interactions with them to anaylise that you might have said but also catastrophise because you worry they have fallen out with you. However, usually there are other explanations for people’s behaviour and its rarely personal. If you notice you do this, remind yourself you are jumping to conclusions
You fear missing out (FOMO) when your friends go out without you
Friendship FOMO is common in people that don’t feel secure with friends. For example, if you are part of a group and a night out is planned but you can’t go, this can can make you feel uneasy. You will worry that missing out with affect your friendships because they will have fun without you. You imagine they will bond more and therefore like you less. This can make you say yes to invitations so that you are not left out when you might not actually want to go.
If you struggle with this, it can be helpful to put yourself in your friends shoes. Do you change how you feel a friend isn’t doesn’t attend something? Does it make an actual difference long term? If friendships are strong they are likely to survive regardless of whether you can attend everything.
You are possessive about your friend and don't like them being close to others
If we’re good friends with someone its possible they are close to other people too, even if you we aren’t. That can make you feel insecure because you may worry they prefer their other friends. It can particuarly anxiety provoking if a friend is quite new on the scene and you start comparing yourself to them. Are they going to like them more? Will they ditch me for them?
Although such situations do happen and probably occured in high school alot, by the time people reach adulthood people are capable of having lots of close friends. We tend to have friends for different reasons and getting close to one person does not mean we don’t need or want other friends. If you feel reliant on one friend and they have others, it can also be helpful to extend your own social circle.
You think you should have more friends and be in a gang .
Its common to think that everyone has the perfect gang of besties because TV shows often present friendships that way. If your friendships aren’t like that it can make you think there’s something wrong with you. You may then beat yourself up or try to force friendships that aren’t right. In fact, there are many different types of friendship styles and some people thrive on 1-1 friendships. If you are struggling to make friends because you think you haven’t found the right “gang”, then focus on quality not quantity.
You struggle to be yourself with your friends or open up if you have problems .
Maybe you feel you have to be a certain way to impress your friends. Perhaps trying to be happy and funny even if you are feeling low and not opening up when you are struggling . Perhaps you pretend to like certain things that you don’t or hide things about yourself if you worry they will reject you. Its natural to feel this way if you don’t feel good about yourself and therefore assume you will be rejected. But not being yourself is draining, can lead to inauthentic connections and erodes self esteem.
You often feel your friends don't care about you or that they have let you down
It can be common to take it personally and feel rejected when your friends cancel on you or Perhaps this makes you feel they they do not care about you and you tell yourself that a good friend would not do that. This may make you withdraw from a friends which can cause more problems in the long term.
Sometimes we may have a friend who is not reliable and cancels because they genuinely aren’t a good friend. So if you feel this happens often with someone it may be a good idea to reconsider your friendship. But on the other hand lots of people cancel for geniuine reasons and if we take it personally, because of how we feel about ourselves, then we can be sabotaging good friendships. It can be helpful to consider whether your feelings of rejection happen in other relationships too and also weigh up evidence across how a friend treats you overall, rather than one or two events.
Causes Of Friendship Anxiety
Friendship Anxiety is caused by our childhood experiences, human evolutionary programming and sometimes neurodiversity.
For example, when human beings lived in stone age times it was very important we were accepted by our tribe for survival because if we were rejected by our fellow stone age clan, we’d be dinner for a sabre tooth tiger.
Our mind and body works in the same way it has done for 1000s of years, so even though we cannot help it, modern humans still automatically care what people think and want to be accepted. Human minds also work on a “better safe than sorry” principle because that would have kept them safe, so it will jump to negative assumptions about other peoples behaviour and think we can mind read.
But childhood experiences have a big impact on how much this old, evolved brain, gets triggered. For example, if you have had experiences in childhood where you did not feel safe or were rejected then you are more likely to assume that will happen again. This can include the way our parents treated us but also our relationships with siblings or how we fitted in at school.
And then when you combine our evolved brain and childhood experiences with social media its no wonder friendship anxiety is such a big thing. These days we know so much more about what other people are doing that it feeds our anxiety. You’ve not heard from your friend but she posts that she has had a great night out with someone else? Or the constant posts about other people with their big gang of seemingly perfect friends can spiral us into negative comparisons and self criticism. You can read more about the causes of friendship anxiety here.
How to stop friendship anxiety
If you recognise the symptoms of Friendship Anxiety and want to know how to stop it then then there are plenty of proven tools you can implement straight away.
Learn Mindfulness
One of the biggest symptoms of Friendship Anxiety is overthinking situations. You may find yourself getting lost in “What If” thoughts or going over past events. Often our thoughts feel very real which, increases anxiety, but even if we know we are jumping to conclusions, its hard to stop overthinking. However, research shows that overthinking increases our risk of mental health problems.
Learning mindfulness is a very useful skill to help you recognise that “A thought it just a thought” and stop them from spiralling.
If you are very motivated to reduce friendship anxiety then setting up a regular meditation practice can be very helpful. But we can practice mindfulness by being more aware of our senses as we go about daily life. Each time we are doing this we are building a “mindful muscle” that helps us have more control over our thinking. You can read more about how mindfulness can help anxiety here.
Try to develop more helpful ways of looking at situations
As explained above, often when we are feeling anxious about our friends its often because we are jumping to conclusions. These thoughts make us feel as is something is real. Everybody’ mind does this to a certain extent and we cannot help it.
Finding ways to look past your automatic assumptions and generate alternatives can be very helpful. For example, asking yourself “Is this a fact or a feeling?” and then looking for evidence on both sides. Often people find that although their assumptions are strong ,they have no actual evidence to back their feelings up.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is an effective way to challenge thoughts which you can access from a therapist or help yourself.
Learn to regulate your emotions and sooth yourself.
Feeling insecure with friends can mean you may experience uncomfortable physical sensations in the body such shallow breathing, tight muscles and a knot in the stomach. These physical symptoms increase a persons feelings of anxiety and means you are more likely to be caught up in anxious overthinking as well as being at risk of other issues such as insomnia and panic attacks.
Its therefore very useful to calm the body aswell as the mind such as inviting your muscles to relax and learning breathing exercises. Often when a person relaxes their body they are more likely to generate feel calmer about a situation. You can find more ways to manage the physical symptoms of anxiety here.
Cultivate self compassion
If you experience friendship anxiety you may also be criticial of yourself because you think there’s something wrong with you. However, research shows that the more you beat yourself up for struggling with something the worse you feel. Furthermore, it is likely that being harsh on yourself has increased your risk of friendship anxiety in the first place. There has been alot of interest in the last few years in how self compassion can helping people reduce harsh self criticsm. Self compassion is something you need to learn and actively practice. So if you notice you are being critical of yourself, pause and ask yourself what you would say to someone you cared about. You can learn more about self compassion here.
Improve self worth and self esteem.
Underneath many peoples friendship anxiety is not feeling good enough. Another way to describe this is having low self esteem and self worth. This means you are more likely to assume that friends will leave or judge you because deep down you don’t feel good enough for them in the first place.
Low self esteem is often causes by early childhood relationships such as feeling rejected or criticised by our parents. There are many ways we can start to build self esteem and you can read more about that here.
Summary of Friendship Anxiety Symptoms
Friendship anxiety symptoms include thinking your friends are mad at you, being possessive , worrying about being left out and rejected. It can impact on a persons mental health aswell as cause problems in keeping friends. Friendship anxiety is caused by childhood experiences, attachment styles, biological tendancies and neurodiversity. It can be managed with CBT, mindfulness and improving self esteem with the help of a therapist.
Want to work with me?
I’m a fully qualified therapist and mindfulness coach specialising in anxiety and low self esteem.
I offer practical, evidence based tools to empower you to be calm, confident and build the life you want. Click below for a FREE 30 min consultation.
