Personal anecdote time: About a year ago a band I like (which also happens to be a side project of members of my favorite band) was playing in my city and I was trying to find friends to come with me, but none could or wanted to. I spent a few hours beforehand agonizing over whether or not to go alone but I finally decided "screw it, I'm going." Got to the club, band came on, played a kick-ass show, and after I went to buy a record at the merch table I spotted the singer (also one of the core members of said favorite band) hanging out by the bar just talking to people. So I went over and said hi, shook his hand, told him how awesome the show was and was generally a starstruck idiot the whole damn time.
None of that would have happened had I decided not to go alone, and it seemed silly in retrospect that I spent so long agonizing over the decision, but I was definitely grappling with a degree of social anxiety. But now it's something I do all the time. The key was convincing myself that no one actually cares if you're at a concert by yourself.
I think that's true of a lot of other social situations, but sometimes it's a hard mentality to internalize. Kind of weird how much we care about strangers' perceptions of us.
Personal anecdote time: About a year ago a band I like (which also happens to be a side project of members of my favorite band) was playing in my city and I was trying to find friends to come with me, but none could or wanted to. I spent a few hours beforehand agonizing over whether or not to go alone but I finally decided "screw it, I'm going." Got to the club, band came on, played a kick-ass show, and after I went to buy a record at the merch table I spotted the singer (also one of the core members of said favorite band) hanging out by the bar just talking to people. So I went over and said hi, shook his hand, told him how awesome the show was and was generally a starstruck idiot the whole damn time.
None of that would have happened had I decided not to go alone, and it seemed silly in retrospect that I spent so long agonizing over the decision, but I was definitely grappling with a degree of social anxiety. But now it's something I do all the time. The key was convincing myself that no one actually cares if you're at a concert by yourself.
I think that's true of a lot of other social situations, but sometimes it's a hard mentality to internalize. Kind of weird how much we care about strangers' perceptions of us.