The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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On the one hand, you know the standard advice. Putting yourself in new situations, making an effort socially, noticing when you mess up without letting it get you down, learning over time, yeah, that's pretty much it.
If you stick at it, even when it gets hard, would you get better at this stuff? I think so, for what it's worth. I don't know the details, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if you've already gotten better, even if it doesn't feel like it right now.
Besides, it's okay to be awkward sometimes. Lots of people won't mind if you stare at the floor sometimes, or say "sorry, I've lost my train of thought, what were we saying?" Half the skill in recovering from those moments is just knowing they don't really matter all that much.
On the other hand, it sounds like you haven't really been enjoying yourself. If you force yourself to do social things you dislike, sure, maybe you get better at it; maybe you just end up associating socialising with feeling bad, which probably doesn't help.
So, what now? Well, one part might just be to focus on how you're feeling. Meditation, sleep, diet, exercise, all well worth it. Maybe therapy or psychedelics if those work for you. If you're coming at this from a place of stress or anxiety, it's going to make everything harder. (So, yeah, the Vyvanse might make this tricky.)
The other part might be to focus more on what you want, specifically. Friendships, relationships, sure, but which ones? What sort of person do you want to meet? How do you want to spend time with them? How would you find such a person?
If there aren't specific things pulling you to being social, maybe it's okay to just focus on yourself for now. Or to try doing more new things, not thinking "I need to be good at socialising", but rather "I wonder if something here will interest me?"
If there are specific things you want, maybe it's worth thinking about how you could get them in ways that do make you happy. If that means a dealing with a certain amount of awkwardness, well, maybe that's worth it. If it means ignoring lots of well-meaning advice, well, that's okay too.
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