Part 3 of Making Friends at Any Age: Tools to Change Your Mindset
Action and Mindset Work Together
In the first post in this series, we listed some specific, on-the-ground actions that will lead to having more friends. We also mentioned that:
Actions on their own are unlikely to result in the social life you want.
Not only that, but:
Taking those actions is much more challenging and less rewarding without creating mindset shifts to support them.
What’s more, and probably also obvious, mindset work alone won’t get you far. In my experience, we need a combination of the two to be effective (and have fun).
As noted in the first post, mindset changes are not straightforward or obvious, but they are possible.
Mindset: How to Work with Beliefs
“I’ll try to talk to someone and get turned down.”
We’ve already taken some vital steps toward working with this belief. We’ve established that this fear gets in our way and robs our lives of essential components for joy. We’ve also shown that we are not alone! I would venture to say that MOST PEOPLE, even the ones who seem the boldest, do have some degree of caring about what others think. We talked about the importance of relationships and why so many of us fear rejection.
Despite directly obstructing your efforts to make friends, this fear shows that being accepted and feeling connected are priorities for you. If they weren’t, the idea of rejection wouldn’t bother you!
Obliterating the premise that rejection is unbearable might cause you to break every existing social rule. You might be so fearless that you become intolerable to be around. Instead of becoming a bold iconoclast, you might just turn into an asshole.
The good news is that we can keep the good parts and dial down the intensity so we can live more boldly without the suffering we feel now.
Some Tools to Consider
Mindset Technique #1: Double Standard
The Double Standard method is a role-playing technique. When I use it with clients, it involves me playing the role of a close friend who’s also a clone of my client. We assume I’ve had all the same life experiences, education, family life: everything. I then explain what I’ve been going through lately and ask my client’s opinion.
If this sounds like something you’ve already done or at least thought about, let me assure you that it feels dramatically different when you’re speaking out loud with another person.
This exercise creates one of those experiential moments I mentioned in the first post in this series.
Let’s pause for a moment to talk about
The Surprising Power of Role-Playing Methods
I’ve been using methods that involve role-playing for years now, and it’s still surprising to me how much more powerful it is than it would be to walk through the same steps in writing or some analytical, logical process.
While it can feel awkward at first, it is also somewhat intuitive: speaking out loud brings the emotional weight of an idea to life. Suddenly, instead of thinking about how something would feel, you’re feeling it right then and there. Then, almost miraculously, you’re feeling a shift when you uncover a new understanding.
I linked to this in the first post, but if you didn’t follow that link, then do it now: memory reconsolidation is an incredible tool, and Tori Olds describes the process beautifully.
Mindset Technique #2: Shame-Attacking
Shame-attacking is even more intensely experiential than a role-playing method. Much of its power comes from its intensity. Ideally, it’s not just intense; it’s also playful. This method involves intentionally breaking a rule you have about shame and self-consciousness in the real world.
Specific challenges will vary from person to person, but for example, I’ve danced in the middle of a mall by myself to music only I was listening to. I’ve walked around a large conference room imitating a duck. Colleagues of mine have stood in a central part of a store and loudly announced the time every five minutes.
It sounds odd. It is challenging to get yourself to do. However, the idea is to test a belief that might generate self-consciousness. These might be beliefs like:
People will notice and judge me if I do anything weird or awkward[trip, double back in an aisle, wear something other people don’t like].
If people judge me, I won’t be able to tolerate it.
Judgment at any one time and place will be contagious and mean social disaster for life.
Those fears can be intense! Most clients I work with avoid this method as much as possible, but it’s tough to beat for its liberating power. Powerful tools, in therapy as in the wood shop, can also be harmful. Consider working with a therapist or enlist the support of a trusted friend before you take this one and run with it.
Self-Disclosure
Self-Disclosure is nothing fancy or complicated; it’s simply deciding to stop hiding things you think will drive people away. Despite our fears to the contrary, most people feel more comfortable around us when we’re not trying to be impressive. Most people can relate to struggles and failures and feel empathy and compassion because they know what it’s like.
It’s a technique that’s so simple it might not sound like a technique, but simple doesn’t mean it’s easy, especially at first.
Working with a therapist is an excellent way to prepare and learn how to self-disclose skillfully and increase the likelihood of a connecting response.
Feared Fantasy
Openness and honesty in the real world do not guarantee that someone will respond with warmth and kindness. It’s helpful to prepare for worse outcomes and to see what it would mean if your fears came true.
Can we tolerate it if someone is rude or thoughtless in response? Does their response say anything objectively and permanently true about me overall? Does it make sense to take it at face value and assume the other person is correct – that we are weird or not cool or not someone people want to be friends with?
Feared fantasy is another role-playing method, so it has the power to disconfirm conclusions we reached ages ago–usually as kids–and which stick around in our implicit memory. So even if your analytical, blog-reading mind is reading those sentences and shaking your head - “No, of course, it doesn’t mean anything about me overall as a person!” – you might still very well have an unconscious belief that criticism from one person would be incredibly dangerous and significant.
Trying this exercise in therapy before Self-Disclosure helps to disconfirm that. Then, when you use Self-Disclosure in real life, any response you get will be easier to tolerate.
When I use this role-playing method with clients, we imagine inhabiting an alternate reality where the worst-case scenario is real. My clients play themselves, and I play the part of the imaginary, harsh, critical other person. I’ve found this to be an incredibly liberating method, and it sticks with me when I notice I have some undercurrent of worry about rejection.
Reattribution
Reattribution is a more straightforward, non-experiential method, but it’s a quick exercise to run through when you notice yourself reaching conclusions about other people’s behavior. If you find yourself thinking:
“They don’t like me. I’m too weird, I’m so awkward, of course they don’t want to hang out.”
Challenge yourself to list at least five possible explanations for someone choosing not to hang out with you. At first you’ll need to write them down instead of trying to do it in your head.
It’s challenging–and unlikely to be persuasive–if you haven’t first recognized that your knee-jerk thought is there for good reason. It shows you care about being liked and respected, about having genuine connections with people, and it protects you from feeling naive or humiliated if you later find out they indeed are cruel and rejecting. If you see all that good stuff in the initial conclusion and decide you want to take a chance on a more positive interpretation anyway, reattribution can help create that shift.
Acceptance Paradox
The Acceptance Paradox is another ‘simple but challenging’ concept. We’re usually afraid that accepting our flaws will mean becoming more worthy of rejection. That other people will see us as more flawed, and we might even give up on our hopes and goals.
In reality, because everyone has flaws, people tend to feel warmth and connection when we tell them about our struggles and insecurities.
One of the beautiful things about accepting everything about ourselves is that it can mean seeing flaws, our own and other people’s, as beautiful variations and details. One person’s ‘flaw’ might be someone else’s ‘best trait.’ Or, what turns people off in one setting can make you incredibly appealing in another.
Mindset Shifts Are Challenging But Very Achievable!
Many of the things we see as immutable traits–characteristics, personalities, or even ‘disorders’ that require either medication or despair–are changeable.
I see it every day in my practice and my personal life. More on that in the next and final post in this series.
Cheryl Delaney, MS, LPC
Cheryl Delaney is a Georgia-based therapist who specializes in helping people overcome perfectionism through online counseling. She’s been a bit of a goofball as long as she can remember. Her approach balances professionalism with warmth, making sessions feel effective and encouraging. When she's not in therapist mode, Cheryl's likely spending time with her husband, three kids, and two cats or absorbed in a podcast while doing the dishes.