Tips for Reconnecting With Friends After COVID

Anxiety can make connecting with friends hard. Add COVID, lockdowns, social distancing, and isolation to the mix, and it can feel overwhelming.

With this COVID year, we’ve had to focus so much on ourselves and our mental health. Stress has been at an all time high. So it makes sense that connecting with friends, especially after losing contact with them over 2020, feels hard to do.

Anxious people need friends, even when their anxiety and stress makes it hard.

And you may have worries about what they think or how they’ll react when you reach out again. That’s ok and normal! Of course you have anxiety around that. But that anxiety shouldn’t keep you from doing the things you need to do to benefit yourself, your mental health and, yes, your friendships that have fallen by the wayside.

1. It feels awkward, but it’s important.

Think about what friendship brings to your life. Friendships, especially good ones, benefit our mental health and even our physical health.

As you follow these tips, recognize that your anxiety is going to come up for you. You may notice thoughts like, “They probably don’t want to hear from me,” or “I’m acting so strange, and I know they can tell!” Practice noticing these thoughts rather than letting them overwhelm you.

(Suggested reading: How to Banish Toxic Thoughts and Floating Leaves Meditation)

2. Evaluate your energy levels.

So, good friendships help us, but bad friendships can drain us. It’s important to evaluate your energy levels around a few different things, like:

• What feelings does this person bring up before I connect with them?

• What feelings do they bring up for me during our time?

• How am I left feeling after interacting with them?

• Considering all the other energy drains I’m going through right now, does this friendship add to my stress or take away my stress?

• With all this info, what does it make sense to do?

Some friendships provide a benefit that outweighs an emotional cost. But right now, after Covid, you

3. Take it one step at a time. Start small.

If you’re a teen or college student with anxiety, you probably also have a high drive to succeed. You’re used to taking on a lot of responsibilities and getting shit done. That’s great! DON’T DO THAT HERE.

You don’t want to burn yourself out on this reconnection journey. You want to do less than you can. So, start small. Identify 3 or 4 people you’ve kind of lost touch with, and then decide which one or two you really want to reach out to. You can always connect with the others down the road.

Or, when you have people reaching out to make plans with you, don’t feel compelled to commit to everything. We’ve all had a year of not doing very much at all. You may get a little overwhelmed if you jump in to your pre-covid social schedule.

Once you’ve identified who you’re motivated to hang out with, just send a quick check in text or email, or even try a spur of the moment facetime (sometime’s people love to pick up, but this is very person specific!)

Don’t worry about explaining your absence or getting in to all the details of what’s been hard for you. Just state what’s going on, why you texted, and what your goal is - “Hey, I’m sorry that it’s been so long since we’ve touched base. I was just thinking of you! How are you doing? I’d love to catch up, hopefully soon.”

4. If meeting up, make a concrete plan.

It’s so easy to say, “Let’s hang out sometime soon!” or “We should totally get together ASAP!” but it’s also easy to continue letting meetings slip by the wayside. If this friendship is important to you, and you’ve decided that you truly want to hang out, try and make a more concrete plan and include specifics.

“Let’s hangout sometime!” becomes “I’ve been reading about this cool coffee shop - what’s your schedule looking like these next two weeks and maybe we can meet up?”

“We should totally get together!” turns into, “I haven’t been to this taco place since LAST YEAR. Are you free this Thursday or next to meet up there?”

5. Be kind to yourself, and to others.

You know that what you feel on the inside may not be translating to how you look on the outside, and that’s true for everyone. Recognize that if someone cancels last minute, or doesn’t get back to you after you reach out, it’s really about them, not about you. They have their own emotional overwhelm, stress, and anxiety that they’re also dealing with.

You could certainly tell yourself, “Oh, they’re cancelling because they don’t want to hang out with me. I should probably start bugging them,” or you could say, “They’re cancelling, and that’s cool! I’ve definitely cancelled plans before, too. I’ll wait for them to reach out, or I can follow up again in a couple weeks. NBD.”

Both thoughts could be true - they could really not like you - but one thought is probably a little more helpful than the other. And one thought is a little more kind, to yourself and to them.

Anxiety can make maintaining friendships hard. COVID kept us from reaching out and maybe even made us drop some friends to focus on ourselves. Figure out what you want to do going forward.

You may realize that you like having a smaller social schedule. You may still feel huge anxiety and stress spikes around certain people, events, and situations.

Remind yourself that you’re in charge of what you do, how you feel, and how you react. Figure out what is worth your energy, and what isn’t. And always be kind to yourself and others during this strange and stressful time.

And if this still feels too hard, consider anxiety counseling.

Our anxiety therapists are trained to deal with Social Anxiety Disorder, and we’ve all seen a huge spike in social anxiety due to COVID.

With a therapist, you can learn to identify what’s going on, come up with healthy coping skills, and figure out a plan for moving forward. If you live in STL, you can set up a free consultation right on our website.

Remember, this is a weird time for everyone. It will get better!

And in the meantime, keep practicing, doing what feels manageable, and getting support from others. We’ve all been through something so, so hard. Friendships are going to help us get through it.

Curious to learn more about anxiety therapy for kids and teens in St. Louis? Compassionate Counseling St. Louis provides specialized anger management and anxiety therapy in St. Louis for kids, teens, and college students. We love helping with thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. We work in Clayton, MO and serve kids, teens, and college students throughout St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Ladue, University City, Town and Country, Webster Groves, Creve Coeur, Kirkwood, Richmond Heights, and Brentwood. You can set up your free phone screening to see if we’re a good fit for your needs right on our website.