Why can’t I get myself to contact my friends?

[Sabine]

I want to contact (and when I mean contact, I mean video call) more people, especially old friends and new people, specifically in the USA, where I live. I got all the resources, people and more time now that school is off, however ...

I don’t for some reason contact them. I often forget or think things such as “do they care about me” or “ehhh, they are busy anyways”. When I feel lonely, for some reason I don’t contact them or want to video call them, I just want to retreat. I don’t have depression, I have intrusive thoughts that conflict with my desires with low self-esteem.

I have a meeting with a club that I am doing at 2 PM PST, I am involved in a film project and I even asked my crush to video chat (which I am very worried about whether she will respond and say yes or no). However, I really want to keep and make close relationships, especially with one person, as I feel its mainly me, my parents and sister, but mainly my parents are my closest relationship during the quarantine.

So how do I? I care about that stuff and I really do want to keep in touch, especially when I may go back soon. I really don’t want to be so lonely.

[Heather]

Do you feel able to just go ahead and start by taking one positive risk with this? How about just texting one person, to start with, and asking if they'd like to set up a video call?