When I was pretty much depressed (must have been, never diagnosed or anything though) I barely wanted to be around anyone, there was almost a voice in my head telling me that even my closest friends and family just pitied me and actually couldn't stand to be around me. So that had an effect on my social life.
Nowadays I'm mostly better and I do have some sort of a social life. But I only do things with people in the day or early evening like going for a meal or something. I only like being around a couple of people, being in a group makes me terribly nervous, even if I know them all to varying degrees. Mainly because of what I said above, I'm fine with close friends and family most of the time now, but I'm still incredibly wary of people I only know to a certain extent and am convinced they don't want to be around me.
The thought of going to a club or something terrifies me for that reason. Also I don't really like the idea of clubs in general but I'm guessing that's because I've conditioned myself not to like them!
Being on a PGCE course at the minute (I know, doesn't match with the social anxiety does it? Fine with kids, terrified in the staffroom lol) generally means I have the perfect excuse not to have a life beyond the odd coffee with coursemates. But occasionally the ones on the course who like to go clubbing (new graduates like me, the rest are career changers) invite everyone out and I have to turn them down. Just before Christmas a lot of us went out for a meal which was nice, but they said they were going on to a bar/club type place afterwards so I had to make my excuses and leave, which made me look a bit odd but there we go.
It's silly because I know I'm not *that* huge- in fact when I was at my biggest but blissfully unaware of it I did brave clubs a couple of times with friends at home. But now all I can think of is how awful and out of place I'd look if I went. Yet I know people who are a similar size, go out tons and have bucketloads of confidence. I want some!
I hope some of this made sense, feeling ranty and almost high on Pepsi Max if that's possible!