yknow i used to feel this a lot
whenever someone asked me to hang out i often wanted to decline and stay home, but recently i started scruffing myself saying "no, you need sunlight and human interaction. outside with you."; and it's been pretty great for my mental health since.
obviously if i'm tired and exhausted from work or haven't any meaningful Me Time in a while, yeah okay i'll take the day for me to rest and vibe. but if i wasn't planning on doing anything specific that day, yeah i'll push myself to go out with friends when they ask - even if staying home feels more appealing. declining plans over and over because home is more convenient and comfortable just rewards and reinforces isolated behavior, and in a world growing increasingly isolated socially, that can be disastrously detrimental to both your mental health and your social life. if you keep turning people down when they ask to hang out, if done over and over and over again they'll eventually stop asking simply because they've realize that the answer rarely if ever changes.
now, mental health absolutely plays a huge factor here. it can be overwhelmingly difficult to motivate yourself to go out and see the sunshine and friends when dealing with depression; but that's the insidious thing about it. depression traps you in a self-sabotaging cycle. it makes you stay home alone withdrawn from people, which then exacerbates your depressive symptoms causing you to stay home and withdraw even more. pushing yourself up and out to go see people, no matter how misery-inducing it may feel to get dressed and out the door, will do so much more for your mental health than any number of rest days home alone ever will. like a muscle, the more times you combat that discomfort and overcome the resistance, the easier it'll be.
when your brain is bemoaning "I don't know, that's scary..." you gotta combat it with with "who cares if it's scary? that's what makes it an experience!"
now, you don't need to push yourself to do big, grandiose social events. pushing yourself beyond your comfort level is crucial, yes, but you have to hold yourself to realistic proactive steps that work for you. you can start with small, casual hangouts. going for coffee. visiting a friend's home. having a walk around the park. something low-pressure that gets you past the threshold of your front door. whenever you're feeling that reluctance, that urge to hide away and hole up in a blanket burrito instead of socializing, fight it.
poor mental health can also make it difficult to communicate interest. sometimes you're just not up for something or just can't go, and that's normal! we're all people with individual lives and schedules! it's not realistic for anyone to be ready to hang out at any given moment. a mere "sorry, can't today" could come off disinterested even if you are indeed interested. instead, you could try:
"I'm not feeling up for [insert activity] today, but maybe could we go do [insert other activity] instead?"
"I can't go to [insert activity] today, but I want to! Could we do [insert activity] on [insert specific date] instead?"
these reaffirm your interest while also offering compromise / solutions, which is a lot better than just outright declining.
because it's related, i'd also like to add here: sometimes lives get busy and wind up in an initiation stalemate. people want to hang out, but they don't act on that intent. it ends up being a passive back-and-forth of "we should hang out sometime!" but never goes anywhere. more often than not people do want to hang out, they just can't on short-term notice. to tackle this you need to kill the phrase "we should hang out" and instead try:
"hey! wanna go do [insert activity] on [insert specific time / date]?"
not only does this initiate the conversation and communicate interest, it also offers the person an activity with a specific time or date they could then plan for if said activity interests them; and if they're someone that's got their own career or family stuff going on, planning is everything.
i absolutely relate to OP's post here, even now when my mental health is better than it's been in decades. i'm sure as hell not above some good ol' shitposting. this post was just a really good segue into talking about isolation oops
