Ask HN: How to deal with social isolation-induced depression relapse?
Hi, mid-20s male here.

I have always been an introvert. This, together with the fact that my college and work environments have never been especially helpful in terms of meeting people made me a social pariah, which ended up inducing depression. I don't have any friends at my home town and hardly know anyone where I moved last year.

In early 2021, I met the peak of my depression. It was really, really bad. And for the first time, I finally went to a therapist. The first thing she did after the first session was scheduling a visit with a psychiatrist, probably because my suicidal ideation scared her. Since then, I have been both regularly attending to therapy and taking small doses of antidepressants.

The benefits of both the therapy and pills seemed to make wonders from the very beginning. First of all, the feel of despair and having no hope rapidly vanished because I knew that, while I wasn't well, I was working towards improving it. I started restoring my sport habits, arranged to meet some people, and went to quite a lot of dates through an online dating app.

During the last few weeks, I relapsed. Not nearly as bad as in my depression peak, but still considerably bad, and without no reason to believe that it's going to get better. I have stopped my attempts at meeting random people (basically, first dates via online apps and a couple of small parties). At first, for me they were a very novel thing, but I have already lost interest, because it's very demotivating to get always rejected (not only in dates, also by potential friends I met in one party, etc).

The worst thing is that now I don't have the feeling of still having some aces to play:
- I'm already getting both psychological and psychiatric treatment.
- I already tried to do sport (in fact, some years ago I was in a pretty good shape, I didn't feel good either, and I didn't attract anyone).
- I already tried to meet people and do different things.
- I have been working a lot on my social skills: look in the eyes, smile, listen and ask follow-up questions to show interest, propose going out again.
- I have always had a good hygiene, etc.

I think that people are just not attracted to me. Not only sentimentally, even as a potential friend or someone to go for some drinks, because no one wants to repeat. Even if in the date or the party, the other one was the one who said that we should go out again (but then ghosted) etc.

I think I have some intrinsic issues. Being physically unattractive, being short, some facial features, an uninteresting voice, etc. I don't know. I can try to compensate these ones by being nice and having what I think it's an interesting job. I can work, and have done up to a point, to improve my social skills. But I wasn't born attractive, charismatic, or funny.

There is also a snake that bits its own tail. The less social/sentimental success you have, the less likely it is you will have it in the future. Being alone is unattractive. And at some point, you can't hide it. There are lots of experiences you just haven't had, and this becomes blatantly obvious when you are already in your mid 20s. In this sense, moving out actually helped me a bit in the beginning, because my story was easy to sell: "I just moved, and I don't know anyone here. Do you want to go out sometime?". But at this point, even I don't believe it.

Other people have been in similar situations, but the usual thing that saves them is that they made their circles of friendships in the ages in which this just happens naturally (friends from school or university, partner somehow related to these friends, etc). I didn't. All the social interactions I have got in these months, which have been quite a lot for my standards, have always come from social dating apps (e.g., a bad date leading to being invited to a party by some random guy we met during the date, etc).

Just writing this up has helped me a bit. Any advice will be appreciated.