I had some difficulties like these in the past, and what helped me was looking into amateur theater. There are part time (2 to 4 hours a week usually) amateur theater/drama schools that form closed groups and that group stays together over the years as they progress (with some inevitable degree of turnover obviously). I still talk to and meet with some of the people I met through that even though I left a bit after covid hit.
These kinds of spaces are good for people in our situation for multiple reasons:
- It puts us in an environment in which everyone is a newcomer, which helps when you struggle with that feeling of being the outsider.
- A lot of the people that go to that kind of space are people that struggle with shyness, loneliness or difficulties opening up, which means you are dealing with similar people to yourself.
- It inherently helps with shyness and closedness because the activity is all about opening up and being vulnerable. It’s very shock therapy because you don’t get any time to be nervous or second guess yourself, if it’s anything like mine was, they throw you out straight into the water.
- You meet people of all ages and walks of life, which enriches you if you open yourself to it.
You will however have to look into the details of what kind of options are in your area for that and how they work and when the groups are formed and what levels there are and all of that jazz because I can’t assume that it will work the same as it works here. If any of them are like my school was, then they offer smaller experiences (like a weekend or a month in the summer) so that you can dip your toes and get a feeling of how things work.
With all of that said, you should still look into regular therapy sessions while you are going through this. For people like us, our own brain is our worst enemy in this situation, and we need an external, specialized perspective that recontextualizes things for us. It will help more than you can imagine if you stick with it somewhat regularly.
Aaaah the Beowulf, the weapon that contributed to ruining my experience further. Not surprised to see it is the most used. The amount of ways in which that weapon was more convenient than anything else is ridiculous.
In semi-auto it hits almost as hard as anything else you can find, but you find it significantly earlier than most powerful things, and it shoots decently fast. It is very common loot so there is a big chance that you will come across one that is souped up, so you won’t even have to modify it. It is flexible enough that it works at most distances. But…
But, but, but, there is something much much more important than any one of those things that makes it so that it is not worth bothering putting any effort into developing your arsenal beyond this weapon.
Do you know what is the most common loot from pickpocketing the extremely abundant security guards in the world? A loot considered so insignificant that you get a very high chance of stealing it even with relatively mid stealth and pickpocketing skills?
A bunch of 7.77 ammo.
Do you know what is is one the most common types of loot from the random bandits and pirates that you randomly kill by the bushload?
A bunch of 7.77 ammo.
Do you know what the Beowulf uses?
Exactly.
The game considers 7.77 ammo trash loot even though the Beowulf is a very decent performer. I had 1600 rounds when I came across the first decently souped up Beowulf. Why would I put any effort into using anything else? I ended up using that weapon for 75% of the game! What the fuck.