1. Your friends guard you from other friends because they think you’re judgmental.

You hear a lot of “I’m not sure how you’ll feel about him”s and “You won’t like her”s and are completely baffled every time you get it. Why? What have you done to earn this reputation of being an extremely picky // judgmental person?

2. You accidentally go entire conversations on the sidewalk without saying a single thing.

Only the quiet friend knows the struggle of drawing a total blank when they have to stand awkwardly next to their friend while she talks to her friend you guys just ran into on the sidewalk. Only the quiet friend knows it’s actually possible to not say anything at all for the entire duration of the conversation, except for “Bye!”

3. The distinct fear that you’re relying too much on your friend to introduce you to people at a party where you don’t know anyone.

There is a unique anxiety that comes with being a quiet person at a party full of unfamiliar faces, where your only entry to communication seems to be via your only friend there. You loathe being clingy but honestly can not at this point think of any other option.

4. That awkward moment at a party when you’re latching on to a conversation with a stranger that should have ended 10 minutes ago when your friend busy talking to someone else.

There is nothing worse than extending a conversation only because you seem to have literally no one else to talk to (except for maybe when you manage to exit the conversation only to go stand in a vaguely out-of-the-way place by yourself, acting like this is a natural thing for you to be doing right now).

5. You have to rely on someone else to make things less awkward.

In awkward situations, you are not in your element. You are helpless to the forces of weirdness, and best when your friend can take care of mitigating these for you.

6. You can be hard to get to know.

People think because you’re quiet you don’t have any personality. They assume you’re boring or uninteresting. You definitely have your own personality but you typically don’t reveal too much about yourself until you’re more comfortable with who you’re around.

7. Sometimes when you’ve been quiet for a long time people always have something to say.

They’ll say something like, “Oh, I forgot you were even there!” Or they’ll ask you, “How come you never talk?” Saying these things only embarrass quiet people and make them feel kinda awful and invisible and put on the spot.

8. You come off cold or aloof when you really don’t mean to.

Other times people think you just don’t like them or you think you’re better than others all because you’re quiet and it’s like, “No really, I’m just a naturally quiet person!! It has nothing to do with you.”

9. You can sit through an entire group conversation at work without saying anything and not realize it until the end.

It’s not that you weren’t interested or you didn’t care about what was being said, you just didn’t feel like you had anything meaningful to contribute.

10. You get anxious about sudden change in plans or social interaction with new people.

When your friend tells you they’re bringing someone to get drinks that you’ve never met before you get nervous and wonder if you’re going to get along with them or if they’re going to mess up the vibe for the rest of the night.

11. You’re terrible at small talk. Like, really really terrible at it.

If your friend leaves you alone with a new person you instantly panic and try and think of things to talk about. You always feel awkward when put into those situations.

12. People always want to point out how shy you are.

As if you don’t know or aren’t self-aware about your behavior.

13. Any sort of group activities are instantly dreaded.

Forced interaction with people you don’t know very well or icebreaker activities instantly make you panic and give you a cold sweat.

14. Loud or extroverted people get more attention.

When they say something that’s wrong or misinformed people naturally agree with them. If you try and speak up and correct them you often go ignored.