My crippling fear of loneliness is ruining my life

I'm moving to the other side of the country for uni and I'm quite introverted so I'm completely worried about making friends etc but I made the choice because I knew it would be better for me. The uni and course are great and eventually I'm going to have to move and learn to live in a completely different environment so why not now.

A few years ago I would have never moved out for uni but I've been slowly getting myself used to doing things outside my comfort zone. I've gone on a few week long trips with absolute strangers and after a while I've gotten used to making friends instantly and feeling relatively more comfortable in those situations. Maybe take it in small steps? Don't move away straight away, find a reasonable middle ground between moving away and staying in the same area and take it step by step.

Maybe think about the benefits of moving away and use that to motivate you? Remember there's always weekends, holidays and Skype if you start to feel homesick!

Ahh congrats on the uni place! I have spent time away from home- I spent a year abroad as part of erasmus, but I think uni is a very different environment to a workplace if ygm? In uni everyones up for a good time and making friends but a work place is so much different, like some of your work colleagues may be married with kids so you can't really relate to them in that sense etc

I feel as if being afraid of loneliness will ultimately result in me living in my home city for the rest of my life and I don't know if thats a good thing or a bad thing...everytime I muster up some courage to contemplate moving to london, I just think about how many nights I'm going to spend alone, eating alone, having no mates in that city apart from work mates (if that), no family etc and I'm back at square one.

Moving away alone is part of the whole fun of it. I've moved away a few times, moving to London myself for uni on Saturday. If you move into shared housing, you make friends with your housemates, you make friends with work colleagues etc. It scary and there are Lonely moments, but ultimately (in my opinion) it's one of the greates life experiences.

I don't want to patronise but the sad truth is that at 26... Friends start settling down and making families and making their own lives... And everything that was so easily accessible when was younger becomes a lot less frequent. And that is an equally lonely situation.

My advice, be scared but take the jump... Move to London and start a new life. But remember, the people you love are always at the end of the phone!

Lol I just turned 22 but I see what you're saying, its a life experience. But imagine you end up sharing a house with people you don't get along with :/

I'm 22 yrs old. My primary school was down my road. My secondary school was up the road from my primary school. All of my mates went to the same college as me. I went to a local uni and commuted from home and made a group of close knit friends there as well. I have 6 siblings. 5 of those still live at home. In my area everyone knows each other and I literally can't walk down the street without bumping into someone I know.

At times I find this suffocating but then I think about lonely people. Those people who live alone and spend their weekends with no one around them and it scares the life out of me.

I was offered a graduate job in london. And it was a very good job/pay, a lot more than I'd ever expect to achieve if I was to stay in my home city. But because I don't know anyone in london and due to my fear of being lonely, I turned it down. I feel like an idiot but I can't help it. What if I don't make any friends in a new city? I have always been surrounded by people I know, so the thought of eating alone or spending my weekends alone in a flat scares the **** out of me.

So I was wondering, how do people find the courage to move? Like those people who move to different countries and leave their family and friends behind, how do you do it?