Having social anxiety makes me depressed

New user here so be nice or something

Hey guys, I’m a 17yo guy and I suffer from bad social anxiety. I got diagnosed with social anxiety when I was 11, and it got really apparent when I went to high school and have developed symptoms of depression, such as thoughts of suicide and sleeping all the time. It was also the time where my social skills deteriorated, and now today I basically have zero social skills. I take 100mg of sertraline every day but it doesn’t do shit to me except give me really bad heartburn occasionally. However I keep taking it because maybe something will change, but in a couple of weeks from now I have an appointment with my doctor and I’ll ask if he could change my medication. So far, vaping is the only “medication” that sorta helps with my social anxiety and heavily calms me down, however I don’t do it all the time because it’s my dad’s and it’s a disposable. I could ask for vapes in school but I have no friends who vape, in fact, I have no friends in general anymore and only have acquaintances in school and people who used to be my friends but moved, which ends up in not being as close to me anymore. I could ask random vapers but ofc I can’t because social anxiety.

My life outside school is really isolating and depressing. I barely have any hobbies and all I do is lay on my bed and doomscroll and sleep and mess up my sleep schedule. I don’t post on Reddit anymore because they IP banned me off the whole fucking site. They even track the device I use so they’ll still ban me even with a VPN. Now I have to resort to here because I have no other way to tell; my parents think I’m delusional for having mental illness so I don’t tell them. Anyways, I have no social interaction at home except my parents, and absolutely no one texts me. I’m absolutely not OK with this lifestyle. I’m always fucking bored and I wish I had friends I could hang out with. I have no siblings. A side effect coming with my social anxiety is that I don’t fit in anywhere so it’s really hard to find new friends. I heavily feel like I’m missing out on my teenage years by rotting in isolation because of social anxiety. What do you think I should do?

Welcome!

This is a safe place to discuss, vent, support, and share information about mental health, illness, and wellness.

Thank you for being here. We appreciate who you are today. Please show respect and empathy when making or replying to posts.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules

1-Posts promoting paid products and services of any kind are not allowed here.

2-All posts and comments must be helpful and supportive. Do not put vulnerable people at risk.

3-Do not DM or ask to speak privately to any of our members unless they specifically request it.

If a person from this community disturbs you in a comment, please report the comment. If you receive a DM you did not request, send a screenshot of the DM in a message to a moderator. This is a bannable offense.

4-Suicide, Self-Harm, Death-- Extended discussions are STRONGLY DISCOURAGED here. First, mods and community members are caring people, but not experts in crisis situations. Second, we want to avoid Lemmy becoming like many commercial social media platforms, where comments can snowball into counterproductive talk.

If you or someone you know needs more help than can be found here, please refer to the pinned resources.

If BRIEF mention of these topics is an important part of your post, please flag your post as NSFW and include a (trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, death, etc.)in the title so that other readers who may feel triggered can avoid it. Please also include a trigger warning on all comments mentioning these topics in a post that was not already tagged as such.