My question is how do I better my relationship with others like my family and friends?

When we lose people that are close to us, it can often make us feel very vulnerable and scared.  This isn't a feeling that is very welcomed and at a younger age can be very traumatic if we don't have a support system in place to help us navigate this emotional pain.  Through this experience it is common for individuals to develop defense mechanisms that may help protect us from feeling that emotional pain again, but those same defense mechanisms can often push others away from us so we don't develop closer relationships. 

Resolving our own internal struggle with past experiences is part of how we can retrain our mind to accept deeper relationships that will allow us to be vulnerable once again.  If your goal is to be closer with family and friends, we need to explore how we became so distant. Over time this has become a learned behavior and it will require trying new things and developing effective ways of communicating with those closest to you. 

My recommendation to my clients is that when we identify that there is something that we need to improve on, we need to start getting comfortable with the feeling of being uncomfortable.  As we go through life, we will lose people that we interact with and an unhealthy solution would be to never get close to anyone. We as human beings do need to interact with others.  I know we can describe ourselves as introverts or extroverts, but we often still interact with people through social media platforms, gaming systems, through services in the community, and people that live in our immediate area. 

We have opportunities every day to interact with others, but if we are finding it difficult to interact with those that are closest to us, then it is for a reason.  Focus on when it changed, why did it change, and the reason that we felt it needed to change.  We made a choice somewhere along that timeline, and now we have the opportunity to make a choice again once we have self explored. 

Remember, it is your journey, and I'm glad you are brave enough to share it with us.