I’m gonna be honest I’ve lost friends because of reaching out.
At least 5 friends I had before I stopped talking because I simply was not in a good mental state to keep using social media/messaging daily, I was in a different country, and none of us had started a conversation.
I felt overwhelmed about it as well. Sometimes I even felt more nervous about reaching out than going to a job interview.
As soon as I sent the text asking how they had been, the first text I received was “You think you can just pick up the phone and text again like nothing happened? You never text”
They didn’t even want to know how I was doing. I was taken aback but I immediately asked “I’m sorry I couldn’t reach out before, but, why did you never text either?” And they just blocked me.
The good thing I can take from this is that I think actual friends would be happy that their friends reached out.