Amazing how lonely mental health problems are...

[Locut0s]

Many of you here are thankfully doing much better or are at least in remission. But I'm sure you can relate if you think back to your worst points, how lonely mental health issues are. It certainly doesn't help that I have no friends in real life and don't socialite at all.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. It certainly can be lonely, my dear Locut0s...

I'm sorry.

[libodem]

2. A person needs someone to relate to

Even if it is on a message board. You have friends here. Hang in there. The bad times pass and it gets better. This time of year is often difficult with the cold and the dark.

[HereSince1628]

3. Yes, it is, yet loneliness seems an equiterminal outcome of different processes.

Last edited Tue Dec 3, 2013, 06:44 AM - Edit history (3)

1) Mental illness, just like other illnesses, is something that is experienced at a very personal level. There is an inherent loneliness that is a component of all illness. The personal experience of it can never be fully shared even if that sharing is desired. That isn't so much pathological as it is the nature of individuality. It can be painful to know that no one 'gets it'.

2) The turning away from activities that facilitate friend making and socializing may be characteristic of some mental illness.

3) The inability to maintain relationships even though they are desired may also be characteristic of some mental illness (I have been assigned such a diagnosis).

4) Focusing on and magnifying intolerance of any attribute of life, including loneliness may be characteristic of some mental illness.

5) Loneliness may emerge from abandonment/isolation by others upon learning of your or my mental illness. That IS NOT a symptom of mental illness but rather the proper role of the emotion of loneliness, brought about by understanding the loss of others from your life. The others' behavior is likely a symptom of his/her/their acculturation into stigmatized beliefs/misunderstanding that lead them to the defensive behavior of shunning the mentally ill.

Sorting all this out into a relevant manageable bit might be a project objective for therapy.

[get the red out]

4. I can certainly remember that

I remember being despised by my family and being alone and miserable wishing I could die.

It can get better, I still feel like I am faking being a "regular" person now because of my experiences in the past, but interests have sprung up in my life that have led to more socialization; and I am very happy that has happened for me.

I hope you will have positive things happen in your life.

[hunter]

5. I got tired of "faking being a regular person."

Yes, I AM a chronically pessimistic and heavily medicated autistic spectrum hermit sort of person.

Deal with it.

Amazingly enough a few people, family mostly, and my pack of dogs, they still love me.

Like Paul Erdős my rocket scientist grandfather survived on amphetamines, past ninety years old, but I rely on more subtle, and more importantly, currently legal prescription meds.

Off my meds I'm no good to anyone, especially myself. I run until my bare feet bleed. Mostly harmless, but disturbing to others.

It took some intensive therapy to teach me to be kind to myself.

Seriously, if I die on the streets living under a pile of newspapers I've already won this game of life. And in some perverse way it's this simple knowledge that keeps me going.

[No Vested Interest]

6. To socialize one has to get out of the house.

One could go to any public place, sit down, observe.

At some point another person will make small talk.

One replies and a small conversation - about the weather? the traffic?, etc. will ensue.

That is how one begins to socialize.

[Locut0s]

7. Very true. I never seem to get much beyond...

I never seem to get much beyond the friendly acquaintance phase though. Thus true friendships never develop for me. I'm pretty good at small talk, to the point where you might mistake me for an extrovert actually. I have an interesting personality and a lot of interests to talking about things isn't an issue. But I think I hold people at arms length emotionally so REAL friendships never develop.