You accept that you are in a difficult situation with no great answers.
You focus on being good company for yourself and treating yourself like someone of value. Be kind and understanding to yourself and try to minimize negative self talk.
You open yourself to creating new connections with others, but without preconceived ideas of success or failure.
Excellent answer
Thankyou. Simple and practical answer
Edit
intrusive thought
Why is it not okay for the world if I want to be a part of it as well?? Why am I not allowed to … also be?? I’m acceptable as in
Ya know, you're awesome, but please just stay "over there", don't sit or come too close to me yeah, okay? Thankyou 😬Or am I just fooling myself with this???
Acceptance. A lonely person can’t solve their loneliness by themselves. You can’t logic your way directly out of being lonely.
Profound
I joined a men’s group. We meet every week.
That means at least once a week, I see someone who cares about me.
Solidarity to men and brotherhood!
Nah it’s less like a team rally thing and more like a weekly standup meeting about emotional state, as an exercise to train perception of our own emotional states.
I myself discovered I had absolutely no idea what emotion I was experiencing. What I believed was my emotional state, was a sort of “good” or “bad” depending on how much energy I had to act like I felt good.
I was playing this character, and the character was a positive person whenever I had the energy to be pleasant and act happy. And I played that character for decades from childhood on and wasn’t aware of it.
Just identifying how I felt once a week, and staring it to the group, helped me notice that there was an actual stream of real emotion happening, that I was treating as a sort of background noise to my project of summoning the energy to “feel good”.
It’s hard to explain. I had this universe of emotion that was fake, and I thought it was real. It’s like having black and white patterns, different patterns for different emotions. Angry is diagonal stripes, scared is squares, happy is circles, whatever. Then one day that rips open and behind it are these fields of pure color: blue, green, yellow.
I don’t know what those are.
But week after week we meditate and then after meditation I tell how I’m feeling. And eventually I realized those colors are the real thing that I thought those patterns were referring to. I thought those patterns were the colors.
I wish I could describe it better.
I accepted that I will be forever alone, so I got a cat
The first step is to take care of your body. Exercise, sleep 8 hours, eat healthy.
Next step is to start taking care of your mind. Not as straightforward as the first step, with quite a bit more nuance.
Lastly, something that helped me is to find the difference, in your life, between motivation and discipline.
The first step is important and well studied. Double your results with exercise by doing it outside. Again, it’s well studied that being with nature improves your mood, so why not take a hike through the woods or along a river? Put your phone away, leave the earbuds at home and just focus on the moment.
From time to time, when the weather is good and everyone’s still asleep, I’ll take a hot cup of tea outside to the woods near my place and sit on a fallen tree and just be quiet. It improves my mood all day. I did it during the first snowfall of the year during covid and could hear the snowflakes hitting the leaves. I could still hear the yelling from inside the house, but somehow it was not my problem in that moment.
sleep 8 hours
🥲
(above is simultaneously crying and smiling emoji)
Best I can do is 4.
Omg I always thought that was a snot bubble and I had no idea wtf that emoji was supposed to convey.
Holy fuck I’m dumb sometimes.
I know 🙃 8’s a great goal. Hard to achieve, but always worth trying for.
fuck off. I did all of that shit at times when I was depressed and guess what, I just wanted to die even more because eating healthy is so much work
Whoa! You’re coming in hot there, buddy. But there is no situation where step 1 doesn’t help in some fashion. My guess is step 2, the infinitely more difficult step is where you struggle. Good luck, I guess…
Create something. Art, music , programs or whatever.
Keeps me going regardless of what’s happening.
The answer is different for everyone but:
Reach out to others.
Create something.
Set goals you care about and force yourself to start working towards them.
Set a time where you do something for you daiky, weekly, etc., pending the size of it.
If all of those feel too big or impossible for you: seek help. A friend or family member first, ideally, but sometimes the only answer is professional help. If said professional recommends drugs to help you get back to a positive mindset, don’t scoff. Sometimes we need to external correction before we can take care of ourselves properly.
That’s the neat part, I don’t.
This is a defeatist answer. The real answer is yours to truly find and the advice here can really help, but you absolutely can pull out of it even though it might seem insurmountable
That’s assuming someone has the skills. I’m surrounded by people everyday. As friendly as they are, they are too exclusivist for me and I have the problem of not being good at keeping a conversation alive. Nothing sticks and it’s hardwired, it’s not going to change unless one of the unchangeable circumstances change.
Well do you think socializing is something you even enjoy? If yes, then most people I meet that aren’t good at conversation are facing 1 of 3 problems. One being they just don’t want to talk or two they have nothing in common with the person or lastly you might struggle with a lack of confidence. To keep a convo alive just ask the person about themselves is the easiest way. But truly getting into hobbies and interests will help you find friends and good conversations. This is one reason why I find video games so useful because you will always find someone who likes the same game as you.
And if no well then what does make you happy?
I do enjoy conversations, I just never get to have them. The weakness comes from drawing a blank and then the conversation dying, and if I try forcing myself to say something anyways, it just ends up like this.
So a tip for that you might not know, just be honest in the conversation. If I’m drawing a blank or need time to think I’ll just tell them “hold on I’m thinking” or “wow that’s super interesting give me a second to think/digest that” and they’ll be okay. You can even say “sorry I’m a little flustered/overwhelmed give me a second”.
Silence is fine, but if you don’t let the other know why there is silence they’ll assume you’re done talking. The more honest during conversations the easier they are I feel. Absolutely no one will judge you for needing time to think and if someone does then they are not people you want to talk with anyways. To make this a habit won’t happen overnight. Do it when you remember and overtime it’ll become a habit.
Being honest is the problem though. Everything I could bring up about myself in a conversation comes up equally and then I never end up choosing any response because if I did it would sound awkward. I’m not saying I ever want to do it, but lying, to everyone’s dismay, would actually work better in a conversation. Sadly nobody I have ever spoken to has accepted “give me a moment to come up with a response” as an answer. You’d be the first to not consider it an unrealistic accommodation to provide. You’d also be the first person to not consider silence too underwhelming.
That’s unfortunate that I would be the first. I think everyone deserves to have someone that’ll give them the time of day to talk. I do believe it’s only a matter of time before you find someone IRL that’ll listen to ya.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Thanks Pipey.
Keep busy, have animals and focus on making 1 thing better at a time. Start your goals small so that you can actually achieve them.
Specifically to the isolation, lately I’ve been volunteering twice a week. Not a “cure”, but it’s been an improvement for sure.
Depression is another beast entirely, though. I like to think I’m “out” of it now, but it took me a long time to get here.
One thing my therapist suggested was to find your values and try to work toward those. So for me, I’ve found that I care a lot about Education and Community, so I started volunteering teaching English to refugees.
I’m generally nihilistic, but when I’m volunteering it makes me feel better to know I’m making their lives better. Gives me a sense of purpose where it was always lacking before.
I hope you’re able to find something that works for you. Just remember that things can and will get better, even though it can be nearly impossible to believe that when you’re “in it” so to speak. Just keep going, and only do as much as you’re able.
Everyone is different but based on my experience you should try to fill your days with new hobbies. If you can, invest money into it. Learn new skills. Do things you never thought about before. Have strong opinions. And most importantly be proud of yourself for all of that. You will hopefully start to like yourself and like being by yourself.
I never stopped feeling like an outcast but I did stop being sad about it. I don’t fit the norm but that can be a good thing.
Have you also tried asking in the depression community? [email protected]
It’s easiest to connect with people who share passions. If you like board games, find a group (facebook, meetup, etc) that has a board games night and go along. Most board game players I know are introverted, and it seems you likely are too, so you’ll be on the same ground.
Get out and do things, ride your bike if you have one. At the traffic lights you can exchange a few words with other cyclists who will be happy to tell you where they are going, accept compliments on their bike, etc. Same for mountain biking.
Go to single-day community events. I went to one recently for jade carving. By the end of it you are all chatting and comparing your work, exchanging tips. It’s fun.
TL;DR Get passionate about something. Chase it and join like-minded communities.
Those events add up too. Even if you don’t have a lot to say at the first one. You’ll be able about jade carving at the park cleanup day or whatever is next. Also, outside events are extra good if you are the flavor of introvert who needs physical space…
How do you practically deal with/overcome isolation and loneliness?
It depends on how I’m feeling. I might see if a friend wants to hang out. I might go out to eat or drink. I might see if I can find someone who wants to play a game online. I might go grocery shopping.
How would you heave yourself out of (when you’re already in it) the annexed depression?
Drink some water, do some cleaning, and find something constructive to do related to a hobby, not like work. Learn something new. Find a documentary to watch, bonus if it is inspiring. Read a novel.
Getting a job will get you out of the house
