Getting “help”

I’ve all but given up on making this blog useful, apologies if you came here expecting something helpful.

I had another psychiatrist appointment last week. I faced the dilemma that many people with mental illness have to deal with; whether to say the right things, jump through their metaphorical hoops and and take the easy way out, or whether to face up to the hard task of telling it how it is and facing the consequences of that. Last time I took the first approach, she seemed quite pleased with the progress I was making. In the days leading up to my latest appointment though, I’ve been feeling extremely hopeless and suicidal again. It often seems to disappear as soon as I get the chance to talk to someone about it and I feel like I’m being overly dramatic by bringing it up but this time I was determined to speak the truth about it.

I haven’t been feeling the desperation that I did before, I don’t feel the need to go out there this minute and do it, it’s more of a realisation what my life is going to be like. The horrible truth hangs over me every day, reinforced more and more with every failed social interaction, every rejection, every person staring and laughing. I feel crushing jealousy as I see people with friends, even glancing at groups studying together brings out a great sadness in me. I am totally alone here, and everywhere except in my home. I can no longer see how I’m going to get past the fact that I am hopelessly socially retarded, my appearance scares people and I am incredibly boring. There’s too much to overcome before anyone would even be remotely interested in knowing me, never mind the fact that I’ve already established myself as the weirdo loner here. It could be worse, at least I know a couple of people’s names, but I never dare interrupt their groups to talk to them, even if I could think of something to say.

I managed to tell the psychiatrist that I have been having the thoughts again and then of course I had to talk to the terrifying consultant. He’s incredibly intense, always staring and picks apart everything you say. I already over analyse the way I say every single thing to make sure it’s no misinterpreted but he sends me into overdrive. It can take me 30 seconds to answer a simple question, I get scared he’s going to get angry at what I say, especially after he smashed his fist on the table after I deigned to ask about anti-anxiety medication. The end result of it all was that he didn’t seem to think I was serious about it and just upped my venlafaxine to 225mg and said I’d benefit from one to one psychotherapy. I was referred a couple of months ago but still haven’t heard anything.

I don’t know what to do with myself now. I wish it was possible to transfer a confident person into my situation (of course no normal person would be in this position in the first place) and see what they’d do. I simply have no idea. I could carry on going to lectures, sitting alone and speaking to no-one for practically the entire week. I’m scared of the people my flatmates bring around here, I’ve missed several meals because I’ve been too afraid to leave my room and go into the loud, social atmosphere of the kitchen.

I’m so screwed up, laughter scares me now. If I here a group of people (especially men) laughing it just triggers a fear response inside me. I suppose it’s some kind of Pavlovian response after all the years of mocking and torment but I wish I didn’t feel like it. I don’t have a clue how I’m ever going to be normal*.

* Now I know the usual response to this is that “nobody is normal” or normal people aren’t interesting, but that’s not what I mean. I think most people would agree it is pretty normal to have at least one friend. It’s reasonably normal to be capable of going out somewhere without being crippled by fear of being laughed at and humiliated. I’d love to have someone to talk to, who I didn’t feel like I had to put on a show just to seem like less of a freak to.

I was asked some difficult questions by the consultant; “Have you ever had any close friends?” Not since I was a young child. He asked about when I was about 15; “Lads have mates who they go out and do ‘lad’ things with” he said. Not me. I had people I hung around with in school because I was too scared to leave them (they bullied me as much or worse than the other people) but I never had the slightest desire to spend any more time than absolutely necessary with them. I never saw them outside of school. I’ve been a loner for the vast majority of my life, but that isn’t how I want to be. I’d say the problem is probably made worse by two enormous problems. First, I am not the kind of person people like. I’m no fun to be around, I’m far too quiet and I don’t like drunkenness and parties, I look hideous, I’m probably too arrogant and élitist in my own introverted way. Second, I lack the basic skills that seem to come naturally to other people, probably through trial and error when they were younger and social faux-pas weren’t as heavily punished. I find it incredibly hard to explain just how little I know about how to interact with people, a lot of people think they are “shy” or whatever, but I’ve not come across many as socially maladjusted as me. I know nothing about what people do, I know they don’t spend every waking hour reading or on the computer like me but all I have for reference is what I see on TV and in movies (which I do realise aren’t realistic, by the way). I feel completely out of place as a human adult.

Life wearing me down (warning: long)

From what I’ve read, it seems like a lot of people who feel suicidal are in a desperate and panicked state of mind. They can’t cope with the horrible state of their life and the pain is intense and immediate. I’ve felt like this before, most notably when I was at university the first time, almost five years to the day. I simply couldn’t handle things any more and I felt like the world was falling in on me. Lately though, my suicidal feelings haven’t been because of such an intense, crushing problem, it’s more like I have just come to realise that things are never going to change in a major way for me. I thought (rather optimistically) that I might be able to reinvent myself and was told that university and living away from home would be “a new beginning” and although I wasn’t expecting miracles, I’d hoped that I might at least be able to take one step forward and perhaps make a friend.

Numerous people have told me about how someone they know became a lot more confident when they went off to university. I’ve seen it happen to people, but of course it hasn’t happened to me. It took a grand total of one day before I slipped back into my role as the quiet loner. I don’t know how people make friends, the process seems a total mystery to me. Within a couple of days, groups of friends had developed in my classes and now I’m the only person who always sits alone. I’m too afraid to approach groups of people and butt into their conversations, I could never do that. The time I tried speaking to a person who was also on their own turned out disasterous and now they have of course found some normal people to associate so have no need for me.

I don’t know how it works, it just seems like people magically get to know each other. Whenever I try to talk to somebody, the conversation never goes beyond meaningless small talk. No matter how much I try to convince myself that I am not a hideous weirdo whom people want to avoid and get away from, I can never believe that. All my experiences so far seem to confirm my suspicions.

I’d love to follow someone else for a day and just see what they do. I realise that no-one is going to go out of their way to talk to a weirdo loner like me so if I am going to get to know someone, I’m going to have to initiate it, but I simply have no idea how to do that. On a typical day I go out in the morning to my lectures. When I get there, a few people are usually standing with their friends talking before we go in to the room, after the lecture people go off to wherever normal people go and I go back to my room to hide. Repeat that for 5 days and that’s my week. I don’t know what to do. Who should I talk to and what about? At the beginning when I had some misplaced confidence, I tried speaking to someone on the way out of a class, I asked which of the courses they were doing and a few other things but within 2 minutes they had made their getaway. When I said hello the next week, their other friends looked at me disgusted like I had no right to interfere in their group and I haven’t dared speak to anyone since.

Life is a mystery to me. I’m 23, almost 24 and I don’t know how to do things that most people seem to pick up as children. A lot of people claim to be “shy” or whatever but I doubt many people have not got a single real-life friend and have never had one for their entire teenage and adult life. It’s quite depressing to be in this situation, and I try not to think about relationships as that tends to push me over into suicidal mood. In a discussion I read on the internet recently, a couple of people were arguing because one of them refused to believe that the other didn’t ever plan on getting married or having children. Their argument was “Oh you will change your mind one day”, as if the idea of someone not wanting those things was ludicrous. I don’t ever want those either, luckily for me. What chance would I have if by the time I’m in my mid twenties I have never so much as held a girls hand before, let alone kissed anyone?

I think the enormous lack of social contact and life experience is as much to blame for my low mood than the anxiety and any physiological cause of depression (serotonin levels or whatever). I’m not normal and I can’t relate to what appear to be fundamental experiences within society. Look how many books, television programmes, movies and god knows what else are centred around human relationships. They are things that people can relate to, but not me.

I’ve tried discussing this with people before but they always try to tell me that I’m not weird (of course none of them are in the same situation) but I know that I am, in an objective sense at least. I can’t find the data at the moment but a while ago I read a study about the age at which people lost their virginity and the average age was around 16, with over 99% of people have lost it after the age of 21. That means I am in at least 1% minority of the population already.

I don’t know what I want from people when I talk about how badly depressed I am. Maybe subconsciously I am trying to get validation for my suicidal thoughts. I think I might want someone to tell me yes, you are a complete fuck-up and the chance of you ever having a happy, normal life are pretty much 0 so you might as well end it now.

Getting By

Figured I should probably post an update since my last entry was kind of depressing. I’ve been through some low times recently, not bad enough that I was actively going to commit suicide but I felt close at one point. Things have been a bit better this week though thankfully. I actually managed to cook and eat my dinner in the kitchen today with a few of my flatmates (I usually take it into my room to eat) and we played cards for a while afterwards. I feel more comfortable around 2 or 3 others than when we are in a big group together.

I hope I can get myself to spend more time with them and hopefully not seem so stuck up or weird, but it’s hard when they spend so much of the time drunk. I’m not having any luck finding someone to talk to in my classes either, oh well.

Loner

I’ve been arguing with my family again; I don’t know how they can ignore the fact that I am not the kind of person people want to know or be friends with, despite all the evidence that supports it. I know it’s hard for them to know what to do, deep down I think they know I am a weirdo and people won’t want to know me, but they don’t know what to do about it so they just keep lying to themselves and me.

People can’t read minds, all they know about you is what you say to them and I can’t say anything. I am totally useless at communicating with people in person. The only reason I have any of my online friends is because we spoke online first. For someone who only spoke to me in real life, I might as well be a robot because I can’t and don’t give anything away about myself.

I have no idea what a person who has no friends or acquaintances can do to make friends here, I’ve tried the clubs/socieites but people already have friends there. I don’t think there is anything, everyone else already knows people so they can go places together and not look weird. Nobody wants a creepy loner to come up to them, especially someone as socially awkward as me, that is a fact that has been proven by my experiences over and over again.

I don’t know whether it’s because I just started the higher dose of my meds and it can have this effect but I really feel slashing my wrists at the moment.

Anxiety Resurgence

It’s been a long time since I was around a lot of people on a regular basis, so I haven’t experience huge amounts of social anxiety for quite a while. There have been odd days here and there but not prolonged periods like when I was at school or work, avoidance has been doing it’s trick. Now I am at university, however, I am starting to get those feelings again more often. I’ve already missed a few meals because I’ve been too afraid to go into the kitchen because I can hear voices of other people in there who I don’t know. I’ve even got to the point where I came out of my room to get a drink, walked to the door and heard people laughing and shouting and just walked back to my room to hide until they had gone.

One thing I’ve been told several times is that university societies and clubs are good places to meet people, and wanting to try and make some friends I decided that I would challenge myself and go along to some. I really wanted to join the Cine society but unfortunately that wasn’t running I ended up asking the president of the psychology society if it was ok if I joined now, since I didn’t sign up at the fresher’s fayre and she said yes. Last night they had a film night so after much worrying and arguing with my mum over MSN about going, I eventually plucked up enough courage to go there. Now, one technique you see in a lot of literature about tackling SA involves making predictions about social events or occasions and then going along anyway, then comparing what happened to your prediction and hopefully then realising that you were wrong and things turned out better than you expected. Unfortunately for me, last night was another occasion where what I predicted turned out to be exactly right; the other people there were all friends and knew each other and I ended up on my own looking like a loser. There were only 7 people there and the other 6 were all talking about people they knew and things they had done on previous nights out and stuff, hardly topics I could join in on even if I could bring myself to butt in on others conversations. So that turned out to be useless just like the other times I have been out, other people just don’t go to things alone looking to make friends. Despite what my mum says, it is highly unusual for someone to be my age and have zero friends, everyone else has people to go places with.

I don’t know what to do now really, I’d been told that everyone at uni would be in the same situation; that they wouldn’t know anyone either so they’d all want to make new friends, but that isn’t how it’s turned out for me. Everyone already knew tons of people from college, school or their jobs, on the first afternoon here when I went into the kitchen to say hello to my flatmates, there were already a bunch of their friends in there and I didn’t know who was living here and who wasn’t at first. I didn’t arrive with a prepared social group, I’m alone.

Outsider

I’ve found myself in a familiar place here, on the outside. Since I started high school I’ve never really belonged to any particular group. I never fit into any of the “cliques” or whatever the name for them is these days. I wasn’t a goth, skater, popular or any other easily defined type of person. I didn’t even fit in with the nerds. Back in those days I used to tell myself that I was happier and better off alone, after all they were just acting that way to fit in with each other, the phonies. In a way I was happier, avoidance let my escape the anxiety which I dreaded so much but it left me without any proper friends or connections.

Here, it hasn’t taken long for me to become the odd one out. I don’t go out to clubs etc so I don’t fit in here either. I suppose it doesn’t help that I am incredibly quiet and also older than my other flatmates but I did initially make the effort to try and get to know them, however that has not gone well. I can talk to them in passing and I’ve even had short conversations with them when I’ve seen them alone but I can’t participate in group discussions so I’m effectively frozen out. I’d like to be friends with them, but we don’t really have anything at all in common.

So out of practice am I, that I doubt that I will make any friends here at all. I’ve already embarrassed myself by trying to speak to someone in my class who also looked to be by themselves and the only other person whose name I know and have spoken too reminded me too much of my old “friends” from school. I don’t want to be in that situation again where I am made to feel stupid for actually wanting to work, and having my notes copied and all that. I desperately want to try my hardest to do well in this degree and I don’t want it being spoiled by another person who thinks they’re “too cool for school” and mocks people for working hard. I mean, what’s the point? Why pay all that money if you aren’t going to concentrate?

I apologise for this incoherent ramble, I was woke up by water leaking into my room from the flat above so I’m not in the greatest of moods.