I’ve been struggling lately. Like so many people, I struggle with mental health; primarily depression and anxiety. I have experienced a fair amount of trauma in my life, some of it fairly recent, which has only served to compound these issues. Over the course of many years, I’ve worked very hard to learn how to identify my triggers and learn healthy coping mechanisms, but for all that hard work, I still find myself struggling at times just to keep my head above water.
When the depression and anxiety hit particularly hard, like many people, I find it hard to sleep, the concept of “healthy” eating habits goes right out the window, and I find myself feeling increasingly alienated, isolated and worthless. While I know logically that these thoughts are merely intrusive and have no basis in reality, it’s hard to continuously try talking sense to the little voice inside my head that tells me I’m a failure.
The thing that hits particularly hard at these times is that I don’t have much of a social support network. I don’t have someone I can talk to when these feelings bubble to the surface. For various reasons, many of the friends that I’ve had in my life have slowly left it. People get busy, they drift apart, or people change and don’t share the same interests anymore. There are tons of reasons, all of them perfectly common and boring, but the fact remains that I often find myself having to wade through the morass alone, making it that much harder.
These feelings of isolation end up feeding into the depression and anxiety, and I start to wonder if maybe the problem really is me.
When I find myself in these moods, I often turn to meditation and journaling to help break out of these unhealthy thought patterns.
I’d like to share an excerpt from one of my recent journal entries that I think illustrates where my head has been at:
I’m starting to feel like there’s something wrong with me. I don’t have any real friends, no one reaches out to talk to me unless I reach out to them first, no one tries to specifically make plans with me unless I bring it up. I feel really isolated and alone, and while I try to make connections with people, none of it feels real or genuine. I wonder if it’s something about me. I like to think I’m a good person and a good friend, but maybe that’s just something I tell myself to make myself feel better. Maybe I’m actually really selfish. Maybe I’m boring. Maybe I’m rude. Maybe I’m not worth knowing. But I don’t even know what to do to fix that, because I genuinely don’t see it. I try to be kind, thoughtful and supportive. The obvious advice would be to keep trying and eventually I’ll find my tribe, and in the meantime I should continue to focus on the things that make me happy like hobbies and interests. But I’ve been doing that for decades now and it all just feels like bullshit. Something you say to someone so they’ll stop complaining.
Personal Journal Entry, 13 June 2023
Even after years of practice, I still struggle to identify thoughts that are intrusive misperceptions of reality and which thoughts are legitimate issues that I should be thinking about.
Is the problem really me? Or is it just my depression and anxiety telling me so?
I look around me, and I see even the most socially awkward of my friends making connections with people, having fun, talking, playing games, making plans, and I always feel like I’m on the outside looking in. I feel excluded. I don’t get invited to the group chat. This has been true for as long as I can remember. I haven’t felt like I’ve had real friends in about 20 years or so, since I was a teenager. That seems somewhat ironic to me, that I felt more socially accepted as an angsty teenager than I do now as an adult.
I wonder if there are things about me that I should be working on that would make me more likeable. Not that I want to change my personality, I do generally like myself, but maybe there’s something I should be doing that would make me more approachable? I don’t know. And I have no one to ask.
I was often told as a child that I was “annoying”. I heard it over, and over, and over again. At some point, I internalized it and started to really believe it. And so I keep to myself to avoid bothering people, unless it’s obvious that they’re receptive. Maybe that’s my problem? Maybe I just need to be more willing to be the first one to reach out and stop worrying so much about bothering someone? Then again, when I do reach out to people, the responses I get are usually not the most encouraging. Either I get “left on read”, or I get flippant or monosyllabic responses.
I don’t know.
But that’s exactly my point. I’m struggling. I’m wrestling with these thoughts of inadequacy and loneliness, and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know who to tell, or how to talk about it. I don’t know if anyone would actually care if I did want to talk about it. And this internal battle is distracting me from doing the things I would rather be doing, like working on my book, or just something as simple as getting a good night’s sleep.
I think people assume that because I’m a “pretty” girl, I must have plenty of people to talk to. I don’t. If anything, it means sometimes people will talk to me because they want something from me, not because they care about me as a person. The attention can feel nice sometimes, but mostly I just end up feeling like I’m a thing and not a person to other people, so I just feel more discarded than ever. When someone doesn’t get what they want from me, they disappear, and I’m left wondering why I’m not good enough.
The whole thing is gross, and it makes me feel gross. And hopeless. But mostly lonely.
I’ve had to be strong and independent a lot in my life, and I’ve gotten fairly good at it. But that doesn’t mean I want to have to be.
I’m sure I’m not the only person that struggles with these thoughts and these feelings. That’s why I’m putting them out here, instead of just keeping them locked away in my private journal. If someone finds this, and thinks to themselves, “I’m not alone, and this is survivable,” then it has been worth it.
I’m not looking for sympathy or a pat on the back. But I hope, if you take anything away from this, it’s that you should check in on people. Make time for people. Care about people. It matters.