How Do You Comfort Yourself When There Is No-one To Comfort You?

[Echo]

Thank you everyone for your kindnesses and suggestions. I got rather beside myself last night after @Ryn's lovely post. Trying really hard to hold it together today to get work done, but will return to respond properly. Thanks again. This forum is a life-saver.

 

[rightkindofme]

I don't handle extended alone time very healthily. If I really spend too much time alone I always end up cutting. The positives I use to distract myself are online support forums (this one is alright but the one that got me through some of the worst time in my life was Mothering.com because they have a surviving abuse area. I bonded heavily with those women and during my last extreme crises they took turns calling me on a schedule. Even people who are far away can become invested given the right spark.

I blog online. All the personal, scary stuff other people write only for themselves. I can't be alone with my thoughts or I just stop writing. It has to be public for me.

I do a lot of sitting on swings and rocking myself. On bad days I sit under my desk curled into a fetal position rocking myself.

I take a lot of baths.

I read a lot and I'm working on memorizing the show The West Wing. My husband says they are my buddies. :) I've watched all seven seasons more than eight times through. Maybe I need new hobbies... :)

I garden a lot! That is becoming increasingly important as I get older and the plants don't die. I'm building some self esteem there. :)

Have a good day.

 

[Hope4Now]

Hi @Echo. I'm late coming back here to post. Had some difficult moments this morning, but am somewhat back together again. This is a great thread that you started, and most certainly NOT a pity party. I am jumping in because I feel completely isolated even though I have a lot of people in my life. Too many in some ways--quite overwhelming most of the time.

You didn't think you'd get away without an endless post from Hope4Now, did you?

I think it is terribly difficult to get connected into a new community. I like all the suggestions people posted here. It's funny, though, how most of us wrote about things we can do for ourselves by ourselves. That is extremely important, but real, live human connection is too. I don't know where you live, what kind of community. I live in a small city that has become pretty cool and funky and alive over the past decade or so, so there's a lot going on. If you're suburban or rural, my suggestions probably will be useless, so sorry in advance.

My constant quest (when I'm not running away to be alone) is to find people with whom I might share a deep connection. This is way harder than it should be. It's difficult for me to take it slowly and just let relationships unfold naturally...I do have a tendency to either write people off fairly quickly as being shallow/uncaring/self-involved (I am working on this part of myself that does this), or to dive in too fast and intensely with people I intuit are ones with whom I would like to connect. Right now, I'm feeling rather abandoned by the few good friends I have. I seem to connect with people who are struggling with a lot of their own difficulties...maybe because they tend to be the deeper thinkers and more compassionate people in my own skewed sense of the world. So, there are the warnings/caveats about my strategies for finding trustworthy, loyal, deep-friends.

KEY: Identify people who ask you questions about yourself (beyond just the "what do you do?" kinds). Far too many people I know just talk about themselves and their lives and their topics. (On this forum, I probably sound like I'm one of those kinds of people...I do talk mostly about myself here, but that's the therapeutic part of this forum for me.) When I meet people who look me in the eye and ask genuinely personal but not intrusive questions, I know I've found someone with possibility. Like the other day at a party I was having one of those empty conversations with someone. At some reasonable point, I asked him, "So, what do you do in your life that brings you joy?" It was funny--his eyes and his posture changed completely. He was not defensive. He sort of lit up. Then, we were onto a real conversation. He asked me some questions along the same lines. It became a really nice connection.

You mentioned a book group. These are good. I started a writing group about 15 years ago...just a group of 6 people who wanted to write one sort of thing or another. We began by bringing examples of writing that moved us...after a couple of months we all figured out that we wanted to write and share our own writing. We met 2x month for about 7 years. About a half dozen times during that period we actually went away together for our own writers' retreats. Those were powerful and connecting experiences. I made two very good friends through that group. We haven't met for five or six years now. Life changed for most of us and the writing wasn't happening. But I am still in contact with one of the women...well, in the process of trying to reestablish contact.

For about a year I have been considering joining an existing writing group...actually a poets' group. I'm afraid to commit just yet. But I think it is the kind of thing that generates connections (at least with the people who aren't too pretentious).

I went church-shopping a long while back and found a Unitarian-Universalist community I like a lot. I have made many, many good connections with people through that. The only real limitation there is me and how much I am willing to get involved. I went over the top in volunteering for a few years and have pulled back almost completely at this point. I'm actually hunting for an additional community and just got a suggestion for one that I'm going to try. A whole new possibility for finding friends. The church thing can feel weird to a lot of people, but it is a really good way to get connected into a community. Have you ever read Ann Lamott's books? A treat awaits you, if you haven't.

Until all my pain started and then the chaos that I'm in now, I was volunteering at a local shelter that serves daily lunch and dinner. I made some really nice connections there with some people I would probably not have run across otherwise. I haven't done anything to maintain them, but they were nice to have.

I do community gardening and there is a really nice group involved with that. I am a TERRIBLE gardener, but I like the idea of it. I seem to be successful only with lettuce, swiss chard and tomatoes. I'm like the zucchini lady except with chard and tomatoes. People run away when they see me coming..."NO! No more swiss chard! Please!" Thankfully, now they have a donation basket for the local food pantry.

Last...I took a pottery class last year. I did it because I wanted to do pottery. The benefit was getting to know 5 other people pretty well. It is quite amazing what people are willing to talk about when their hands are muddy and they're concentrating on raising the sides of a bowl! I couldn't afford to keep doing it. If I could, I think I would have made some good friends. The others have been taking these classes for a number of years.

NOW...because of how grossly needy I am...I am hunting up support groups. Maybe I will find friends there...not sure...but at least some connection. Last week I went to a chronic pain support group. It was good, but it also triggered me because there are a lot of angry people there. People who have been through hell and are angry about it. I haven't decided whether to try it again. It is appealing because it is run by a psychologist, which makes it feel a little safer than other groups I've tried in the long past (ACOA). I also just found a group for trauma survivors...am looking into it although it is a bit of a drive. My therapist wants to start one, but he doesn't have enough people yet. This winter, I went to a 4-day workshop on something I had never heard of before, but is apparently well-known (I was the only person there who knew nothing of it...almost ran away before it got started!). It is called non-violent communication. There are groups all over the world, and lots in the US apparently. I've been kinda thinking about connecting with one of those.

So...there's a smattering of my Quixote-like quest for human connection. We're all looking for it in different ways. It is such hard work and takes so much energy that we sometimes don't have. Don't give up!

 

[Hope4Now]

I find when I'm feeling really deafeningly lonely I can't do much more than curl up in a really tight blanket. I shut my eyes and pretend it's a really strong long hug.

Yup. This is what my under-blanket fantasies usually are. Think it comes from what I missed from infancy on.

First, I tried to pinpoint what exactly I wished I had in a supporter, what I was yearning for that was lacking in that empty space. That included a couple things - safe physical touch, a listening ear, someone to distract me or cheer me, someone to give me advice, etc... to name a few. Then I've tried to deal with each of those issues individually.

Thanks for posting this, @Ryn. This is a really useful way to think about getting needs fulfilled. I guess I've been doing this too--it helps to hear your positive spin on it. I've been harsh with myself for being so scattered and ineffective.

 

[lonelyshadow]

@rightkindofme and hope4now me too (gardening), the physicality is such a good distraction. I can work through some of my frustration at life and find it relieving in a therapeutic way. I try to get into the garden most days even just to poke around and see what new growth is coming through and I can slay weeds like a Spartan! It is a little funny how obsessed I've become with these semi inanimate plants. And the inside of my house is starting to look a bit like a greenhouse lol I love seeing them respond to me like they "care" that I exist, they "depend" on me and trust my capability because I "understand" them and what they need. I admit it's a bit of a co-dependent/dysfunctional relationship... :)

 

[Philippa]

So grateful to have found this thread today. I'm feeling exactly the same way, and I relate to mostly everything you posted Echo. I'm also the one everyone has always come to for support, and advice, but I noticed they all didn't have the time when I was the one needing some of the same. It can make a person bitter.

As for the suggestions already given...they are so great, and remind me that what I'm doing is proactive and that I am doing good stuff to counter act the loneliness I feel. Journalling on my notepad...not for the public...has helped, as I can just blag out for pages and pages. I ran out of actual paper, which I've always preferred to computers...but I also like pressing buttons, so this is good too...and saves paper.

I eat comfort food as much as I can. Lots of hot tea...today it was eggplant parmigiana with drippy hot melted cheese. and toast with avocado and olive oil and salt. Did I mention hot tea? :D

Wrapping up under covers and cuddling up with my cat, letting him give me a clean always lifts my spirits, and yeah, distracting myself a lot with you tube vids, funny videos that make me belly laugh, and watching Buffy help. Painting helps me to absorb into something else besides myself. I have been considering volunteering again to be a community visitor and make sure people with disabilities are being treated respectfully by their 'carers' (who sometimes aren't very caring at all), and be their voice and advocate. That gives me a sense of self-esteem and purpose to help others who don't have a voice to speak up when they are being mistreated.

Listening to good music, calming music, at the moment I'm into french abstract hip hop, which sounds terribly pretentious I know...but I love the band Gasoline!

I participated in an art market stall last sunday, which was really fun, and in a great wharehouse venue, that I enjoyed being in, with cool people...where I made contacts and got invited to a B grade trivia night this weekend, so...that can help to lesson the loneliness. Today I feel especially alone, so I've been journaling off and on and just taking it easy, meditating and coming here for comfort. I get overwhelmed when I start to truly comprehend how many times I've needed comfort from loved ones, and no one has been there. It's really sad.

Hope this helps and you feel better Echo. :)

 

[Echo]

I am sorry I've taken so long to come back to this thread. I have been slogging my way through a piece of work that I only managed to complete just before midnight last night. I've been in a pretty numbed-out state in order to cope, not that that helps in accessing any remaining intellectual part of my brain.

I was deeply touched by your kind answers, and you have come up with lots of good things to do. Many of them seem a bit out of reach for me at the moment because I struggle to get out of the house. I don't normally have any problem with making friends or finding fun and interesting things to do, but my body and mind won't co-operate at the moment, so to lose friends and thus points of contact has been really hard. I've never been in a position where there wasn't someone to call. It has been a very strange process, and I can only presume it is a sort of weeding out (hopefully to make way for some really positive new connections when I'm stronger). I think I might be getting a bit agoraphobic, too. But that is another story.

Ironically, yesterday, as I was plodding (racing slowly) to my deadline, my carefully prepared peace was invaded in a rather strange sequence of events that really rattled me.

First at very short notice, my landlord wanted to bring insurers round to my flat - the flat I hadn't cleaned for ages (the one with the hole my cats chose to dig in the carpet one day recently - don't ask). So on top of everything, I had to make time to clean up and try not to stress about what felt like an invasion. I had to fight my perfectionism and the rising panic by taking everything really slowly. My body is in such pain and rigid most of the time - partly those nasty bio-chemicals released by trauma, partly the somatic memory stuff, and partly my dislocating shoulder still. I get so frustrated and panicked that neither my body nor my mind will work in the fast way they used to and that everything takes so long and is so exhausting. I tried to find out when they were coming, and managed to get a time slot out of them. I had started to get really upset about unknown men coming to the flat at an uncertain time, and annoyed with myself for feeling like that. By the time they were 2 hours late, I was getting really triggery and had to concentrate on talking myself down. They came and went pretty quickly, I breathed a sigh of relief and hoped I'd be fine from then on, but I think I stayed triggered from then on.

And then, oh God, as part of the text I was working on, came the worst bit. I was reading a description of a painting to be auctioned and was just scanning the entry for the ownership of the work, when the name of the town suddenly massively triggered me. I couldn't work out what was happening, and sat and asked myself why that word had that effect on me. Immediately, I got lots of previously forgotten images of the place in France where I was raped. That was the town and I had lost its name until then. I felt like my rapist was walking around my flat.

Ten minutes later my phone rang, and it was an ex of mine, who phones me maybe once a year or less. We have professional links in common so I have tried to maintain a reasonable relationship with him over the phone. This time though I did not pick up; I was in no fit state. The last time I spoke to him was shortly before the onset of my PTSD, and I think that call had directly led to me getting ill. When I had finally found the words ten years after being raped to voice it to a sister, who had advised me to speak to this man about it, his response was to refuse ever again to sleep with me, to have a succession of affairs all of which he lied comprehensively about and to submerge himself in porn right in my face. Two weeks after having told him, I found lumps in my belly which grew fast into large fibroids, which I have always seen as me re-suppressing the rape and self-hatred. He was really the last person I needed to speak to yesterday.

And then to cap it all, an hour after that I received an e-mail from the man who left me nearly a year ago, since when there has been radio silence from him. I've said elsewhere on the forum that he has started to circle around me in the last few weeks and turn up in odd places (on my route to my therapist's twice, for instance, when he works the other side of the county). I am really frightened of seeing him, because I can't stand the idea of further rejection, difficult challenging conversations or that he will see me like this. It turned out probably to be spam from an account of his that I do not know, which confused me a bit, and I did wonder if he had staged it to look like that for a few moments, but decided not to delve. Yes, well, that shock finished me off and I ended up in a shaking, blubbing heap, desperate for something or someone to console me. I am sick of all this.

So this is a long-winded way of saying that I had to use all of my coping skills and more just to get the work done yesterday at all. Today, the anniversary of my friend's death, I am just about finished. I am normally such a positive person, even though my therapist feels I am carrying so many heavy weights, but sometimes finding the positive is hard. I wish these things were not so challenging. I know it is all really probably about learning to hold boundaries, but I'm not there yet.

I'm not terribly keen on affirmations, because they so often seem so trite, but I kept trying to give myself little pep talks and to console my screaming, terrified split parts so that I would make the deadline. I hate submitting work into the late evening; to me it looks unprofessional and scatty to be doing so after business hours, but I tried to feed into myself that I was doing my best in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. I can tell you though after that sequence of 'visitations' from unwanted men, I felt challenged by some external force I could not face down. You don't hear from anyone for months and then they all turn up within a hour of one another!

Comfort would be good, and I am still at a loss as to how to find it for myself in the moment. I think I want it to come from myself. I wonder whether it has got to come down to better self-soothing techniques, but, above all, a change in beliefs about myself. That I deserve happiness, peace, no more harrassment, no more invasion, and less beating up of myself, self-hatred, criticism and exhausting self-slavery with work. I need to believe that the process I am going through is leading to a positive outcome and that the universe is on my side. All fine in theory, but so hard to live it in the moment.

 

[Ryn]

Sweet @Echo. I am so sorry to hear of this incredibly stressful sequence of events that crashed on top of you. It is no wonder you are feeling so overwhelmed - that is an unbelievable amount of crap to try to deal with in one day. :( And I am very sorry to hear today is a tough anniversary for you... this is all so hard.

I was doing my best in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

Yes. Absolutely, you did so well. Well done for finishing the work - that is an amazing accomplishment with all you were going through.

That I deserve happiness, peace, no more harrassment, no more invasion, and less beating up of myself, self-hatred, criticism and exhausting self-slavery with work.

And you deserve all of that, so much. I know it is so hard to believe, but you really do deserve it.

I hope you will find ways to comfort yourself that work for you - it is so understandable that you would need some right now, and it hurts my heart that no one could be there for you when you needed it. I hope you will continue to reach out to those of us on the forum if you feel it would help - I wish we could come give you some real-life hugs! In the meantime, I'm sending lots of gentle and reassuring cyber-hugs if you want them. :hug: Praying for strength, peace, and rest for you. xx

 

[Echo]

Thank you, @Ryn - wouldn't it be great if we could all wrinkle our noses or touch our patch pockets and be transported to some central hugging location for a quick hug, and then back to our lives? Many of us, you included, could do with some really lovely hugs. x Echo x

 

[Ryn]

How are things, @Echo? x

 

[Hashi]

a change in beliefs about myself. That I deserve happiness, peace, no more harrassment, no more invasion, and less beating up of myself, self-hatred, criticism and exhausting self-slavery with work. I need to believe that the process I am going through is leading to a positive outcome and that the universe is on my side.

I'm confused when you say affirmations often seem so trite. To me, these are affirmations Connecting to these ideas is one way of doing affirmations, and doing affirmations changes your beliefs. I'm wondering what you mean by trite affirmations...

Having said that, I'd strongly recommend making them all positive and in the present. I could explain more, but I'm not sure if you'd want me to. I'm just struck by what you said about affirmations, followed by what to me is a paragraph of them.

 

[Fadeaway]

For the first 20 years of my PTSD (I was only diagnosed about 7 or 8 years ago) I had absolutely no one to turn too. The first few years I would be punished, sometimes beat with the belt, and was even taken to an exorcist by my ultra religious grandparents who were given custody of me, even I lost it emotionally or had anxiety attacks. Things and relationships with people got worse from there and in my mid 20's to early 30's I completely isolated myself from the outside world. So I really learned to depend on music. Music and books were my salvation. Songs that had a soothing quality for me or songs that expressed what I was feeling. Books where a good escape for me. I also turned to the internet.

I know how hard it is when you have no one to turn to, but you learn little tips and tricks.