What If You Don't Really Mean Anything To Anyone?

[Friday]

Just coming back to this Q... What happens if you turn the question around?

What if no one means anything to you ?

It changes things around a bit. :) Introduces a whole series of new questions. Do you want people to mean something to you? If so, what? What would the minimum requirements be for them to hold those positions? What kind of standards would you employ? What would you prefer in individuals who might fill those roles vs what would you insist upon? To what level are you yourself willin to go to? Where would you begin your search for applicants? What would make them unsuitable for the position? What kind of time frame would be expected for this process to take place?

It's a very different creature, hunting for people you might like and want in your life... Rather than the reverse, wanting to be liked or wanted in other people's lives. Do I like them, rather than do they like me.

 

[Chava]

@FridayJones once in a while I meet someone I'd like to get to know better but it's not reciprocated. Like I call to see if they want to get coffee or go for a walk and they don't call. They usually have enough family, friends, etc and don't need more people in their life, I understand, or they just aren't interested in me. I do shy away from even approaching people because this sort of rejection messes me up.

 

[KwanYingirl]

@Chava you matter to me. You are worth having a few friends. That's enough you don't need lost of connections. I have difficulty with relationships and make many mistakes in dealing with them. A good group you might find friends is AA. If you want to quit drinking you can always PM me for a shoulder to cry on.
I think, like me, you have a hole in your soul and then when it's unbearable, in goes the booze. The only requirement at AA is the desire to stop drinking. FWIW, I quit drinking many times for long periods of time, and each relapse resulted in more drinking. It progressed.
I'm not here to lecture you, just sharing my experience. Drinking solved nothing in my life, it just made life that much harder. Sometimes I feel like I want to die rather than working on my issues. I'm alone a lot and get lonely too. My job allows me human contact and it exhausts me. This is all part and parcel of a trauma victim.

 

[Chava]

Drinking solved nothing in my life, it just made life that much harder

Yes, this is how it goes for me too. Very true. I've been so exhausted (not sleeping well), so have excused drinking on a sedative a few times to knock me out. Well, the sedative alone is good enough! But I'm also going to increase a new sleep med tonight (I really want it to work!!).

you matter to me. You are worth having a few friends. That's enough you don't need lost of connections. I have difficulty with relationships and make many mistakes in dealing with them.

Thank you! I've found a precious few souls I connected with and they moved for work. I really belong in a city (as if I could tolerate that). I'm so rural...many people come and go, especially if they are like Ph.D.s or artists, or looking to "move up". Then a few I tried to reach out to and make normal new-friend gestures (coffee invite, walk, etc) but they weren't responded to, which is actually not the end of the world...but I take little rejections like that to mean I am a complete loathsome piece of shit. Then with friends who do respond, I'm sometimes a shithead and don't respond back to them. Most people don't seem real to me. I think understanding some of this on a deeper level feels both hopeless and hopeful, which I won't ramble on about for right now. That whole connectivity thing. Getting clearer and better in some ways, but realizing also the depth of these relational defaults...

I was just sort of irritated to see the texting-car-crash commercial made powerful by the associations people had to others. Every person at risk was first portrayed as being cared about by someone else. It brought me back to that black hole sensation of my existence.

 

[The Albatross]

Chava... what do you mean to yourself? Stop the slide gal.

 

[The Albatross]

You're caught up in management of symptoms... but avoid the core issue... taking something/injecting something from the outside to change the way you feel on the inside. Playing with your meds, booze or mouthwash gal... you're clearly in trouble. Get the assistance you need.

 

[KwanYingirl]

Yes @Chava, that black hole is a bitch. I am interested what you mean when you say people don't seem real to you. Do you mean they aren't genuine or is it more of an existential quandary? I identify with rural life. It was hard to find anyone I liked. I met a few people at Church who are recovering alcoholics and they really helped me out in my early sobriety. But I moved and they did too. I've reinvented myself so many times I can't keep count of the people I've let slide away because I was too busy running away from my past. You know, don't you, that it's the black hole and our formative years that have left us road weary. I want to get to a place where I put the past in the past and just look forward to a better tomorrow. Well, Namaste and good night. Good luck with your sleep aids.

 

[Chava]

@The Albatross I'm not playing with my meds. I'm taking any and all as prescribed. I'm trying to find something to replace the ambien...have had several messages back and forth with my doctor about this. Increasing new med tonight (her suggestion) in hopes that it works. If not, I either increase again or find something new, which is sort of a bitch when you cross sedatives, benzos, and muscle relaxants off the list (part of the issue is my muscle relaxant started making me insanely restless, like I'd pull all my own muscles in my sleep...but not sleep...so I threw them in the garbage and my doctor pulled them off my list).

@KwanYingirl people don't seem real like they are "gone" when I don't see them and they are only there through a bubble when I am around them. Like I'm in a cartoon. Yes, none of us really truly exist. I've adapted super well and get along great with colleagues. Humor pulls me into reality, I think, so that's very helpful when it's working for me. I've had just a couple friends in life who it felt like saw through my thick bubble...but it was hard for me to stay connected to them. I'd just run off...and then miss them forever....

:banghead::cry::(

My therapist is starting to seem like a real person to me, so I do hope that is something that is transferable to other connections at some point. Right now I'm still hyper weird about where my bubble is going and how to be around people who don't know me very well (which is mostly everyone).

 

[Deleted member 29920]

((((((Chava)))))) I feel the same with the loneliness. I wish we all lived in the same town. :hug:

 

[Friday]

@KwanYingirl people don't seem real like they are "gone" when I don't see them and they are only there through a bubble when I am around them. Like I'm in a cartoon. Yes, none of us really truly exist. I've adapted super well and get along great with colleagues. Humor pulls me into reality, I think, so that's very helpful when it's working for me. I've had just a couple friends in life who it felt like saw through my thick bubble...but it was hard for me to stay connected to them. I'd just run off...and then miss them forever....

I hope someone can help me out here... That's a real solid symptom of something escaping my mind at present... And it has a distinct treatment plan. I studied it in school, but it wasn't something that "stuck". Argh.

It's also a normal part of Early Childhood Development, partly tied to both object permanence & learning empathy, & then later, Adolescence. At a certain point in ECD other people become "real" ... Until then? Clearly, teachers sleep in their classrooms / everyone's families are like their own families / if a child knows something "everyone" else knows it, too, etc.. Meanwhile It's nick named "Center of the World" & ________ (something else I forget, relates to living in their own little bubble)... for adolescents. Again, totally normal part of development. Other people simply aren't "real" to most adolescents, & even a percentage young adults. For a period of time, even their nearest & dearest friends & families... Only exit in relation to themselves. It's less that both stages are grown out of, and more that they are learned out of. Like I said, there's a solid treatment plan for this kind of reasoning when it hangs on... That mostly mimicks the learning process that toddlers & teens go through. It's driving me a little nuts that I can't remember the specifics at the moment.

 

[Changing4Best]

There is a lunch club for senior citizens here in my town. It meets in the Community Center every day from around 9AM to 12:30 or so. We eat lunch at 11:30 AM. It is funded by the local, state and national governments. I have a dozen or so friends there and enjoy their company every weekday.

Other places one can meet people is at a Gym or even a restaurant. I used to go out for breakfast every day at a local diner at about the same time. Most of the days I went there, the same folks would be there too. We would socialize and have a second cup of coffee, which was on the house. Sometimes I would just listen to them talk, other days I would have an interesting story for them. Breakfast is the least expensive meal of the day, so it is more easily affordable. I moved from that place, but found our lunch club for seniors here. Every town has someplace where folks socialize. If you look, you will find it. Good luck.

 

[Chava]

@FridayJones I know what you're saying sort of but also don't know the word. I have recognized it as a little like object permanence. It's not quite the self-centered bubble, because the world does not revolve around me. It just stops existing. I'm real-ish to myself in my bubble. It is like either I am unreal or the other is unreal. We can't both be real at the same time.

I do have empathy and really good ability to take perspective (have been told this by a few colleagues, specifically this stepping into others' shoes and perspective-taking ability)...so it's a little weird and separated into a couple distinct patterns. Not like an overall picture of missed developmental chunks. Very connective-specific, avoidant, and semi-dissociative within relationships. With empathy and other feeling stuff I am mostly afraid to feel (get fuzzy and dissociative especially with strong feelings) and am afraid to connect...like as soon as I'm "connected" to someone I will become unreal or they will. I think related to early relationships where I never fully crossed the me-other hump or however it goes. Probably in parental rages and other negative episodes, I had to become unreal or the parent did, so in better times I could still hope for connection.

There were my immediate needs, which I often felt guilty about and were numbed out in many ways. And there were caregiver's needs. I learned to subjugate many of my needs for caregiver needs. "I" was gone. Honestly "we" were never in a relationship. I have one memory, maybe five minutes long, of having a lullaby sung to me. Then we felt together, but in my memory as a kid, that memory felt "unreal" because it didn't fit into the overall pattern. It was too unusual and fleeting. So...

In therapy we're doing some corrective stuff. More often it feels like both my therapist and I are real, BUT that feels like a very challenging place. Not rewarding really because it's still quite freaky. But I feel like she is very safe for working it out. It's just not an issue that resolves or corrects itself in few months worth of sessions.

I'm not sure but some of this might be similar to what some borderline-diagnosed people experience, though I have not been diagnosed with BPD. There is certainly some cross over with the early relational stuff.