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i wish i could start my life over.

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i wish i could start my life over.

Postby Ricciardo » Sun Jul 09, 2017 1:06 am

Its on the night that most of the time i tend to get reflective toughts of sadness about my life, specialy since my 30's, as far i remember i didnt used to feel like this a couple years ago, i supose im starting to break and loneliness is somehow defeating my personality into a final colapse...

I just came to a point where nothing is positive, everything in my life is negative and strange from the "normal" perspective, during the last 7 years i have been a complete ghost, i have no friends, not even i social networks, i avoid social netwoks because of shame of my loneliness and how i think people would see the weirdness of an individual who doesnt share anything of his life on twitter, facebook or whatever, because he is lifeless...

I dont take selfies, i dont share toughts, i dont do anything a normal individual of my age would do...
years ago i wouldnt botter much about being different socialy, i would simply focus on my own things, behaving like on an atlernative world, filling my time with hobbies, tricking my own mind to not feel sad or depressed for not having any social interaction...

But lately i am starting to feel bad and depression seems to be taking over....the fact i cant interact with people for more than causual/superficial matter reduced the meaning of my life into a level where i simply am a ghost.

i stay in my room all day, trying to occupy my self with something but at times its dificuld, going out alone is also hard because i really cant get rid of the odd feel of being lonelly allways...

People around me (neightbours and family) think i am mentaly dissabled, that i am crazy...
they obviously dont call me crazy directly... but once i noticed a pattern of it, since my niece who is a very young child called me "crazy uncle" wich basicly is something she eard in conversations with adults, its ok, i dont mind... she is a child and thats normal..

I am not writting this expecting anyone to feel pity or because i feel pity of my self, i am just in the need to writte it, since i rarely communicate with people other than randomic conversations in websites like omegle or IRC since its the only places were a nickname or simply anonymous conversation allows you to interact without feeling exposed or ashamed...

And i think shame is basicly the reason why i probably developed this type of personality, i seriously dont know, never tryed to seek help, and i personality dont think any mental help would change me, but i do feel shame, i am very self critic and i often analise people and try to predict what they think of me, some peopel might think this is only paranoid behaviour, but i think this is some sort of gift, i can tell when people is having negative toughts about me even without speaking...

and i think that i ended up like this mostly because of it... i steped away from people, i never had a sucessfull social life, even in my school/ high school period, and one year after another i started to fade out... into complete isolation...

And eventualy you reach a point where even if you wish all your problems were a matter of behavior, even if sudenly you wanted to became another person, to become someone socialy active, you cant anymore... because any new person you meet and tries to have more than a casual conversation or interaction will either see your a complete lonely and think your weird---

i used to have problems in the jobs i had because of it, my co-workers or colegues would eventualy start asking questions about weekends, girlfriends and social life in general and my only solution was mostly avoid it , to also avoid lying...

because saying to others, "you know... i dont have friends, and i dont do nothing at weekends" it will allways sound strange...

The same way you get 7 or 8 consecutive years going to sleep before midnight in the new years eve because you dont want to go anywhere alone, and all you can do is to see and mostly feel jewlous of anyone who have a friend or someone to interact...

I even end up asking to my self a lot of times, maybe i died and i dont know... maybe this is what is like to be dead... a ghost, an invisible being in its own exclusive reality...

i used to daydream a lot , its was one of the features my brain used to give me, i was an above average creative person, now i lost it, i know this because music was one of my hobbies and i totaly lost the motivation and strenght to keep going, just like everything in my life i gave up with time...

I dont know what ill do tomorrow, i have no plans and i am not attached to anything, in theory i would be a free person to do whatever i wanted, but unfortunaly it seems i am arrested and dommed to this situation.
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Re: i wish i could start my life over.

Postby blank » Sun Jul 09, 2017 2:50 am

You're not alone in how you feel, if that means anything. So much of what you wrote is just like me. I have tried to start life over, but eventually your problems catch up with you.

I know the pain of loneliness and always feeling like you're on the outside. I almost always feel like there is this invisible barrier between me and everyone else. And really have no clue how to tear it down, and not really sure I want to anyway.

I spent 15 years alone. Just living in my house with only my hobbies to occupy myself with.

I don't know what to say, except that I get it. I struggle with these things too. I am familiar with shame, and it's a very toxic emotion. It just eats away at the soul.

Have you tried to talk with a therapist about this?

Please feel free to post here again if you like. I'll listen if you need to talk.
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Re: i wish i could start my life over.

Postby CoffeeCup » Mon Jul 10, 2017 3:03 pm

I can relate a lot to everything you’re writing here, and unfortunately also to how you feel things have gotten worse the last few years. I tried writing several longer replies but they just came out weird or as lengthy rants about my own situation right now, so I ended up deleting all of them.

Feel free to PM me if you ever feel like chatting anonymously just to vent or whatever. IRC isn’t really anonymous enough to me since I don’t have a bouncer, but most other chat services could work, Discord, Kik, Google Hangouts.
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Re: i wish i could start my life over.

Postby gyatso » Wed Sep 06, 2017 6:30 pm

I'm really sorry you feel like this. I have similar issues, but maybe less intense. I don't know if it will help you but there are couple things you are thinking that maybe are not true and maybe are just making you feel worse.

One is that you must be weird to not share your life on social media. I think it's weird to share on social media. I don't understand why people do it. Most people on social media are not really your (our) friends, and therefore, are not really interested in your life anyway, except probably to compete with you or to feel superior to you in some way. This is how it seems to me anyway. I don't share anything personal on social media. I only share things that I've found that I like, such as an album or a cool video. Then, I don't check back to see if anyone liked or commented on whatever I posted. I assume no one liked it or commented on it, because it is depressing for me to care whether anything I post is liked or even seen by anyone, since it usually doesn't get anything anyway. I see social media as a desperate, desolate place, where narcissists and phoney people seem to thrive and authenticity is avoided at all costs. I have a few real friends on facebook, which only makes it weirder to me, since those real friends complicate how it is for me to share impersonally. I need to work on calling people whom I really care about, since years can easily go by without my reaching out to them at all.

You also believe that other people think you are strange or have problems. A little child referred to you as crazy uncle, but you really don't have much data to go on there. I must admit, that I have a tendency to make negative assumptions about what people think of me myself, but I try to have the mental discipline to say "I don't know what anyone else thinks of me unless they directly tell me". Perhaps you could feel slightly better if you tried to assume nothing at all about what anyone else is thinking. If people don't like you, for real, it is quite possibly because they feel you have rejected them in some way. I think this is true for me. I reject by not trying to connect, because I have some very negative beliefs about friendships and relationships, like you do.

You don't want to try to meet new people because you believe they will be turned off by your loneliness. I will tell you, I would find that to be a very positive quality in a friend. You are very sincere and real and feel pain and struggle. That gives you a depth, humanity, and authenticity which I would highly value in a friend. I am a misfit, although I probably appear very confident and successful to other people. But I am not interested in people who live on the surface and only want to talk about superficial things like sports or beer or money. So, know that there are people out there who would appreciate you for the very things that you think you would be rejected for. Maybe it's a small percentage, but know that this is simply the way it is - you are going to be able to connect with only a small percentage of people, but still, how many friends do you really need anyway? 1 friend can be all you need in life, but 1 is infinitely more than zero, mathematically and emotionally speaking.

You have avoided talking to your co-workers because you fear that they would ask you questions about your social life. I am not sure what the culture is like where you live, but I think you might find that people will not actually ask you such questions. In my experience where I live, it is pretty rare for anyone to ask me a question, except about something very superficial and unrelated to my actual experience of life. If you were me, and someone did ask you about your social life, you could say something very authentic about it. If the person proceeds to reject or ridicule you, you could tell yourself, this is not as bad as the things I say to myself. This person is just another manifestation of the pain in my own thought process, and it hurts because it's true. This pain is trying to motivate you to change. Also, if you are authentic in this moment, there is a chance that the other person could be touched and affected by you, and appreciate your honesty and humanity. It could be the beginning of a real friendship. I would not be open with this person, though, unless I thought they had some sort of resonance with me. If it was someone I knew was not a thoughtful or kind person, I would just say something vague and change the subject.

I have another, general idea, which is easier to say than to do. It is to stop believing your thoughts. Know that your thoughts, at least around friendships and relationships, are not helping you. It's like you have a little devil inside you who seems to want you to suffer. If you can separate from this negative entity in your mind, and stop listening to what he says, you can start opening to the possibility of change. Like I said, this is much easier said than done. As a first step, you could write down everything this voice is saying. It's not an infinite amount of material. The more you can separate from this voice, the more you can find a path to a more positive thought process. I'm telling myself this as I tell you.
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