Josie72Senior Contributor
No social/personal support
What do you do when you have no support?
I’ve walked this path for many years. I’ve done a lot of therapy and made significant improvements.
July last year I lost my mum. She was the one constant in my life. I’ve done grief counselling which was awesome and I’m about to start counselling with Sane.
I’ve had many friends that have supported me over the years but all have left. They all say they are there for you. They all say they want to support but I think it becomes too much. With each departed friend I retracted. I tried to burden them less so they would leave but this beast always shows.
I let people see me, the real me, little by little. I watch their reactions, try to gauge how much they see, how much they want to see, how close they are prepared to get.
The friends I have atm have only been in my life for a touch over 2 years. They are apart of a motorbike club. They have supported me thru mums failing health & passing and some other things a little.
But the big ones, the melt down moments. I’m on my own. I’ve never felt so incredibly absolutely alone before. I’ve felt alone before, when the friends started leaving. I embraced it & accepted it. But this is a whole new level of alone that I’m really struggling with.
Mums support with the big stuff made it okay so I didn’t burden friends so much. I could cope with the small to medium stuff but mum was there for the big stuff.
Now I don’t have mum, the big stuff is overwhelming me. I think about reaching out to my new friends but I don’t want to lose them, I also don’t know if they’d ’get it’, once people see this, it changes them. Once they see the depth of my darkness, the intensity of my thinking & emotions. They run. They all run!
Mum got me. She accepted me. There is one person in my new friends that mostly gets me, definitely accepts me. But he is a man, about 15 years older than me. We are mates, we are equals. But he is still a man so when it comes to it, he deals with women the way men do so it’s not actually helpful for the big stuff. Which is fine cause I also accept him. Ps. There is absolutely no sex stuff. He is very happily married & I’m friends with his wife but she doesn’t ride with us so I don’t know her that well.
Whenever you do counselling they always ask if you have support. I always say the truth - that I don’t have much. Now I don’t really have any.
There has to be others out there that don’t have support. What do you do? What strategies do you have? How do you get thru it?