Sad Alien

Hey @Turtleshell ,

Sounds tough. I hearing you.

I wonder if we all have a stage in life where we feel a little 'Alien-ish'? I know I did... especially when I was in my early 20s.

Upon reflecting on life, I reckon it is because school was so structured. Coming out of high school, you are in a world of adulthood and every action you make can affect your future. I know it took me more than 10 years to 'grow-up' and come to the point where I was genuinely satisfied with myself and finally accepted who I was....

It took a lot of work though.

I wonder if this is similar to what you are experiencing?

Thank you for responding and listening.

I have had periods of feeling alien (isolated, disconnected), all throughout my life. And I know these feelings are due to emotional neglect/ abuse in childhood and bullying in school. I hope I can work on this with a therapist.
I am working on implementing stability/ structure now. Not having it has partly been a fault of my own.

I just hope I can get through this and feel the light again

Hey @Turtleshell. I understand what you're saying in a lot of ways. I don't know how old you are but I was like this until about 18 months ago and i'm 53 now. So I don't think it's ever too late. Reaching out here and sharing your story is a fantastic step and very similar how I started to work on my own issues.

No, you're not an alien. There's a lot of people here who will identify with a lot of what you wrote. Plus many, many more out there in the community.

When I saw a psychologist for the first time, she asked what I hoped to get out of it. My answer was to be more open and better at letting people close to me because, like you, I had a partner and I had the same fears as you. I wanted to improve so I could be better for her because I thought she deserved better and it was only a matter of time before she realised. I did get better at talking to her and letter her know what I was dealing with. Not good at it mind you, but better. I found my trust in her grew because I found out that she wanted to support me as much as she could and was had far my faith in me than I did.

I know it seems impossible at the moment... God I felt that way for decades! But it's like we tell ourselves that over and over again until it just sort of becomes fact. It's not impossible but it is hard and it wont change overnight. You just need to chip away at it. After all it's chipped away at you for many years so it will take a while to repair all that self-damage.

I've found just talking to people on places like this, or support groups has given me connections to people which has helped me to realise I am worth something and people can like me. It's still difficult and I still need to remind myself of this quite a lot, but like I said it's only been about 18 months and the low self esteem has been chipping away at me for most of my life so naturally it's going to take time.

So basically my advice is to keep doing what you're doing but stick with it. Start off by just getting to know people here. Something I made myself do was to make sure I relied to anyone that replied to me. That got me in the habit of interacting WAY more than I would have normally done. Then read other people's posts and offer them some support or just tell them how much you identify with what they wrote if they talked about being lonely for example. Then try to build that into more face to face connections, like support groups or social groups... anything in your area that you think you can handle. It's just a case of building slowly, pushing yourself, but always trying to build more connections. Hopefully you'll soon start to doubt all those negative thoughts you've convinced yourself were true and you'll start to feel more confident and like you can make and keep friends.

I'll leave the choice of medications or not to you and what you think is best. I've had them recommended to me a few times but I just have my doubts. I haven't had any experience with them (good or bad) but I just have my doubts so I don't want to take them, but that's just me. I've heard from some people who swear by them so it's up to you if you're willing to try them again.

I wish you all the best. I know how so well how damn hard it is... mentally, physically, and emotionally! It sucks. Me from 18 months ago would have never written any of this, or any of what you wrote, but most days now I have contact with different people and get support, give support, and have a laugh as well. Even if some of it is through a keyboard.

So have faith in yourself, have faith in your partner and always try to share your struggle with them. After all, would you do everything you could to help and support them if roles were reversed? That's the way I try to look at it with my partner.

I wish you the best of luck. You're not an alien and you're not alone. We're here to support you and get you to a more positive place.

Hey @MJG017

Thank you so much for your message.

I’m sorry you’ve experienced this but it is comforting to know that someone out there can relate.

I will definitely take your advice of replying to everything that comes my way, that is a good start for me.

I do get hesitant to share my struggles with my partner at times because I know right now we are both struggling. And I don’t want to push him. It’s a lot for me, so of course it will be a lot for someone else on top of their own issues/problems.

How do you and your partner balance both of your issues and still be there for one another?

I’m also really impressed that you seem to have made so much improvement over just 18 months. I hope that I can one day make improvements that stick. Thank you for your kind words. I did read it this morning on my way to work, but couldn’t respond then because I had to keep it together and put on my “work persona” (eg. being normal happy worker), which is tiring in itself. But your words gave me a sense of hope that maybe I can change, maybe I can be better. So thank you @MJG017

Hi @Turtleshell,

Thank you very much for sharing some of your story with us.

I am sorry that you feel this way, and I can sense how distressing this must be for you.

I think it's never too late to try to accept different aspects of ourselves or even try to work on ourselves and change certain behaviours, especially if we feel they aren't healthy or helpful. Which I know is much easier said than done…

It sounds like it's a good thing that you have an appointment with your GP coming up, do you have a good relationship with them?

I know I don't know what your current situation is like — but I'm sure your partner loves you and only wants the best for you. Do you feel you can talk to them openly about your concerns?

I hope that you can see the beautiful community we have here on the Forum and know that we are all here for you should you need to reach out.

I hope that your appointment goes well tomorrow.

Hope to hear from you soon.

You're very welcome@Turtleshell. Forcing my self to reply when I first started really helped me a lot because I really struggled a lot early on with confidence and motivation to do it... and the fear i guess. Now I don't really think about not doing it, so I definitely found it to be a great first step.

The hesitation of sharing with a partner is something I still struggle. I know she doesn't mind and wants to support me, but at the same time I know she has her own struggles and so I don't want to add any more to that if I can help it. So I do find myself saying "i'm fine" a lot still, when that's not 100% true. More work to do I guess. I guess we probably do a similar thing, I'm not sure how much she tells me either. We both have to kind of force things out of each other I think. But the important thing is the trust is there and we know we can both talk to the other if we need to. We've both admitted that we both struggle to be really open with people and so I think that mutual understanding kind of allows each of us to cut the other some slack for not always sharing everything, but knowing we can if we need to. Having said that, we will also both admit we should do better.

I think the really important thing when first starting to get to a better place is not to look for improvements too early. It can take a lot of time, so it's easy to become disillusioned if you look back to a week or month or two and thing "this isn't working!". You just need to give it some time. I sort of look at it, like you don't start going to a gym and expect to get ripped after only a few sessions.

Yep, putting on that 'persona' is tiring and can just make things worse. Work is probably a bit different because you do sort of need to leave your 'stuff' at home I guess and not bring it into work. The main problem I found is when that persona becomes permanent whenever you're around other people, so hopefully you have some people around you that you can take it off around.

I'm sure you can change. The fact you're here and trying to connect to people is proof that you're on your way so stick with it and you'll start to feel stronger and more confident as you start to feel that support network build... even if some, or a lot, of it is online. That's how I started, then I found the confidence to join a few in-person groups and have a group of people now that I regularly can sit down and talk to. Hopefully you have similar success soon.