I have no friends.

Someone mentioned a new book by Daniel Goleman called Social Intelligence the other day, it sounds interesting as well @Denv12 @Supercoolguy

I am in the same boat. Wish there was a place that was safe that people could physically go to in our communities to meet people. Someone mention Meetups App but just be careful with some groups/ that apparently organiser have to pay for their presence on the app, so after certain amount of time or amount of people subscribed, the person who start the group has to pay a fee to keep the group going. So if there is a Meetup don't muck the organisers around or bring unwanted attention to yourself. You also might find that their isnt any good Meetup groups in your area (I've got that problem at the moment, but I keep the app and recheck every few months). I'm in the same boat so I understand, maybe if we did the opposite and instead of looking for groups we instead start our own group?

@Supercoolguy- My suggestion would be to look around for places you can volunteer at. You only need to invest the time you can into it. Try networking from there and you never know the kinds of people you can meet. I'm not great at networking myself and tend to lose touch with people pretty quickly.

All the best to you and everyone 🙂

Do you think if you had friends you would be in their lives enough? Go to their social events? I’m saying this because I think I want friends too but them I get them and they find out a lot about me and look into my eyes and see my dissatisfaction with life and I swear it makes them sad. I then find a reason not too see them and usually I don’t see them because I want to keep myself locked away because it does not make sense my emotions. Perhaps it is you not really wanting the reality of having friends and so you are the one holding yourself back.

@Elis I can relate a lot to your post at this time in my life, but I can relate to the others' posts

at different times

At the mo, I know the reason I don't have friends is that I'm not at ease with myself and my circumstances - I feel in 'survival mode' too much of the time - and don't want to bombard other people with intense emotions or topics that I feel fixated on to try and get safe.

I miss being able to just relax and enjoy others' company but at the same time I don't want to burden them or burn possible relationships in a relatively small community by being too much in company when I feel this way.

I guess I compromise by having 'outside face' - I don't change my personality around other people, it's still me - I just keep things superficial so I know the good people are out there for when hopefully I can meet them on their plane. It is really isolating though I kind of wish I had some 'foul weather friends' who were also dissatisfied and also wanting to do something about the situation that was bothering them and try different things. But then sometimes I think it's ok that it's a personal journey because it leaves everyone free to discover things in their own way.

So I meet people through 'reading a book in friendly spaces' exchange pleasantries & mostly keep to myself. One day I hope I might feel like I can make friends again.

I find best way is doing something enjoyable that I like - take up a hobby I want to do anyway, and while everyone's doing the hobby natural friendships arise or don't over time.

A hobby is a good idea takes pressure off having to talk. I know exactly what you mean.

i made a friend recently and even though they say they like me I think the fact they know I am miserable a lot really stops them from picking up the phone and engaging me I always have to text them now. It’s like they wait til I’m ok to talk .

That's such an important distinction to make, @Fredd50, it's great you have some awareness of not being at ease with yourself and how that can impact your connection to others. Not everyone has that insight, and frustration can come from others not reacting how we'd like them to, or them not seeing us for who we really are underneath our anxiety or sadness. There was a Tony Robbins video recently on Youtube where he was speaking to a husband about his relationship, and he asked the husband about his wife's dreams. The husband couldn't answer the question. Tony then probed and asked him about his wife's creativity, and the husband said she is most alive and has playful energy when she paints. He also noted that's his favourite aspect of her, but he doesn't see it often enough. Tony asked if he encouraged her to paint, and the husband says "yeah I do", but then they discuss how he communicates that, and Tony breaks down the difference in what the husband says and what his wife hears. It was quite a revealing moment for that guy. Sometimes we think we're communicating clearly, but others don't understand the context or experiences that have shaped what we're thinking or feeling, so the message is lost and we often blame the recipient for not seeing us, or not caring enough. Awareness of ourselves means we can work on that communication and how we're perceived, but it is a lonely journey at times.

Great to hear you're getting more involved in your own hobbies and looking to meet people that way. Sending you love and hope that you feel comfortable to start opening up those friendships in a more vulnerable way soon

Hi @Ali11 ,

Thanks fur your message

But to be honest I'm not sure how to respond, or whether I should be responding here or in email discussion with the moderators.

I made the post just to try and support the thread as best I could, only shared personal details if thought they could help. I wasn't trying to make it an me or my complaints with SANE, which are valid and well founded.

Part of me thinks it would be most appropriate to explain the reason your post was very hurtful to me in a private complaint, because it isn't fair to the other thread participants to change the topic.

Part of me thinks there might be worth in opening some of the issues here as they might relate to emotional safety in friendships and also emotional safety in helping relationships that can affect our self esteem and thus ability to firm healthy, no abusive friendships.

So in that vein I'll continue the gener theme in this post, but follow up the personal details in our ongoing private discussions about the issues on the Forum, I hope that suits?

In general, I guess the post hits for me on something that can go wrong in all kinds of relationships, including friendships, family, helping relationships, work relationships, etc.

I guess that thing is, in general, when people feel hurt, but they also don't feel like they can express the hurt openly or directly, so they express it indirectly. And the other thing is when "the Blame game" happens. When done does express hurt, and the other person them feels hurt from the expression (especially of the person who expressed hurt also expressed anger, or of the accused the first person of some kind of wrongdoing). If the second person feels treated unjustly, and doesn't have the support to work through that, in my experiences they can lash out and start undermining the other person in suble and destructive ways. The undermining can happen for other reasons too and it can, of course be entirely unintended or even unconscious, it can also go both ways.

I find the best thing is to get it out in the open, allow both people to be able to say how they feel, instead of judging the other person or trying to guess orvset their narrative for them, which can be deeply destructive over time, as the person loses their own natural ability to understand themselves and sees themselves in the others' lens. And then, of course it can become the culture and people start doing it to each other.

So to movr it back to me and away from setting general narratives. I feel hurt by your post because I know that if I am hurt and traumatised and reach the point where I need to make formal complaints against other's behaviour, I'm doing it for a really good reason. And if I show lots of emotions while that is happening, that's not because there is anything wrong with me, but because I was hurt and abused for a long time and now I'm trying to recover from the trauma.

Of course I know it makes me unable to participate in simple, friendly conversation, but that is part of the injury and injustice. So many people suffer this way, and rubbing their noses in it is very cruel. I know that of other people had to express things emotionally or talk about hard stuff I'd be there for them, that's what I meant by "foul weather friends". But I also like to keep the people safe who are living peaceful lives and aren't being preyed in by the bad things that have happened.

Paradoxically the postade me realise that sometimes, despite my efforts to keep my problems to myself in the real world I have connected the most when I let them out. And I often find that other people are doing exactly the same thing as me: keeping it all under wraps because that's our culture. When I talk then they think they can too. And I find out one lady who comes to help me with cleaning wrestled with a dx of depression but beat it herself because it was important to her to do it alone, and she has similar ferlings to me about certain professions for similar, if less extreme, reasons. I find that another is heartbreakingly dealing with a husband who drinks and doesn't know what to do but doesn't want to go to a doctor for support because she instinctively feels if she tells them what's going on they will medicate her.

( Iwas thankfully able to give her the details of domestic Violence supports in our area)

What I meant by my post was that I couldn't make friends right now because I'm going through the process of coming to terms with being a victim of institutional abuse in a world where I have to make my own supports because there aren't (yet) any appropriate ones available. Where I have to spend my time talking to people who can change policies and laws, because structural discrimination has backed me into a corner.

Your post was hurtful because it felt like a situation that I was trying to fix, a problem in society that was affecting me, so I couldn't just live a happy life, for all the reasons I said, was some kind of personal flaw in me. Or that I was mistaken by all my bad experiences.

I agree that people can become influenced by their history, but one of the things I'm trying to fight is unconscious biases. The way in which people can become influenced by their history to undermine people who speak out and try to change things, or who show emotions like hurt, sadness, fear or anger, in appropriate and not harmful ways.

It does hurt when someone tells me I hurt them, for example, but it's a "good hurt", it's the reason why hurt evolved, to let us know something was wrong.

If I turn around to them and say "it hurts me to hear that but I'm so glad you told me, let's solve this together" I hope that might help, because that's what I'd like to hear if I were them

But if I turn around and say "You're hurting me and you need to get more aware of how your hurt and frustration hurt others" I wouldn't be being the person I want to be. Because I would have made it all about me. And invalidated and ignored the importance of what they were telling me I was doing that was hurting them.

When it happens in systemic issues, it is sometimes called "tone policing", important issues are buried by focusing on the tone instead of the content, not letting people express appropriate emotions when hurt or harmed.

Ultimately, we are all in this world together. If we keep repeating the cultural mistakes of those who came before us, how will we create a better world? One where maybe people don't have to be or feel isolated when they are sad or down? Because we welcome all our emotions with open arms and we want to resolve things, not push them away?

Hi @Fredd50

Thanks for posting about your feelings. I can see you mentioned a post has hurt you here – so sorry to hear that. Like you mentioned if you want to contact us about any of this please feel free to email team@saneforums.org

We really care about how posts can affect people at different times. It can be very tricky in online communications as there is a lot of room for different interpretations of meanings and intentions behind words. Without tone, body language and other visual tools words can come across in different ways. One person could interpret a post as an attempt to validate and support, while another might find it hurtful.

We do hear you and are happy to work through it offline if that would help ✨

@Former-Member

Thanks so much for your post and for the clarification that @Ali11 probably intended the post to validate and support.

It helps. But it also brings me to another thing.

I guess it's that sometimes, intentions (which are conscious) might be embedded with predjudices or misunderstandings (that are unconscious). It can be really hard, in my experience, when I've learnt I hurt someone, though I never intended to.

Since I've had a bunch of psychdynamic therapy, I hope it's not too annoying if I voice my mental map of what's going on in these terms - though of course I know it's only a theory and could be totally off point.

When we live in a society where bringing up wrongdoing, big or small, and trying to figure bout what is wrongdoing and what is not has been sublimated (in this context, I use the word to mean down to the subconscious because it's become socially unacceptable to talk about wrongdoing or reflect on one's own wrong doing

(eg. because of shame, not supposed to do anything even by accident) or reflect on the wrongdoing if others (eg. Because of loyalty, if having on wrong brings shame and distrust to another, we can't raise issues if their wrongdoing without harming them). So it becomew socially unacceptable to talk about wrongdoing or to talk about feeling hurt by another's behaviour. Then the deep and natural impulse to tell someone that their actions hurt us, comes out in behaviour considered more socially acceptable, eg a comment intended to be supportive and validating.

I guess this is my theory for trying to make sense of behavior that is in the form of a supportive comment, but carries the sting of coded criticism.

I hope the criticism in @Ali11 's comment is clear to you too? Because it wasn't that subtle. I guess what I was trying to say, was that if @Ali11 felt hurt by my raising complaints or the way I did it, I'd like to get that out in the open and in context, so we could all talk any any wrongdoing that any of us had done, or not done, deliberately or accidentally. Figure out why was in the wrong and who wasn't, not to punish or shame anyone involved, but to learn, understand and grow in the way we all affected and we're affected by each other. To move forward another baby step towards a society and a culture where we could be mutually respectful to each other, including when we inadvy harmed one another and needed to correct the situation. But in a way that was open and clear and kind.

Unfortunately my experience is that our culture has not been good at this. And that's led to a myriad of problems our generation now has to solve. That's kinda exciting to me,bas well as challenging. I hope you guys can see it in a way that could be positive and non-blamey, non-shamey too?

I have found some wise people from other cultures help me with this stuff, as well as some western psychotherapy (much of which often borrowed from other cultures to look at how to address shame & Blame)

A good one I found was the

NICABM course on helping clients with shame & Blame (I purchased this course and can quote or reference it in some emails if you like, insofar as Im legally able, as it's proprietary material)

Or a Bon Buddhist teacher I find particularly helpful, who offers some free sessions in addition to his formal teaching work as a Buddhist master.

Here's one of his sessions he offered through social media that I found helpful, healing & thought provoking in trying to find wisdom around these sorts of issues

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=%23&ved=2ahUKEwjKwOf-2vniAhVZOisKHQ-RA4kQwqsBMAB6BAgDEAU&usg=AOvVaw0VTJzWxrN8ZFOD4xbU2nov

I guess in a nutshell I'm trying to figure out how do we negotiate complex situations of understanding one another, where harm exists in a space beyond intentions? And bringing up wrongdoing is about resolution and growth not a Blame game of accusation and shame? And how hard this can be in a society where shame has been so imbued, that we can't hear we did something wrong without feeling shame. How do we heal from this trauma that we all have?