Hello everyone,
I am sure I am not the only one who struggles with this, so I thought I’d start a threat where we can all share our experience. I’ve become quite a hermit in the past few years, got worse after losing job, friends... and I’ve isolated myself even more after I attempted suicide last year.
I understand from therapy and looking at my life ‘before’ that social connections are really important to me. But what do I have left to say? I’m in admission right now, so there are questions: What happened that you had to go back to clinic? Wanted to commit suicide.
Or questions in social settings:
Do you work? Yes, I’ve got therapy 3 times a week, that keeps me pretty busy.
What do you do with all your free time? Negotiate endlessly whether I should turn in bed to look at the wall, the ceiling or outside the window, or close my eyes.
Whats wrong with you that you can’t work? I’m messed up in the head.
There are just some crude Q&A to get the conversation started. I’m sure I’m not the only one. People work, have kids, a home, a family, friends, I used to have that. Now I don’t have answers for small talk and it makes it really hard as on the one hand I don’t want to just deflect questions, answer in a comical way, but I also don’t want to dive in too deep because I’ve been hurt so much now by people who don’t get it.
How much do you disclose? How do you explain your invisible disability? How do you explain the ups and downs, admissions, emergencies? How do you find people and start conversations that could make them a friend?
Would really love to hear from you x