I'm asking for help on loneliness

[oakjay]

Hi! I will try to be as short as possible.
I am 27 and I'm autistic level 1. Because of this growing up I experienced a lot of rejection from other children and from my parents (from my parents it was not real but perceived). This kind of improved in middle school and especially in high school.

So my problem is mainly a feeling of emptiness/loneliness that never leaves me if not for short periods of times. My therapist says that it's mainly because of the rejection I mentioned before.
Even if I have some friends (at least one of them is also autistic I think) and I have a good relationship with my parents, this feeling didn't really go away. I tried to make it go away with drugs (both illegal and legal), therapy, staying with friends, starting new activities, martial arts, mindfulness meditation, but now I'm here because it's like I lost 99.9% of my hope.

I try to describe this emptiness. It's like waking up, opening the window and seeing only a white background, like being alone on an infinite white sheet of paper. I stay home and I feel like I'm the last human on Earth. I go out and everything seems pointless. I meet people but I'm invisibile. I look at myself in the mirror and I feel like I'm ugly. I am like a ghost without a personality. I feel like all my loved ones forgot about me.

There are many moments in which I don't feel like that. The problem is that it always returns. For example if I meet a friend by whom I feel understood and can be myself, then I feel like I'm "normal" (I don't mean neurotypical), I have a personality, I'm funny, I'm smart, I'm strong, I have things I enjoy, I have friends that love me even if they're not there in that moment. But the next day I woke up feeling like before: empty. And like the friend I met the night before doesn't really like me that much, that I'm just one out of many people, and doesn't even think about me most of the time, that if I was sick or in need they would just ghost me. Even if they are the one that asked me to go out.

Or even after meditation sometimes, I feel like I mentioned before, but after a day or so that feeling disappears. And meditating more doesn't work anymore.

My therapist says that I have to do many activities and make many friends until I heal this feeling of rejection I have. But as you can imagine it's very hard to do it while I feel like this and until now what I've managed to do didn't help. Lately I've been thinking that she tells me that because she can no longer help me or maybe she doesn't really understand how I feel. I even wrote down every time they praised me or showed love to me (another thing she asked me to do) but again after some hours the good feeling went away.

Another fear that I have since high school ended is that everyone has some hobby to do or a fiance or will have a family while i'm here not knowing what to do with myself, so I'll never be happy without them as they can be without me.

This is all. I hope you have some advice for me. Thanks

 

[Chonebox]

Or even after meditation sometimes, I feel like I mentioned before, but after a day or so that feeling disappears. And meditating more doesn't work anymore.



This is all. I hope you have some advice for me. Thanks

You said you tried meditation, perhaps you should try falun gong exercises/mediation. it is very powerful.
Here is contact info. Before you go to local practice site you should contact the person. Falun Dafa - Classes
Link to the exercises/meditation. Falun Dafa Exercises. Do not mix mediations though. You can try the new one. It's best to meditation is a group setting. You're not suppose to mix meditation practices that's including mindfulness.
Article on loneliness with pertaining to falun dafa : Conquering Loneliness and Getting Rid of Lust

 

[Judge]

For me, I usually phrase it by saying, "A sad feeling of always being on the outside, looking in." That said however, I'm usually quick to add that I favor solitude over loneliness. Whether it may appear contradictory or not.

One thing that continues to fascinate me about autistic persons is how varied we can be, apart from how common our traits and behaviors might be. Especially those who consider themselves as extroverts, and demonstrate a consistent and even intense need for human companionship of any kind. A perspective which I cannot easily really relate to. Particularly having lived in near isolation relative to the "real world" since 2006.

Yet I'm inclined to admit that we all get lonely on occasion, and that it can hurt. When in my own world, all I can really do is to "soldier on". To not let loneliness- or my clinical depression overwhelm me. And to keep busy...whether for something needed or something enjoyed. Being too idle can be toxic to a lot of folks...whether ND or NT.

 

[oakjay]

You said you tried meditation, perhaps you should try falun gong exercises/mediation. it is very powerful.
Here is contact info. Before you go to local practice site you should contact the person. Falun Dafa - Classes
Link to the exercises/meditation. Falun Dafa Exercises. Do not mix mediations though. You can try the new one. It's best to meditation is a group setting. You're not suppose to mix meditation practices that's including mindfulness.
Article on loneliness with pertaining to falun dafa : Conquering Loneliness and Getting Rid of Lust

Hi Chonebox and thank you for reaching out. I didn't know about Falun Gong, but I am familiar with Qi Gong practice and it did help but honestly in everyday life when I feel lonely I can't go somewhere and practice Qi Gong or Falun Gong and feel better because it doesn't work. I know also about non-attachment and acting for the benefit of all beings like it is said in the website you mentioned. They are wonderful things and worth practicing but honestly I stopped believing that by those practices alone one can cure trauma and such because it's been almost an year since I started practicing and many things have improved, but not this one.

 

[oakjay]

For me, I usually phrase it by saying, "A sad feeling of always being on the outside, looking in." That said however, I'm usually quick to add that I favor solitude over loneliness. Whether it may appear contradictory or not.

One thing that continues to fascinate me about autistic persons is how varied we can be, apart from how common our traits and behaviors might be. Especially those who consider themselves as extroverts, and demonstrate a consistent and even intense need for human companionship of any kind. A perspective which I cannot easily really relate to. Particularly having lived in near isolation relative to the "real world" since 2006.

Yet I'm inclined to admit that we all get lonely on occasion, and that it can hurt. When in my own world, all I can really do is to "soldier on". To not let loneliness- or my clinical depression overwhelm me. And to keep busy...whether for something needed or something enjoyed.

I'm happy it works for you but for me keeping myself busy is not enough especially in the days in which I have nothing to do and 16 hours awake by myself seem like an eternity. Unfortunately I can't pick any activity that can stop making me feel lonely besides maybe some drugs but I don't think it would be wise even if if I don't manage to come out of this soon I might as well start again.
It's not idleness, it's that when i feel like that it all seems pointless you know and i don't even enjoy things.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I hear ya, @oakjay . As a teen and young adult I was existentially lonely and could see others progress in life but could not understand what I was missing or how to grow or ask for help. I was fiercely independent and that ultimately helped me. I was hurt by social isolation and internalized lies that I was damaged, unwanted, undesirable. I have recently worked through that with Cognitive Processing Therapy. However after my mid 20s I was living independently, had resources to follow my interests and joined groups that allowed me to practice being social. I was amazingly fortunate to meet a woman when our interests intersected, and though both of us were wounded by earlier experience, we bonded and have been together for 47 years.
- Take stock of your interests and pursue them.
- If there is a welcoming group that feeds your interests join and learn how to enjoy other people with common interests.
- Ultimately you will need to be vulnerable to another if you wish companionship. You need to develop a thick skin not to feel rejected if somebody does not wish to date.

You may be experiencing trauma with your loneliness as I had. Your therapist can assist you in rewriting your internal dialogue. What helped me was learning about classical Stoicism.

For emotional scars, Stoics would recommend:

Face painful memories with compassionate awareness

Examine unhelpful beliefs formed during trauma

Redirect focus toward present virtuous action

Good Luck in your journey!

 

[Judge]

I'm happy it works for you but for me keeping myself busy is not enough especially in the days in which I have nothing to do and 16 hours awake by myself seem like an eternity.

I'm formally retired. With fresh memories of being employed in some rather intense occupations for a very long time. Though having remained busy doesn't necessarily equate with happiness either.

Keeping busy for me is largely just a matter of being creative, especially in the absence of being gainfully employed. Yet for some retirement can be like a prison sentence if they let it. My biggest obstacle being my own chronic clinical depression.

To me the trick of it all is to balance your creativeness of keeping yourself occupied with the resources you truly have. Whether they may be social or financial, or both.

 

[oakjay]

Thanks @Gerald Wilgus
If you don't mind I want to ask a few questions.

I have recently worked through that with Cognitive Processing Therapy.

How does Cognitive Processing Therapy work and can I do it by myself?

Take stock of your interests and pursue them.

If I have a whole day alone ahead of me it feels like every interest is pointless and if I try to do something I end up feeling even more lonely. So how do I pursue my interests?

If there is a welcoming group that feeds your interests join and learn how to enjoy other people with common interests.

I have done that and I feel very happy when I'm with such people. My problem is that as soon as I'm alone for a day or so I feel like I'm not important for them, like emotionally they don't exist anymore. It's like I would need people to always be with me and constantly remind me that they love me and accept me and such. So do you have advice on this?

You may be experiencing trauma with your loneliness as I had. Your therapist can assist you in rewriting your internal dialogue.

Unfortunately my therapist thinks that it's pointless to analyze the past. Thankfully I was obsessed with reaching the cause of my depression/anxiety and did a large part of this work by myself through meditation and other ways. Otherwise she wouldn't have bothered with my past. She says to just focus on making new friends with my same interests and such. She's not the first therapist to say so. I don't think they can understand how hard it is. So she can't assist me or she doesn't want. She thinks I can rewrite it only by making new friends.

Face painful memories with compassionate awareness
Examine unhelpful beliefs formed during trauma
Redirect focus toward present virtuous action

I can recognize unhelpful beliefs formed during trauma but how can I convince myself that they're not true after all? I now know that I feel like this because of rejection during childhood and such but as soon as a friend doesn't answer my texts for a day for whatever reason I think they don't want me anymore. I can say to myself "it's not true" but it's like I can never manage to convince myself and calm my insecurities.

 

[Richelle-H]

Hello @oakjay. I am not sure that I have anything constructive to offer other than to say I know exactly what you are going through. The summer I turned 31, I went into the deepest and last depression I have ever had to deal with. In retrospect I believe it was triggered by my friends not acknowledging my birthday. They knew when it was and it triggered me. I spent the entire summer in a depression so deep that I hardly ever left my room. All my enjoyable activities just didn't help. I stopped reading, going to the movies, watching television. visiting my friends. I was waiting for someone to contact me, wondering how I was or what I was doing. It was as if I had ceased to exist.

Understand that it was the worst and very last depression that I ever suffered in my life. I do not know, even now, what triggered the release. It was like a mental rubber band that had been stretched taut to the point of breaking. I was as miserable as a human being can get. Life seemed pointless and I had given up trying to engage with everything and everyone.

Then on a night in September, one end of that rubber band suddenly snapped free and my mental state flew to the most euphoric level I have ever experienced. I was suddenly one with everything in the cosmos. No drug I have ever ingested has ever given me that feeling before or after. I truly wish I could tell you what the agent was that allowed this release, but I can't.

As I read your posts, each one connected with me on some level. I was not diagnosed with Asperger's until my early 40s and I have always rejected psychiatric therapy due to a bad interaction with a psychiatrist who claimed I was schizophrenic and put me on both Stelazine an Thorazine for over a month and when I started having pseudo parkinsonism he just proscribed another drug. The first full dose of which had my mind floating on the ceiling as I tried to get some sleep. That high was several degrees lower than what I described above and some eight years previous.

It was also deep depression that put me in that earlier state. Perhaps it is the cause of your current state of mind as well and you just don't see it. Then again, that is merely an expression of the state I found myself in that made me identify with so much of what you expressed in your posts.

The only thing I have to offer is that it can get better if you let it. I got into such a hyper-focused state that I could not look beyond or see the end of it. Point is, it did end, so do not allow yourself to despair for that just adds to the mental load.

Forgive me for dumping this in your thread. I just felt the need to offer what I could, as little as it is. I hope you weather this storm and find your center and some peace.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

How does Cognitive Processing Therapy work and can I do it by myself?
I needed the structured step by step guidance through it.

1. Acknowledge your pain and write a narrative about what happened. I wrote a narrative of my experience and my feelings. That required a lot of introspection and baring my soul.

2. Understand your triggers and break them down.
A. ACTIVATING EVENT "Something Happens"
B. BELIEF/STUCK POINT "I tell myself something"
C. CONSEQUENCE "I feel something"
Then dig deep and respond:
Are my thoughts in "B" realistic?
What can you tell yourself on such occasions in the future?

3. Then, review the elements of your agency that allow recovery from those events.
Address the following with beliefs related to self and beliefs related others.
- Esteem issues.
- Affirmations.
- Forgiveness.
- Giving and Taking Power.
- Intimacy issues.
- Safety issues.
- Power and Control.
- Self Defeating Thoughts.
- Trust.

4. Now, review your work so far and identify those beliefs that you cannot grow past.
Consider each one.
What is the Belief/Stuck Point?
a. What is the evidence for and against this stuck point?
b. Is your stuck point a habit or based on facts?
c. In what ways is your stuck point not including all of the information?
d. Does your stuck point include all-or-none terms?
e. Does the stuck point include words or phrases that are extreme or exaggerated?
f. In what way is your stuck point focused on just one piece of the story?
g. Where did this stuck point come from? Is this a dependable source of information?
h. How is your stuck point confusing something that is possible with something that is likely?
i. In what ways is your stuck point based on feelings rather than facts?
j. In what ways is this stuck point focused on unrelated parts of the story?

5. Now, review what you have learned about yourself and redo item 2.

6. Write a revised narrative that accepts reality with the recognition that you have the power to respond constructively.

If I have a whole day alone ahead of me it feels like every interest is pointless and if I try to do something I end up feeling even more lonely. So how do I pursue my interests?
To me is sounds like you are developing a go-to response of resignation and that nothing you do matters. Part of CPT is to help develop your agency so that you may practice acceptance of your hurts without resignation. This was very hard for me. You will need to separate the events from your judgments about them. Your loneliness causes pain, but your ongoing interpretation of what it means about you and your future is where we have agency. Recognize that your response remains within your control.

It's like I would need people to always be with me and constantly remind me that they love me and accept me and such. So do you have advice on this?
Part of the resilience of understanding that your responses to things is under your control is not to require constant validation. Let go of your ego and cherish those times you are with people who accept and love you. Enjoying their company will make you more desirable to be with.

Unfortunately my therapist thinks that it's pointless to analyze the past.
I have been fortunate to work with a therapist who works with autistic people and has experience with CPT including military trauma. I think you, like I, have internalized some lies about yourself. The way forward in CPT is not to rehash the past but to uncover and examine those lies with the view of moving forward constructively so that they have no power over you. I needed to understand that my social isolation left me feeling; Damaged, Unwanted, Undesirable, Unattractive, and Unnoticed. Now, I understand that and acknowledge those past hurts, and can now respond constructively to those intrusive thoughts.

I can recognize unhelpful beliefs formed during trauma but how can I convince myself that they're not true after all?
It is not a matter of convincing yourself that those beliefs are not true, it is recognizing the ways that you have overcome your hurts. You have friends who love you and that is a very powerful thought. Autism has impacted you, like I, but you are not your autism. As you deal with those negative beliefs and rewrite your inner dialogue, you may find that while faced with the normal give and take of life you have security in who you are.

My final word is that perhaps you need to make inquiries about a therapist who has worked with ASD and can guide your through CPT or CBT. This is not just about making new friends, it is about understanding the ways you have persevered to overcome the challenges that autism has put in your path. The introspection and discipline are hard.

 

[oakjay]

@Gerald Wilgus thank you, I truly appreciate that you took your time to write that reply just to help me. I will have to read it more times to really get everything you wrote (especially about resignation and agency) but I think I got the general meaning. I think that for me the hardest part about rewriting the narrative is deciding what evidences do I have

It is not a matter of convincing yourself that those beliefs are not true, it is recognizing the ways that you have overcome your hurts. You have friends who love you and that is a very powerful thought.

for example in this case if a friend likes to go out with me but then lately doesn't answer my texts if not after a day or more, I think it's normal to have doubts about the friendship, so even if i have evidence that they like me when we are together, it can't erase the evidences about the opposite such as this one. And this is especially true with my autistic friend since they can understand me among many people that can't and I'm afraid to lose them.

 

[oakjay]

@Richelle-H thank you for your reply. I would like to comment much but I can't put all my thoughts in text right now.
It's not the first time I read about such an experience after a long depression.
I also had experiences akin to yours (very similar to psychedelic experiences I had in the past aside from the visual aspect obviously [apparently it's ok to talk about this here]) after periods of depression but differently from yours they didn't last.

Lately I've been following this pattern where I fall into a depressive/anxious state that lasts a few days, in which I have to face my deepest fears, and then suddenly it ends and I feel relief (in this case they aren't always strong experiences; for the most part they're just experiences of self-acceptance and overcoming fears). And then a few days later the depression/anxiety comes back, and it's like I have to face the same fears but in a different aspect of them or on a deeper level.
The problem is that until now I tried to endure because I thought that one of these times would be the last. But I'm afraid it will never end and the fears will always come back. Your post gave me some hope but I can't know if it will be the same also for me.

May I ask you how did you see the previous events after the depression ended and you had that wonderful experience? for example about your friends and your birthday? how did you manage not to let your mood be dragged down again by life events?