Trying to restart

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Hello. My name is Christopher. I have found myself in a rather unfortunate situation: I am having to reconstruct life from zero social network. I'm not in a place I know people, I have no friends close enough to reach out to, and my closest family is hundreds of miles away or a soon to be ex-wife. It's been most of two decades since I've lived alone and in the past two years my wife has helped me start filing for disability (PTSD) but since we split up I've taken over with that as much as I can manage. I find myself alone and confused and pretty freaked out because I don't really know how to meet people as the PTSD makes interactions very difficult (it's taken me two days of looking at this post to work up the courage to hit post....face to face talking to people is kinda worse) to get out of the isolation I find myself. I was hoping to find a support group or something like that in my area, but no luck. I don't talk to people. My weekly activity is (in total) a therapy appointment Wednesdays and sometimes seeing my daughter and ex-wife. I might talk to my mother three times in the week but otherwise I see and talk to no one regularly. I am more and more scared because I know from previous experience/general knowledge what long term isolation can do to a person.

I have no idea what I'm doing or where to start. I don't want to repeat myself, as I can be loquacious. I'm not sure if I have a question or wanted to vent. I probably won't check back on this for a few days. It'll take me a while to get over being scared after hitting "submit".....Thank you for your time and have a peaceful day.

That sounds like a lot of change to try do deal with and adjust to. Its probably good you have a few appointments in the weeks because if you were stuck in your house alone you could start to feel the isolation in no time. I had a situation in the past where I went from a busy household to suddenly being on my own. The hardest part is the beginning because it takes time to adjust to the quite. The business you were probably used to can make it feel like time is going really slow until you settle in.

Eventually I found that I loved living on my own, I had a lot of control and eventually got into a routine. If it takes you a while to meet people in your area, I suggest trying to socialise as much as your able to online. That should at least keep you from feeling to isolated. It will probably just take you some time to adjust to all these changes you've been though.
I suffer bad social anxiety and try not to leave the house to much and I find it much easier to socialise online.

I wish I had the ability to see being by myself as a good thing. It's retched. I may sometimes go days with out speaking out loud. I feel like the more I try to explain the more irritated I'm going to become. I go to bed every night terrified I'm going to die in my sleep. I'm diabetic and if my sugar drops and I don't notice or I do but I'm too weak to do anything about it I'm a corpse.

I'd love to looks forward to living by myself. But that means my daughter doesn't have both parents in the same house. It means going days not hearing her voice. It means a whole bunch of things that I can't put into words. Thank you for your encouragement and your kind reply. I.....I wish any of the benefits of being able to start over were worth the cost.

What difference is online and offline? It's still a person. I can't tell myself "it's just online" because that's a toxic attitude to have. I....no. I need face to face people. When I saw you had replied my first feeling was fear. As I read your response I realized I hadn't managed to express myself properly....

And I'm going to stop here because it's too hard to make the words that want to describe what's in my head. It hurts too much and I start crying. So I'm sorry. You tried and that was nice. I'm not physically capable of interacting with people in a way that feels at all safe. That's really the issue. I have no safety and can't create anything that feels safe so the danger of others is way too risky. Thanks for giving me a place to work that out.

How old is your daughter?

I was sorry to hear this. May I ask if you're gainfully employed? If you're not gainfully employed, do you have sufficient funds to move back wherever you regard as home?

I have moved over 40 times during the course of my life. I'm 57.

Work has frequently caused me to move some place (even abroad) where I haven't known anyone.

There are several ways you could meet people.

1) If you are religious, go to church. Many churches offer social activities as well as ministries through which you could volunteer your services.

2) Look for a volunteer group to join. Animal shelters, parks and recreation, food banks, soup kitchens, hospitals, and senior care centers are always looking for volunteers. Not only could you help your community but you'd have the opportunity to meet with other volunteers.

3) Check out meetup.com. Meet up is a social platform that promotes group gatherings for various interests. I've seen all sorts of groups promoted through Meet up ... gaming groups, exercise and fitness, dining out etc. If you can't find a group you like, you could also start your own group.

4) If you're working, why not chat with colleagues? Invite some of them to go out after work.

5) Take a class at a community college.

6) Join a fitness center.

7) Become a political activist and join a local group in support of electing a politician you like.



It's hard to meet people if you don't talk to them but even so, there are all sorts of volunteer jobs you could do without having to talk to anyone.



if you don't talk to people, how do you feel about on-line chat rooms? Google chat rooms and find someplace that covers topics you're interested in. If you don't like talking to people in person, try chatting with them on-line using real time posted messages.

Best wishes,

David