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Originally Posted by Skeezyks
Well... I have to admit I don't have any idea what any of this is about.  I'm not a mental health professional. And I don't really even know a lot about psychology.  What I do know something about is social isolation. |
Thanks for your reply, professional psychologist or not
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That is because, although I am married, I live an otherwise almost thoroughly reclusive lifestyle. But I'm old & it works for me. (It's a long story.) I have no extended family, no friends & not even any acquaintances of any consequence. Even on-line the only place I have any contact with anyone is here on PC. And I do things here to minimize the amount of on-going contact I have with anyone. 
The one thing I do have that keeps me sane is, as I mentioned, I am married.  And I don't think I probably appreciate the degree to which my spouse keeps me sane. I can easily imagine what kind of shape I would be in, & what I would be doing, were I to not have that one connection to "normality". In reading what you wrote, I have the impression perhaps you don't have anything that anchors you to the real world, so to speak. And, if not, my own personal experience would suggest to me it would be easy to slip into various states of mental illness. 
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You sound like you are more comfortable living as if you had schizoid personality disorder (even if you are not truly schizoid either since you have a SO you are connected with), while I'm not really cut out for that. Though yeah, I guess if I had a SO with who I could connect emotionally with I'd be better off but I'm not capable of that atm (and never have been but it always stressed me out, I'm not truly schizoid).
So while I don't think I'm a "natural" at being isolated, I was not able to physically exist around people (long story as to why not) by the end of high school, which is when I went for the isolation physically for the most part, but I was pretty social online still. That's how it is now too.
Yes I do think that whatever happened to me at the end of high school where I strongly withdrew physically*, but which happened with emotional withdrawing first, due to too much stress being around people, is what a decade later worsened into the psychotic etc symptoms... So your point is good about isolation being a problem, it's just that it's kind of just the consequence of the original emotional vulnerability (?) and withdrawal issue that then built on itself and made things worse I'm sure.
*: (I stayed home from high school, though I did finish the school on my own time and I did finish a university degree too later in the same fashion when I was still functional enough, I also did online remote work very nicely... all while I was functional enough still)
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I recall you mentioned you're not on any antidepressants. And that may or may not be something you need (that or some other variety of psych med.) I don't recall you mentioning whether or not you've seen any kind of mental health therapist or psychologist. But at least my personal opinion would be that working with some type of mental health professional is probably necessary. (I see you list yourself as being in Hungary. I don't know what services are available to you there.) A mental health professional may be able to help you sort through all of this, figure out what it is all about & what to do about it... much more so than can any of us here on PC.
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Actually, heretic or not
, I don't believe in going to mental health professionals for this - the ones (and there were many!) I tried to speak to are just not trained for this kind of issue. And they generally gave no **** about the issue of the "negative symptoms", which actually is my biggest problem though. They can only think in terms of depression and similar stuff but they cannot think in terms of my issues, just not trained for it...
No, antidepressants don't help the "negative symptoms", because that's not simple depression. Or the issue of my having had to withdraw, that's also not depression. SSRIs just blunt emotion even more, worsening the disconnect I got by default (since my withdrawing from the high school), so that's definitely not what I need...
I did not want to look at antipsychotics because tbh that stuff seemed scary to me with cognitive and other side effects, and at this point they are probably not needed anymore, though I did read that people with heavy anergic dysthymia who are also being disconnected from emotional motivation can benefit from amisulpride due to how that manages dopamine... I don't know. If I can't find anything else and I see I'm stuck, I can try and go to a psychiatrist again with these symptoms and if they want to subscribe this, okay... A psychiatrist anyhow that doesn't just want to diagnose the issue as plain depression based on a 5 minute "examination" lol and then ignore my actual reports on how the medication is not working. Like I said SSRIs worsen my issues. I did tell psychiatrists about the "negative symptoms", but they either ignored it, or just tried to give me Wellbutrin for motivation (which didn't work and then they said nothing about that), or the last one, he just said oh that's just how it is... and yeah I read up on it and I know that there isn't much medication available for that stuff apart from the bit I mentioned above that maybe works for some people.
(Previous experiences. But this was all free health service with the psychiatrist stuff, maybe a paid though more expensive psychiatrist would actually pay attention to my actual symptoms... As for psychologists, I did try paid ones too, but they were not trained for my issue. Tho' I didn't give up on that entirely, even if I don't believe most of them can help. I am on the waiting list to a clinical psychologist provided by the free health service.)
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And then, beyond that, getting out-&-about & finding some ways to establish some ongoing social contacts may also help you to keep yourself grounded & mentally healthy. Granted it may be difficult to reintegrate yourself back into society, as you mentioned. You probably will have to work at it & take it one step at a time. But my personal opinion at least would be this is what is going to be necessary. At least these are my thoughts with regard to your post. I wish you well...
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Yes it is very difficult, this is what has been my goal for years but the mental illness or whatever it is still wants to get in the way. It is still hard to reconnect with the disconnected emotions (at one point it went over to the other extreme with the "borderline" phase, except it was not actual borderline, but just heavy emotional dysregulation while still feeling disconnected from some of the emotions... all that was crazy too), and the "negative symptoms" and just in general still lowered tolerance for stress when I do force myself out of distraction to try and exist in the outside world is still hard on me or near impossible, mostly mentally.
So I need to find a way to get past that and that's why I posted. I do have the goal you stated here as necessary, it's the implementation where I'm a bit stuck... continually. What keeps me going is that I do work on myself (mentally-emotionally) and I do feel I'm less disconnected and have slightly better tolerance now for that stress / slightly lessened stress compared to the previous crazy stuff... but it's still as I described, very hard and feeling like it can't go on like this forever as it is now.
So I was just curious to see if anyone here can relate or if they have any concrete tips for what direction I should be looking in, or tricks for getting on with this, etc. Even small tips would be appreciated
(Beyond the idea that I should go to mental health professionals, I explained above where I am with that currently.)
Can I ask you about what experience you have about isolation causing mental illness? And did you get better, and how? If that's okay to ask about.