I'm alone since my boyfriend died yesterday and getting in bad shape. Please help me

I think this was intended for another thread.

Oh you meant to post that link in another thread?

Rose I understand that you had accepted at one point that your significant other was going to pass.

The kind of acceptance that I am describing in the realization of actual absence is once that presence is really gone. It’s not a going to be gone, it is gone and the finality of how that changes the way one navigates their life that is changed significantly.

When someone is part of your every day life it takes time to adjust to that person not being there and never will be again. There is a lost sensation that comes with that.

O.E., look at your post #225 above. I think that you put it here by mistake. It's about some killer.

I think that's valid.

Yes that is what the link you posted was about

This is what comes up from the link you posted:

O.E., I want to thank you again for this post. Since coming home from the hospital yesterday, I have thought hard about how much I want to let, or not let, these persons back into my life.

I postponed responding to some calls and texts I got from them. I believe I would do very well to seek out other people to be in contact with. I do think I underestimated how much they were sucking life out of me. Actually, the problem was my willingness to let them. I felt I was strong enough. I figured they just didn't know how to meet my needs as well as I knew how to meet their's, since I'm trained to do that.

The truth is they weren't trying all that hard. It's time I wised up to that. I had figured they weren't self-aware and were relating to me as best they knew how. Even if that were true, I don't have to go along with it. Maybe they had some bad habits, but I don't have to enable that behavior. Once I stop enabling, they will either adapt and be less attention-hogging, or they'll lose interest in my company. There probably should be a limit to how much I will tolerate just to preserve a connection to another human being.

O.E., You might remember some of my earliest threads here at PC that were about my brother. He expected a lot of attention and was draining me. Eventually I said "No" to him, and I haven't heard from him since. In the years since, I've felt bad that I didn't handle my encounters with him differently. I've believed that he wasn't capable of being different from how he was . . . but that I had more options and could have been more patient and diplomatic with him.

After my s.o. passed away, I really mourned my lost relationship with my brother. I imagined his presence would have been a great comfort to me now, if only I hadn't alienated him. That wish probably belongs in the realm of fantasy. Once, when we were still seeing each other regularly, I told my brother that my s.o. was back in the hospital and quite sick. All my brother said was, "Well, we all got to go sometime." I guess empathy wasn't his strong suit.

It's hard for me to believe these friends I've leaned on have a true lack of empathy for me. Yet there's not a ton of evidence to the contrary. One texted me, when she heard my s.o. had died, "Well, you two had a lot of good years together." That seemed a bit sparse on sympathy to me.

I figured any human contact was better than none. I think I need to refigure that.

Thank you. I clicked on the wrong link. My mistake.

I think that a lot of people genuinely don’t know how to listen. Actually I learned that when dealing with individuals that have dyslexia or adhd they can only listen for a short period then zone out. Yet can go on and on about themselves. In fact many of the individuals at AA meetings have to learn how to sit and listen and not interrupt when others are talking.

It sounds like the women you are friendly with don’t know how to listen and attentively interview you so you feel heard. That can be frustrating given that as a caregiver you are trained to listen and attend accordingly. These women most likely don’t have any of that kind of training. Doesn’t mean they are not nice or purposely selfish they simply just don’t know.

Once you were in an environment with others that had this training you felt heard and felt comforted.

Psychiatrists are not therapists. They tend to look for symptoms and consider what drugs may reduce symptoms. And they don’t always diagnose correctly either. Their interest is more about brain chemistry. But also look for behavior patterns that fit into different criteria’s that are listed in DSM manual.

I question that diagnosis of npd to be honest because I have not seen you gaslight or lie or manipulate. You have a devotion to making sure something comes out right and you love to learn. I think you get frustrated when you experience emotions when you don’t want to. It’s almost as though you were encouraged to see to much emotion as weakness or that you are a failure if you can’t contain them.

I think you tried to rationalize how things were going to be to prepare yourself for your SO’s passing. And you don’t like the grieving. Well nurses learn to detach and think about the medical care. And you did that with your SO but you also loved him. It’s not the same as just another patient. There is a different dimension to this. It’s much more emotional.

I don’t think the average person is capable of recognizing that. Yet I think the staff in the smaller unit were capable of having that kind of understanding.

I know this thread is old. When I started it, I didn't dream I would still be this much of a mental mess more than 3 months later.

Everyone says it takes time for grief to lessen. I do understand that. My problem is not just grief over losing my s.o. That loss triggered a whole other set of problems. I've struggled with depression and anxiety my whole life. I've been emotionally troubled my whole life. That is a chronic problem for me. It always will be. The best I can hope for is to manage my emotional turmoil, so that I can function reasonably okay. The loss of this important relationship has aroused mental health problems in me that were there long before the passing away of my s.o. Those problems are big and deep. I think I need someone - probably a professional - to recognize that grief is just the visible tip of the iceberg. Right now, that is what is most obvious. There is an underlying problem of aloneness that is making it vastly more difficult for me to cope right now.

I loved my s.o. Of course it's hard to lose someone you love. However, that one relationship was pretty much my whole world. He wasn't one of the people in my life. He was the only person in my life. I have no children. My sisters are thousands of miles away. I went 6 years without seeing them. I am retired. I don't have a lot of connection to other human beings. I never have had. That tendency to be too much alone has bedeviled me all my life. Now I'm alone like I was before I met this man who became my companion for years.

Back then, before meeting my s.o., I was nearly suicidal over the problem of aloneness. That's what I mean by a deep problem that is independent of grief over the death of one person. Sure, I understand that grief lessens with time. But I have this other problem that has haunted me my whole life. "IT" is not likely to lessen over time. This other, separate problem is now suddenly huge and likely to get huger. The two problems added together are just too much. I am overwhelmed. I need to tell someone that I am not able to cope.

I've been given a drawer full of psychotropic meds. Aloneness cannot be medicated away. Being in the hospital helped me because I interacted as much as I possibly could with everyone around me. That included staff and other patients. Now, at home, I am alone. I go online to interact, but that does not really work too well. It's no substitute for being with people IRL.

The easy answer is that I should find people IRL to interact with. For some reason, or reasons, that has always been kind of a losing struggle for me.

Losing at that struggle right now is like not having enough oxygen to breathe. It's easy to say I need to try harder. I say that to myself. Sometimes failure is not the result of inadequate effort. I need help from someone who could understand that.