What pushes you from liking someone to actively getting them into your life?

[ToGoBoldly]

Hi,

What the thread title says, really.

I'm really struggling with feeling isolated and lonely. I've felt like this all my life, but it's been really intense recently so I have been feeling even more low than I ususally do.

I have a handfull of friends but no one really close, and they are all kind of fairweather friends. They've all kind of retreated away from me into their own lives, which is fine, I accept people grow apart, but it feels like everyone in the world has a network of friends and a partner, and I am being left on my own. I try really hard to get out and meet new people and stuff, but I feel like I am constantly rejected and it is really, really difficult to bear.

I have been doing some work on my feelings around this with my therapist and have been asked to drill down on why I believe I don't form close bonds with people. I can only think that people don't like me enough - they don't dislike me, but they don't like me enough to actively want me in their lives. It's as simple as that. She's tried to suggest I might be familiar with the feeling of rejection so kind of invite it, but I really don't think that's true. I try really hard to go out of my comfort zone with people - I am shy but friendly, I invite people to things, I make the first move, I volunteer myself for things, I am generous, I'm laid back and not pushy... but none of this seems to count. It feels like plenty of people think I am nice enough but they don't want or need me as a close friend. I don't blame other people for this - no one is obliged to be friends with everyone - but I just feel like everyone chooses people to be in their lives, but no one chooses me. And I've really hit a wall in trying to work this out.

This post sounds really needy and whiny, I promise I am not like this when I am trying to make friends or boyfriends! Like I said I am having counselling (for various things) but we've kind of reached an impasse on this one.

I've felt like this forever. I felt it at primary school, at secondary school, at university, at work, and in my love life. The only way I could explain clearly to my counsellor was how I felt it at primary school, so their behaviour is clear, not because they are horrible children but because they don't try to hide their feelings. But you can see more clearly with kids how people naturally gravitate towards those they want to be friends with, and that often is the really pretty girl, or the boy who is really good at football or whatever. I don't think things change a lot as an adult, it's just more subtle. And I don't think anything bad about people who have those who gravitate towards them and want to be their friend, but I just feel really sad because it feels like no one naturally gravitates towards me. It makes me feel really unloved and depressed.

I try to be proactive, no matter how many knockbacks I get I try to carry on with life and try new things, but it's really overwhelming. I asked my counsellor what she thinks I could do differently, but she is either stumped, or wants me to work the answer out myself. But I really can't think of anything beyond "people don't like me enough", which is their prerogative, but really hurtful when it feels like I'm not good enough for anyone I've met in my whole life.

So I guess I'm trying to bash out these thoughts a bit more. Am I just hideously unlucky that I never seem to meet people at the right time for them to want to pursue a friendship or relationship with me? Or what is the magic ingredient that makes people want to move things forward? I feel like there is a locked door and people will smlile and wave at me through a window and think "there's that woman, she's nice", but they won't ever invite me in, if that makes sense.

I am sorry if this sounds quite immature and self indulgent

I am willing to accept that I am screwed up because of what happened. but what has been cannot be changed. So I will be screwed up until the day I die.

That's not true. It is not permanent!

Of course it can be changed! Plenty of us on here who have successfully negotiated that change.

you cannot change the past.

I;m fed up of living like this.

apparently I don't feel beautiful because my mummy and daddy didn't tell me I was beautiful when I was growing up. So if I feel how I felt about that, connect with those feelings to put them to bed, then I will believe I am beautiful, people will find me attractive and want to be my boyfriend now.

etc, etc, etc

No, but you can resolve the past - successfully. As many of us on here have. We've had really awful things happen, too.

What happened then is not the end of the story.

What do you want to hear? When you talk about your difficulties, what do you want ppl/therapist to say?

That is a massive step - to accept that you have been (mis) shaped by your past.

Can you accept then that others can sense this mis shape - no matter how hard you try to hide it - in fact probably more so the harder you try to hide it - and then unconsciously (or consciously) keep their distance?

Our emotional development was stifled by trauma - necessary then to survive - but it leaves us emotionally stunted, immature, unsophisticated and deformed - so we do not fit, or connect easily with others. We can come across as defensive or abrasive or needy - best kept at arms length. But once we acknowledge that we have suppressed trauma we can choose to unlock it physically, release it, rid ourselves of it and then heal. Then we will have nothing to hide and mis shape us and we can become re shapen and better able to connect and have healthy intimate fulfilling relationships with others.

So sorry to hear you're feeling that way, ToGoBoldly.

It's not you, it's them—you've found "friends" who treat you the way your family did, without the affection and respect you deserve. And you've put up with it from your "friends" because it's what you're used to from your family, and turning your anger on yourself.

Your therapist is absolutely right to say that your past experiences have shaped you and how you feel about yourself.
But that's not cast in stone. All the recent research about neuroplasticity is reason for optimism, especially as you're still young.

Changing yourself is still incredibly difficult, though. I'm much, much older than you and I haven't figured it out yet.

But I'm getting some of it right. I haven't damaged my children the way my parents damaged me. I don't let my emotionally-abusive exes take advantage of me any more, and I know their nasty criticisms reflect on them and say nothing about me. They just bounce off me nowadays.

But I still have terrible trouble with new people, you're way ahead of me in that respect: I have horrible social anxiety, I still feel I'm boring and no one will be interested in anything I have to say. So yes, it's me that's the problem, and that's what I need to focus on fixing, by any means that works.

As I've said, I'm struggling to make progress by thinking about/feeling for the "little me" who was abused and neglected. But I'm trying it because I've tried (nearly) everything else and it didn't work and I can't bear to go on being frightened of everything and everyone and feeling as if I'm on the wrong planet.

Perhaps you would do better if you tried another method. I haven't done it myself but there are various kinds of somatic work where you bypass the talking–which because you're so bright you turn into a way of intellectualising and minimising–and let the body release all the trauma—google trauma releasing exercises. You mentioned EMDR—maybe you think it's woo, but maybe it would work anyway. What do you have to lose?

You've been incredibly strong and persistent so far. But working hard and working smart are two different things.

And you need to drop the horrible friends and family. It wasn't until a few years ago that I realised that the problem wasn't that I was difficult, as my family always told me: "being difficult" meant having normal needs and taking up any of their time and attention. When I really understood that the actual problem was that they had abused and neglected me, I was furious and raged and wept about it.

Have you done that? I suspect not: you're still minimising the damage they did to you—it wasn't that bad, it was a long time ago, I can function. But you can't just put it behind you, it's like an old wound that has scarred over on top but is still festering below and you need to clean it out before you're healthy, even though it looks all right on the surface to you.

Ok, I have rambled enough.

Please know that you're not alone, most of the people on this thread have been in the same place as you and some have managed to get out of it by the methods they've described. Yes, it will be painful and scary and hard, but the only way out is through.

((((Hugs))))

Well I started the thread asking what makes people like others and want to embark on some sort of relationship with them. I didn't expect the answer to be "people are repelled by you because you are fucked up"

I don't even get far enough with people so that they can discover these undesirable qualities, they have no idea whether I am defensive, abrasive or needy. I'm falling at a hurdle way before that one.

Thank you weevil.

I did drop bad friends and hardly see difficult family these days. The upshot of that is I literally don't speak to anyone. I don't have anyone left to drop.

Now I could say you're not listening to me!

Yes, ppl pick up you're fucked but they don't go 'omg she's fucked!' Chances are high they're fucked too, but in a different way. They don't recognise your fucked bcs it's not the same as their fucked.

We're hearing, recognising, your fucked bcs we were fucked in similar ways. And we're recognising that, bcs of trauma, you cut yourself off - because we cut ourselves off too so we know it when we see it. It's not theory, we've actually lived this. And broke through the barrier. In lots of different ways but same aim and end result: to break through to get to what was cut off.

i hear what you say but i do not cut myself off.

and if everyone else is fucked but i'm a unique type of fucked that means no one wants to be my friend, the situation is the same

In this context, cutting yourself off is not something someone does, it's what they are. If you are cut off you are not 'doing' it, it was done. It happened.

....they have no idea whether I am defensive, abrasive or needy....

Yes they do - they have normal, fully developed, fully functioning, sophisticated, emotional intuitive, intelligence that enables them to sense our underlying, stunted, emotionally challenged supposedly hidden and supposedly compensated for, flaws.

...i hear what you say but i do not cut myself off.... investigate dissociation.

if I am acting so visibly different from the whole world then I must have zero perception skills and may as well give up.

and i don;t believe all the people I come across are just so emotionally sophisticated and intuitive that they can read me like a book. In any case, I know severely anorexic people, horrible bullies, massive drama queens etc that manage perfectly fine to get people to like them. I ca;nt believe I am any more stunted than them.

The whole world? You're acting like us. We're part of the whole world.

ive read about dissociation.

So I cut myself off, I invite rejection, I am the agent in no one wanting to be my friend or boyfriend, I bring it all on myself. It's nothing to do with the external world.

Is it youre ignoring us bcs you don't want to be like us? Hahaha. Don't blame you but guess what, you are

Yes it had to do with the external world, especially when all the shit first happened to you. That was entirely the external world dumping shit - their shit - on you. But you took it, bcs you were a child and at that point in your development there was no other truth: what they represented was the truth, the world, the universe. Their treatment cut off your humanity, you accepted that. It's still lying fallow, waiting for you to pick it up again.

And in today's external world people behave amazingly badly on a usual, regular basis. People are lazy, feckless, selfish. Not always, certainly, but a LOT, especially in relationships. So yes, that has something to do with what you are experiencing. But not all of it by a long chalk.

No not acting visibly different at all - most definitely the opposite (compensatory).

But, yes, the repressed trauma has stifled our emotional development - so our emotional skills are stunted and do jar socially - but this can be addressed when embraced in therapy - so do not give up.

and i don;t believe all the people I come across are just so emotionally sophisticated and intuitive that they can read me like a book.

Why don't you believe this?

It is very painful and humbling to contemplate that most people are more emotionally intelligent than us because their emotional development was not stifled like ours by trauma - so yes they can see and sense our deficit.

And who likes horrible bullies and drama queens? They may be able to command attention thru fear, dominence and control of others - but do they get people to like them?

now I am lacking humanity?!

i am a lost cause