People are the best medicine

I am glad to say that my parents have gone on holiday to Cornwall for a week as of last Friday.  I'm living with them again at the moment (and have been since late January) and as parents have a knack of doing, they are driving me up the pole.  The problem is that we have a very small family, and none of them live closer than 60 miles away from me and my parents.  I'm also an only child, meaning my world has been encapsulated inside this parental bubble all my life, with no outlets like 'a favourite aunty up the road' or with another sibling to occupy them.  Don't get me wrong, we generally get on and needless to say I love them to bits... but parents are there to drive their mid-20 year old children to despair.

My kitchen after I've
washed my hands

So great, you may think, a reprieve for a week.  Yes, it has been good not to have to worry about one minuscule droplet of water on the kitchen floor that I accidentally put there in transition of washing my hands to reaching for the towel... "The floor's wet, be a bit more careful."  The rules my parents make me abide by are absurd (although I've only really appreciated that in the last year or so) so it's nice to be able to be a bit more relaxed for a while.  Part of me wanted to flood the kitchen floor and purchase a variety of tropical fish to swim in it, but I didn't think the sarcasm would have helped me.  In serious terms, it's highly likely that these parental traits of meticulous detail, in terms of tidiness and order, has caused me to have minor OCD (see earlier blogs); 25 years of exposure to this is bound to have an effect.
So what's the problem?  I'm alone.

I've set the scene family-wise.  I am in a four-bedroomed house completely on my own, in a village surrounded predominately by people over the age of 100.  OK so I'm at work all next week and I saw my good friend yesterday, but today I've been alone, all day, having to plan my day just so I don't get bored for more than one minute.  The TV has been my only company.  At least when my folks are here they are here, there is someone to converse with.  But when the only company is my own, this can lead to a recipe for disaster.

My own company means listening to my mind.  My mind says things like 'if you're lonely you're anxious' or 'you have a niggling pain, what if it's the start of a catastrophic illness' or 'I'd better not have a panic attack now because there is no-one here to help me.' 

All useful thoughts, I'm sure you'll agree.

Not only that but nowadays I would classify myself as a 'people person.'  I'm not one to walk along a street with my head down and not say 'good morning,' or pass off a query at work to someone else as soon as possible.  I like talking to people and I like helping people.  So when I'm alone, I end up talking to myself which usually ends up with me over-analysing things that are only like to further heighten anxiety.

I moved out of home last April 2012 to seek new beginnings with new people; I shared a house with a good friend and four others, but I got unlucky in the end and it was those 'four others' that were the problem.  Unless saying hello to a lady called Jean, they'd never come across the word hygiene before, and they didn't seem to be concerned with making friends with the other people they were living with; moreover, they weren't the sort of people I could ever see myself being mates with anyway, for one reason or another.  My good friend was also away a fair bit (he's a musician) and with his hours (evenings) and mine (days), I needed other like-minded people there to fill the void when he wasn't, which didn't materialise.  Consequently, I was often more alone than I feel when my parents are here; thus tolerating the move back.

I could live on my own or just with my good friend (which in hindsight would have been better than the actual result), but given my circumstances the likelihood of loneliness declining in either of these scenarios is less.

What about all my other friends I hear you cry?  I have four friends I see in Stafford on any sort of regular basis.  I occasionally see two people from Uni and social events involving other people per year you could count on less than one hand.  The reason for this isolation is simple; not enough socialising at school and at University.  Not enough opportunities to develop more friendships. 

Do I blame anxiety for this or has this lack of socialising caused anxiety?  Perhaps not surprisingly, it's a bit of both.  I had far less confidence back then about socialising - although at times it can still be a problem today - to the point where I avoided certain situations, without even trying them.  I felt I was going to make a fool of myself, my self-esteem was shot and there were also times when I was frightened of having a panic attack during a social occasion.  Consequently I was limited the number of people I could meet and often didn't make a good enough impression to secure potential friendships because I was so scared of screwing up.  OK, so largely caused by anxiety related conditions, quite possibly.  But the thing that really let me down was the unwillingness to even try.  Chances are, many of the aforementioned situations I avoided would have turned out well, and even if they hadn't, I now know that such scenarios make you stronger.

Today, this reluctance caused in part by anxiety and in part by this annoying element of my personality, has resulted in, quite simply, not having enough friends and therefore enough social opportunities.  Don't get me wrong, I have really good friendships and I wouldn't change them for the world.  But if my desire to meet people was matched by my confidence and of course no chronic anxiety condition, I could have had infinite social opportunities. 

And so today, having not built up these friendships and having lost the best opportunities to do so (school and especially University), I am often left on my own.  Without my day job, my interactive life would be pretty barren and desperate. 

OK, so there are still opportunities.  Moving again is one, which will hopefully be more successful than last time.  There are clubs I could join, courses I could do, but still there is a confidence issue and work being quite intensive these days also restricts my opportunities (and giving up work in the current economic climate is not really a viable option).

It's got to the stage in my life now where giving a presentation for work in front of 30 people I find easier than going out with the aim of meeting new friends. 

Oh yes, and this is without mentioning relationships... and for the sake of my sanity and everyone else's, it's best I don't open that can of, well, nothingness.

I suppose my message to readers is this: embrace people, whoever they are and from wherever they come from.  If you struggle socially, remember that for every pitfall or hit that your confidence takes when out at an event, it is wiped out by the advantage of meeting a new person. It's the same message when it comes to treating chronic anxiety; talk to people about it.  Being more open about it has made it a lot easier for me to get through life.  If you have a real problem with social anxiety, talk to a professional about this first and foremost.

People are a pain in the backside, but without them we'd be in chronic isolation.  Use them.  Embrace them.  Challenge yourself to make as many friends (and I mean proper friends, not social media friends) as possible, no matter how uncomfortable it may feel at first.  Anyway, we all have to live on this earth together, so we may as well make the best of it.

Best wishes
Al