An antidote to loneliness

The fourth in a short series of scenes on taking up emotional space

Over dinner my family are asking me if I am intending to write something for ‘Mental Health Awareness week’ on the subject of loneliness, this year’s theme.

I tell them that I can never think of anything to write other than pointing out that developing a feeling of love for oneself means you’ll never feel lonely again, because you’ll always have you.

My daughter laughs,

‘That’s the that Holy Grail of mental health. It’s like telling someone to cheer up without telling them how.’

She’s right, but it’s been a career long frustration that I can’t even tell anyone how I did it, thereby offering some kind proof that it can even be done.

The runner beans are pressed against the window in the spare bedroom pleading to be put out into the garden.

Earlier in my life, I would just have planted everything outside and hoped for the best, a strategy popular with the slugs and snails.

Having lost all of the crops, I would curse my impatience and habit of cramming too many things into a short space of time, worsened by a seemingly perpetual unwillingness to see any of them to fruition.

It created a loneliness of sorts, borne from a misunderstanding and intolerance of myself.

When, as an adult, I was diagnosed with AuDHD, everything began to change in often imperceptible ways.

I still feel impatient and want to move onto the next task before finishing the one I’m working on, but I find more compassion and kindness towards myself in doing so, which helps moderate destructive behaviour and resist the temptation to hide away, shameful of my incompetence.

Organising myself was often an embarrassing challenge.

I’d make notes in a host of different notebooks with no hope of finding them again let alone collating them into anything coherent. I’d forget to get rid of information I no longer needed and find I’d discarded something important. Then, I’d fall all too easily down a rabbit hole in which buying some laces for boots I hadn’t worn in years became bewilderingly more important than finishing the tax return I’d nearly completed.

Self-compassion carved out a route to mitigation where the sort of highly regimented routine that I actually need and enjoy became a gentle way of keeping my more skittish self in line, with kindness and humour rather than anger and annoyance.

Once, a client, who didn’t know that therapists also benefit from talking about their feelings, said to me,

‘I wouldn’t want to see a therapist who needed therapy.’

As the words finished coming out of her mouth, I suddenly knew what it meant when someone tells you their whole life flashed before them, often in the moments just after a car crash.

I saw myself in the little room with the skylight window and the rain streaking down it on the day that my therapist told me I was too comfortable in my depression, shame and misery.

I heard myself complain to a different therapist that I could do many things but none of them very well into the aching silence that followed when he didn’t push back in the way that I hoped he would.

And I remembered a time in group therapy when I told everyone assembled that I didn’t recognise the worst aspects of myself because, ‘that’s not me,’ and how the therapist gently reminded me that it was, even if I couldn’t yet understand why.

Taking the vegetables out to plant into the newly established raised bed I hope the beans are as excited as I am.

This year, I have taken the time and trouble to dig right down into the earth and establish a barrier of cardboard that will stop the grass growing through, and give the crops at least half a chance against the slugs and the dogs.

It might sounds trite to suggest that it feels good supporting yourself to do something simple properly, but it’s a powerful show of self love, and the best antidote to loneliness that I’ve ever found.

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Next week on ‘Sideways’ we’re talking about the dangers of going on holiday in the early days of recovery. It’s our final episode for the summer. We’ll be back in September, God willing. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

It’s been a while since I made you a playlist. Making mixtapes was a big part of my life when I was younger and, to be honest, I miss the whole process. Digital curation just isn’t the same. but it’s better than nothing.

I used to especially enjoy browsing the racks of records and choosing something based entirely on the name of the band or the look of the cover. That was the way we discovered new music before the dreaded algorithm.

Anyway, I’ve put a few songs together that I’ve been enjoying whilst pottering about in my garden, making bread, and writing to you from the quiet of my desk. I’m sorry it’s on Spotify, but I can’t send you a cassette because I don’t have your address and I don’t know if you’d have anything to play it on, which is a really depressing thought.

That’s all for this week.

Thanks for being here, I appreciate you.