The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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This is a weird question, but my dears, if I can't find weirdoes here to help answer it, where will I find them?
So... what do you do if you're not lonely?
By which I mean, all the pop psychology and media opinion pieces and chatty helpful (annoying) little mental health wellness driblets tell you you should be lonely if (check off list of things).
Apparently there's a loneliness epidemic. Or maybe there isn't, opinions differ. But there is agreement: lack of connection is bad for you, including bad for your physical health. Some are optimistic that AI can be your friend instead.
Yeah, but... I'm alone, but I'm not lonely. I can check off that list:
Lack of human connection? Yes
Social isolation? Yes
No friends? Yes
No close family members? Yes
No romantic partners (this seems to be the big one, the cri de coeur of the incels and I do not mock them with this)? Yes
No kids/fulfilment? Yes
Not even furbabies? Oh hell yeah no pets
But you socialise? You travel? You do things? You have hobbies? No
I should be curled up in a ball crying and weeping and wringing my hands about wanting all that, and I'm not.
Now, am I depressed? I think I might be (can't get a diagnosis, the one and only time I mentioned suicidal ideation to my doctor I got asked was I self-harming or tried suicide? no? nothing to see there, then), but while the big light-bulb "aha!" moment there should be "and that's because you're so isolated", I don't think so. I've wanted to be dead (not the same as wanted to commit suicide, I've never tried that) since I was about eleven, but here it is decades and decades later and I'm still here.
The cynical view is "but you need friends because friendships are transactional and can be monetised; if you do things for them they have to do things for you". That's never worked for me, because the few times back when I was young and dumb enough to ask, in return for 'do this for me get that for me of course we'll do the same for you', "okay so now can you do this for me?" suddenly and miraculously it was always the wrong time, inconvenient, impossible for some reason.
So I never grew to regard friendship as transactional because I could never get those transactions going (sorry, Rorschach, I disagree with you there even though I would be sympathetic to a lot of your thinking and if that makes me an authoritarian, Alan Moore, then too bad).
But I'm not lonely. I'm on my own, and I'm happy that way (if you accept that this, for me, constitutes "happy"). Mostly I don't like people. I can fake it, I can get along for short bursts of interaction at work and elsewhere, remember things other person said and bring them up or talk about some topic in the news, but about five minutes is my maximum tolerance and ability to pretend normality. After that, I have to consciously remind myself "do not say out loud 'I wish this person would shut up and go away and stop bothering me', keep the expression of mild interest and pleasant smile on until they do feck off, don't look at something else like paperwork or computer screen or whatever".
So what do I do, when I'm supposed to be lonely and wanting all that human connection, but I don't. I really, honestly, don't.
What do you do when you're supposed to be lonely but you're not?
Work more? Assuming you are not set for retirement and maybe plan to have kids in the future a bit more money saved never hurts. If you're not lonely or depressed get out there and make some moolah! Unless you feel unmotivated to work for whatever reason - then maybe you are lonely and/or depressed.
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