Just burying myself in my interests like doing my IT because I’m a bit of an IT person, obviously I have to be to do my job but just burying myself in that and burying myself because I’m also a reader as well although I don’t get as much time to do it now but I was a very vivid reader when I was younger.

I: What about anything else that you, any other coping mechanisms with dealing with loneliness?

Just to keep myself busy? Keep myself doing things. I have more hobbies than the majority of people could even think of. I you know I collect tools of all sorts of different things from woodwork to carving, woodturning, metal work, engineering, mechanics photography, model trains, model building. I’m forever doing something.

I: Do, do you write?

Yeah I, I do journals, a journal every day now. But yeah one of the, the drama therapist actually said to me you, even if you never tell anybody else, if you just get it out on paper it’ll help. And it’s a good way to, to monitor how your moods are going and how you track your life, cos you can see monthly if there’s like a, and up and down period when you know you’re gonna you know hit that lonely spot and you feel really bad. So yeah, I do, I would recommend writing how you feel.

I: So how does it work? Do you, do you write every day, do you have a specific time to do it?

Usually just before bed, I’ll get into bed and I’ll just sit there and have a think about how I’m feeling, and what the day’s gone, and then I’ll just write, it doesn’t have to be long, it could be a couple of sentences, it could be a whole page, it could be anything. It’s just how you’re feeling, you just work it out, and it does feel better when it’s on the page, and reading it back is always hilarious. It does make you think, oh I need a bit of perspective in my life. What, why was I moaning about that on that day, that’s such a silly thing to moan about. Or, yeah, I could really understand why that was upsetting. It, it gives you that clarity to just rethink it in a different way. So, it is good in the sense that you’ve got that  data to look back on and analyse it, just like you do with any research really. It’s just, once it’s written you, you, to get rid of it would be silly, because it’s not going to be productive to help you going forward if you get rid of it, so I just think if you journal it, it’s helpful. And then if anybody else came across it, God forbid anything happened, they might understand me a bit better.

I:        Have you tried to communicate those to anybody?

R:       [Um] I have, I have said, a couple of my friends have read journals from me in the past and they’ve, they’ve got it, they’ve understood a bit better and they know phrases like chin-up,  or just do some exercise and things like that, don’t help. [Um] You know when you, when you’re feeling low and your depressed and someone says to you “Chin-up,” the last thing you feel like doing is sticking your chin up, you just,

I:        Yeah.

R:       You know you just want to hide away, and it, it also helps if, if you are in that moment where you feel so low and you’re, you’re hiding away, and then you write it out and then the next day you still feel bad but you re-read it, it sort of gives you that momentum to pull yourself out of it.

I: You talked about a training group that you joined, so that kind of helped you socialise?

Yeah, it was really good. Very, very difficult to join cos I was very anxious but yeah, just threw myself into it and did it.

I: Did you kind of have to step outside your comfort zone to do that?

Oh yes I’ve never been a massive fan of exercise in the sense of groups and going to the gyms and things like that so to join a group of people doing squats and sit ups and running around the hall, was daunting to say the least, and this was walking into a big sports hall with about 150 people in it, of all different shapes and sizes, and ages, all running around sweating. It was daunting, exhilarating and scary, all of the above, but it was one of the best decisions I made.

I: How did you make that decision?

I kind of gave myself a kick up the bum, I’d had a really bad depressive spiral if you like,] and I was trying to figure a way to pull myself out of it that was different to everything else that I’d tried. I didn’t want to go on anti-depressants again, I wanted to do something different that lifted my mood, and I needed to get out of the house because I realised my kids were growing up and I had no social life whatsoever and I was like, oh God that’s scary. That you, you don’t do anything, what are your hobbies, what do you like to do? And I was thinking I don’t know; I don’t know what I like to do. I’ve been spending so much time raising the kids, that I was like what do I want to do? So I thought this sort of gives me an option to just see what it’s like, so my friend who I worked with was already a member and she said, “Come along, see what you think,” and I went along and that was it, I loved it. Sort of went to sweat fest on a Tueday night and circuits on a Friday, and Sunday morning club and then I started the Run Club, and that was it. Just it was, it was really good, and then obviously lockdown happened and we couldn’t do classes and I’m not one for running around in the park, being yelled out to do squats, so I didn’t do those classes. So I ended up running every day and running sort of took over, and that was my get-out of my head sort of thing and get out of the house.

I: And, and that has helped.

Running has been amazing. I’m not the best runner in the world. I did the couch to 5K and when I completed that I kept running, I, I’ve done 5K’s, 10K’s that kind of thing. But I can’t think when I’m running because the only thing I’m concentrating on is breathing. So, so it’s a great way to clear your head,  and just get you out of yourself, so to go running for half an hour was a godsend, cos it just took you away from your life, and just let you, you just ran and listened to music and just, just ran. Just went where your feet took you. It, it’s just such a nice experience to just not be in control, but you are in control. You, if you get me?

I: Yeah absolutely.

And she said did you know the Hearing Voices group’s closed at [place] so I said no, she said why don’t we start another one, I said no I’m not bothered she went come on Pete let’s do it together lets’ do it on support and education and we did she encouraged me to set it up and it’s now the longest running group in the world, reaching its 25th year next year.

I: Wow

So by doing that it gave me a purpose because I got to run the group I got to get people to come I got some flyers I had a purpose in my life and then people started to see me I became someone again but I wasn’t doing it for financial gain I was doing it to help others which made me feel better in myself and started to break down that loneliness.

I: So purpose in your life that’s very interesting. And do you think it’s, the purpose in your life but also helping others you said.

Yes.

I: And that made you feel less lonely?

Yes I’m, helping others achieve something as well, you know, like the OT helped me and so did other people as well. As I say when I got involved more with the Hearing Voices movement I met people like xxx and the guy called xxx he was an Emeritus Professor of psychiatry anyway he was still very revered in [city], world famous and he invited me to his home and he used to tell me about the history of psychiatry and he was such a fascinating man and I thought why is this man that’s so famous interested in me, maybe I’m not invisible maybe I don’t have, because I’m not lonely and isolating myself if I’m out there I can serve a purpose by learning from him how to learn to help other people and learn other people about things.