I: Have you ever asked for help from your GP in relation to loneliness?

No

I: Why do you think that is?

Fear of being dismissed. I think my experience with with the, the youth mental health advisor when I was 14, oh every teenager feels like this, every teenager gets like this it’s, it’s nothing it’s that fear of being dismissed.

I think for me it exacerbated it cos I already had some mental health problems but then the more I lost friends the more depressed and anxious I was, so it just worsened it. But I can also see where somebody that doesn’t any mental health problems, if they’re like losing friends and they’re, they’re stuck at home and they feel lonely and they don’t have anybody to go out with then they’re going to develop mental health problems, maybe they’re going to get anxious because they’re in the house so much, or maybe they’re going to be depressed because they don’t have anybody to talk to. Because I think that was also a problem that exacerbated my mental health, because I was losing friends and being more lonely then I didn’t have anybody to talk to about my problems, so then that just made my mental health problems worse because I had nobody to talk to.

I: Could you tell me a little bit about your experience with bullying and how that really affected loneliness?

Do you know, I think that’s where it started actually, cos that just… I, I don’t think about it that often because it was in year 7 and it just, it feels so long ago, and I left the school after a year of being there and being, getting bullied cos I just hated it so much and that’s actually, because in primary school I’d had my really close best friend with me the whole time and I was like never alone so it wasn’t a problem then, but I went into year 7 I didn’t really know anybody and I started realising that I actually had trouble making friends, and I found it really difficult, and then when I started to get bullied a bit, and that was by my, by the group of friends I was in, which was just really odd, so like they would kind of bully me and then I was still around them and it was just, yeah, strange, but I remember sometimes if they were like particularly mean to me, because I would have no other friends because that was my group of friends then I would just kind of wander around the school grounds like with nobody and just… It just… That, that was really the first feeling of loneliness, like just walking around and seeing all the other kids in school in their groups and just finding some isolated place to go and sit because I didn’t have anybody and I was like oh my god, I’m such a loser. And it, it just felt so awful. I used to um go to the nurse’s office and like say that I felt sick and my dad had to come and pick me up like so many times cos I just, I had no friends there, I just felt so awful and lonely that I just wanted to go home. Like it was such, such a deep, horrible feeling of being alone, but I just didn’t even want to be there anymore.

I don’t know because, well especially not now, because I don’t go to the GP for anything. Because I’m terrified of overburdening the system, but I still feel like it’s something that they would, like they, they don’t care about. I tend to really, really detest going to the GP about any mental health problems because I, they don’t care about it. They hate dealing with it, it, it’s like washing their hands of it, they don’t even want to touch you, they don’t want to get near you… If you come in there and you talk about mental instead of physical health, they’re just kind of like “oh, I, I’ll call the community mental health team, oh,” you know, “I’ll pass them over to you.” They don’t want to know. So I feel like that’s… Loneliness is, is like associated with mental health and it’s, you know, it’s, it’s mental more than a physical problem that needs fixing, so I feel like they just don’t care about it, they don’t want to know.

I do have a cat, he’s asleep on my bed. I guess he does actually help because I always have somebody in my room with me, even when I feel like crap and I’m alone, he’s usually, he’s usually there with me, so it is nice to have just some, some other thing that’s like living in the room with me and that I can kind of speak to, I guess. My friend um found a lot of comfort in her cat and used to like talk to him when she felt sad, so I know that some people really, like really value having their pets there, and almost like a, like an outlet to speak to you that you know they’re absolutely not going to judge you, so I think that’s, that’s really nice, but, but I don’t think my cat’s that, that much of a support for me, but I definitely like having him around.

I think there are positives and benefit… Uh and negatives. The negatives being that these social media websites usually a place where people put only their best parts of their life and, and all the great things that happen to them, so if you’re really lonely and, and feeling kind of low and you’re on that, uh, on these kind of websites, and you’re prone to somebody who’s this kind of thinking of compare and contrast type of thing then you’re going to be looking at these things and all these people living this great, wonderful lives and having all these friends and like living a life that you feel that you can’t, then it’s going to make you really depressed um and angry that you can’t be one of those people that gets to experience these things, and I know that’s, because that’s been my experience, that I’ve like felt so, so jealous and wanting to experience the life that they lead that where it’s filled with friends and acquaintances and um the going out and having interesting life experiences. I think the positives are that it still enables us to connect with other people, despite things going on in our life. I know that I used it to talk to people when um like my agoraphobia was worse, my anxiety was worse, and I found it difficult to leave the house, like at least I would still be able to talk to people and, you know, be in these kind of group chats where I could speak to a bunch of, of different people and it, it can put in touch with people like you as well that it’s more difficult to meet outside. So I’ve, I’ve joined groups like for people with my diagnosis, so like a Borderline Personality group, um and other groups like that, that can network you with other people that feel a similar way, and I think that’s really important for curbing loneliness as well, I think it, it made me feel a little bit better when I could like post something in that group about how I was feeling and other people could be like “hey, I feel the same” and you know, offer to chat or whatever. So I think it’s, it can be helpful.

I: So these are uh groups on Facebook or am I old school? I don’t know.

Yeah, Facebook.

I: Facebook. So, so tell me about those groups and how uh they buffer against loneliness?

I suppose I’m talking about loneliness in, in my sense where like I, I have mental health problems and there aren’t people in real life around me that also suffer from those problems, so I feel I’m more alone because I can’t talk about the way that I feel and like really relate to people that have similar problems to me. So when I can go on these groups and like… I just remember feeling this sense of joy, I was like oh my god, I’m, I’m not alone, there’s this person that feels exactly the same to me and they, they like really understand and they can be quite like unhelpful places as well I think because if you put a load of like people that have a certain mental health problem in a group together inevitably there’s going to be some problems, like cos the admins and moderators of these groups tend to have the same problems themselves, you know, they’re not going to be completely unbiased, so there were a lot of problems in them where people would just be nasty to one another and the, the moderators would have a difficult time like kind of trying to calm these arguments. But I think um overall it tends to have quite a positive effect because you can, you can talk to people that have the same kind of problems and just they make you feel less alone.