How do you deal with isolation? (details inside)

Seek companionship outside your family. Form friendships that matter.

Get busy! Take a class,volunteer,exercise,take up a new hobby…or talk to people here:)
<<HUGS>>

I keep myself busy. I will pick up on a old hobby or two. I would even learn a new one. I have learn to be grateful for what I have. I don’t have much but I love them dearly.

Can you write to family members regularly in order to start getting closer to some of the members that you can communicate with? Doing that may gradually make you feel you are getting closer. It won’t solve your problem, but it could be a step in the right direction.

If you give it importance beyond what is practical it will consume you. Not much you can do about your distance from these people at this time in your life. What is near and around you is what matters today and tomorrow and embrace what you have and it in turn will embrace you!

Accept yourself so that you can live with yourself. It can take over 20 years before you can re-connect with family if your misery cannot be handled properly.

Eventually the feeling of loneliness and isolation isn’t that bad. It gives you time to get to know yourself and check into reality.

I’m with @marinelife with this, just get the party started with your closest friends… :-)

For some people, family is of their choosing. For a lot of people, their friends constitute the support network that others get from fiends. Look to make multigenerational friendships. You are young, and striking up relationships with older people can often fill the void of not being close to your own family. They, too, are often isolated.

Volunteering is a great way to meet people outside your own age group.

Is it possible to look to extended family members for relationships, such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. for family connections?

Edit: That should be “Friends constitute the support network that others get from family.” (Not fiends. Arguably, a Freudian slip.)

In the recent past, I found a great deal of satisfaction from volunteering at my local library’s literacy center, so I’m with those who recommend volunteering. I found it a great way to get out of my own head and away from my perceived troubles and a way to work with others in a meaningful way.

I also have friends that I play Scrabble with on a regular basis. Again, it gets me out of me and out into the world.

@BarnacleBill great answer. I posted a question similar to this one regarding not being close to relatives but the onlt difference for me is that I don’t want to be close with them anymore. They have ignored, abandoned and circulated lies about me. They watched me be homeless and up until recently acted as if I didn’t exist. I used to love them and wished I could have the kind of relationship with them that other people had with their family but after years of isolation and being ignored by them I have grown. I don’t want or need them in my life and quite frankly my life is full of joy without them in it. I have chosen to make the family I wasn’t born into. I have a husband, and his grandmother adores me so she is my grandmother now, I have a friend I met in Detroit 7 yrs ago and he is the best brother in the world to me, I have a sister I met in college almost 20 yrs ago and a truck load of adopted children and many, many more! My life is full of love and yours can be too.

“Friends Are Our Chosen Family” is carved into a plaque in my yard. I can identify with your problem and have come to experience and appreciate the above responses. They’re right, but be prepared for it to be a long process. I encourage you to get a pet, like a cat or a dog. Animals can bring so much into your life. I can’t imagine being without one.

I think I have an inkling of where @actuallery is coming from here… Still…I love my own company..it’s the least threatening but can be the most condemning. I eat and I drink at weekends and in the week I study and throttle myself for eating and drinking at weekends…and the beat goes on.

Thanks for the replies. It’s helped just getting it out – it’s been consuming me over the last 48 hours.
Looks like I’ll be getting myself a new family :)
@zzc I think it will be a long proces.

big things do take time and you see that so you are a huge step forward already. Place yourself where time can go faster and where you have others around. Maybe some community or volunteer or church work. You can choose from these people an extended family to be around. That will take time too but a person needs both the people we don’t choose as family and those we do. One or both of these catagoties may have related people in them :-)

I have a friend who has taught me the meaning of, “A Kindred Spirit”. Like @datonamisticrip said, getting to know yourself….so that you recognize a kindred spirt, someone “on the same wave length….the same page,” so to speak, when you meet them. It’s good when you find people who can relate to you, “get you”, and vice versa. It’s good to be able to be yourself, understood AND accepted. You need to come in contact with a lot of people, to find the ones that fit…..but you need to know who you are first. Patience with the time and process is difficult, but you can come out ahead, rather than that, “Blood is thicker than water,” thing!

@zzc wise words and ones that resonate within me at the moment xxx