Relationships versus social isolation

I was listening to the radio the other day and they were discussing a meta-research study (a research study that combines the effects of a lot of other studies that are deemed to fit inside the relative criteria) of 140 studies that looked at 300,000 people. That is one large sample size and thus worth considering (even though I cannot verify the states of the study in order to justify its sampling processes). In the study they found that people who faced social isolation (so having few connections with people in general) had the same risks to health as those people that smoked 15 cigarettes PER DAY. WOW!

I go on and on and on here about how we are meant to help people and even more importantly how we are to be helped BY people. So often I read about people who feel so very isolated and end up feeling that they need to do recovery by themselves. One friend at the moment is struggling so much, she is in hospital facing feelings that she has rarely experienced in the manner she currently is and she is feeling very cut off from her normal social networks, whether she realises it or not she NEEDS those people. Its not even that she wants them, she NEEDS them, for recovery, for her health, sanity and otherwise. Another friend had some news that took her almost a week to tell me about out of fear, fear of rejection, fear of being misunderstood, and just plain old shame, shame for what was happening, shame about what was going to happen. It was a struggle. She had some workers that knew her situation but she didn't have FRIENDS, true good hearted friends that knew. She was isolated and alone and it really played with her health, with her recovery. Another friend has been struggling because of the environment she was in, it wasn't her fault, it was a choice she made towards recovery, it was a good choice, but yet again it left her vulnerable and scared. Another friend has been having troubles with family. She loves her family dearly but the way they make her feel, it isolates her and she has very very few friends to whom she can turn to, talk to and KNOW that she'll be understood, not judged even more then she already is. Isolation has really harmed these beautiful lovely people. They are trying their hardest but find themselves in circumstances where they feel isolated and lonely. These people are also trying to reach out to people and to various extents are finding that hard in itself....imagine how much harder and how much more difficult it would be if they had no one to turn to?

Then there is me. I'm lucky, I have amazing people I can talk to, I have people that love me and accept me and I do actually practice what I preach and let people help me, I let people in. Not always straight away because I'm not perfect and because sometimes other people's needs come before my own. Last night I found myself falling into a pit of despair quite rapidly. My natural reaction was to bunker down, take some PRN (as needed) medication and batton down the hatches....instead I took a risk and called someone who knows me very well, someone who would and DID listen to me, someone who'd JUST gone to bed but got up and spoke to me for about an hour. It wasn't just me whinging and crying on the phone to her, it was also her talking about HER and the interaction of BOTH is exactly what I need. See we need people in our lives and we need to let them help us out (15 cigarettes a day damage to our health is a lot of damage every single day!) but part of letting them help us out is also learning to listen to them because while we can whinge and vent and cry and so often we need to do that, we often need some distraction and a bit of loving of another person to help get us out of the pit we find ourselves in.

One of the very first verses I learnt thanks to my friend S was that God will take us out of the sticky mud and onto a solid rock (Psalm 40: 1-2 paraphrased)....some translations refer to it as the mud and mire or the clay....but I like the sticky mud cause have you ever tried to get clean when the other person is as dirty as you? It's pretty tricky. You need to get up and then get washed off with clean water, another person can be our clean water. They can love us, empathise with us, help get us a bit more fit for duty by talking about them, distracting us for a bit, giving us something to laugh over or just plain old consider and then they help us shoulder the load. What I needed to talk about last night, I could've called my psychologist or my psychiatrist, really the only two other people that have a clue about this topic, but I needed a FRIEND. I needed someone who knew me and loved me and knew how to help me. This friend knows in very very basic detail this story and one day she'll know more but she knew enough and she knows ME well enough to know what I need. Friends like that don't happen over night.

Friendships like this take a lot of time and a lot of communication. We need to talk about what we LIKE when we talk, what HELPS, what is UNHELPFUL and what drives us CRAZY. We need to be open and honest about our reasons for a phone call or a visit....sometimes we don't need to talk at all, sometimes we just need to watch TV together! Sometimes we need someone to help us unwind, sometimes we need someone to ground us. And different people have different roles in our lives and that's okay too. Some people we talk to more when we're distressed, others when we need a fun time, some more in an emergency and some when we need a distraction. None of this is bad the point is that there ARE others. One of the most important things in building a friendship though is forgiveness. Why? Because everyone is human, even the professionals that a lot of us see because we need their help. Everyone is going to make mistakes, everyone is going to hurt us (hopefully unintentionally, but sometimes intentionally with our best interests at heart and sometimes intentionally without our best interests at heart, at which point we should be forgiving but maybe also reassess the friendship)....without forgiveness and the willingness to sort things out and give someone another go, we wouldn't have friends. And as much as need need to be honest about OUR needs we also need to be willing to listen to THEIR needs. It goes two ways. Even with professionals. In general a professional is the one that should be keeping certain things afloat but we shouldn't assume they can mind read, we shouldn't assume they can guess our stories or our needs etc, we need to consider that they also need holidays and no that isn't abandoning us, that they get sick, that they have education sessions to attend and sometimes they need to fit another client in, things happen. So friend of professional we both need to communicate our stuff to them and all them to communicate their stuff to us.

Lets not be those people that are unintentionally destroying our health 15 cigarettes worth a day....there ARE good people out there, even in our worst most depressed state. Hang on to them and be willing to both love and be loved for in being loved we're also giving people the opportunity to reduce their own social isolation too. It all works both ways.