Pretty similar.

Loneliness is one of the worst pains a human being can feel. It’s often been ranked even worse than physical pain. I don’t envy you, I know what it’s like.

Unfortunately, the only way to get out of it is through even more pain (probably). You have to force yourself to talk with new people and create deep relationships.

Even more pain, because you’re very likely to be rejected. First of all, deep relationships, in contrast to superficial relationships, have much higher compatibility requirements, idk, you’re probably only compatible with maybe 5% of people to form a deep relationship with. But then you probably also have bad social skills right now, so a part goes away through that. And then there’s just situationally no path towards a deep relationship with a person, maybe they have too many already, or whatever, so another part of that 5% goes away. So the actual chance to start a deep relationship is very low, which will mean lots of rejection and failure.

This will be incredibly painful, because you’re likely already introverted for reasons that involve negative interactions with people. And you’ll likely add more of them to the list unfortunately. But I’m almost sure you’ll add many more positive ones to the list as well.

You can do it like me and get rejected over and over until you feel so worthless and desperate that you rewrite your whole being to please another person, then latch to anyone that gets fooled by you pretending to be what they want, then breaking down because you’re living a completely fake life.

Wait, maybe that’s bad advice? Naaah worked for me so must be good right?

But seriously. I’m mainly saying this because I went through all kinds of mistakes, but doing them was better than not doing anything. And I know for a fact it can be done. I was incredibly lonely, having no friends, in so much emotional pain all the time, but now I feel like the happiest person on Earth, with so many good friends and loving relationships abundant.

All of this shit you’re facing right now can be conquered and overcome. Keep searching for advice like you’re doing right now. Humans are not meant to face the world alone, and there are always people willing to help you, you already see it in this thread, and add me to the list. Talking with many other distinct humans about our problems is almost the best thing you can do. We learn through other’s experiences almost as much as through our own experiences.

If you want to know more, I’m here, talk with me. You can do this :)

Hello, so for lonliness I would recommend going out, even by yourself. I’ve been in your situation as well, and I know we are all different people, but, going out really helped me. Take myself out for an early bird diner to avoid the crowds, go bowl a few games, sit in a park and read. My ibs is paired with my anxiety which is basically most of the time. Also, this might seem weird, but, they have found that talking to yourself, like in third person, obviously away from other people, activates parts of your brain similar to talking with a close friend and helps with lonliness.

From my experience, IBS is both about diet and anxiety.

Obviously not eating isn’t going to help. You’ll have to learn what foods set you off and limit or eliminate those from your diet. (For me it’s raw onions and overly starchy foods.)

But I believe your condition is fueled more by your anxiety and depression.

I can’t really help you there other than to say that controlled breathing exercises seem to be helping me. I often take cold showers when in an IBS attack that has verged into being a panic attack, but in that cold shower I realized I focus on my breathing.

My background is that I knew I had IBS but it was getting out of control. It turned out I had a hernia that was causing an occasional intestinal blockage. Once that was fixed, my IBS started to slowly improve.

It should’ve been massively better, but I had been training myself to be anxious each morning, worrying whether I’d be able to function at all.

I had to unlearn that worry… and it took a long time.

I dunno that I can give you advice on making friends. I am lucky to have a very good core support group of friends who have been with me through the last twenty-some years. We are all middle-aged dudes now, with our own complicated lives, but we still get together for board games, d&d, and chat on a discord all the time.

There was a time when we grew apart a bit. (We are stoners and one of our rowdier friends went to jail.)

I called a few together for a board game night, and it stuck. If I had not done that, we would almost certainly not still be in each other’s lives.

So find some friends and keep them close. It is very hard to get through life alone, as you know. It takes hard work to make and maintain these relationships, but they are necessary.