Feeling disconnected

Hey everyone. I'm a new poster who stumbled upon this board looking for someone to talk to.

For sometime now, I've been feeling disconnected from the world around me. I'll talk to people, but not feel any kind of empathetic connection or motivation to converse with them. I'll be in a crowded room, but feel isolated and alone.

The few friends I have joke that I'm an emotional cripple, and I think they're right. I generally don't feel anything except a sense of contentment, or occasionally a general funk. I don't really feel anything strong about anything it seems. Just a few weeks ago, I watched my dog of 14 years die in front of me in a vet's office. I watched my mother break out in tears over the ordeal. I didn't feel anything. Didn't even feel the need to hold anything back, as there was nothing to hold back.

I want to be able to connect with people, and have been doing the things the self help books suggest (I volunteer, have gone outside my home to find some new friends, and I'm actually quite confident in myself), but I still feel like I'm more an obvserver in life, rather than a participant.

Can any of you relate to what I'm saying, or at the very least, have an idea what I'm saying. Even if I'm completely alone in my endeavor, it's at least nice to be able to post this and maybe have someone read it.

Hi mate. I read your post and I can identify with parts of it.

I to often look at myself as moor of an observer then a participant in life. I don't work and live alone so I very much see myself like that a loot of the time. Even when am playing a game at me cousin's place with he's friends I still see my self like that a lot of the time.

I also don't have really any strong views on anything that much. Nothing that would really make me angry. All tho I have been in the exact same persuasion as you with my mum and a dog. I did fill up with tears. I did love that dog moor then anything in the world through and even now 17 years later I still think she well be waiting for me in the ofter life. All maybe that's just me just being soft over a childhood dog. I did use to tell all my problems to her tho. And she used to listen.

But weirdly enough I do seem to be numb to a lot of things that other ppl would be upset over. Doesn't make you a bad person just cos your don't get all emotional over things that a lot of ppl would tho.

Also Welcome here

OldSchoolGamer said:

For sometime now, I've been feeling disconnected from the world around me. I'll talk to people, but not feel any kind of empathetic connection or motivation to converse with them. I'll be in a crowded room, but feel isolated and alone.

Click to expand...

Sure enough.


Welcome OldSchoolGamer.

Welcome to the forum. I think a lot of people here feel like observers. I hope you find what you're looking for.

Well...the clostest I came to that was many, many years ago.....
I got tottally shited faced all the fucken time so I couldn't feel a god **** thing.
I checked the messed out....Striaght up 151, Malibu, southern comfort, bongload or Gojo.
Life on life's terms sucked ass. Those were my coping skills.
Yeah...i didn't give a fresia oneway or the other.
Yeap...worked like a fucken charm...turned into a fucken robot and went to work and made
honeysuckle loads of money...so i can numb the fresia out even more.

I wish I still talk to my ex...(SnowWhite)..but i don't.
SnowWhite pretends like I'm fucken dead.....lmao
That's her coping skills.
Beats the hell how she dose it ? Convient is her primary motivator..
In other words...She dosn't give a fresia.
I'm fucken...irreparable damnages or broken.
If i died...all of my fucken problems will be resolved and she can just pray for my ass
to go to heaven. Fits nicely into her grand scheme of making honeysuckle right...lmao
More like wish I fresia up or kill myself..so she can say..."see he's a fresia up"...lol

Btw...Snow-white...that's an inside joke.
She's so fucken holier than thou..now.
God declaired her white as fucken snow.....lmaO.


mmm...I was abused as a child..so I know how to numb the fresia out to servive without drinking or using...
But i wasn't really good at it....so i reacted or got into trouble...which got me more ass whoping.

I cried today actaully. it's okay feelings are good for me.

Maybe try making a list of emotions...
Observe youself...your feelings.
Maybe you still feel them but can't identify them or just have a habit of numbing them out.
That's what helped me.

Can roughly understand your feelings.

In a big group yet feel disconnected.I am the kind of person who is more of the emotional cripple because I cannot relate to other people's feelings.

Hello emotional cripple, pleased to meet you, I'm social retard.

I know that feeling like an old friend cause I've always felt that way since I was a kid. Thus, I feel disconnected with people and life around me in general too. It's all good as long as you have the desire to connect with people and try to reach out to others in any way that you can every now and then. Sometimes it's the act of trying, attempt, or process to reach out to others, despite the inability to feel that connection, that makes ya more human than a lot of individuals out there in the world. Keep on man, and there will always be a kind person to keep ya company in return.

Oldschoolgamer (how oldschool, incidently? Are we talking Atari 2600, ZX Spectrum or maybe SNES - I nearly died of happiness playing Super Mario World ),

You have my full fledged sympathy when describing yourself as disconnected because I often feel relegated to fly-on-the-wall status when mixing with a crowd. Though ironicly, I quite enjoy annonimity and can quite happily venture through a strange town or city without it causing undue pressure.

At least you're trying to do something about it and to that end, I wish you good luck.

This is trauma of an emotional kind and mild depression of a complex kind. It might surprise you to know that this only happens to emotional and overly empathic people who are wired slightly differently than others.
You have gone through an emotionally traumatic experience, whether it’s a break up, being bullied at school, loosing somebody close to you or feeling betrayed by a person or a number of people. Forcing yourself to deal with this and suppressing the resulting emotion makes you switch off inside, your mind makes the decision somewhere along the line that it is easier to carry on in life being contented and numb rather than to feel the highs and the crippling lows that come with it. You loose your sense of yourself, you forget what makes you special and no longer place any real value on yourself. If your mind won’t let you get excited or have any real sense of achievement or happiness for worry that it will ultimately cripple your soul again, how you possibly see yourself as being of value. This means you search for beauty in the wrong places, you wonder why you only find people physically attractive now and not adorable, why you only muster a smile at a joke rather than cry like you used to, why you haven’t got a competitive bone in your body. You make acquaintances with everyone but never true friends because you can’t distinguish between desirable and undesirable qualities. There is a disconnect between your dreams of your life as a child and what you believe to be a harsh reality, a total and disappointing lack of any magic. This isn’t true and is a warped perspective - as a matter of urgency you need either go for counseling as I did, or make the decision, at some point everyday to go back to the situation that caused this. You need to write down everything that you used to feel and where/why along the line you’ve lost hope. Then you need to make a conscious decision every day to let yourself feel happy and excited about life again because you deserve it. Let your mind know that it is ok to feel the pain next time it comes because with out it you can’t enjoy anything, let your mind know that you will deal with it next time no matter what. This problem can be especially difficult if you’re the rare type of person that is always self analyzing, and trying to improve on who you are, stretching your social boundaries and putting yourself in situations that make you uncomfortable, that important and developed image of yourself (that you spend your whole childhood creating) Whilst your spiritual side develops and your view of the workings of the worlds become clearer, you have confused your sense of self which is what makes us human. The image of who you are becomes too vague and you loose any sense of self and thus self worth and you naively but understandably come to the decision that nothing really matters. Along with the above you need to rein it back in, close your bubble that you have allowed to expand too far. Make your world yours again, it is yours and it is personal, unique and beautiful. People are interested in it and you and you are fascinating and fervently loved by select group of equally fascinating and lovable human beings who have remembered what is important in life. Because you think the opposite you have ironically turned into a selfish person who refuses to be interested in the people most close to you, no one expects you to be interested in the world, just a selection of the world, so choose wisely and be passionate about it. Write down your qualities and think hard about why they are attractive, think about the kind of people you want to hang around with and what you want out of life, and how you want to make your stamp on this world. If you do this everyday, it will take a few months to connect with your self again. Strip away everything and feel the uniqueness of your soul, remember that that is what makes you attractive, this is the only thing that you used to function as a child which is why your childhood memories are so clear (the good and the bad). Function as you did then, live life in the moment and stop over analyzing, just be. If you believe the noises of the world, rather than the silences of your soul, you will be lost.

Old School - in recent years there've been times - funerals of semi-distant relatives I knew but wasn't close to - when I've not felt that much, and felt guilty/worried about the fact.

And there's times when I just feel indifferent about everything - I'm sort of ambitious about what I want to do with my life, but there's times when I think it's all hopeless, and I feel like there's no point in aspiring to anything.

It can be scary/worrying at times, but it's important to try and look for the positives in life - find things you can take pleasure in, people you care about, etc.

That's what I'm trying, anyway.

Wow, I posted my post 3 tears ago.
Losing Renae traumatized the living out
Of me...a long long time ago.

When i wrote that 3 years ago i never thought
I would ever see her again. 20 years had gone by.
She was always in my mind someway somehow.

Who woukd have thought....the love of my life
Would had found me after all these years.