Ever heard of “the boring, creative type?” Me neither. If anything, creative people are more often called eccentric, non-conforming, one-of-a-kind, “out there,” expressive. At times we are accused of being high maintenance, emotional, fickle, excitable.

To that, I say “Good!” It makes life fun.

But I admit it can be challenging at times for those of us who can’t just sit quietly, but who need to express ourselves through creative outlets. We may struggle from feeling a lack of respect from the “strong, John Wayne stoic types,” or like we have a target on our foreheads so others can more easily make fun of us. We may witness more than occasional eye-rolls from people who see expression as frivolous or “silly.” We may even fall prey to our addictive personalities more quickly than do others. But all in all, in the day of a creative person, a lot happens to make life exciting. For me, the benefits most certainly outweigh the struggle.

A Fiction Character’s Interview with His Author

If you could interview your Creator, what would you ask?

In the following interview, I, the writer of Bullies & Allies, am the overseeing author of Kyle Rickett’s teenage life. I am in 2015 while for him the year is 1978, and his coming of age story has just reached its conclusion. I am armed with the clarity of hind-sight as I reach back in time to discuss the outcome of the story I wrote him into. He has questions for me, his creator, and since I know his past, present and future, I’m able to answer him openly.

In this interview, a slightly irritated eighteen-year-old Kyle wants to know why his life couldn’t have been easier and less confusing. As his creator I have good reasons for how things worked out for him and am able to overlook his irritation.

The Following Interview is Fictitious

Me: “How are you, Kyle?”

Kyle: “I’m an emotional basket case, thanks to you for creating me that way.”

Me: “You’re welcome.”

Kyle: “I wasn’t being funny.”

Me: “C’mon, Kyle. You’re important.”

Kyle: “You could have written me as a lucky lottery winner who gives millions to the poor. I’d have been important then too.”

Me: “Now you are being funny. No one needs to read about a lucky millionaire. You’re important because of the intensity with which you feel things. A lot of people are emotion-based, and they need a character like you to show that it’s okay that you are so.

Kyle: “Well I don’t always feel like it’s ‘okay that I am so.’”

Me: “Trust me, you’re okay. In fact you’re better than okay.”

Kyle: “Okay? I have PTSD for God’s sake. I work hard to be stronger than average, but when the tiniest stress comes my way I shiver and shake like a feeble old fool that needs tranquilizers. It’s not fair. It makes me look insane in front of my friends…in front of girls! Do you know how hard it is to live with something like this?”

Me: “Of course I know how hard it is. But I see your situation differently. You’re standing up to a world that tells boys like yourself that because you have emotions you shouldn’t be taken seriously. To make your message even more impactful, your emotions have been maliciously tampered with so as to make you appear broken and out of control. You, sir, are the poster-child for showing that men with emotions can not only be okay, but can rise beyond it all and become better than okay. I did you a favor by writing you the way I did. I gave your life a noble purpose. PTSD is not the end of the world, but it’s seen by the public as something only women and soldiers can suffer with. As it turns out, you are not the only civilian boy who has it. I created you to be a voice for a lot of real people that need to be heard. Not everyone gets that honor.”

Kyle: “Well it sure has caused me a ton of grief.”

Me: “At first, maybe. But in the end, you were given a lot to be thankful for.”

Kyle: “Ah the ‘be grateful card.’ The boobie-prize for people who have to find a reason to be glad they have a disease or a broken arm or something. So for your information, Mr. author/creator, your decision to make me this emotional nearly cost me my life. So, gee—thanks.”

Me: “C’mon, Kyle, I saved you before things got too unbearable. The ‘gratefulness card’ isn’t just for people who’ve been in accidents. Everyone needs to remember to be grateful, and accidents serve to remind us of that. Gratefulness is an important perspective to everyone, no matter what. Now that you’re on the mend, I’m sure you can see that a lot of good came from your experience.”

Kyle: “Sure something good came from it, but with all due respect, that was thanks to Tuck, not you. He’s the one who showed me how to trust people again.”

Me: “Um…I wrote Tuck also you know. I made him close enough in age for you to feel like he could relate, but gave him seven years on you so he could fill in for the less-than-honorable older siblings you couldn’t trust. To get him ready for you I put him through two grueling years of college that he didn’t want to go to, just to teach him the right things to say to you. I made him do service work at Crisis Intervention so he’d see and recognize your own Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I saved him from dying when he was fifteen so he’d be empathetic to your own near death experience (NDE) at fourteen. That poor guy went through hell so he’d be ready for you. So again, you’re welcome. And he’s a good guy. I’m glad you liked him right from the start.”

Kyle: “Well we started out a bit rocky, but yeah, he’s the best friend a guy could ask for. You sure took your own sweet time with him. You could have avoided a heck of a lot of my grief if you’d have introduced us a few years sooner.”

Me: “On the contrary, if I’d have introduced you two sooner, no one, not even him, would have been able to save you. You were sliding too confidently down a slippery slope, growing complacent—too comfortable being uncomfortable. You had adapted too well to your overshadowing troubles to recognize your need for someone like him. You thought your life was normal but it was far from it. You needed to be brought right to the bleeding edge of life and then to be shaken at the core to wake up and see what was happening. You needed to be shocked out of your comfortable journey to hell.”

Kyle: “What’s so wrong with being comfortable?”

Me: “Comfortable people don’t change. They soak, like dumplings in slowly heating water until cooked. It takes discomfort, or all-out-pain, to drive change. And from my author’s perspective, people who don’t change don’t have stories I can write about.”

Kyle: “That’s why I was torn open in an accident? To shake me up?”

Me: “Damn straight. You needed a physical crisis—one with real blood—to wake you up from a bad dream you didn’t know you were having.”

Kyle:“Oh, so you had to make me miserable so that I could become happy? My story is about how I changed?”

Me: “Aren’t all good stories about transformation? Learning? Overcoming? If you’d have met Tuck before your life had degraded into crisis, you’d have shrugged him off as just some nameless busy-body wedging himself into your complacent life. You’d have let him slip past you, unwittingly avoiding a sorely needed rescue. Then the only story I’d have had to tell would have been about another mysterious teen suicide that didn’t appear to make any sense—even to you. I’d have talked about how everyone had thought of you as happy, energetic and likable. I’d have called your death a senseless tragedy that shouldn’t have happened. No one would have ever figure out why such a promising, cute youngster took the ultimate way out.

Kyle: “I admit, I was pretty confused at one point.”

Me: “Yeah well, I knew it was coming. I spent four years preparing Tuck to intervene at your crisis—and trust me when I say that after everything I did to him, he needed your friendship as badly as you needed his. I couldn’t let all his suffering be for nothing. He saved you (and you saved him) at exactly the right moment, and he helped us show the world a deep truth about how secretly defeated you felt and how you’d come to be so distrusting of your own allies.”

Kyle: “What’s weird about that is how I didn’t realize that I didn’t trust people. I thought every family was like mine and that love included having to watch my own back. They were my family. I thought it was morally wrong for me to question their motives.”

Me: “The whole family wasn’t to blame. Certain antagonists had spent many years covertly, but tenaciously undermining your self-image and quieting your screams for help. It was they who confused you so that whenever you did try to reach out for help, you’d sound crazy and no one would take you seriously. You needed Tuck, but first you needed to know that you needed him. When you became aware of how desperate your own situation had evolved you became ready for me to introduce him to you. That’s when you would allow him to reach in to your insanity for a rescue. Seeing how close you were to your own demise prompted you to reach up and grab his hand.”

Kyle: “Thank God for that. Okay, I’m starting to figure this out. I’m another bullied character in another novel about being saved from suicide by another caring person?”

Me: “Don’t minimize this, Kyle. You’re a complex character in a story about being seriously overwhelmed by a sense that you aren’t acceptable to the world. In order to feel as alone as you tend to feel, you needed more than just a sense of confusion. You needed villains.”

Kyle: “Villains? Plural? Since you’re an author, shouldn’t you stick to the rule of simplicity and have only one villain so you don’t make the plot too difficult to track with?”

Me: “Normally that is a good rule to follow in novels, but, Kyle, this is more of a true story that’s meant to resonate with a sense of being involuntarily confused and alone in a busy world. I’m kind of annoyed by normal bully stories that don’t address how hard it really is to stand up to enemies you can’t identify—especially when you yourself have been convinced of being too crazy to know what’s going on. If there was only one bully then all you’d have to do is stand up to him. That’s how most novelists do it. They name the one obvious dragon so as to depict you as a hero when turning to face it. But Kyle, real life isn’t always so simple for everyone. Telling a person to ‘stand up to their bully’ isn’t going to help someone who is too confused to identify exactly who that even is. One easy-to-spot antagonist isn’t enough to tear you down the way you were torn down. You actually thought that you were born flawed and that the entire world would see your shame if these extortionist bullies exposed you. How does a boy stand up to that?”

Kyle: “I guess I really couldn’t.”

Me: “I needed to put my readers inside your head, so they could experience with you, your true belief that no one understood you. You were that kid whose allies didn’t see your pain because they mistakenly saw you as having a great life. You’re cute, intelligent, close to your parents, cousin Scooter and your amazing best friend, Connor. You worked tirelessly to pretend that you were doing fine in life, and unfortunately for you the ruse worked. By outward appearance you had what a lot of people thought they wanted, so they didn’t look any deeper. People needed to get inside your confused head and experience how you came to the place where you actually saw your own allies as your bullies and subsequently lost your ability to trust anyone.”

Kyle: “And so one villain wasn’t enough to do me in?”

Me: “Nope. Not in one blow. You’re too strong for that. You were whittled down slowly by a mob. You looked out to the world for help, but they didn’t respond so you assumed they were part of the mob. In a social structure peppered with various bullies and allies, you didn’t know which was which. Kyle, you represent a category of real people who feel relentlessly overwhelmed by humanity. You’re not the only emotional person out there. As an emotional teen, you look for acceptance in people who don’t understand how to give it to you. You believe criticism much more deeply than you can accept praise. You feel outnumbered and outmatched, even though you aren’t. Your life in Bullies & Allies is a representation of a boy who was driven ‘crazy’ by three key people who had one thing in common: They wanted something from you and didn’t care how they got it. They each made way into your heart so that you’d be too bonded with them to fight back. Your kind spirit and compassionate spark made you an attractive target. Once they had your respect they put their sins on to you and you took the punishment. They used common manipulations to isolate and trick you into believing the whole world was on their side rather than on yours.”

Kyle: “So my only three bullies were Fran, Andreo and Dr. Krieg? Everyone else was—”

Me: “—Everyone else was just minding their own business. But when they didn’t announce themselves as being part of your solution, you lumped them together as part of the problem and you became overwhelmed. The true antagonists were three disconnected individuals, each exhibiting a different variation of a single anti-social personality disorder.”

Kyle: “They were meanies?”

Me: “They were sociopaths. People who, without the annoying burden of conscience, can say or do anything they want without having to feel bad for it. Fran represented a family member with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) who used divisive gossip and lies to trick unsuspecting family members into a permanent war-like state of defending themselves against each other. Andreo was your former best friend who was fighting with demons of his own. Demons which he eventually transposed onto you and then coldly attacked you for. Dr. Krieg was a common pedophile, empowered by his sociopathic ability to see the world as a playground to feed his obsessions. But he was a family friend and a community pillar, and you were not a fool. You saw the risk of being hated by everyone if you had been the one small boy who’d tried to expose that disgusting mess.”

Kyle: “And this is supposed to be like a real-life story? Do real people usually have three sociopaths trying to get something from them?”

Me: “Usually? No. But if you were to go out into the city streets and interview enough runaway teens, you might find that your fictitious story of being manipulated when you were too small to fight back is lame compared to what some of them have been through in real life. Your story is not in any way a far reach from normal life for some. Your life wasn’t violent—which made your abuse a tad more difficult to notice.”

Kyle: “Whoa. That hit home. I almost became one of those runaway teens, remember?”

Me: “I remember. Your case was a real eye-opener. You were a normal, middle-class fourteen-year-old with no bruises, but still you believed that the pain of staying with your family was greater than any fear of trying to make it on your own. I guess we humans tend to move away from the greatest perceived pain. The fact remains that evil strikes all classes, and kind-hearted, peaceful, creative, sensitive people become targets for sociopaths a lot more often than the general public can see.”

Kyle: “But three? How real is that?”

Me: “You’d be shocked to find that a general rule of thumb in crisis intervention is that people are seldom targeted by bullies only once in their lifetimes. For some reason, no one is sure why, it seems like abuse either never happens to someone or it happens multiple times.”

Kyle: “Like having the proverbial ‘target on my forehead.’”

Me: “Exactly.”

Kyle: “This is making me nervous about my future. As my creator, can you tell me…do I still have a target? Am I cursed for life?”

Me: “Yes and no. One thing I want you to understand is that life isn’t always so much about miraculous cures as it is about gaining control through awareness and acceptance.”

Kyle: [heavy sigh] “I’m always going to have PTSD, aren’t I?”

Me: “They’re going to be working on finding a cure for quite some time, yes. And men without war experience is going to be the last group to be readily acknowledged.”

Kyle: “Crap.”

Me: “It’s okay, Kyle. Things work out well for you. I’m thirty seven years in your future and I’ve seen how things turn out. You’ve got a long, exciting, sometimes bumpy ride ahead of you.”

Kyle: “Is it worth it?”

Me: “More so than I can even describe. You’ll marry someone who finds you worth the effort it takes to put up with your PTSD episodes. Your kids and grandkids are going to love the two of you because of how attentive you’ll be to making sure they’re never bullied like you were. They’re also going to love you because you’re never going to fully grow up. Neither is Tuck. He’s going to be their favorite uncle and a friend for life that will never stop mentoring you. Oh…and when you’re thirty-six, your sense of humor will make you into a successful stand-up comedian.”

Kyle: “Woo-HOO! I’m going to be famous?”

Me: “Mmmm. Not necessarily.”

Kyle: “Oh.”

Me: “It will be by your own choice not to pursue show business. For someone like yourself, who struggles with interpersonal trust issues, you’re going to find yourself too uncomfortable by what you’ll call ‘a lack of integrity in the back-stabbing show-biz community.’”

Kyle: “Oh! Ha ha! I’d feel like I was back with my siblings again?”

Me: “Exactly! Ha Ha! Also, you’ll find it much more difficult to connect one on one with ‘regular people’ during the time that you are seen as a professional entertainer. You’re all about connection and trust, so you’re gladly going to allow yourself to fade from the public’s eye. On a positive note, what you learn from your year on the stage is going to give you an edge when you become a writer and a public speaker on the topics of mob-bullying and non-military men with PTSD.”

Kyle: “A writer versus a comedian? Isn’t fame fame?”

Me: “Not necessarily. Being a writer is much more discrete than stage-work in this star-struck world. You’ll be able to reach out to your audience while enjoying the anonymity of walking around unnoticed in public.”

Kyle: “Will it make me rich?”

Me: “Not with money.”

Kyle: “Again, one of those things you say to someone to make them feel better about being poor?”

Me: “Trust me on this one, Kyle. You’re an expressive soul. Finding your voice and your perfect fit in life is worth far more than cash. All too often, money-rich people go to bed each night fearing that someone will steal it all. You’ll live in the peace of knowing that no one will ever be able to take this from you. Becoming the man you are meant to be really is going to be better than having money to spend on unneeded luxuries. Excessive money can actually separate you from other people. Being rich sets you apart from a predominantly middle-class culture. You hate feeling alone, so for you, excess money does not bring happiness.”

Kyle: “I hate to say this, but your reasoning actually sounds pretty realistic.”

Me: “It is. But be aware of the fact that your ability to connect with others will always be a double-edged sword, making you a ton of friends, both good and bad.”

Kyle: “Both good and bad? It can’t get easier?”

Me: “It’s life, Kyle. It’s that way for all of us. Being forewarned is being forearmed. When you make a ton of friends a certain percentage of them are going to be less than honorable—it’s simple math. As a giving person, you will attract a large number of people over the coming decades. Some will seek to take from you. The gift you received by being enlightened at eighteen was that you became able to fully appreciate the trustworthy people, while gaining the ability to heal quickly from the selfish ones.”

Kyle: “But all in all, I’m going to be okay?”

Me: “You’ll struggle but you’ll enjoy a deep richness you’d never appreciate if life had been easy. You’ll have times during the year—every year—where you can’t seem to get away from the trauma memories. But you and your family will call it ‘the flu’ and deal with it appropriately. On the nights you can’t sleep, which will be many, you’ll quietly go downstairs and write the things that you learned from your struggles. You’ll never get over your hyper-anxiety, but it will make you into a harder worker among your peers while giving you and your friends an endearing humor around your overactive sense of panic. Like always, you’ll make the best from the hand you were dealt. You’ll have trust issues with everyone you ever meet, but over and over again you’ll work through them. You’ll learn so much about the art of trust that you’ll write books about it. Meanwhile, you’ll be there for people. You’ll give a lot of money and help to friends who need it, but you’ll also give a lot of money and help to people you’ll wish you’d have never fallen victim to. Being gullible will frustrate and often embarrass you, but you’ll brush off the dust and move on.”

Kyle: “Good God. I’m in for a ride.”

Me: “A good one, Kyle. You’re in for a good ride. You’ll come to understand that a good life isn’t defined by what is done to you, but by how you choose to grow from it. You’ll find help. Your friends will see that you’re worth their patience. You’ll find a therapist that grounds you. You’ll stay with him for life. Good, steady therapy is sort of the right medicine for someone with your level of trauma-driven anxiety.”

Kyle: “So…I really am crazy?”

Me: “Not by a long shot. Just by saying you are…you aren’t. Truly crazy people don’t know they’re crazy. Only sane people have the wisdom to question their own sanity.”

Kyle: “Then I must be really, really sane…because I feel really, really crazy.”

Me: “Congratulations on that, and welcome to the club.”

It’s almost humorous to say that millions of lonely souls struggle to connect with others on an overcrowded planet.

An alien watching from space might ask, “How could anyone feel alone there?”

Here we are, living elbow to elbow with family, neighbors, classmates and workmates, while suffering a deeply internalized sense of being completely and utterly alone.

Alone in a Crowd
People often say, “I’m going to a movie alone,” or “I’m going shopping alone.” But that is hardly possible when on any given day, thousands of people are sharing the mall with them. How does one shop alone? Answer: By not connecting with any one of those thousands of people. Realistically, people can’t shop alone, (unless they’ve broken in to the store during the night—but that’s fodder for another topic). During the business day they might shop while in an internal state of isolation.

Isolation
Isolation, while not a disease, could be called an epidemic that distresses some lives and takes others completely. I contend that the rising rates of depression and suicide are not comprised mainly of people who feel trustingly connected to others. It seems to me, that because we are social-based creatures, then isolation works against our very wiring, making it one of the more dangerous epidemics we can succumb to. Insidiously, not all isolation is self-induced. A lot of people are driven to it by someone else.

Who feels isolated and who did it to them?
I’ll give 5 common scenarios of people who are driven to isolation:

• Survivors of abusive childhoods: Children who survive childhood neglect, abuse or childhood sexual abuse often spend their lives feeling singled out and isolated. Lifelong trust issues are common in their world.

• Teens feel isolated when they struggle to find their place in the world. If they feel pressure to succeed in grades, sports, and social activities that they aren’t passionate about, they might feel like a square peg being unfairly forced into a round hole. They might believe the adults who are driving them in the wrong direction don’t see them for who they are. Or if their social life becomes a battlefield of rumors and lies because of adolescent jealousies at school, then they learn not to trust sharing their vulnerabilities with other teens.

• The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) community suffers a 4X higher suicide rate than the straight community NOT because they are GLBT, but because their peers and superiors have intentionally humiliated and ostracized them for being who they were created to be. How can they trust a world who pre-hated them without giving them a chance to show who they really are?

• Abused wives are often intentionally isolated from their families and friends by sociopathic husbands who want full control. A person without allies is very, very easy to bully.

• Victims of Sociopaths/Narcissists/Psychopaths: Anyone with a sociopathic boss, parent or older sibling will experience the phenomenon of being intentionally isolated by that sociopath, through a relentless, daily stream of accusations, rumors, lies, and humiliations. Sociopaths use these divisive tactics to isolate and overwhelm individuals, hoping to create the sense that the whole world hates them. They sometimes do this simply to enjoy a sense of empowerment. They view life as a daily competition for situational dominance. Their most common goal is to make their victim feel crazy in front of others so that all credibility is lost, which isolates the victim, making him or her even easier to torment. Why do they do it? Because to them, it’s fun. A perfect example of this is when nine-year-old boys gather with salt shakers to laugh at their power to melt slugs alive. “Stupid slugs!” they’ll shout. But soon enough those boys evolve consciences and outgrow their enjoyment of watching slugs suffer. Sociopaths never develop consciences and so they don’t outgrow that morbid enjoyment of watching torment. They feel empowered and god-like when, for no other reason, it’s just fun to watch animals and fellow human beings squirm beneath superior war-like evil.

Trust
Trust lies at the root of our inability to connect with the scores of people we share the earth with daily. It’s not that we don’t see the crowds around us, it’s that we don’t trust them with our vulnerabilities. In each of the examples above, the isolated victim could easily have made multiple attempts at asking for help, but for a number of reasons the people they approached may not have recognized the seriousness and so they failed to offer the help sought.

We humans learn by repetition. The more often we see a similar outcome, the more solidly we learn. Trust is little more than the ability to predict the future based on what you know from the past. When a child reaches out to his/her protectors twelve times, only to be told twelve times that he/she needs to handle his/her massive problems him/herself, that child learns through repetition to stop asking for help. He/she learns to trust what he/she knows to be true, which is: Adults don’t understand what’s really happening.

When adults say, “If you are being bullied, all you have to do is tell a parent or teacher,” they are further isolating those children who have tried that tack a dozen times but with zero success. Those children know that the message is naïve and therefore flawed, so they don’t hear it anymore. They are left utterly alone with no way to trust what they are being told: In essence, the message as they hear it is that the thirteenth adult will somehow be different than ALL the others. –Yeah…right. I don’t think so.

Connection cures isolation
If you are feeling isolated then you need connection. Being in a packed bus is not connection, it’s crowding. My experience of isolation turned me suicidal beginning at twelve years of age. I’ve since lived a long life on the brink of my own demise because of a sense that no matter how many people are in my life, not one of them really loves me for who I am. It wasn’t until fifty years of age, when I closed the door between myself and my life-long bullies, that I began to experience calm, genuine, compassionate connection with the people who always did, and still do love me. Before then, I gave love with all my heart, but couldn’t accept it in return. Because of the irresponsible messages given by the people who I wrongfully trusted, I had been repeatedly taught that the love people showed me was conditional: I thought I was loved only if I took people’s crap, painted their houses, helped them move, gave them money, etc.

What’s working for me?
I am grateful to say that I am losing my sense of isolation. My life is improving through efforts that are finally working.

1. I got out of the abusive situation: The first order of business was to distance myself from the bullies who used their connection to make me miserable. The first rule of thumb is that standing up to bullies makes them cower. But that only works when it works. If the bully is an entire school, (a term called “mob-bullying”) or a sociopath, then standing up to them risks igniting a fury that the victim may not be strong enough to stand up to. If the abuse has gone on long enough, that victim may be too badly worn down to be expected to stand up to a monster or a mob.

My second rule of thumb is that no one can hope to heal from the damage done by abuse while the abuse is still happening. During abuse, the goal should be to rescue the victim. Once the rescue is complete and the abuse is history, then a sense of personal safety can be instilled and healing can begin. Five years ago my healing began to take hold because I had put a permanent distance between myself and the people hell-bent on making me miserable.

2. I accept the reality: The damage is done. It’s water under the bridge. It’s time to accept what can’t be changed, and to work on what can be fixed. I have accepted that not all disorders can be cured, but almost all can be embraced and mastered. Nobody I’ve met yet, has had a particularly easy life. Truly successful people almost always have difficult pasts but have learned to make something productive out of their struggles. This truth is demonstrated best by those who’ve lost limbs that cannot be reattached, and go on to lead productive lives by learning how to get around the lost limb. Acceptance is a beautiful thing: By no longer expecting a “cure” I am no longer disappointed that there isn’t one.

3. I now trust myself and those who can be trusted: I now see that I love and am loved by many people. And yet, several times a year, I still fall into the trap of believing I am utterly alone. Learning how to trust means learning who to trust. I am learning to trust myself and how my own brain works.

Trust, as it turns out, is less of a feeling and more of a behavior that can be learned. I am now learning to trust reality over my misguided feelings. EXAMPLE: I often feel alone, but reality tells me that I have felt alone before—and things still got better. Therefore I exercise trust in repetitive history and I decide to trust that this is only a feeling. I can go one step further and trust that I will handle it correctly. I have proven to myself that I know ways to overcome the feelings of isolation, and so I trust that I will again overcome it this time. This works more quickly each time it happens.

4. I seek qualified help: I have a long-standing relationship with a highly qualified, well educated, compassionate, professional therapist. Not some well-meaning but poorly educated church minister. Not a school councilor. Not a self-help book. Not an internet support group. But an actual college-educated, psychology-trained psychologist with years of practice and success. It took years for me to learn to trust him, but that trust has become the very key to accepting the healing and making it work. Now that I’ve broken the poisonous relationships with the people I should have never trusted, and built a connection with a person who has proven he can be trusted, my ability to learn and heal is taking hold like never before.

5. I get out there and connect: When given half a chance I still isolate myself. On long weekends when my wife is working I often stay in my pajamas all day regardless of weather. Some weekends I never even open the blinds. If this goes on for a few days in a row, I find myself recognizing symptoms of loneliness as they creep in. So I use that as a trigger and I muster the strength to reconnect in some way with someone. I go shopping alone (or rather—“in an internal state of isolation”). The shopping trip is meant to get me into a crowd of people so I can challenge myself to connect with someone and make someone else feel heard—usually a store clerk. I have found it to be true that the Universe gives when it receives. In order to stop feeling misunderstood, I have to try and make someone else feel understood. In so doing, I end up creating the very connection that I need.

6. I count my blessings: I intentionally look at the people I love and then I express gratitude for any positive connection I now have. At nearly fifty five years of age I am both dumbfounded and elated at the realization that people actually love me. When my wife, children, grandchildren or peers tell me how valuable I am to them, I struggle to avoid tearing up from thinking about how I’ve wanted to hear that my entire life. I told one peer, “If you could have seen how beaten down I once was, and how horrifically vulnerable I felt in my family, you would know why you mean so much to me today.”

7. I know that sharing is caring: I openly share my struggles with others. The benefits are three-fold:

7a. It helps me to treat everyone as equals: I now know that isolated people don’t advertise “I’m isolated.” They quietly smile and nod and try to fit in. So the truth is that I have no way of knowing for sure who is and is not feeling like an isolated outcast right now. So by sharing my story with everyone, I am not accidentally withholding what I know from someone who might be too isolated to tell me that they wanted to hear it.

7b. People think they are the only non-Brady kids: An isolated individual will often perceive that the rest of the world has life all figured out and that they are the only ones who don’t. At work I drink coffee from a Brady Bunch mug. Peer comments allow me to joke with the statement “This is my family…that’s my story, I’m sticking to it!” The laugh opens the door for me to confess that I grew up thinking all other families were built on a foundation of mutual respect and of “having each others’ backs.” When I tell that my family was more indicative of a competitive sports arena, pre-loaded with gossip-traps and chronic criticism, and that my life didn’t calm down until I broke all contact with 99.9% of them, they almost always tell me that they thought they were the only ones who didn’t come from a Brady Bunch family. My confession to them gives them a new perspective about their own lives. Maybe they’re not so alone after all.

7c. I don’t want to be mistaken as being on the “other team”: The book I’m about to publish is called “Bullies & Allies” because those two terms, a bully and an ally, often describe the same person. To an isolated soul who believes they are the only lost soul in a world of people who have it all together, they can see the world as divided into two teams: bullies versus allies, or them versus everyone else. Therefore they may automatically assume that I am on “the other team” with everyone but them. I want them to know that I’m not.

However, I now know that I have done a good job impersonating a “together” person, and so I understand how people could mistake me for one. I have learned how to laugh and present myself as if nothing really bothers me. To my shock, that façade has worked, and here’s why I constructed it: In my particular family, if I had problems, I risked being humiliated for not being perfect from birth. So what I learned about family life was that it was more of a competitive sport rather than a loving fellowship. For my entire life, I worried, like many do, that I might one day lose my job and then my home. That concern by itself isn’t unhealthy. Sadly the reason I worried was a bit more neurotic. Being homeless was not my worry. Being utterly humiliated by key members of my own family for being the incompetent fool they’d always said I was, is what drove my high stress levels around employment. My point is: In order to survive my own team I learned to appear as if I had it all together.

Sharing is caring. It’s good for me and good for others. We’re all not-so-different after all, and no one needs to feel isolated in this world. Over the past five years, since walking away from my antagonists, I have many times witnessed that my confessions of struggle and of the sting of betrayal by family and friends have opened doors for people to trust that I’m not so different from them. First they say, “I never would have guessed…oh my gosh…” Then they see a chance at talking with someone who might understand them. To my joy, they often open up to me with: “You know…I’ve never told anyone this before, but…”

And for the duration of a single conversation, the two of us connect. We later carry with us the feeling that maybe—just maybe—we are both not so alone.