Anyone else struggle living with strangers? (if you do)

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LimboMan
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14 Jan 2017, 3:07 pm

I'm 20 years old, and twice now I tried to live away from my family away in university with students. But both times I felt overloaded and could not cope. First time round it was with the wrong people - I am very quiet and they were crazy party animals. The second time was more successful I lived with quiet people that I got on well with but it was a rollercoaster.. I really enjoyed it to start with but the longer I lived away from home my anxiety got higher about my health, it was in a city and I got very overloaded in this atmosphere compared to living in a smaller town. I also started to be really hyposensitive to people I lived with, I believed I was a burden to them I was becoming paranoid.. and the weather got much colder and no one could afford heating, so I moved back with family to travel instead.
These experiences highlighted my anxieties and has made me feel very different and strange to others. I try to do things normal people do and it just ends badly and I can't cope. I don't think I'll choose to live with strangers in the future, or even friends because of the probability of disagreements and conflict if you live with others. It just seems much better to live on your own.

Does anyone else live with strangers or did they try living away at university but found it too much? The experience made me feel so weak and different, and felt worse about my diagnosis.


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ArielsSong
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15 Jan 2017, 1:33 am

I struggled a lot at university. I locked myself in my room and kept myself to myself as much as possible. I was bullied and definitely not liked by the people that I lived with. I was fortunate to have en-suite accommodation so, aside from food preparation, there was little reason for me to leave my room. When I did, I would make food in the kitchen and then clean up what I'd used, then go back to my room. I also had to deal a lot with passive aggressive notes, and verbal comments, about how I wasn't doing my fair share of cleaning or housework because I didn't pitch in with the big cleans that they frequently had to do. However, I hadn't contributed to the mess - I always took care of my own mess each time I made a meal.

My first year at university was the worst. I was in with a mix of males and females, none of whom liked me, and there was a lot of showing off and nastiness. In my second year it was an all-girl setup, more exclusion than outright bullying, but by this point I was at breaking point so moved in with my friend and slept on his floor for the remaining 1.5 years of university. That was preferable to group living, for me.



LimboMan
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15 Jan 2017, 10:10 am

ArielsSong wrote:
I struggled a lot at university. I locked myself in my room and kept myself to myself as much as possible. I was bullied and definitely not liked by the people that I lived with. I was fortunate to have en-suite accommodation so, aside from food preparation, there was little reason for me to leave my room. When I did, I would make food in the kitchen and then clean up what I'd used, then go back to my room. I also had to deal a lot with passive aggressive notes, and verbal comments, about how I wasn't doing my fair share of cleaning or housework because I didn't pitch in with the big cleans that they frequently had to do. However, I hadn't contributed to the mess - I always took care of my own mess each time I made a meal.

My first year at university was the worst. I was in with a mix of males and females, none of whom liked me, and there was a lot of showing off and nastiness. In my second year it was an all-girl setup, more exclusion than outright bullying, but by this point I was at breaking point so moved in with my friend and slept on his floor for the remaining 1.5 years of university. That was preferable to group living, for me.


Thank you for saying about your experience. You were lucky to have a en-suite, the house I was at it had a shared bathroom and I anxious about when I should have a shower and use bathroom and things like that, and I have a bit of OCD about what times I use it it felt very difficult!
How did you find cooking and diet? That was something I really struggled with, I didn't know how to fill myself up to be honest. I got used to going in supermarket with was a anxiety I dealt with but I always kept buying not enough food to last and I was self conscious of others in the house when I was making or eating my dinner.


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crystaltermination
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15 Jan 2017, 12:59 pm

I spent the first term of my original university living in Wales (I'm from England) in shared housing with a bunch of international students from India and Nigeria. It was way too much. Not just because I was quite severely mentally ill at that stage but also the sudden detachment; living a long distance away from home without anything familiar. Eventually found myself taking on the responsibilities of everyone else's housework rotas because no one else did their part and was content to live in a disgusting mess. By the end of it there were also some ugly arguments breaking out between my Indian friend and one of the Nigerian guys due to their conflicting religious beliefs.
Should I be in this situation again - living with strangers - next time I will force myself to take on a very uncompromising personality around others and put my foot down. I won't be sucked into the small-mindedness of other people's conflicts, and I won't put up with others causing mess and not doing their share of the cleaning. I also have a pathological dread over the prospect of living with the freeloading partner of any housemate in a relationship but remains the sole individual under contract. Having that again would, probably more than anything, set me on the warpath.


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ArielsSong
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15 Jan 2017, 2:05 pm

LimboMan wrote:
ArielsSong wrote:
I struggled a lot at university. I locked myself in my room and kept myself to myself as much as possible. I was bullied and definitely not liked by the people that I lived with. I was fortunate to have en-suite accommodation so, aside from food preparation, there was little reason for me to leave my room. When I did, I would make food in the kitchen and then clean up what I'd used, then go back to my room. I also had to deal a lot with passive aggressive notes, and verbal comments, about how I wasn't doing my fair share of cleaning or housework because I didn't pitch in with the big cleans that they frequently had to do. However, I hadn't contributed to the mess - I always took care of my own mess each time I made a meal.

My first year at university was the worst. I was in with a mix of males and females, none of whom liked me, and there was a lot of showing off and nastiness. In my second year it was an all-girl setup, more exclusion than outright bullying, but by this point I was at breaking point so moved in with my friend and slept on his floor for the remaining 1.5 years of university. That was preferable to group living, for me.


Thank you for saying about your experience. You were lucky to have a en-suite, the house I was at it had a shared bathroom and I anxious about when I should have a shower and use bathroom and things like that, and I have a bit of OCD about what times I use it it felt very difficult!
How did you find cooking and diet? That was something I really struggled with, I didn't know how to fill myself up to be honest. I got used to going in supermarket with was a anxiety I dealt with but I always kept buying not enough food to last and I was self conscious of others in the house when I was making or eating my dinner.


My diet as a student was terrible, but honestly that was because I didn't know any better. Nobody had ever taught me how some foods were healthy and others weren't, and I'd been raised on the absolute worst junk, so I didn't know anything else. I always just grabbed things that were very cheap and very easy to cook. Primarily pasta sachets (Pot Noodles, Pasta and Sauce), cheap chicken nuggets and chips, or sausages. Whatever I could prepare easily, so that I could escape the communal kitchen again. No thought to the impact on my body.

It took me a fair few years afterwards, to learn about proper nutrition.