Feeling Lonely and Depressed in Taipei

I have Been living in Taipei for 7 years and feeling extremely lonely and depressed here. In the first few years I tried to socialize with the local crowd, got some acquaintances, but later I found it very difficult to really open up and connect with people… I feel most of the locals are mellow, polite, judgmental and superficial people with no depth or personality, and they bore me to hell. Usually I went out with hope to create fulfilling friendship but ended up coming home disappointingly. So for the past 2 to 3 years I tended to discard the social life here. I stopped going out and tend to stay in my own shell saving all the time for myself. Though in the beginning it felt cozy to stay in solitude, as time goes by now I feel extremely lonely and regretful that I missed out some important things in my life.

Is it only me? Do any of you feel the same way? What might be the problems? How can I change my life?

PM sent. I may have a friend in Taiwan. Your age and also in same industry. That maybe you guys could hang out?

It may be presumptuous and arrogant to say, but I wonder if language is a factor here. When you can only communicate in less-than-native Chinese, or your friends can only communicate in less-than-native English, it makes it hard to have deep, meaningful conversations about life, the universe, and everything.

In other words it is easy to decide an entire population is shallow and boring simply because you are looking in from a window and failing to find the door. Just about everyone has this same problem when relocating to a foreign land. I had it too before finally figuring out another way to understand people.

It doesn’t help, though, that a large portion of Taiwan’s “expat” population is transitory and leaves within two to three years (yes, I’m talking about teachers mostly), plus the fact that many if not most of them are young people with a lack of life experience. There are a lot of fun people to meet, but it’s sometimes hard to find someone with depth. In fact, what you are now feeling about Taiwan in general is sort of how I feel about the foreign community here – present (virtual) company excluded, of course.

I know my response probably doesn’t address your concerns, but I hope you can get out of the funk and find your happy place. Everybody deserves to be happy.

You’re conflating two issues. Fix your dpression (I had a horrible bout in the middle of my time in Taiwan) and then you’ll feel less drained and bored in others’ company. Think about it: if you find everyone boring, why would they open up to you?

This is no Pollyanna-ism: I still loathe 90% of people on sight. But the 10% make life golden. And the time I spend by myself is positive: filled with fun, relaxation and things I like doing: not procrastination, worrying and isolation.

Counselling is geerally retarded, but if you can find somewhere that provides CBT, try to get that. I want to say than other than taking huge amounts of medication, CBT is the only thing that’s had any impact at all on my lifelong depression. And maybe yoga.

Don’t think any of this is critical: it’s hard, I know. I’m not in Taipei anymore, but if you’re feeling on edge, PM me.

It’s not only teachers that leave regularly … real company expats do it all the time … only the lifers, like me and many others (try) to stay around, married or not, although it’s difficult at times.
BTW, are you a real Princess? :ponder:

I must say that the weather here in our lovely capital does not help things. With the rain and gloom I also sometimes feel pretty down. A day or two walking around Tainan or other points south sometimes really helps.

Guy

No, you’re not the only one… but what took you 7 years only took me about 7 months. I went straight around the bend from meeting all sorts of people and trying all kinds of new events to just keeping to myself. This is partly due to not really connecting with many people here… but also because I’m a bit of a strange person. Anyway, this comes to mind:

[quote]Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.

Yuppies be yuppies. It’s not Taipei, and it’s not you. It’s the human condition. Most people are shallow, everywhere you go. You have to hunt for the non-shallow, but you can find them anywhere if you try hard enough.

I’ve been able to find people here worth knowing. I had to put some effort into it.

People are not the same everywhere you go. There are important cultural differences at work here.

[quote=“afterspivak”]I must say that the weather here in our lovely capital does not help things. With the rain and gloom I also sometimes feel pretty down. A day or two walking around Tainan or other points south sometimes really helps.

Guy[/quote]

You know its funny. Of course, i generally prefer sunshine. And North Taiwan in winter certainly does not get enough of it.

I used to live near the coast and often came over YMS to Taipei. And i loved to stop by and take a nice sulfur bath. The clouds and fog and cold and damp took on a kind of charm of its own.

I guess I was lucky never to have been affected by S.A.D. , a weather caused DOWN mental state.

i live now in the east bay ,calif and we have sunshine 300 plus days a year.

There are days when i look back to the fog and mist and dark of north Taiwan winters and I kind of miss it.
Weird huh?

[quote]i live now in the east bay ,calif and we have sunshine 300 plus days a year.

There are days when I look back to the fog and mist and dark of north Taiwan winters and I kind of miss it.[/quote]

Wanna trade? :slight_smile:

Guy

[quote=“Princess_Sa”]I have Been living in Taipei for 7 years and feeling extremely lonely and depressed here. In the first few years I tried to socialize with the local crowd, got some acquaintances, but later I found it very difficult to really open up and connect with people… I feel most of the locals are mellow, polite, judgmental and superficial people with no depth or personality, and they bore me to hell. Usually I went out with hope to create fulfilling friendship but ended up coming home disappointingly. So for the past 2 to 3 years I tended to discard the social life here. I stopped going out and tend to stay in my own shell saving all the time for myself. Though in the beginning it felt cozy to stay in solitude, as time goes by now I feel extremely lonely and regretful that I missed out some important things in my life.

Is it only me? Do any of you feel the same way? What might be the problems? How can I change my life?[/quote]

About ten years ago I went through a stage in which I felt isolated and cut-off for quite a long time. Part of it was just thinking how futile it was to bother making friends with ex-pats when they’d inevitably leave anyway.

What eventually helped me was finding other people with similar interests and hobbies, and discovering that many of them were also here for the long haul. I was in Taichung at the time and the people I met were all over the island, but one of the nice things about living in Taipei is that there’s a large enough foreign population such that there’ll probably already be a group interested in the same things you are - there certainly seem to be Facebook groups for just about everything imaginable. Use the hobby as an excuse to get together, and eventually you’ll make friends you can hang out with without involving the common hobby.

And if you don’t have any hobbies, now would be a good time to consider developing a few. Board games, scuba diving, hiking, improv, acting… I’m sure you can find something you would like!

Friends come and go. Don’t grasp at friendship: if if it’s gone, it’s not lost, it’s still in your mind.

I’m saying goodbye soon to a lovely woman I’ve known for three months. I know that I’ll probably never see her again. But that’s OK. She came into my life, made me happy, and left. I wish her everything good. Just try and enjoy the time you have with people.

Friends come and go. Don’t grasp at friendship: if if it’s gone, it’s not lost, it’s still in your mind.

I’m saying goodbye soon to a lovely woman I’ve known for three months. I know that I’ll probably never see her again. But that’s OK. She came into my life, made me happy, and left. I wish her everything good. Just try and enjoy the time you have with people.[/quote]

That works for you, which is great, but it doesn’t work for me. Maybe it doesn’t work for the OP either; I’m just offering my perspective. The emotional investment and commitment of trying to build fulfilling friendships is exhausting when you have to keep doing it every year.

On the other hand, my mood is utterly unaffected by the weather in Taipei - which doesn’t seem to be true of a lot of people here. I’ve always felt that a couple of weeks of continual rain is much less upsetting than the months of sub-zero temperatures I’ve endured in other places I’ve lived. :slight_smile:

[quote=“tommy525”]

You know its funny. Of course, i generally prefer sunshine. And North Taiwan in winter certainly does not get enough of it.

I used to live near the coast and often came over YMS to Taipei. And i loved to stop by and take a nice sulfur bath. The clouds and fog and cold and damp took on a kind of charm of its own.

I guess I was lucky never to have been affected by S.A.D. , a weather caused DOWN mental state.

i live now in the east bay ,calif and we have sunshine 300 plus days a year.

There are days when I look back to the fog and mist and dark of north Taiwan winters and I kind of miss it.
Weird huh?[/quote]

I’m the same way. Skies are clear, blue, and sunny almost every single day of the year where I live, and there are times where I desperately miss cloudy, dark, stormy skies. But during those odd times here when we actually do get clouds and a bit of rain, if it lasts for more than a day I start missing the sun again and feel relieved when the skies return to normal. :slight_smile:

Hobbies are fine as long as it’s “normal”. As soon as you get into model rocketry, airplanes, etc. then you won’t find any foreigners there.

I’m in a bit of a similar situation although not really “depressed”, just a bit annoyed that I can’t seem to join or build a social circle I enjoy like I was able to in previous places I lived. It just seems like I’m in some really awkward demographic both in terms of age (25) and profession/purpose of living here, because my Chinese classes are 1-on-1, and I’m not a teacher here, so I don’t really meet other students and whenever I’m with teachers who then talk about their daily teaching life I just completely zone out. I also sometimes like to go to bars / restaurants / clubs that exceed the teacher/exchange student “500 TWD is too much for a meal” budget mentality many here seem to have. On top of that, most foreigners here seem to be Americans and somehow I don’t get along very well with them. Maybe it’s a cultural thing. On the other hand my Chinese simply isn’t good enough yet to really make some local friends, or at least so I feel.

I hope I can finally improve on this but sometimes it gets a bit frustrating. I used to live in HK and you meet people from all kinds of backgrounds, nationalities, social classes etc. very easily. Here, as far as foreigners go, it looks like it’s 80% American English teachers or naive 19 year old exchange students on their first ever trip abroad (“Have you tried stinky tofu yet???”). I mean, not like I expected any differently, but yeah.

A recommendation. Find a nice cafe where you can befriend the owners and hang out there a lot. Especially cafes run by younger folks. They tend to have a circle of friends and pretty soon you are part of the group and you can do stuff together.

I walked into a small , cozy , snazzy cafe in DingHao one day. And ended up going there all the time. Made good friends with the owners. And eventually the groupies there all made a trip to Hong Kong and Macau together over one Chinese NEw Year.

YOU cant make friends if you don’t stay in one place long enough. A rolling stone gathers no moss, or if it does, the moss soon falls off.

Find a cafe or a few to hang out in DAILY. You WILL make friends. Trust me.

Some effort is required ok?

It aint gonna happen all by itself hear?

[quote=“afterspivak”][quote]i live now in the east bay ,calif and we have sunshine 300 plus days a year.

There are days when I look back to the fog and mist and dark of north Taiwan winters and I kind of miss it.[/quote]

Wanna trade? :slight_smile:

Guy[/quote]

Do send some sunshine, please!

[quote=“afterspivak”][quote]i live now in the east bay ,calif and we have sunshine 300 plus days a year.

There are days when I look back to the fog and mist and dark of north Taiwan winters and I kind of miss it.[/quote]

Wanna trade? :slight_smile:

Guy[/quote]

how about NO ? :smiley: