> Anyone have advice on what to do when you've been scared to be alone with your thoughts?

You're a Christian, so the first thing I'll say is that you're never alone. I know what you mean, but one way to process those thoughts you are afraid of is to work them out in the context of prayer, rather than as things that plague you when no one else is around. When you are actively praying, it is much more difficult for you to succumb to the traps of despair, anger, self-pity, desperation, or whatever that thinking about disturbing or painful thoughts are laden with. God's grace is sufficient for you; his strength is made perfect in weakness (II Cor. 12:9), and so if you are offering up these thoughts, good or bad, in prayer, with the earnest desire that things should be right with Him, this may be just the thing to do. Prayer is important anyway, even if you don't try to work through these thoughts within one; at minimum, pray that God would help you out in whatever this is. I will. But I'm not a big fan of dealing with feelings by ignoring them and hoping they will go away. I think that leads to worse things; I've seen it lead to worse things.

However, it *is* a good idea to try to get out of your house/apartment/dorm room/whatever and be active. Are you involved with a church right now? How about a Christian student group? How about any other kind of group? Being out and about keeps one's perspective from narrowing, as it naturally seems to do when something is heavy upon us.

I'll tell you a story. Thanksgiving week this year, I was pretty down about things. I'm a naturally reclusive sort of person, and so I spent a lot of time alone with my thoughts. This isn't altogether bad: again, one can't deal with things by not dealing with them. But the excess of alone time started making my focus on things so very narrow. My own situation was all I could really see, all I was thinking about or working on. That's ok to a point, but the loss of perspective can really hurt. But at some point I just went out for a walk, to think and pray, as I often do, and I wound up at my pastor's house. I decided to see if he was home, and it turned out he was, but he would be heading over to the church in a while to oversee the delivery of Thanksgiving baskets (a frozen turkey and unliftable amounts of produce and boxed and canned goods) to people with needs around town. I offered to help. I ended up going to three different homes, two with him, seeing a lot of different people and a lot of different situations. There's a whole world out there, I realized...again. I'm not the only one out here. I knew this, of course; I learned there was more to life than just me a long, long time ago, but from an emotional perspective (rather than a purely mental one), this is something a lot of reminders are needed for, especially when things get rough.

That evening did little to fix my own situation, but it did everything in the world for putting me in a position where I *could* face things in a constructive, controlled way.

The great thing is that I had prayed for perspective just moments before. Sometimes God teaches us patience and longsuffering (more often than not, probably, and the lessons of waiting on God with patience and longsuffering is woven into the very core of the Bible's message to us), but once in a while God acts pretty swiftly.

Anyway, if you weren't a Christian, my answer would be quite different; as you are, the first thing to do is pray. Second, use whatever "bad" things are in your life right now as good things -- use them to learn and grow. Third, try to get out. See the world around you. Talk to your pastor, maybe. I'll keep you in my prayers.