Why stay?

[Gandolfication]

I feel hopeless. The last few days, my kids have been out of town visiting with my sisters. I'm very thankful. I thought I would get a much needed respite... which I did, in part, getting to spend several days with my girlfriend, celebrating her birthday.

I thought I would catch up on some work. That seems like about all I ever do is catch up on work. Instead, I took the last couple days off, paralyzed by avoidance and fear, half self created, half just a real product of my practice, and the limitations. I didn't even go into the office or open email or answer calls. (Perhaps if I were able to cut my workload and schedule down to half and work part-time, I would be so much healthier but that is not a possibility).

Now I'm facing what seems insurmountable.

Life in general, and every day of it seems to me an exercise in self-deception and trickery that it is worth taking the next step. The things are good enough or they could (realistically) get better. That piece or joy are really accessible to me.

It feels like I exist to absorb stress and anxiety and pain to make a few more dollars to survive. Rinse. Repeat. Never enough. Never getting ahead. Often falling further behind.

I don't know if real plans to figure out let alone fix the tax liability or other financial weights that are crushing me.

It has been kind of fun to teach AI law over the last year, but I don't have any realistic prospect to connect the dots and form a better or more profitable business out of it.

It feels like any talent I have is going mostly squandered, and unhappy clients threaten to ruin me.

I am perpetually, exhausted and in physical pain.

It's not a comparison. I know many people endure worse and somehow managed to have a better attitude.

This is where I feel like a sucker, tricked by it all.

Why?

Why should we or should I have to keep going?

Pretending, self-assuring that it's really actually better than I think or feel?

If I don't actually feel like that, isn't it just a self-delusion. Denying the simple truth of what I actually feel?

It seems like it is just evolutionary instinct. The propels me forward today.

That and lacking the guts encouraged to go through with suicide today, when I have wanted to for several days now.

I think of the people I love.

I don't really think I'm making so much of a positive difference in their life that it really warns me staying. Instead, I stay out of a sense of slavish obligation to children that I brought into the world and who would suffer without me. And this is truly a life of misery.

[sunshinefan]

I often feel the same way. I just had to resign from my job and it was a hard decision, but now I feel like I don't have worth because I don;t work anymore and I often feel like everyone would be better off without me but then I remember my family and I can't do that to them. Do you have a therapist or psychiatrist or both to talk to? I know my therapist has helped me sort out those feelings somewhat.

[Gandolfication in reply to sunshinefan]

I have been there before multiple times being fired or having to resign from a job.It feels like the end of the world. It is very difficult.

Although we are not our jobs.

While they are important, they are, but merely a part of our much larger lives.

And yet I still labor under the stress in the belief that even my job currently still is the be-all end-all determiner of all things.

I do have a therapist and a psychiatrist.

Right now, none of this seems to matter. All I can think about or seem to focus on is how this same recurring pain and misery and disparate hopelessness does simply continue to recur and has for the better part of 15 years. And I feel like a dupe and a sucker for continuing to try to make a better life when it just comes back.

I'm so sick and tired of it. I just want to end it all. Finally, mercifully.

[LoveforAll41]

Hi Gandolfication, I am so so sorry that you are feeling this way. I think that you are a f****** hero for carrying on. I think that of many on this site who work so hard while feeling so hopeless. I will probably post more on this later as I am going to give it some thought.

[Gandolfication in reply to LoveforAll41]

Thanks Loveforallfor1,

I'm trying to navigate my way through this and find reasons to live when I want to go about planning to die. I listened to this, and I'm familiar and can accept his first three points about my cognitive biases and misperceptions (although he never got to talking about how or why yoga. Is any part of a solution here that I recall), and this is only I think the second time I've heard a mental health expert or clinician talk about depressive realism.

youtu.be/Cv3bj1M96fQ?si=sI1...(Not working as expected?)

[LoveforAll41 in reply to LoveforAll41]

"And yet I still labor under the stress in the belief that even my job currently still is the be-all end-all determiner of all things."

I think that here you are perhaps aware of your problem. Sometimes that doesn't make it any easier. I would think that the idea of quitting and declaring for bankruptcy or finding another job is less preferable than being dead? I recall having those same feelings before I quit my job out of anxiety and depression 1.5 yrs ago. I just lay around fantasizing about wandering off into the mountains to lay down and die...

My wife got me to an inpatient center and I got back on meds and things got somewhat better. I got to the point where I was working again. This was some progress as I began to acknowledge and feel emotions. Real progress was made when I gave up on earning worth though. I know that is an abstract thing and probably not everyone's cup of tea. The latest podcasts on the Feeling Good podcast may resonate with you a bit...

feelinggood.com/2024/03/18/...

part two of that is out on podcast platforms. The story is of a successful professional perhaps you can relate to some.

I am sorry that you are suffering and see no hope. It is the worst place to be as a human.... I guess I can only suggest that desperate times will call for drastic changes 😥☮️ changes for good, not the end of life!