I don't even know where to begin with this really. I just feel lost in life and confused but most of all just terrified and I have long ago lost all motivation and any sense of hope or enjoyment in life. I feel I have lost all direction and my life feels completely out of my control. I am just existing and going along with whatever happens to me like a robot. I feel helpless in life like a child who is scared and has lost its mother, just so terrified.
I am deeply embarrassed by this. I feel no sense of self worth, my confidence and self esteem has always been so incredibly low. Life has passed me by and almost all of this time has been as pathetic and hopeless. I have missed out on so much experience in life and sometimes feel cheated out of it. I have always been exceptionally sensitive and I always feel that I was not meant to be on this earth because somebody as weak as me just cannot survive here without self destructing or being destroyed by life's reality.
I feel deeply ashamed of myself and my anxiety and depression. Completely pathetic and useless as a human being even though deep inside I also feel such a sense of sadness for myself like part of me still wants to reach deep and give me a big hug and save myself, but I keep failing at this. I imagine I would excel in another type of land or in another world where I am just able to be at peace and the way I am and be left alone. I have already been through the days of finding small bursts of habits to keep me going, like playing video games, indulging in music or chatting online. I have also been through over eating, binge eating, losing weight, gaining weight, not dressing, not washing, lying in bed, crying at the tiniest issues, worrying about worst case scenarios in life, and also feeling so completely lost as to what to do with myself.
I get scared in life to the point of paranoia. I imagine the absolute worst will happen, getting into trouble, ending up in prison, ending up in a vulnerable situation or homelessness. I find it really hard to trust myself, let alone other people because I feel I have no skills to cope in life. I feel tense around others and only peaceful when I am all alone in solitude, but this is also a very lonely and isolating place to be. I crave affection and love so desperately.
I feel a source of guilt in terms of any relationship with my family because i know they cannot help me, they have not been able to aid in my dysfunctional mind and circumstances, nor do i expect them to. I have felt trapped, hysterical and like i am verging on psychotic at times, shouting inwardly, throwing things, anger, tears. All this has already been and gone. As i am particularly able to articulate my feelings and problems lucidly and with intelligence and even then they do not realize the extent of my problem and the absolute unbearable sense of fears, paranoia and misery i feel inside.
It's as though I have never fallen into any "category". I think this is because I have quite a variety of psychological difficulties that all merge into each other sometimes and seem to feed off one another. Because I have managed to hang on (to all outward appearances) to some kind of sanity, they do not see the real picture of the chaos in my mind and body. I have suffered traumatic episodes in the last 20+ years where I have lost something in my mind and it has never returned. This remains something of a mystery to me.
I feel like it is a physical manifestation of anxiety taking over even though it doesn't seem fitting or trying. These reduced sensations have never resolved or returned and I now live with reduced and diminished sensation including not being able to sense pleasure sensations like physical touch, orgasms, or sometimes pain. I feel somewhat adverse to sex and always have sometimes find it a bit dirty and repulsive and feel violated and I cannot live with how i feel because i feel like a freak to feel that way because of my past trauma. I have no history of serious abuse from family at least, just an anxious mother with some depression and negativity in her own thinking, however neglect and emotional trauma was a big part of my upbringing. Apart from this i have just been scared since always and have never had the strength or courage to pull myself out and i am now at my worst point ever and have given up on life and am just existing.
I have tried within my very limited mental means to pull myself out by attempting life changes but have been crippled by my own anxieties and fears and these attempts have ultimately ended in the same patterns of failure. I lack any sense of ability or life resources, no sense of strength and I am aimless in life, feeling as helpless as if I were a newborn. I do not see the meaning or point in anything and feel it is so diffiult to think of anything that would make me want to see a glimmer of optimism and really try again. Been there, done that before. Already too exhausted.
I feel like I want a parent figure to come guide me step by step and pull me out from this hole. But that is just a ridiculous scenario and the more I think of how i should be able to manage my life, the more ashamed I feel of my bleak and fearful reality. I now find myself in a very stressful situation in life currently. I arrived here through my own desperation and hysteria to escape my last situation and lack of seeing any other way out, an out of the frying pan into the fire situation. I have tried several medications, meditating and stress reduction techniques.
I am so sad that I have come to this point but I do not know how to get better or where to begin, so much seems to have happened inside my mind that I am genuinely afraid that I have gone completely mad (but still manage to pretend to be sane). I cannot cope with the vast amount of emotions and their intense strength that I feel in terms of everything seeming so dark, desperate, scary, chaotic and my mind just can't process it all. Particularly it just all feels an abundance of thoughts for a single mind to have. I have been through a lot of weird phases, living on junk food and take out for a long time, which has finally caught up to me, now i am labeling the calories on everything.
It is very difficult living a disabled life due to living on a very limited income. If i lose the ability to control even my home or food then i feel i will have absolutely nothing since the rest of myself is so far gone. But the pressure this extreme thinking gives me is unbearable to live with and makes me tired and cry when I don't match up to my own pressure and standards. It takes ages to get ready every day on the days when i feel able to try and go out because i feel i have to put on a pretense of appearing respectable and "okay".
The reality is sometimes I cry, shout internally, like a toddler who can't handle adult life and who can't dress himself or manage his well-being and life. Afraid, lost and unmotivated. My mind wants it all to go blank. I want peace. I feel like a complete failure in life. I just want to float away quietly on a cloud or sleep and not wake up sometimes and just drift off into a haze where the last thing I think about is something uplifting and peaceful and far from the reality of this overwhelming existence.
I feel guilty to myself and to the world for being this way. I feel guilty that i can't help everyone in need that i know suffers every day, i am amazed i have not adapted compassion fatigue from it. The only way my contemplative mind justifies it is to pretend I am an important person or deity from another world who was made perfectly but has come to an imperfect world and cannot hack it because it's too far from my own world. I imagine this particular thought in a sane way, not in a insane way. I realize I am not really this person but this is the best way I am able to get any comfort in how I feel in this life.
9 Replies
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Hiya, and welcome to the community.
I can empathise with a lot of what you’re saying. I often feel I’m not ‘cut out’ for this life. So many other people around me just seem to be able to apply themselves, move forward and make something of themselves. I often feel confused, angry, guilty and ashamed of how I am with depression/anxiety.
I’m sorry that things have hit such a low point for you. Something I try to remind myself is that everybody works at their own pace. What is easy for one can seem insurmountable to someone else. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses, and hey, you’re still here, still able to talk about what you’re feeling... that is commendable in itself!
You seem like a intelligent, articulate and sensitive person. I’m of the opinion the world definitely needs more of these!
Lots of lovely people in this community - we’re here for ya.
I have just sent you a Private Message with full details of how I have recovered from a 36 year illness and I had bad mental health symptoms all that time. I sound like I'm selling something but I can assure you I'm not. I have genuinely recovered my mental health just by eating differently. Good luck
Hi I am sorry you are going through such a difficult time. The first thing to realize is that there is no blueprint for life that we all have to follow regardless. Society can assume you are a failure if you don't aspire to or have certain things in life. We are all supposed to want the marriage, kids, home, good job, material things.
Well welcome to the real world where many people either don't want that or have it and are unhappy. Or like most people, have some of it. You are assuming that everyone is the same and following a certain pattern in life. Well some certainly are but the main thing about life is for you to use it how you want to. We are all different after all and you are certainly not a failure.
You have no need to feel shame. Who taught you to be embarrassed and ashamed of yourself? To have guilt? Whose standards are you trying to emulate?
I think you need to seek some counselling to get things straight in your head and to learn to accept yourself as ok. x
Hello Christoph90, wishing you a very warm welcome to our community, where I see that you have had some very helpful replies, many thanks to everyone for replying to our 'new person' here......There seems to be a lot going on for you in your mind and I certainly agree that counselling can help you to see things clearer and in a more realistic way. It will help you to express all your worries and insecurities and make sense of them, so that you can learn to accept yourself, for who you are and the person you are. With the right support, you can learn new ways of coping better with your life. Accepting who you are means being kind to yourself and in time to let 'go' of this guilt and shame that you feel, as these feelings perhaps are stopping you getting on with your life as best you can. You do not need to feel like this and you are certainly not a failure. You are a sensitive person with a lot of insight and understanding, and these are great qualities to have. Also in joining this forum, you have started to open up about your feelings and thoughts and this is a very good start and a very positive step, so well done for doing this. This shows determination and a strong character, and though you may not think so, you are wanting to feel better and for your life to improve. And it is only right that you want things to improve for you, to feel happy and become more self fulfilled. Please see your GP, as perhaps trying another medication may help you and also ask to be referred to your local Mental Health Team for support and counselling. Perhaps too, you may like to contact 'Mind' for further support and help......mind.org.uk......Telephone....0300 304 700 every day of the year, 6-11pm. Please stay strong and get the Professional help and support that you need. And do let us know how you are getting on, I am sure that some of our other members may also be able to advise and support you, so that in time you can start to feel better, .......take good care of yourself and wishing you better soon....lots of good luck to you, kind regards........
Hiya, so sorry to hear about the difficulties you are experiencing , many of which I can identify with and have had to work through in my own life. I would not wish to patronise you by offering simplistic solutions but I think a lot of the potential answers to your dilemma lie within your comments and I base my observationss on things that I wish I had known when I was young.
You mention feeling guilty several times. That's a heavy burden to carry around all the time. It's a common feeling but, honestly, it is better to replace the guilt with forgiveness and compassion.
With regard to anxiety, some people (including me) are biologically more prone to suffer from it. I think it is worth speaking to the doctor again finding out the root cause of your anxiety and exploring the best options to manage it (potentially a combination of the correct medication, therapy, relaxtion techniques and other lifestyle and dietary changes).
You mention being 'disabled' - are there any disability support groups you can engage with? Being able to talk to others and share experiences can be hugely beneficial.
The overriding point that I detect from your post is that you feel lost and do not know where to begin to climb out of this dark valley. What I would say to this is - keep it simple - it's the old saying that every journey begins with a single step. Get out a blank notebook and a pen and write down a couple of things you want to achieve and then write down the ways to achieve them. At first you might not succeed but keep going, keep writing things down and gradually you will be successful and your plan and your goals will become more ambitious and more attainable. Be patient and be kind to yourself. Take care,
I really empathise with your post. It sounds like you have really low self esteem over a long period of time and at the moment you are feeling hopeless as everything has just built up for you. I feel like you need more support in your life, so posting on here is a good step as we are here to support each other. I feel like maybe it would help you to branch out more in life in general and think of people as intrinsically good and we all need to connect with each other; you are not any different from others except that you haven't had the grounding and support you needed at the time when you needed it, so now you feel lost.
Please keep posting and PM me if you want. You need to start believing that you are a good person and someone that people want to know and someone who people appreciate. I think you feel there is something bad about you which isn't true; it is just a lack of confidence.
Gemma X
I feel as if i should clarify some more things here. I want to thank everyone here for the replies, PMs as well. I have been taking supplements for about a year now alongside a fairly strict diet. My energy levels are better and my health has improved. I also visit a therapist regularly who is very kind and i take medication alongside it. However none of these treatments have really helped me other than calm the extreme rage i felt inside.
There is no coming back from abuse and isolation. That is all i knew in my life growing up. It is really interesting when you hear of another childhood and it is so foreign to your own. All i know is i wasn't like my peers in school. I was the only 6 year old in class sitting in the corner alone wondering why he was alive. Nobody noticed or cared, and that is very much the remainder of what grade school was like for me. If i wasn't isolated then it was being beaten/bullied in it's place. After all of this and i still had to go home and face my stepfather who treated me like a dog that needed to constantly obey.
I never told my mother or biological father what happened to me, because i was so afraid of getting worse than what i already endured. My real father was one of the very few people in my life i could've relied on if i had just talked to him about my life. Unfortunately i messed up really badly and missed the opportunity to do so when he took his own life, which i didn't even know about until 2 years later. The last thing i ever said to him was i hated him, because while i loved him as a father, unlike my brother i felt like he never made a serious effort to connect with me, because he didn't understand me.
I ended up learning from my mother that he would've understood me better than anyone, as he lived a similar life to mine growing up. I didn't think it was possible to feel worse than i already did up to that point, but when i learned he took his life it affected me so deeply and profoundly that i knew that i had come full circle with my pain. I have pretty much lost interest in everything at this point and it has remained that way to this day.
I have no ambition. I don't have a desire to be successful or have an abundance of money, i only wanted to live a modest life and not feel the way i do every day. I used to want a life partner but i can see clearly now that never happens to people like me. I know no one could ever care about me in that way so i stopped putting in effort in that area of my life. Even if i did resemble some level of normalcy i simply can't relate to anyone where i live. The only thing i do now is better my health and a great deal of reading, but i have gotten to the point where i am so incredibly lonely that it is all i think about half the time.
I have had lumbar/sciatic issues since the age of 21 which have really limited what i can do in life. I already had surgery to alleviate the problem but it wasn't enough to fix it completely. The surgeon told me that this will likely be a recurring problem throughout my life due to genetics and the nature of the illness. It is painful to live with and there is a side effect of numbness in various parts of the body, including the genital area. As of a year ago i can no longer obtain physical relief.
There is no way out for people like me. I am not even doing this for pity/validation, i just want people to understand. To understand the importance of circumstances such as this in life. To understand that i cannot give anymore because there is no more to give. I know where people like me end up in 10-20 years, all i am considering is what is most logical for me at this point.
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but I can assure you I'm not. I have genuinely recovered my mental health just by eating differently. Good luck
Meh.
Darkness
Depression or Sadness?
Newbie seeking some sort of help?
