Bored with everything being perfect

[Firefly]

I should be ashamed to say this, but I’m not. Because these are my feelings. My life now is exactly what I wanted it to be when I was at my lowest point in 2014. ?

But I am feeling bored. I want to do bad things again. I want to do drugs and I want to stay out late. This of course would mean that I would lose my wonderful man. So of course I won’t go out and do these things.?

But god damn if the street life doesn’t just whisper in my ear and call me back....

I am on my proper ptsd medications. I am happy. But I have been doing everything f*cking perfect for 3 years and I just want to get f*cked up.
I don’t want to feel my feelings. I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I hate being scared when I’m alone. Looking over my shoulder to check if anyone is going to come up behind me and hurt me. I don’t want to be scared anymore!
I just want to cry. I have everything that I could ever want in life. But my f*cking PTSD just wants to dominate my life. I want to just go out and do some blow and get high on ecstacy and feel some god damned relief from my feelings. ??

 

[mamachick]

Are you in counseling now? This is something that needs to be talked about if you are. It sounds like you are in the maintenance stage of recovery right now and you have come a long way and worked hard to get where you are today. You are on the hardest course....maintaining. Do you have supportive people that you can talk to about this? The mind has a way of trying to draw us back into self destructive behaviors.

 

[Kamorth]

It's hard to tell from your post, are you after solidarity (people going "hey, been there man"), people telling you "No you've done so well don't risk it!" or would you like a possible explanation of why you feel like that?

Because, hey, been there man.

You're also clearly doing really well, but equally as clearly the possible costs of going back are too high for you to do it.

And I know why I feel like this sometimes. It was easier back then, I couldn't be held responsible for my f*ck ups so I didn't have to try as hard all the time to be better. Sometimes I didn't have enough spoons to cope with anything and all I wanted to do was to be allowed to not cope. There was a kind of safety in living that way, because the voices in my head kept telling me "None of this is your fault, you're allowed to feel good sometimes, you've spent enough time feeling bad, you deserve a reward, and besides it's not your fault anyway".

Especially at this time of the year, when your emotional reserves are drained from just the inherent stress of living around other people who are all also stressed and having all those extra expectations of keeping up appearances... it gets really hard!

 

[Rani G2]

@Firefly

But I am feeling bored. I want to do bad things again.

One bell rings here for me..
The "I-am-going-to-Do-it-one-more-time-but-this-time-with-different-results" concept! This might sound alien but in a dark corner of my consciousness there is a strong drive/wanting to relive situations in order to provoke a different outcome. I'm Not good when it comes to describing emotional textures...so this is the only way for me to put it. Repeating but this time having more control also!It feels like unfinished buisness, an aspect which hasnt been digested, when these wanting to relive thoughts create an itch, I might try to visualize a part ?I try not that It works all the time. I need another sorrounding, technicolour, sounds, or smells... just to make that moment feelable. If this makes sense...?If these emotional dashes of colour arise I need to focus on the Body or breathing... it might sound ridiculous for some but this all what has helped me so far..
Manipulating the reality with a few tools...

 

[Friday]

If you’re bored? It’s not perfect. It might be close... but clearly, adjustments are needed.

Black and white / all or nothing thinking may say “Burn it to the ground!”, but there’s actually a whole helluva lot of other things you can do.

I used to periodically nuke my life... walk away from jobs, relationships, homes, friends, a whole life I’d built, fairly “randomly”. (Quotes, because in retrospect it wasn’t random at all. It was during anniversaries and when I got stressed out and other giant waving red PTSD flags.). At the time? I’d be convinced I wanted no more of any of this, forever. Done. Finis. f*ck right off. Or I’d grit my teeth and hold on, hold on, hold on.... until f*ckit! Here we go! :sneaky: And throw it into 5th gear. Waving goodbye without looking back.

It took me a painfully looooooong ass time to realize that most of the time? After a couple few weeks, I was not only fine, but wanted my life back. Too late. I’d torched it. A few weeks to get my head on straight, again? Is NOT done, finis, forever. That? Is a vacation.:facepalm:

So I started adding vacations into the lives I was building. Both intentional ones, and “acting as if” ones (meaning in my head I might be “Done. Finis. No more forever.” but I’d still give my job notice that I’d be away, pay my rent, touch base with people, do all the things a person does if they want to have a life to come back to. Even though -in the moment- I didn’t want to come back, and couldn’t imagine myself changing my mind, I’d been in that exact same place sooooooo many times that I simply ignored myself. Being responsible would give me the option to come back IF I wanted to. I didn’t have to, if I didn’t want to. But I had the option. As opposed to nuking my life, which would trap me.

The life I eventually built & stuck with for over a decade? Because it suited me down to the ground? Was a bit quirky. Amongst other things it had 1 big trip (planned), 4 little trips (planned), and countless spur of the moment adventures.

It wasn’t anything like I’d ever imagined living.

It’s one of those “where the rubber meets the road” things. We can IMAGINE abc-xyz, but until we actually do abc-xyz? That’s all it is. Imaginary. We have to do it to find out what works, what doesn’t, what we thought we’d love and find we hate, what we feared but unexpectedly delight in, and a thousand other details.

If you want to nuke your perfect life? Don’t. Because it’s not perfect. Try making adjustments to it, first.

 

[intothelight]

But I am feeling bored. I want to do bad things again. I want to do drugs and I want to stay out late. This of course would mean that I would lose my wonderful man. So of course I won’t go out and do these things.?

I don’t want to feel my feelings. I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I hate being scared when I’m alone. Looking over my shoulder to check if anyone is going to come up behind me and hurt me. I don’t want to be scared anymore!

Is it boredom or fear of losing what you have? Is it fear of waiting for it to end and/or the next bad thing to happen? Just something to consider.

 

[Firefly]

thanks to everyone for all of the words.

I feel better today.

When I am alone I often get stuck in my head with fear and anxiety and the fear builds up into this huge monster and because of all of this fear, I don’t leave the house.. which I know isn’t healthy either.

@intothelight it is the literal fear of being physically attacked and killed. One horrible night in my life I dub “the robbery” that has given me PTSD. I got bonked in the nose the other day by accident and it somehow triggered my body into remembering the facial injuries I got during “the robbery”.

PTSD sucks but it’s nice to be able to spew my horrible feelings on here and have other people, my peers, weigh in on some things. I won’t f*ck my life up. I can’t risk doing it again.
But yes, as @Friday said, some adjustments may need to be made for me to tolerate normal life.
I will sit and stew on this for a few days or however long it takes to straighten my feelings out and then talk to my man about it all.
He is so understanding of my PTSD even though he doesn’t have PTSD himself.
thanks again.