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Discouraged

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LostGirl

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I'm just feeling so discouraged, that my life is so purposeless, even though I have a husband and 2 daughters and I'm studying to become a social worker. The fact that I cannot feel connected to people close to me is depressing, and it seems such a long way to recover. I'm trying to work on (with my therapist) connecting with myself and all the various parts I have inside, and even that is so difficult. And it's not exactly the kind of stuff I can talk about with most people. So, I guess it's kind of lonely, too. I'm glad to have found this forum, and I'm hoping it will help me get through.
 
Hey LostGirl,
I know exactly what your feeling. I have spent years feeling discouraged and not connecting with anyone. Sometimes I go through life in fog, no emotion just trying make it through another day. Keep working with your T and hang in there. I have found some comfort in just reading through the many posts on this site.

Take care

Sandy
 
Hi LG and welcome to the forum.

I related so strongly with your post. I've always felt like a failure, regardless of external circumstances or external achievements. "The fact that I cannot feel connected..." said it exactly for me - why I could never "feel my life". It's why, regardless of events or relationships, I felt empty and barren and...disconnected.

You are not alone. I can tell you that it can and does get better. And yeah, it's a hell of a lot of work, damn it. Sometimes I have to get mad about that and just be mad until I don't need to be mad (or sad) anymore.

I can also tell you that there are times now that I feel like I'm here, in my skin, inhabiting my life. I've done some fun things recently that I could actually "show up" for (meaning, not just forcing myself to show up physically while the rest of me has bailed out). I've taken an art class and actually felt what it was like to be so engaged with something that I was fully present, completely unafraid (this is huge for me, btw... I've been dragged along behind that particular runaway horse my entire life).

I'm sometimes less hypervigilant and I have less of that "seething watchfulness" which I hate so much. Sometimes now I am "forgetting myself" - not standing outside of myself the whole time I'm interacting with people, but am actually just....there.

I relate to how painful it is to feel inauthentic in feelings toward (and relating to) people I am supposed to love. I have been so frozen most of my life....it takes time and healing to thaw.

I'm sorry it's so difficult for you right now. At times the road can seem so long and the returns on the investment rarely show up right away. Once, when I was angry about the results of my hard work, I spouted to my counselor, "If I got the same returns for my investments in stock as I'm getting with this work, I'd fire my agent!"

A woman I know says, "It takes what it takes" and, oh man, that used to piss me off. I don't know if this will resonate with you or not, but sometimes when I get discouraged I'm comparing the "idealized me" - the me I wish I could have been, or even might have been - to the "real me". That disparity can cause a great deal of additional pain. In reality, I can only be who I am, right here, right now. I'm finding that I can't beat myself into feeling safe enough to be present, to love, to live. I can't judge myself into it, either. "Stretching" myself is one thing; driving myself is another! Self-acceptance, I'm coming to find, is key.

Anyway, HTH-
-Dylan
 
You guys, I'm feeling pretty discouraged today too. I guess I've slid into zoning out all the time and being irritable and anxious and not knowing it. I really wish this all would just get better. It seems the more memories I uncover, the better I should get but no. Sometimes I feel like I'm incredibly crazy. I have a professional job, but I don't feel I'm even remotely like any of the other people at my work. I alienated my only "close" female friend at the start of all this crap. My family is lovely but, they get so sick of my frantic and irrational behavior.

I am in the middle of a week of mandatory training at a location 1.5 hours away and today I felt resentful when the class went over the scheduled time as I'm already giving up the majority of my evenings. I was sighing and packing my stuff before the trainers were done and now I've been obsessing that I need to apologize to them or I might lose my job. I got hurt at a rest stop on the way up this morning slamming the car door on my shin because I wasn't awake and was in such a hurry. Other crazy paranoid thoughts that I can't even really talk about have been racing through my head. My simultaneous hypervigilance and spaciness is driving me out of my mind.
 
I felt very discouraged during the first part of my recovery. It was like 'OK...we've identified what's wrong and are working on fixing it. Why is it taking so damned long?' It can also be discouraging as you work through each level of healing that you find you're going over the same ground again and again. It's necessary or it wouldn't pop up. But it's still a pain in the butt. Keep going forward. You are or else you wouldn't feel like recovery is so far away. It's there and it's in reach. Like Dylan said it's a lot of work!

I still can feel a bit lonely sometimes. Especially when my symptoms are high and I know that the people around me just don't 'get it' no matter how supportive they are to and for me. I find myself coming to the forum a lot during those times. It helps me to not feel so alone in all of this.

Lisa
 
I feel that disconnect vividly most of the time too. When I am in stores or out in public I feel like everyone else is doing it right and I am just 'playing house' or going through the motions but not REALLY living...that I am missing something. That I am not like them.
I dont have any friends so I can't really say what I am like with friends. I would LOVE to have friends but don't know how to go about making them or what to do with them once I have them!
I get discouraged with my progress too...all the time. I want to work hard and get better NOW...I dont want to mess around, I feel like I have wasted years and years of being screwed up...I got a lot to learn and a lot of catching up to do!
I feel lonely on this forum too. Don't really know what to do about that. It is worse when I am in a bad spot because I come and compulsively look at my threads or my diary to see if anyone said anything and when they don't my internal dialogue is not very nice to me. But they say it gets better....so I am gonna stick with it.
 
Keep it up LG!!

Hi LG and others, I must say that though you are discouraged and feel alone you are not. As you all can see, others have been there and are there. These times of disconnection and numbness seem to follow us, its the PTSD talking.

Just keep doing the good things for you and eventually things will get better, then they are going get worse again, then better again. This see-saw, or rollercoaster is part of what we go through. I have found for me that that tidbit of knowledge is both frustrating and liberating at the same time. Frustrating because I know I will never be "totally better", but liberated as I know that when the darktimes comes that things will get better again...eventually and hopefully the better times will be longer.

So keep up the good stuff, by the way congrats on your choice to study social work it is one of the truly noble professions. God Bless.
 
Thanks, everyone, for the responses and encouragement. Yesterday I had a particularly bad day, and I just thought about how I hate my life, even though I am blessed with many things, sometimes I would just rather give it all up, let someone else have it, and just let me die so I don't have to deal with the pain anymore. I guess I feel powerless to change things, and then I feel stuck and would rather just die. How does one feel empowered to do something?
 
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