Feeling Stuck With Unhappiness And Faking It?

[Chava]

I just feel unhappy with my life. It's like I stopped distracting myself, or better yet (good news, but not helpful right now) I started being able to imagine my self living beyond ten minutes from now. Most of my life I had no sense of future. As a kid it was typically dreamy and exaggerated, like most dreams, and as I grew older I didn't really believe I could have anything good, and then that I wouldn't live much longer.

Anyway, some of that has cleared and I simply imagine a future that is a continuation of isolation and unhappiness. I moved into a pretty rural and quiet place. If I had some sort of soul, it could represent peace and solitude. But I'm just so tired and don't have enough positive connections. So it feels more like I'm out in the middle of nowhere so I don't have to feel lonely within a city. Like that's the best I can do. I might find better connections if I totally relocate...if I could live closer to my sister, closer to Zen centers or yoga studios or more AA meetings. But I can't afford to get out of where I'm at, because the little part of me that never felt I had a future still can't save and farts away all of my money. I want to have a "plan" or direction to motivate me in some direction, but I just feel lost. Feeling lost is probably okay...I can tolerate that to a degree. But I feel like I'm losing energy and just being more anti-social and more apathetic about even creating goals or a better vision for myself.

I have few people I feel like I can talk to at all. Part of me wants to at least be able to tell my parents I'm really unhappy and I need someone to brainstorm with....but I "test" it out by just complaining about some smaller part and my mom shuts me down by saying something like "oh well..."....neither of my parents tolerate me being anything other than happy. So, I don't need to talk to them about any of it...but that's sort of my bind. I'm so deeply programmed to act like I'm okay. I used to present myself as highly polished, then go home at night and try to kill myself. I'm no longer suicidal but my life feels like a waste sometimes, like I will never have meaningful connections with people, and I am stuck acting "okay" because you can't just go complain about how unhappy you are to people you don't really even have a friendship with.

So, to make a long story short, I have no support for wading beyond this mess and I am too tired to figure out how to get it. I need to start by working on relationships, but it's so hard to do that from a apathetic, depressed place. I feel trapped acting okay just to keep up my semi-close relationships. I'm not a total loser, incapable of relationships, but my best friend moved last year and my pattern is a friend like that comes around rarely...and my isolative independence serves as a way to both preserve and destroy me.

My therapist is gone and I haven't wanted to bring this up anyway because I keep thinking something will "click" and part of me doesn't even want to unload my unhappiness in therapy. I just grew up feeling like nobody could tolerate my negative emotions and I can't either...so in therapy I'm usually just trying to find ground or taking a ridiculous amount of time trusting my therapist. I could accept my isolation, as I've done, and wait around unhappily until I fall apart. Or it seems like I have to figure out how to move mountains. I'm really, really tired but (if any of this even makes sense) are there easier action steps I can take? For now I feel like I need to amp up habits of taking care of myself. My therapist says relationships with others will come when I have a better relationship to myself. But it's hard when i'm stuck in these low moods. I don't hate myself but too often I don't give a damn...stuck in those new thoughts of my future and how hopeless it feels because I can't change or don't know how to.

I've done classes, volunteer work, civic work, book studies, fyi...I still don't connect to others. I participate from inside a thick bubble, so I'm tired of trying to meet new people or create friendships because my attempts keep reminding me that I am so fundamentally flawed (real or not, that's the feeling).

Sorry that was so long. It feels good to just admit to myself and someone else (you) that I'm really unhappy. I hope it can keep me open for possibilities for change I don't understand at the moment...trying to think of it a little that way vs hopelessness...trying to adapt to a belief in a future without fearing it will always be unhappiness, isolation, and all the energy of always acting okay...or just hiding from the world.

 

[anthony]

It does get better chava... it truly does. Not that it doesn't take a lot of hard self work to get there, because it does... but with that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Every single person with PTSD, regardless how complex or severe their trauma, can lower PTSD symptoms to a manageable daily enjoyable life level. It's usually hard to imagine something beyond our current selves, but even looking at our current self when feeling this way, you can still identify days where you felt better and worse, and with that knowledge you know that something better can exist more often than what you feel now, today, this week, this month, this year.

 

[Chava]

If I try to think "long term" I maybe need to move out of my tiny town, isolative, shit hole and find "community" (if I'm not a drinker, or Catholic, there is nothing to even be involved with here). Trauma stuff aside, I'm realizing the tax burden to individual home-owners in a small town with declining population is too much and will only grow. But all of this adds to this ball of feeling trapped. I need to save my money so I can have a plan, whatever it is, and yet not overwhelm myself with totally mapping out my life right now. Trying to find myself in this solitude but also consider where I might better belong some day...confuzzzzing.

 

[anthony]

There shouldn't be anything negative in having future goals... as long as you don't fall into the trap of futuristic thinking. Setting goals is normal, is realistic... providing they have realistic expectations associated with them.

If a person was unemployed and their goal is to be out of a town in one year... then really their goal is unrealistic, because their first and only goal at that time should be... to get a job to earn money to achieve the next goal, being to move out of the location.

Don't beat yourself up with any failures.... we all fail at times. It's ok, and human, to fail at times within our lives. Everyone will. Stay focused, and you can achieve anything you set your mind upon that is within your realistic abilities.

 

[Chava]

Thanks, probably partly this issue of having any idea of "future" at all is confusing, plus figuring out what is true for me vs what feels safe. I realize I pretty much trap myself, to the extent I feel trapped, but I end up with in trapped feelings probably operating out of meeting safety needs or just well-worn patterns. There's a lot not to love about feeling too rural and isolated but I feel physically safe where I live. There are more options for "community" in a metro area, especially since I don't jive with more traditional interests, like being a member of a church, but last time I lived in a city I also had to thicken my "bubble" around myself. Too many people, too over-stimulating. I end up hyper. I want to be okay where I'm at, at least until I understand what parts of me will "heal" and what parts are simply my personality. Like I won't change being introverted and needing space and solitude, though I know introverts find ways to manage in cities, too.