Have To Admit It's A Constant Thought

[Impossible]

It's important to get outside the concept of it being within myself, that this problem or solution is somehow within me or is a perceptual or just a matter of my accepting or seeing things in a certain way or ... I don't know. It's an external thing. Beyond the blockades the fears cause, even if I didn't have them, the solution is still unlikely to occur no matter what, and either way the consequences is still not tolerable to me.

It's not like it's a matter of "I have to discover the ______within me and the answer will lie there." The solution is concrete and I just don't have it and can't get it, or make it happen, barring some sort of miraculous acts on my part that magically make it happen in time.

I am a fool, I lived the wrong life entirely, now the options are untenable and I've been destroyed in the attempts.

There's not one word for the whole thing. Terror, despair, overwhelm and overwhelming despair and crushed and mangled to flatness and hopelessness.

 

[Impossible]

....and great, somebody just posted this quote on FB and it's just another reminder of what I do wrong. I'm not persistent. I'm lazy and stupid and flighty in my pursuits even when they are the only thing that's meaningful to me (or was, it's getting extremely hard to keep meaning to anything) or can possibly provide a solution. So of course I'm just a common failure.

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” ~ Calvin Coolidge

Thanks a lot, person-who-just-posted-that. Gawd, I hate so-called inspirational crap.

 

[KwanYingirl]

Well, good luck! Personally, I have been able to identify with everyone on this forum. We all have PTSD, it is a real illness and penetrates every aspect of our beings. If you read what people express, it's often with words like hopelessness, overwhelming, insurmountable, my fault, I don't deserve happiness, just to name a few. We help each other ride the waves. PTSD Is very polarizing and insidious. You may be having very normal reactions to very abnormal events.

 

[Laura 2]

I don't have the time or ability to find the right solution that doesn't involve some sort of intolerable situation in the timeframe they need to be solved.

Then the options are:
1. find someone to help or do it for you. What's your partner doing in all this?

2. forget about it all, go to bed and pull the covers over your head. Eventually someone will make the decisions for you and do what needs to be done (which won't be exactly what you would like, but it'll all be removed from your shoulders).
(I have the chutzpah to say what I say so bluntly because I really have been where you are currently.)

I lost the medical practitioner

What's stopping you finding another GP?

... no matter how much I explain or how hard I try to explain it, even using analogies

But, @Impossible, you've explained nothing in your posts here but how impossible it is to explain.

It's not lack of courage, it's futility.

Everything is futile. We bring meaning to everything, we create meaning for everything. It takes courage to invest meaning in anything. Courage is principally the virtue of daring to invest yourself, your time, your heart, your soul, in things that you know are essentially and ultimately futile. Are you saying that you've decided not to invest anything more in life? I can fully understand that. You get so hurt and crushed that, essentially, you take your ball away from the game. But at least, Impossible, make it your decision - even owning the decision gives a modicum of strength!

there's this inherent assumption that it (the issues) must all be due to some sort of lack or skewed perception within me, when it's pretty much not.

Well, whose 'inherent assumption' is that? Not mine and, I dare say, not that of anyone here. Are you projecting your assumptions onto us ? Please stop it! ;)

I don't think anybody understands the depth of my despair or desperation, it seems like it's something foreign, and its causes, it's totality, all the different dimensions of it .

1. There's no way I can convince you that I understand. But I and many others have been where you are now. Not saying it again!

2. For many other people this despair-beyond-despair IS foreign. It's entirely outside normal life experience. It changes you. It makes you alien. It forces you completely outside the cosy circle-of-life. It forces you to learn how to exist in a foreign and often hostile new land.

I feel like a fool

Clearly you're not!

I think I've entirely failed at life

You, me and about 7billion other people! Sorry if I'm coming over as flippant, but most of us think or feel like we've failed somehow at some times. We haven't, we've had experiences that were far too damaging for any human to overcome without a lot of practical, emotional and financial help.

Nothing really feels like anything anymore

Is that the PTSD or the depression speaking? Perhaps both?

These are my truths.... It's not a matter of my perceptions being "inaccurate"

Again, no one here has said anything about your perceptions being inaccurate. That's projecting what you may have heard from others elsewhere onto posters here!


So...when are you going to begin telling your history?
I've honed mine down to the 90second version for people whose eyes are most likely to glaze over once I say 'terrifying NHS abuse and negligence' - which is about 3 weeks into the very long history.
I miss out endless exponential, multifaceted, horrific, constantly abusive and re-traumatising details - I do mean endless, the severe exponential problems will be with me now til the day I die and then it'll all be passed on to my kids, who are even now secondary PTSD sufferers...If I can distil it all, and not care a flying fig now whether people get it or not, then I am very confident that you can too.

All information falls on a lot of deaf, uncaring ears...more rarely it's actually heard. And you'll never stand a chance of that miracle unless you start broadcasting your message about your actual needs far and wide.

And when it comes down to it, you DO have a chink of hope otherwise you wouldn't still be posting, you wouldn't still be throwing your ball in our direction would you my friend?:tup:

 

[Impossible]

Well, good luck! Personally, I have been able to identify with everyone on this forum. We all have PTSD, it is a real illness and penetrates every aspect of our beings. If you read what people express, it's often with words like hopelessness, overwhelming, insurmountable, my fault, I don't deserve happiness, just to name a few. We help each other ride the waves. PTSD Is very polarizing and insidious. You may be having very normal reactions to very abnormal events.

That's the thing though, it doesn't matter what my reactions are, I still have to deal with intolerable circumstances. Unless I can make something happen to prevent it. Which isn't likely.

I feel completely alone because nobody really does understand how desperate or awful I feel. There's nobody in real life who can help or make it better, and it's a real-life thing, and I can't bear it.

 

[KwanYingirl]

Impossible, you are making progress!!!! Far out!! Can you articulate these unbearable consequences? I had to let truth and my greater good outweigh the consequences of losing my family. I still fantasize that maybe someday my mother would accept me as her child again after I outed my perpetrator. I had to suffer the consequences of losing all my friends at work when I reported the chemical contamination to OSHA. My lawyer told me the first visit I had with him that everyone would abandon me. And they did. I have wanted to die so many times from the loneliness of my life. I have had really great Therapists who have saved this sorry soul many times. But they don't have PTSD. Only reading posts on this forum has finally connected me to people that GET it. How I wish we were all on a holiday instead of this journey of recovering. Keep coming!

 

[Impossible]

It's too much to explain and I don't have the ability to do it in a clear, concise way - if that's even possible, which it really isn't. There are too many offshoots and legs, and "buts," and exceptions to rules, and there are indeed circumstances that are outside most people's experiences and they have trouble even believing me because it's a completely foreign idea and then it's presumed to be a flaw in my perspective or actions or something. There's no short version possible because all facets have their own stories.

And yes, I'm projecting what my experience has been with others (many of whom are also in this subset audience). But it's not really projecting because I haven't assumed anyone here has done it or said they have, I'm actually anticipating to be repeated what has been my experience thus far in life.

And the options #1 and #2, neither are possible. Again it's not something that anybody else can do for me, and #2 isn't viable, and neither is #3. (Because there are actually several things going on which options can overlap.) There's the overarching big-picture life-problem issue(s) with its traumas and sets of really gigantic overwhelming intolerables, and there are all the 1,000 "little" (not so little!!!) life-issues all around me with their fears.... and it's all related... and in any of those cases, there's still nobody but me, and nobody who can help, and no magic genie, and no magic wand, and it's just so futile. And the "I can'ts" aren't all "just" (not that I want to use the word "just" because it's belittling) from PTSD. And the life situations are about my basic needs and I am sick sick sick sick sick sick to death of being this old and still just having to be terrified about basic life needs and having to be consumed with meeting them when by so doing it negates - I can't explain, it destroys - has destroyed - my very self, anything that matters to me, the answers are not answers, and I'm even really just done with struggling and striving and being squashed-down, repeatedly, over and over pummelled all because of whatever-it-is-that-I-am, and I know - I know I wasn't supposed to, meant to live that path but a person is supposed to be able to survive.... The only thing really that keeps me going at all is ...something I don't really want to talk about, but it's something that without accomplishing, my life will have been a waste. And I'm not even going to be able to do that. So...waste. Doesn't matter what the common "you have value" blahblah is. That means nothing to me. What's important to me is to leave....that accomplishment, otherwise I've been nothing.

But the means to doing that requires survival which requires intolerable things.

 

[shimmerz]

That's the thing though, it doesn't matter what my reactions are, I still have to deal with intolerable circumstances. Unless I can make something happen to prevent it. Which isn't likely.
I feel completely alone because nobody really does understand how desperate or awful I feel. There's nobody in real life who can help or make it better, and it's a real-life thing, and I can't bear it.

Your words to my above posting are very telling @Impossible. Your name reflects how you are feeling. Of course I can't know what your circumstances are or have been - not because I haven't felt the way you are describing - but because your processing is your own.

@Impossible, I wasn't suggesting the problem lay within yourself. I have slept in cars in sub zero weather - wanting to just have it all over but knowing it couldn't be for children that were living in nice comfy cozy homes saying 'sorry Mom, we can't spare a room (they all live in 5 bedroom + homes). Everything I ever worked for I lost. My children, my work, my friends, my life and any accomplishments to name just the key things. Everything I have done in life feels like a waste of time. Every F***ing THING. I have no financial means what-so-ever. People admire me because I am thin - I am thin because I am starving. People don't want to hear that and people who know me don't want to acknowledge it. Yes, it seems hopeless. I It seems to be to be unbearable. I seem to be in a black hole and some days I want out and others I just want to curl up and die in it. Not because I wasn't trying but because it seemed everywhere I turned the system and the people I once trusted - well it almost felt like they were either sabotaging my attempts or just didn't get what I needed. No matter how much I yelled in the town square. I was so incredibly disheartened by this. I am not saying this is YOUR situation, I am simply applying my situation to the words you used here when I feel like you describe in answer to my posting.

Many people on this site are in the same position - not because of them but because of a lack of support etc. I find I am not alone in that feeling and that makes me feel very sad. I wish I was alone. The thing is, these people are online. They can help only so far. They can't feed me, they can't stop me from sleeping in cars and ditches, they can't get me a job or suggest to my kids that I am not crazy. They can't make anything else okay for me but one thing. They care. Caring right now matters - somehow. Can that matter to you? Do you want that to matter to you?

Look at all the postings here. People give a s*** how you feel. See that you are in crisis. They keep trying. Nobody needs to know your story if it is overwhelming and personal. They just want you to know that they care about your situation.

Please forgive me other posters as I am speaking for you and I shouldn't but your postings scream to me 'I so care'.....that is why I am here.

 

[Impossible]

It's like, say you need an oxygen tank in order to survive. Say everybody does, but you're allergic to the metal of it, it's too heavy to pull around, and the smell of the mask makes you very, very ill so that you can't function as a human. So others just shrug and say, "You just have to get used to smell and pull it around, like everybody else." But you can't, and it makes you very sick.

And let's say that the meaning of your life - the only thing you care about - is up a flight of stairs. The wheels on the tank won't go up those stairs, and it's too steep for a ramp, and it's too heavy for you to carry, and nobody else can do it for you or even help (ok the analogy fails here - but just take it on faith that it is simply not possible for anybody else to go up those stairs - that in order for the meaning fulfillment, the only thing you really care about, you have to be the one to go up those stairs and nobody else can have anything else to do with it).

In the meantime, also, the tank has battered you very badly. And other people say, "It's just a tank, that's just the way it is, get used to it." And sometimes somebody says, "You should just spray the mask with perfume and that will make it easier to cope with." Only when you try that, the combined smell of the perfume and the mask make you just as sick, and they don't help with the weight, and the metal allergy, and the constant tethering that keeps you from going up those stairs. And the tank drives you absolutely crazy... nobody else seems bothered as much by theirs, they don't like it but they can live with it, but for you it's torturous. And your tank, no matter which tank you get, it keeps ramming into you and bruising you and breaking your bones, no matter what you do and no matter how hard you try to make yourself safe from it. It flattens you and makes you very ill, and yet it's either the tank or not breathing. If you don't have the tank, you can get up the stairs but you won't survive. And so your ability to do what you need to do up those stairs, will be squashed. But without going up those steps, without doing what you need to do up there, life is nothing for you - it's who and what you area. But if you do have the tank, your life is intolerable, too. Broken and consumed by that tank.

And so you know there has to be another way to get the air, and you must be able to think of it, and do it, but you haven't come up with the magical solution, and you can't put it into effect in time anyway before the tank is running out of air. And even if and when that tank runs out - you have never been much able to get new tanks. There's no supply. None of the tanks fit your equipment and you can't get new. You have what you have. Sometimes a tank rolls in your direction but then rolls away. If you happen to get lucky and a tank connects with your equipment, it still bashes and pummels you, you're still allergic to it, it still makes you sick, and still keeps you from doing anything that has any meaning to you.

Eh. That doesn't even relate it in full. There's a lot more to it than that. A lot. And this doesn't seem as powerful as the importance to me. Or.. .there's a lot missing. There's no way for me to portray it. Even if I say things.

 

[shimmerz]

but for you it's torturous.

That is another great word to use @Impossible. I mean it is a terrible word to have to apply to life but the words are helping. Thank you.

Eh. That doesn't even relate it in full. There's a lot more to it than that. A lot. And this doesn't seem as powerful as the importance to me.

Of course it can't. There is so much! But what happens if someone here, just by an off chance helps give you the strength or an idea as to how to work out how to fix the tank or the stairs or what is up the stairs? Personally I think the analogy you made her to be apropo. It can't possibly paint the whole picture. But what if just someone(s) caring to listen helps you just a tiny bit? Is it possible that caring matters to you?

 

[In Exile]

One of the hardest things for me to accept was that there are others who have had similarly terrible things happen in their life. Not the same thing, not the same experiences, but the fact that people do commit suicide shows that there are people who feel despair.

Most therapists I saw did not "get" me, because they had never been in that bad themselves. Typical motivational things which get posted on facebook will not work for people like us. We're in a different world.

People who fight wars often say that they can't talk about it to others, because someone who hasn't fought in a war will never understand. While I can't understand what they went through, anymore than they can understand what battles I have had to fight, I think there would be a shared feeling of kindred spirits for having had to witness or be a victim of something which the human psychic was not built to withstand.

We are not here because we got a B+ instead of an A- on some test. The horror we know is unspeakable. It haunts us like an unseen power. The body tries to respond. The brain tries to make sense of something it was never designed to handle. Depression, panic attacks and anxiety are actually healthy, normal responses to the trauma.

I don't know what will work for you. I barely sense what works for me as I slowly try to rebuild my life.

So, I can't and won't tell you what to do or give advice.

However, I will tell you somethings which have helped me. But only if you are interested in listening.

And I do hope you realize that although I don't know your suffering, I am good friends with suffering myself. We go way back.

 

[Laura 2]

I have slept in cars in sub zero weather - wanting to just have it all over but knowing it couldn't be for children that were living in nice comfy cozy homes saying 'sorry Mom, we can't spare a room (they all live in 5 bedroom + homes). Everything I ever worked for I lost....

....Please forgive me other posters as I am speaking for you and I shouldn't but your postings scream to me 'I so care'.....that is why I am here.

:hug:@shimmerz - thank you, you just wrote my experience, every word between these quotes. Shortly I will be sleeping in my car again (obviously with no access to internet, so that's why when you notice I'm not posting). It's so beyond belief and beyond humane and beyond torturous that I cannot begin to worry about it.

I am so numbed out to it all that it's like I've ditched that part of my life somehow. It's like I lived in hourly, 24/7 terror for so long that I haven't got anything left in my brain or body to be terrified with or even anxious with. At the moment I'm just extracting every moment of simple pleasure and comfort that I can for when I'm on the street and need some positive memories. I'm not mad or bad, I've done absolutely nothing wrong but have a stroke and then get traumatised by chronic stalking because the stalker obsessively 'took exception' to my disabilities. For years and years.

We have discovered the fundamental Lie behind our 'civilisation'.

I care.