Thinking About The Future

[digger]

Do you allow yourself to think about the future?

Just wondering because I can't. It scares and depresses me too much when I try to.

 

[Abstract]

I don't think about the future. It freaks me out. One little foot in front of the other is what I do....

 

[therisa]

Sometimes, when I am feeling like I am gaining ground, on my mental health problems. I dream, of being able to do things that I could do, before my August 2007 panic attack, which triggered my latest bout of flashback. It's the undiscovered country, for me, to quote General Kang, from Star Trek VI.

Your day will come, @digger1 , just have patience with yourself.

 

[digger]

I don't believe it will though @therisa, I guess that is part of the problem. This is not a new thing. I think as a child I was maybe able to in the fantasy way that children do, but as an adult no, more so I think since I tried to kill myself in my early twenties. I think since then I really can't see any future which holds any meaning so I can only live day to day really.

I thought when I had a child that might change how I was able to view it, but it never has. It made me hold on and accept that I have one, but I still can't see one that has any meaningfulness. Perhaps because I only live for other people really and am unable to choose to live for myself.

I just wondered I suppose if other people are the same in that respect.

 

[therisa]

I understand, @digger1 , as a childhood abuse survivor, myself (Oh crap, this is the first time, I can say survivor and really mean it.) Thank you, Digger, for helping me, achieve this stage of healing.

 

[Hashi]

digger, I've been struggling badly with the idea of a future. The more I heal from trauma, the more aware I am that removing the negatives doesn't create a positive in my life. It only leaves a void where there's never been anything else.

It's hard for me to see any meaning. I constantly hear that meaning comes from service to others, but I have no interest in or motivation for that. I feel that I've been used pretty much my whole life, and to spend the rest of it helping others would only mean being used more, in a different way. I see no satisfaction or enjoyment for myself.

I think part of the problem for me is that my thinking tends to be big-scale. I tend to think of My Future, like the conclusion of a film. To see a happy ending is impossible, because I'm so far from that now and I don't even see a route to it.

Instead, I've decided to try for small improvements. I can't worry about having a feeling of purpose or meaning, because that just makes me despondent. I think that goes against what I hear, and maybe it helps other people to identify with meaning, but I've been trying that approach and it only makes things worse. My focus now is on getting unstuck, without thinking about where I'm heading. As long as I'm getting unstuck in a healthy direction that's all I'm going to think about. Treating money more wisely, eating a bit more healthily, taking better care of myself, arranging to meet a friend, spending time on an interest and so on.

In thinking about this, I decided there's a difference between doing those sorts of things for trauma healing or getting through from day to day, and doing them to move forward. I have to start doing them at a different level, and that means pushing myself more and - in particular - challenging my attitudes towards things. Not in a boot camp way, but in a reflective, journalling, trying to open my mind sort of way.

It's hard to explain this, but I feel like although this isn't the ultimate solution it's what I need to do for the time being in order to open the way for something that can make a bigger change. I don't know how to move towards a better future, but I know I need to at least start moving. Maybe things will get clearer later on, but right now I feel like if I don't have some momentum I'm just going to gradually sink lower and lower into the ground.

 

[Mercy]

It is very common for people with PTSD to have a shortened view of their life. I never thought I would be alive this long. I used to buy my two daughter's winter coats in several sizes so at least they would have warm coats after I had gone. I wasn't thinking suicidally just practically. My abusers always said they could get to me any where at any time and that they were in charge of how long I lived. Seeing so many children die after two week vacations for the men, made me believe them. If the kids were too badly injured or too mentally shaken they became part of another type game. For example, hunters in the woods finding and eventually killing them to keep the organization secret.

As for a future, I dare not dream and lapse into a flashback. This year or early 2015 we will have to move from our home of 25 years into something much smaller and out of state. So I do have some future to work out. I am rather numb about that. It will make no difference to the hell I live internally. There is no such thing as a geographic cure.

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

Funny, I experience the complete opposite from what most of you describe. I'm actually in love with my future, making wild plans, I know my ideal profession exactly, I know what type of plane I'd have, what it would be called and with what kind of painting... which might all sound like idealistic daydreaming. And on the one hand, it is. But on the other hand I daresay the sky is the limit.

I'm not saying this to make you feel bad. It is actually right now, that I am terrified of most of the time. More than half of my days I feel paralyzed, frozen, uptight and completely unable to make a move, to the point where it's very physical (body pain because of the tension and an unwillingness to move from my desk chair). It also makes me unwilling to work on this future I envision.

I know well that for me to have that kind of future, I'll have to work for it. I'll have to finish my studies and get a drivers license and a ton of other practical things. And instead of doing so, I sit at home unable to get myself to do any of that and thinking "I'll do it tomorrow". If there were a way to un-freeze myself I would love it...

 

[rightkindofme]

I'm a hardcore future tripper. I plan elaborate things for my future and I follow through on them. I tend to have a lot of different goals: short, medium, and long-term and I make conscious verifiable progress towards all of them all the time. Not ALL the time, but continually.

I have done a lot of international travel and I will do more. I like to build things and paint things. I worked for ten years to be "qualified" (to my own standards) to home school children I didn't have yet. I knew I wanted to be a home schooling parent when I was 17. I didn't have kids till 27. I went to college and graduate school so I could learn what "healthy" would mean.

I think that I will only have a future if I actively create it. No one will walk up and hand me anything I actually want to have.

I ran a marathon. I have written two books. I just keep plugging along with goals.

I live by "get busy living or get busy dying". I'm not ready to die yet so I have a lot of stuff to do.

 

[Tympre]

I think about the future, but its not all rainbows and roses. I do great budgeting for the future as paying off debt comes easy for me, but saving well thats what my soulmate does. I can plan to eliminate the negative but I cant seem to build a positive future. Don't know if that makes sense. I can see my self moving as we will this coming summer, and leaving behind the physical house where my trauma occurred, but I can not see me being successful in the new place. I can plan to eliminate bills to reduce the required income to a fourth of what we use now, but I can not see me making any more money than minimum wage, if I even get to where I can see myself working. I can not see my childrens futures, which is sad to me. I can not envision my marriage in say 3-5 years but I do dream of us old and grey together sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch. I think I am to scared to dream of the rainbows and roses side, as I am not hopeful it will happen.

 

[digger]

@Hashi - thank you - I think those are mostly the words I was looking for last night but couldn't find.

I can plan to eliminate the negative but I cant seem to build a positive future. Don't know if that makes sense.

That does make sense to me.

 

[Madhather]

Future = death. That is the only future I can see or plan. No not suicide, just dying as we all do. When I was younger I would fantasise (day dream) about if I had this I would do that, having all the money I could ever spend and moving far away and living in isolation, completely safe. Those day dreams faded and were replaced with surviving one day to the next. For me this moment is all I have and that's okay.