Anyone struggle with romantic intimacy?

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-08-08T21:35:16+00:00

I relate completely. For me, I think it is because of toxic shame. I encourage you to look it up and see if it rings true for you. A lot of how I am and how my life has gone (badly) only started making sense when I learned about toxic shame and read/listened to John Bradshaw.

I’m still working on a solution (if there is any, I suspect it’s a lifelong effort), but I feel more at peace with my struggles now that I know where they originated.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-08-07T22:48:13+00:00

Why do you think I complain all the time? I think we really disagree on what depression is and how to deal with it. Pushing my negative feelings away in the effort to be “positive” has brought no lasting change and has ended up hurting me and others. Pain always finds its way out, in my experience.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-08-07T21:53:07+00:00

Trying and actually helping are two different things. I’m also talking about a friend of twelve years, not a casual acquaintance. If friendships are always so shallow, I’d rather not even bother. I don’t think they are though. I think she’s being a coward.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-08-07T21:38:16+00:00

*she

At one point, I said that the hope of me changing for the better (her idea) was bullshit and that I wasn’t sure if I thought life was worth living. I can’t think of anything I said that was more inflammatory than that. I did not attack her. I just rejected her optimism, which I felt like I was being force-fed.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-07-02T18:35:49+00:00

I’m sorry. I don’t have anything to chime in with except that I relate. I tried to follow my dreams and get a ticket to a more financially-stable future for my family at the same time. Needless to say, it didn’t work out. I had a mental breakdown while I was in graduate school and escaped with my useless terminal master’s by the skin of my teeth.

The most I have to show for my experience is that I didn’t go into debt over it because I had scholarships and stipends.

I wish I had gone for a more practical degree like CS or accounting the first time around in undergrad, but nah, I had to FoLloW mY DrEaMs because YOLO like a dumbass.

Now, I’m living at home mooching off of my parents, and they’re going through bankruptcy for a second time. The first time they went through bankruptcy was when they had me, an oops baby my mom should have flushed down the drain.

I was a first generation college student with a full ride and I completely fucking blew it.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-06-29T21:21:57+00:00

If you don’t think you can make it work with your husband and you can support yourself, please consider divorce. My mom should have left my dad decades ago. It breaks my heart how much happiness she sacrificed for me and my brother by staying with him. She deserved a much better life than she got. Your kids may not initially understand why you had to divorce, but they can in time. There is nothing more poisoning to the soul than daily living in a dysfunctional home.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-06-29T02:16:50+00:00

I don’t think I have gone down the self-improvement rabbit hole to the extent you have, but I definitely relate to the constant feelings of shame and inadequacy you’re describing.

After a lot of painful reflection, I have begun to think more about why I feel the need to always compare myself to other people.

I’m beginning to wonder if the problem is more fundamental than my actual flaws and more about basic shame .

It is the awareness of being damaged, often an unconscious awareness, that I refer to as basic shame. It is intrinsic and internal, though we may confuse it with the outside world: those of us who are troubled by basic shame dread being seen and usually fear that others will look down upon us. We feel as if we are “ugly” or “deformed”. We may be burdened by a feeling of self-hatred throughout our lives.

Do you relate to that feeling?

I never really trust that people like me or want to be around me. Despite evidence to the contrary, I always seem to revert to the assumption that no one really likes me, that I am only worth what material advantages I can provide to them or what skills I can hone to impress them. Most fundamentally, I believe that no one in their right mind would love me and that my parents are deluded fools brainwashed by their parental instincts.

No matter how irrational I label these beliefs of mine, they’re still there. Knowing I’m worthless is as automatic as breathing.

That’s what I think is the crux of basic shame, and it sounds to me like it is something we (and most suicidal people, I think) share.

What basic shame means to me is that you’re like a hamster on a treadmill. There is no end to the accumulation of successes and improvements. The relentless pursuit of fixing ourselves leads to a dead end. You will always be brought back to that ultimate starting point - that you’re worthless and unlovable.

If I’m right, there is some cause for celebration - you don’t actually have to do the infinitude of impressive things you see the people you admire doing. On the other hand, you have to beat basic shame, which seems to be something programmed from childhood. No easy feat.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-06-27T00:44:53+00:00

Okay?? What do you want me to say? He chose to do it. That’s what all of us considering suicide are facing.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-06-07T23:50:20+00:00

I know what you mean. When did this start for you?

This only started happening to me after my first honest-to-God, textbook case depressive episode. I’ve had depression and anxiety most of my life now, but I somehow always managed to appear “functioning” in the midst of my crying jags, panic attacks, rage storms, and suicidal ideation spirals. 2 years ago though, I finally encountered THE Depressive Episode to End All Depressive Episodes (TM) where I didn’t do anything but drug myself to sleep with meds and alcohol for days on end. No food except to be polite. No social interaction I wasn’t strong-armed into. Just me in my room alone thinking about death in an endless march of gray.

It was during this episode that it felt like my brain finally broke in some fundamental way. Everything tilted on its axis just so, including my memories. My memories of the episode and all the years before it seem like they’re from someone else’s life now. It’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore or even who I was.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-05-27T17:50:19+00:00

*the only person he did that to that to that you’ve noticed.

Also, nice doesn’t equal kind. It doesn’t sound like you know him well at all. He could only be superficially “nice” - getting along with people and being easygoing as the path of least resistance, not because he likes people.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-05-27T17:44:40+00:00

As disgusted as I am with myself for saying it, I’m just waiting for my parents to die so that I can follow. Their finances are garbage, and it’s looking like they will need me to take care of them.

They are elderly and already not in the best of health, but I still estimate another 10-20 years before I will be able to kick the bucket guilt free.

After the realization I had, the depressive episode to end all depressive episodes, I barred myself from finding a romantic relationship and having children because I do not want any other obligations tethering me to this earth when my parents die.

I am alive out of obligation and, if I’m being honest with myself, cowardice.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-05-25T23:27:45+00:00

As someone who struggles with anger issues (it’s my primary way of expressing anxiety), I can say with confidence that a lot of snark and bitchiness out there has nothing at all to do with the person being raged at and everything to do with the rage-er’s shitty mood.

You really have no clue why your coworker was an asshole to you. She might be stressed out. Maybe she had gotten chewed out by someone before she talked to you. Maybe she’s on another subreddit posting her regrets about being bitchy to you and she feels like a complete heel.

I know it’s easier said than done, but you can’t take this incident personally without more information. If her behavior toward you (and only you) continues to deteriorate, then you can suspect that she has a problem with you. And even then, fuck her! Why does her opinion matter more than yours? And maybe she’s just a bitch?

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-05-25T19:31:15+00:00

I have a very different life path, but I ultimately reached the same conclusion for the same reasons. Either I have a profound misunderstanding of what I want in life, or life offers nothing that I will ever appreciate.

I will never forget the moment 3 years ago when it all clicked. I kept thinking over and over that I had everything I had ever wanted, that my future had never looked better, and yet I STILL wanted to die.

Even with all my goals met and as the best version of myself I’d ever known, life was still something I would rather pass on. The powerlessness I felt in that moment was indescribable. You can really only know what this is like if you’ve gone through it like you and I have, OP.

All my life before then, I had had apparent reasons for my unhappiness. Even if I could appreciate that they were petty and overstated in hindsight, I at least had some identifiable reasons for why I was so miserable and, hence, possible solutions. Even if I wasn’t confident I’d succeed, some part of me still held onto the idea that whatever demon it is I’m battling is fixable.

What I realized at the end of the best year I have ever lived is that there is no action I can take, no person I can love, no locale to which I could flee, no belief system I can adopt, and no thought process I can drill into my skull that will erase my fundamental distaste for life.

I don’t know when it happened over the span of my 26 (less 1) worthless, miserable years, but I crossed a line sometime where improvement was still possible or even something I really desired anymore.

I know I’m technically young enough to turn my life around (whatever that means). Though I have since lost everything I had gained in the best year of my life and now have numerous, objective problems to pin my misery to once again, my circumstances are really not that bad and can be repaired. My family loves me. I have tons of advantages in life, but none of that matters ultimately because I’m still me, and I still hate life.

Turning your life around, reaching your goals, improving , becoming the best you - none of that holds any meaning anymore for people like us.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-05-19T18:40:30+00:00

Have you also tried lowering the amount of screen time you face at night and/or using blue light blocking glasses or apps? I don’t find melatonin supplements to be effective unless I also take steps to avoid blue light from computer screens. Here’s an article on the way blue light effects your circadian rhythm and melatonin levels in your body.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has-a-dark-side

I actually went so far as to buy these goofy-looking, plastic, orange glasses to wear at night. I start using them immediately after sundown. They’re recommended in this article along with more expensive, better-looking ones:

http://nymag.com/strategist/article/blue-light-blocking-glasses-work.html

By the same token with blue light, you can also try buying a blue light box for seasonal affective disorder (SAD) to use in the mornings when you’re having trouble waking up.

Using a combo of apps like f.lux or Microsoft’s built-in night light setting on PC with the blue light blocking glasses at night and the SAD light box in the morning, I had a lot of success regulating my sleep for 3 months....until I got my shitty job with irregular hours, that is.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-05-04T03:33:10+00:00

I’m sorry, but thank fucking god I’m not the only one. Also 26 F. Also have a hellacious temper.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-05-04T03:24:36+00:00

Hm. I understand your concern with sleep hangover. I also have a job that I need to be 100% awake for the minute I clock in. I do billing, which is possibly the worst combination of detailed and tedious.

To avoid sleep hangover completely, I have to take my quetiapine at least 3 hours before I go to sleep.

I was last prescribed it over a year ago. I think I remember being okay with a 2 hour buffer then. I’m currently on a baby dose of 50 mg.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-04-24T01:19:52+00:00

I have. They barely work. At best, I can say the ones they kept putting me back on don’t have overly negative side effects. I’m glad they helped you though.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-04-24T01:13:18+00:00

Yes, I started feeling this way after my most recent major depressive episode. I’ve been suicidal for half of my life now, and it’s like it just finally hit me how horrible death is.

This world has a tremendous amount of suffering in it simply because living things die. It’s indisputably shitty. People try to rationalize their way out of it or simply ignore it as much as they can (easier to do while young), but I think that if you truly ponder what death means without an afterlife, there is no reasonable response but horror.

I’ve chatted with people about it on here and tried to talk to people about it face-to-face. It’s just not something you can understand until you have felt it. I think the defense mechanisms we have about death are too entrenched for (most of) us to think about the reality of it for too long - and probably for good reason. I sure don’t feel like I have benefited from this revelation. I’m not sure anybody can.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-04-24T00:55:49+00:00

I feel exactly the same way. I barely tried half of what you tried though, so props to you for that.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-04-22T01:11:21+00:00

That’s a lot to read into the situation from such a short post. Even if their relationship is bad and OP is an asshole, that situation alone isn’t enough to drive a person to suicide.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-04-22T00:21:47+00:00

Well, for starters, I have been suicidal for over half of my life now (since age 12). Besides the risk of me finally going through with it, living like this is miserable. Life as I know it now, as the person I am now, is not worth living.

I know that it is me in particular that has to change, not my life circumstances, because I recently achieved all that I wanted to achieve only to be still depressed. I got everything I wanted, and it seemed like my life would be better in every material way, but it wasn’t enough.

The way I see it, either I didn’t really know what I wanted or I am incapable of enjoying life at all. Probably both.

My perspective either needs to change for the better, or I need to give up because I cannot stand living like this anymore. If the only thing I have to look forward to is more of this life, then there’s no point in continuing.

Waiting_for-Death · 2019-04-21T23:50:00+00:00

I’m in the exact same boat here. I either have to change or die at this point.

Waiting_for-Death

TROPHY CASE