Hi, if you are 30 or above, I would like you to reply and tell me how you cope with day to day. I feel lost and that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe you older groups here could direct me to who you are. I don’t want you guys to sit alone and feel like islands if we can get a conversation at least going on and try and get some perspective from a fellow older lad like myself, 29 now. I feel time is running too fast. How do you cope with depression? Pain? Cancer? Unemployment? Anxiety? Do you also feel as if nostalgia hits you hard and you cannot forget about the past?
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I wish I had that answer but I haven’t found away to cope. I just struggle through thinking one day I won’t have to suffer this way anymore
Hi, I’m 33. I seem to have clinical depression and very often suicidal thoughts. It’s because this world is just horrible. Dealing with this world and all of the things they value is bullshit. Yet if you swim against the current, they will attempt to drown you to prop up their failed system and keep living in obliviousness. There is no humanity left in them.
Growing up, no one warns you that the world is shit, that everything is about who you know and who can be the best suck up or put on the best fake smile. That merit and hard work mean a whole lot less than that in the world of ‘getting ahead’ or even ‘getting by’. Maybe in your youth, people dont tell you the truth about how shitty the world is because they would rather live in the delusion that ‘it’s not so bad’ and they deny it so much, they convince themselves that the lie is true.
I don’t know.. maybe they do see how horrible this place is but feel bad for selfishly bringing an unwilling participant into this tragedy. So they’d rather not carry the weight of that decision, and instead, put it on you to find a way ‘to be happy.’
I self medicated a long time with drugs (primarily cocaine), so I would be free from the anxiety. Underemployment with my degree, the demise of a 7 year relationship in my late 20’s, seeing more and more futility in the world, and just the hateful, uneducated mass that has and will always be swayed by knee jerk reactionism that pretty much determines the course of policy that affects the educated minority. I’m supposed to find a way to assimilate within this society. How? From what I’ve seen, this place gets worse. Not better. Why would I hop on a train that’s already plunging off a cliff to try to get it back on the tracks?
Yes, pain from the past (on top of current depression) hits hard sometimes. I often think this is because I myself was more distracted and oblivious in the past. We tend to idealize those times, because…even though we were living a lie and ignoring realizations about the world, at least we didn’t feel constant pain.
If you want to chat more about anything, feel free to send me an email atlasbleeding1@gmail.com. It’s good to see others who are around my age on this site.
Thanks!
J
Thank you brother, I will email you soon! The world is shit indeed! Amen to that! We soon figure we are in it for a raw deal; it is not a clean break. We burn the candle at both ends and hence find it hard to muster why we are on the verge of being out on the streets. The bare necessities gets reduced to unfathomable commodities that only the rich can ascertain: job, house, spouse.
My depression is quite unique. It bites me so hard that it even features in dreams. I had this crazy dream yesterday morning of me living with my father(with my mother being absent for some reason). He went off to work and I felt so sorry for him. I fell into depression as I looked around to help him get to work. I then remembered the 5 or so interviews I had and how I never heard anything back from those people. I noticed I am aging and wallowed in pain to the reaslisation for the chop of the sword that awaited me. I felt empty in the dream. I was worried if he is unable to work what we are going to do; I am jobless and he breaks his back for me.
If depression isn’t bad enough in daily life, it comes as an iron fist to your dream world.
I am 54 and have been dealing with depression for forty years. Chronic pain for almost 30 years. I am an 18 year cancer survivor. I’m allergic to myself (autoimmune diseases) and am losing my vision because of retinal toxicity from the drug I was taking to control my disease.
How do I cope? I don’t know.
Where does your chronic pain mainly come from?
Hi there @tiredofchronicpain I’m about to turn 42 at the end of this month and I’ve been deppresed since 14.(in not to good at these things so bear with me lol) So here it goes….. I’ve tried to kill myself a couple of times in my teens and it’s a miracle I’ve made it this far. I don’t really want to die now as my life has gotten better for the most part but I still suffer from many issues such as depression (which never seems to go away no matter what) social anxiety and low self esteem. Having a kid for me helped improve the way I saw life a lot as I now had responsibilities and it wasn’t about me anymore. Having a job is also very important, I’ve come across many people who were depressed simply because they had no money, no job and saw no hope for the future. Your environment also plays a big part in your life, if you can move to a better place surround yourself with positive people who are going to uplift you thats a great thing. I know what caused my depression from an early age were my parents and the environment in which I was raised.Try to pick up a hobby like bicycling or I find that going for long walks really helps me out. I hope this helps, feel free to ask me any questions, good luck
Hi Clipped-wings. I have come to know you through your posts; very inspirational and thoughtful as always. I sometimes used to think of my childhood luxury as bona fide, until my teens and my early 20’s emerged. I think part of depression is going back to the past. I sometimes refer to this as the “prison of the past”. It locks you up because you have this guilt side pulling you, an envy side pulling you, and an anger side pulling you. There is also a sadness side to it. As per my dream I had yesterday morning. I notice how protected I become of my parents. They are getting older. They are the only bread winners in the house now.
I think I can speak for all of us in this room, and most of the older guys especially, that many of us feel as if our hand has been revealed clearly. We are seated in a movie we cannot escape, because there are the guards at the exit path. For me, it is definitely my family. They are the guard. I feel obligated to make a success of my life, but at the other side, I have mental illnesses, physical problems, and spiritual turmoil that would not grant me the gift of a luxurious life. What most people take for granted – having a job, wife, kids, food to eat, is almost out of reach for me.
Clipped, I am sorry about your cancer. When did it start?
BIGRICH, thanks for taking the tme to write. I will reply to you in more detail in a successive post!
@tiredofchronicpain I was diagnosed with cancer in 2000. I have been cancer free for 18 years now. It was found very early and by chance, so I was fortunate.
I’m 35, and I dunno what to tell you, honestly. I just fixate intensely on right now, and maybe some planning for bills and other essentials to navigate this horribly stupid world. I dive into the minute details of everything because that’s mentally occupying and kicks the anxiety down a few notches for a while. As for depression, I’ve been drinking a lot lately, but that’s a self-defeating strategy. It does make talking to people easier, though. I guess that’s a plus.
And nostalgia? Ha! Why, when I was your age…
Also, just to note, I do not recommend emulating anything I just mentioned. I wouldn’t be on this site if I had good coping strategies. The bit about hyperfocusing on details I can’t really do much about, but I readily acknowledge that booze is bad, mmkay.
On a more positive note, I have two sweet little cats who constantly demand I pay attention to them, and I’ve been honing some cooking skills so I don’t have to rely on pre-packaged, fast foodish garbage anymore. Baked red snapper and rice ftw. Diet seems to have a big impact on how intense my anxiety gets, and I feel less depressed when I have something to do aside from posting things on a suicide site. I have a bunch of hobbies I try to maintain, but finding the time for much of anything is like pulling teeth with my work schedule. It is what it is, I guess.
Pets and hobbies are very helpful to me also. I have a beautiful and very vocal cat. I also have a cockatoo. He’s a huge distraction. And for me, being a wife helps me to focus. Knowing that someone else’s life and mental wellbeing is wrapped up with mine.
Hi clipped. Animals are better humans than humans themselves !
I’m 33. I’ve been depressed since I was a kid. First suicide attempt was at 10. I’ve never felt able to relate to the world around me. Not for lack of trying. Just a constant hit and miss. My anxiety stops me from being the best mother, friend, wife that I could be. I had a heart attack last Christmas but doctors thought I was lying (it’s just heartburn) because I’m so young and I waited for so long to see someone about it. I waited because I doubted myself. I survived it.So it couldn’t be an actual issue. I keep going to doctors to see what I can do about some other things and all I can think is… why would I try to resolve the issues? Just let it play out. Why would I try to be Girl Scout troop leader? Why would I try hard at work? Why when I don’t plan to be here very long. I’m tempted to save some money, see the places I haven’t seen, then end it all. Write letters to my kids and hope they understand one day, that it wasn’t me trying to leave them but me not being able to cope in the world anymore.
Right now it’s one day at a time for me. I fall asleep, wake up.. it’s another day and I’m still alive. Maybe I’ll see what this day brings and wait for the next.
Sometimes… a lot of times… I feel like my depression is a terminal illness (please don’t skewer me for saying that) and there is no cure despite the heaviest doses of antidepressants they can give me. Just a matter of time. If you find a way to cope with everything, I’d love to hear it.
Right now the thought of the hassle and pain that my suicide would cause others is the only thing that keeps me going.
Maybe time for me to move onto ECT.
You wrote something that is very true: ”nostalgia hits you hard and you cannot forget about the past”. The depressed tends to think and rethink her/his past over and over again? especially all those things that she/he believes were her/his mistakes. The depressed keeps recalling these ”traumatic” memories as a kind of ”punishment”. The past seems like a huge rock that you carry with you and you can’t throw it away. As for the ”normal” people, the antidote to carrying this rock is being in a state of frivolity (that’s the ”solution” proposed in Hermann Hesse’s ”Steppenwolf”, or as Jason Xenakis put it in his book ”Hippies and Cynics”: ”live this life as a tourist”) and constantly projecting their happiness into the future.
Anyway, I’m 32 and I have depression. How do I cope with it? I listen to a lot of music (any kind of music, although nowadays I listen to a lot of jazz, ambient and classical), and I read a lot (mainly books about philosophy, history, psychology, art, or literature). I like taking small trips outside the main cities, visiting remote/small villages or walking in nature. If I had enough money I would try to live outdoors. I also like watching movies. Films serve as a kind of ”escapism”. I used to go and watch a lot of plays (mainly Greek tragedies), although I haven’t been to a theater for 6-7 years. Tragedies are a form of ”therapy” that leads to what Aristotle called ”catharsis” (a kind of ”relief”). I used to have different pets in the past (cats, dogs, sparrows), but I don’t have any anymore. The last dog that I had died 3 years ago. But I enjoy pets. A pet is (if not always, at least most of the time) a good company. And last but not least, I enjoy talking to people I like. I’m not very social, but I have a few people that I can call friends. And, believe it or not, I met one of them here on the SP.
As for the unbearable physical pain, the anxiety, panic attacks etc, the only ”solution” (if you want to continue living) is through medication and/or psychotherapy. I have to admit that, even if I don’t like most psychologists and psychiatrists. And it’s not an easy task to follow – this ”therapy” lasts for the rest of your life. Alternatives to that are: committing suicide, drug/alcohol abuse etc. The main and critical choice that someone has to make is if she/he is going to live or die. Everything else comes after that.
Anyway, I hope all these were helpful to you.
Hi Taf Taf. Cogito Ergo Sum! Your post immediately peeked my interest. I want to pick your brain a bit too. I also am an avid armchair philosopher. I am in search for the wisdom traditions and cannot stop researching them. I try to get wisdom from all over the world into a condensed form and kindof “live” my own philosophy. Which philosophies have applied to you most? Have you studied wisdom traditions yourself? Stoicism? Cynicism?
You project a hermetic lifestyle. How come you are single? I define myself best with the “incel” label but try to avoid the oxymoronic connotation. Incels these days get a flippant response from the mass community and I hate to admit I am unable to attract the opposite sex because of social disabilities or inadequacies.
What is your view on God and religion? How or why do you believe the way you do?
To get onto a more personal footnote of why I got everyone together – I am most likely the first. I want us older guys and girls to have a more “mature” conversation than the fleeting hopes of teenagers who didn’t find their feet yet. It is one of those things that come with age. I myself have a load I never thought I would bare at this age. I am, yes, still living with my parents at the age of 29, living with chronic discomfort, aspergers, misanthropy, Body dysmorphic disorder, anxiety. If it is not the former in the list, some of the latter terms take my head space up. And on a very bad day, I get a symphony of almost all of them at once. I have graduated with a Bachelors with Honours in Electrical Engineering and unable to find work. I went to peaks and troughs with work. I was fired more times than hired. I worked for free to gain “work experience” for a tyrannical boss who used me to finish his PhD. I am spent…
Everyone else get along in life, and all I do is waking up, study philosophy, meditate, draw, play music, and just worry about everything in the end. I was born to be free. I hate work. I realise the void of having to stress about keeping your job everyday. Having a day at a call center was enough for me never to work again. I did develop a retaliating fear of the workplace after my anxiety battle and social anxiety. This cause me to tense up so much I cannot focus to what is being explained to me. As a result I now sit without any work, and I am extremely afraid of going to interviews too. I am just fearful of life I guess. It is like a dualistic side to me; I should actually be wiser to know not to worry, but I keep beating myself up over not getting anywhere. I am more and more worried about the future. This also projects back at me through dreams. My dream world was always fascinating. I remember myself more cohesive in my sleeping state than in my waking state. I feel like an auric person with so much more potential in the dream world than I can ever muster in real life. It is as if in each dream I would have this psychic emotion of “knowing” and feeling extremely at ease in the vivid dreams I get. I dream a lot of flying to great heights, and falling in deep waters. My dreams would cause me a lot of havoc and fright. I travel a lot in my dreams and I am so at awe sometimes that I cannot begin to even think. My dream is a pioneering escape from a prison of this world.
Every day I talk to the walls when my parents leave off to work. I pretend there are people around me( the very things I miss and once had.) Because the ones I make up in my mind and pretend are there, are better listeners than the haves here. I would talk to myself for hours on end.
I realise more and more; I will always be a foreigner here in Australia. I fought to escape the terrors of South Africa and now have to probably return back to look for work( something I don’t look forward to). Thought the new world was so much better. But people here are so alien to one another. It feels like a matrix. No one gives a rat’s arse about you.
I try to find some meaning in this empty existence. I spend my time reading philosophy and emerse myself into ancient wisdom – of what I realise what I lack is the collegial love that a man/woman has for one another instead of the vivacious memory Mneumonics I use to pretend that person exist. I am a man who is severely lacking. I was born with a difficulty getting out of the womb – Csection needed to get me out because I was stuck as hell. And that was almost like the dark beginnings that shaped me for who I am today. As soon as I came out my hands was up in a “boxing” form close to my cheekbones. I lived the metaphor of “fighting” against the light itself. I did not want to be here. Whenever I went to parties I was known for always having to take a back seat in pictures. I am a known “wallflower”. My childhood was congenial and generally fun, but as soon as I entered my adolescence, I began to feel more empty as the girls did not pay any attention at me. This was a snowball effect and eventually left me so depressed that I started self harm at the age of 24. After giving up billions of times on girls I eventually took the queue and followed a path of solitude. But I realised even this is not enough. I want to be with someone. Soon after more troubles followed; chronic pain from dental abscess that never really healed and caused more pain in my face aggressively. I was in so much pain in 2017 and during the first months of this year that I was unable to have a night’s rest with excruciating headaches at least 3 times a week; mostly 4.
I really feel as if death would be a blessing. I am unhappy. I feel out of sorts with who I am. Best thought of a constant war with existence. On the other note, I opened up to my parents about this and they are petrified; “how can you be so young and tired of life” they say. My parents are lovely and I shed tears thinking of how my death might impact them everyday.
I grow more paranoid as time pass. I try to be a good son. I worry about them getting older. My parents aren’t working like they used to. They are getting older and also have health problems. I have been banned to this life; I can’t escape because my parents would be devastated; I feel I have no life by staying. I am between a cross road of dichotomies left right, and centre. I am unable to get a birds eye view. I just want to be annihilated.
*Films are great. I also lose myself nowadays into my childhood cartoons and comedies. I truly love to laugh. I don’t know a word yet for someone who enjoys laughing a lot. Laughomanic just doesn’t seem right. I am gastronomically humorous. I love good humour. I also like slapstick. My favourite movie is Steph Brothers and similar genres from the 90’s pick. Man I miss the 90’s my youth… What happened to the trends? We don’t have any fucking trends anymore. We had JoJo’s, Yoyo’s, banana looking Frozo milkshake things. The 90’s was epic. Now life is full of chip-on-the shoulder boy-racers looking for fights and a reason to stay on the dole. Fuck it.
Sorry for my late response to you, I’ve been very busy the past couple of days. I also have to apologize for my English (it’s not my native language) and if you don’t understand what I’m trying to say, feel free to say it to me. Also, feel free to correct me if I make any mistakes.
I’ll answer your questions about me and then I’ll tell you what I think about you – please have patience, because this is gonna be a long comment (probably).
I’m Greek and I live in Athens. My interest in philosophy (and later on psychology) began by reading history. My first book was one on ancient Greek mythology, then my parents bought me the Iliad and the Odyssey. After that, I started reading about ancient Greek history (later I studied World history and various mythologies/religions from around the world). I was reading about the (ancient) Classical and the Hellenistic period and I kept finding Socrates’ name in most of these texts. I was thinking of him as a weird and interesting figure, so I started searching more about him. I’ve read Plato and Xenophon (they were both his students), then Aristotle and then I just kept going. I’ve read Heraclitus (or to be more precise, fragments of Heraclitus’ book that survived until today), books about the sophists (especially about Gorgias) and the Cyrenaics, books about Cynicism, Pyrrhonism, Stoicism (ancient Greek and Roman), Epicureanism etc. Then I studied Buddhism, Christian and Muslim philosophy/theology, Chinese philosophy (Lao-Tzu and Confucius), then the philosophy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, modern philosophy (especially Kierkegaard, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger), existentialism (especially Sartre and Camus), phenomenology (Husserl), psychology (and its branches: psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, psychosynthesis etc) and post-modern philosophy (Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard and others) . As to which of these apply to me the most, I can’t tell for sure… I’ve been influenced by all of them and my own way of thinking. I might say that my logic is a combination of all these and my own thoughts. As for God, I don’t believe in him in the Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Indian etc sense. I’m not saying that there isn’t a God (or Gods), there might be one, I just believe that we don’t know for sure. And probably we can’t know. So, one might call me agnostic (I keep saying that I’m an atheist for convenience, because if I say ”agnostic”, most people don’t know the meaning of this term).
Anyway, I can relate to you, because I feel the same sense of alienation and emptiness. I go to work everyday (I’m a mechanical engineer) and I can’t relate to others. I also don’t like much my job. The way I approach my job is a cynical one: I work and I try to prevent it affecting me in a bad way.
But I see that you feel guilty about yourself (I also feel the same sometimes). I think that you must ask yourself why you should feel guilty. Guilty for what? You are what you are, you don’t have to feel bad about that. I’m not saying that it’s easy being you, I’m just saying that you should accept yourself as it is. I, personally, find you a nice person (that’s my impression of you from what you wrote and the way you wrote it).
As I see it, our main problem is not social or cultural or any of that (although, all these are contributing factors), but existential. The nature of our existence is our main problem. That’s why I think you should search inside you, see what fills you up, what makes you feel better and then follow it. And, again, I must say that this is not going to be easy. You wrote that ”everyone else get along in life” and that’s not completely true. They try to get along in life. They face similar (if not the same) problems as we do, that’s why they try to combat them in a way they choose: for example, someone tries to advance in her/his job and her/his career, others try to produce art etc. The more someone tries, the more is ”haunted” by her/his existential agony. One alternative to that is (of course) suicide. But suicide is not an easy task (if it was easy, most people – including us – would be dead by now).
As for your physical pain, we must ask this: is your way of thinking affecting your body, or is it your body that causes the way you think? There’s not a clear answer to that. I think that if you can’t take it, then you should consider visiting a psychiatrist. There’s nothing wrong on doing that and you shouldn’t feel bad about it. And that’s also not going to be easy: don’t think by visiting a psychiatrist that all your problems will be gone away immediately. And I have to say (again) that this is a choice that you must take by your own, after thinking about what you want to do. I’m not trying to force you to do anything, I’m just saying what your options are. I also have to say that I too suffer from physical pain (especially headaches), so (again) I can relate to you.
As for the nostalgia for the 90’s, there’s an explanation for it: people idolize their youth and the past in general (that’s why they always talk about ”the good old days”) and they always try to ”escape” to that period of their lives. Others try to project this ”happy feeling” to the future (that’s why they say ”good things are coming/everything will be better” etc). And they do both of these, because our present is always changing. We can’t ”live” in the present, we always live in our memories of the past or our hopes for the future.
Anyway, that was a long comment (sorry…). If you want, we can talk more about these things. We can communicate via e-mail and analyze more the situation. Or we can keep talking here on the SP or by using a messenger app – I don’t know… Just tell me if you want to, and we’ll see what we’ll do.
The one advantage we older folks have is that we know, by experience, what works and what doesn’t. This is the key to my ability to (questionably) cope. But it gets better every year.
Example. A 14 year old and a 35 year old feel an equal amount of pain. The difference is that the 14 year old may believe suicide is as simple as swallowing a bottle of advil, whereas the 35 year old knows that won’t do squat. Thus, the 14 year old may obsess over suicide by advil, while the 35 year old knows (not by intelligence but just by experience) that suicide that way is not an option, and so the older person will be more likely to move on to a new thought.
Scaling this example up, I think over time (and I’ve noticed it here on this site) that older folks are less spontaneous, less likely to post “I’m going to do it tonight!”, and probably more likely to accept the fact that suicide is a lot harder than just thinking about it. And I think that’s the first step to moving beyond suicide: realizing it’s just not going to happen. So we move on.
That’s as far as I’ve gotten in my wise old age /sarcasm. I’ve accepted that suicide isn’t in my cards, so I’ve downshifted from suicidal depression to just plain depression. An improvement, I guess?
I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has taken this approach to recovery: ruling out the impossible and focusing on more probably solutions rather than stagnating in a dead end thought. I don’t know where to go from here, but at least I know I’m not in danger of gulping a bottle of advil.
I drink beer and dick around on the internet. It doesn’t really help, but passes the time I guess. Not even the time I spend with my amazing daughter helps, although I am happy when I’m with her. But afterwards.. The depression and loneliness and everything else comes back even stronger.
Sorry, I don’t have a better answer.
I have started feeling a tiny bit better since I’ve accepted that I will definitely be killing myself in the near future. I guess it’s the fact that nothing really matters anymore.
Good luck to you.
I’m 31. When I think about how I go on, I recall a line in a song by the band Spectral Display. The song is titled It Takes a Muscle to Fall in Love and the lyric is “you’re going to live tomorrow if you don’t die today”, so essentially there is no option but to live if aren’t dead. Similarly, the Samuel Beckett quote, “I must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” channels the same insight. If you’re not dead, you’ll find a way to tomorrow and you’ll go on, and on and on. So the real question is why do we continue to go on, choose life, choose tomorrow?
Well. I guess that makes me the senior citizen of this board.
I read this
http://suicideproject.org/2013/04/first-and-last-post
Found that post to be a a masterpiece. Coming from an atheistic point.
You are reading a post in the 3rd dimension earth plane. All of its
emotions and family tribal rituals are just props. Some of you who
think you dive outward into space what makes you think you don’t
dive inward? I think David Bowie’s passing got me thinking about that
perspective. Suffering? Yeah, End Stage Renal disease, no thyroid,
insomniac and myriad of ailments. For the time being, “It’s just another
day” if I make it that far in this 3rd dimension body then fine.
Hi Sir. Thank you for replying. I want to thank you for the post because I really miss intelligent written heart-felt posts like this these days. Tell me a bit more about yourself. Just a quick summary of your story! I am unable to see your posts hence the wonderful programming of this site.
I am a private person. Death should be personal, some make it out to be a big
brouhaha. I am over 50. At my stage of the game you just make the best of it,
till there’s a breaking point. I like your nym, “tiredofchronicpain”, true but also
misunderstood by our society. I’ve been around a lot of forums but curtailed
my postings in the past five years. I think a lot nowadays.
Maybe too much. It is sad to hear and read when somebody under twenty-five takes their own life. But yeah, “chronicpain” includes insomnia and being berated by so called family members. Take care.