Any tips on how to handle it when you have no prospect of things really getting better? It’s not a phase for me – it’s been over a decade like this. I’m too old to believe time will improve anything. This is me now. I’m long past the point where I can see any way out. There’s no hope left.
But I’m still here. I’m too scared to let go, and until something gets drastically worse (which probably will happen eventually), I can’t see that changing.
But I have no idea how to live with this. I’m just full of extreme loneliness, self-hatred, guilt, shame, regret, and it all combines into this crippling despair. Nothing seems worth doing. There’s no peace, no release. Just this awfulness I’ve created around me.
My impulse is to just numb it all away with more self-destructive behaviours, but I don’t want to go too far in that direction anymore. Although I can’t see things getting much better for me now, I’m pretty sure I can still make them significantly worse.
But I don’t know how to live with this experience, day to day, without doing something stupid. Knowing that there’s nothing I can do to make things ok. With no feeling of purpose or comfort. No reason, no future. Just living to delay death.
It seems intolerable. I don’t know how to do it. Continuing to live is killing me inside. I’m a walking open wound. Every crushed hope, every regret – it’s just constant reminders of how shitty I’ve made my own existence, and I don’t know how to stop. There’s no feeling better – just brief periods of denial and distraction, until the reality intrudes once more. Living hurts. Being around people hurts. Thinking about myself hurts. Awareness hurts.
I shouldn’t exist, but I’m too scared to face the leap into darkness.
I need something to get me through until the end comes. Something to take the edge off. Something to tell myself that quiets the desperation. Something to stop myself from self-destructing. I feel like the misery is leaking out of me wherever I go, contaminating everyone around me. I need some way to push it down.
I need a drink, but that would require contact with other people, which would probably make it all feel worse. Not worth it. Guess I’ll settle for a sleeping pill and trying to distract myself from reality until I fall asleep.
5 comments
First. Sorry, im just a idiot, so idk if this gonna help, but…
Pls try to move on (i know you already tried but pls). If you did shit or “shame” things, pls screw it. You re a different person right now. A prove of this is your text. U want to get better and all those stuffs, so please… try again, everyone makes mistakes or something that re embarassed
I’ve been ready and waiting to kill myself for the past 15 years. Every one of those days, I would have preferred being dead. I always get scared because these awful people attack me and even if I walked away 1,000 miles – they would still attack me. So I stopped planning trying to flee and now instead of leaving to have a chance at having a real life worth living, the only thing I’ll ever do is kill myself. I’d be dead today but I’ve just a few things left to do before I throw every opportunity I had to leave my terrible shitty life for a nice normal one.
One of the most relatable posts ever for me.
First tip would be to make sure you get your sleep. And just looking after your health in general. But start with sleep. It improves your self-discipline, reduces impulsiveness, and should make you feel a bit better too.
The second tip is to deal with your shame. For me, shame and social anxiety are two sides of the same coin. And what is social anxiety? It’s the fear of discovering what people think of you, and of it being bad. It’s the fear of their eyes on you, it’s the fear of meeting their eyes and seeing in them their spontaneous reaction to you.
How do you deal with that? By accepting that everyone has an opinion on you and your past (as well as your present). And by not averting your eyes or covering your ears. Take it in. Find out what people actually think about you. It’s like having a fear of heights and looking down from a skyscraper. Terrifying, but eventually you will get more used to it.
Sleep is important, but tricky for me to regulate (without pills, which leave me feeling worse the next day.) I have some minor physical issues which make it very hard to get comfortable, and I basically have to wear out my mind to the point where I no longer notice my discomfort (can take into the early hours.) The more I try to control it, the harder it tends to get, so I try not to.
That’s a very insightful description of social anxiety. I’m not sure I could take finding out what people really thought of me. All it takes is the slightest negative reinforcement or comment (e.g. ‘why are you so quiet?’) to send me plummeting to the depths. Besides which, the main things I have to be ashamed about are things I can’t tell anyone. So all I could get would be people’s opinions of the front I present to the world, whereas the real me is far worse. I’m not sure it would help much with the shame. But it’s solid (if challenging) advice for socially anxious people in general.
Sounds bad with the sleep. Being sleep deprived is likely to make anyone depressed. Sorry to hear it.
Regarding the shame, can relate to feeling KOed by comments like that, but actually I also find that it eventually makes me stubborn. It’s like “Fuck you if you don’t like me.”
I’m not sure it’s even possible to put up a convincing front. The person you are on the inside tends to bleed through. Which is also why that person is more important. You can’t change your past, but you can try to change how you behave now, when nobody is looking. If you feel good about how you are behaving in private, that will eventually shine through in public, I think.
Good luck