Despair passing, but still need some support.

[eeks]

I had about an hour and a half where I was having suicidal thoughts.  Just thoughts, no plans or anything like that (it's ok internet people, if anything had escalated I would seek help locally). 

Just feeling like my life isn't worth living, I'm not meant for this world (not tough or ambitious) and no one except my mother would miss me if I was gone.  Feeling like life is not worth living mainly because I have not been able to attain friendships, sex, intimacy generally.  I'm 36 and the longest relationship I've been in is 2 months, and those were few and far between.

I'm not looking for advice.  I think I've heard all the advice one could possibly receive in this situation.  Which seems to boil down to, either change your attitude in order to accept your situation (I don't.  I just can't.)  or motivate yourself to take action to get the things you want (I have.  I have in the past taken consistent action over periods of time, and it didn't work.)

No, I just feel too fragile and impatient right now to handle the typical small-talk that has to happen when you first meet people, and most of my friendships (the ones in the city where I live, anyway) have ended, either because they were lopsided (either they felt they were giving more than I was, or vice versa) or I was just too embarrassed to tell them "yep, still don't have a job."

I have had a therapist (psychoanalysis) for a year, and other therapists on and off probably for a sum total of a few years.  Yoga, chiropractic, conscious dance, etc.  Lots of reading on my own.  Increased in self-awareness but somehow none of it seems to affect my conviction that I'm unworthy of love, nor my ability to cope with day to day life.

I am actually a really lovey person.  if I met someone new I liked, I would probably be like "I really like you! I'd love to spend more time with you!" ... .but I would never actually say that because I am afraid they are going to get a disgusted look on their face and say "you think I would actually want to hang out with you?"

Yeah, I know adults don't usually do that but years of social rejection (elementary and high school; I did have friends at times but some of those friendships ended cruelly) means I feel like my genuine kindness is just too dorky for people.

Also, I don't know whether or not I'm "weird".  I never thought I was weird, nobody called me weird until I was identified as gifted, and then I thought, "well, if all these people are saying I'm weird then I must be weird."  So all that rhetoric about embracing your weirdness, "let your freak flag fly" etc., I don't even know if it applies to me!

[eeks]

I wish I wasn't so all over the place.  It makes it hard for me as well as for anyone I would ask for support.

Anyways, I was just doing some inner dialogues, and what came up around the brutal inner critic is not anything to do with anything I just said, but issues with my parents.

(the inner critic, it hounds me the way it does because it is trying to get me my parents' love... .I had some insights but now what's coming up is my mother's unresolved emotions around the sexual abuse she experienced as a child, and I don't feel I can progress any further with that tonight)

I'm exhausted, off to bed.

[Lucky Jim]

Hi eeks, My suggestion is that you practice self-compassion, that is, being kind and loving to yourself.  If you start from the premise that you are worthy just the way you are, you might find it makes a difference in how you treat yourself.  Also, you're not weird, you're exactly the unique person who you are supposed to be.  Strive to be authentic, rather than worry about labels such as "gifted."  Hope this doesn't sound too much like "advice"!  Just my two cents.  LuckyJIm

[fromheeltoheal]

Everybody's weird; folks we consider "normal" are just people who are weird in the same direction we are.

Hey eeks, have you ever looked yourself in the eyes in a mirror and said "I love you" and meant it?  If you haven't ever done it, it will be weird at first, but I recommend it.  All you need is within you now.

[Lucky Jim]

Agree, fromHtoH.  Learning to love oneself, in my view, is the jumping off point for self-growth, from which many positive benefits flow.  LJ

[Tibbles]

Hi ekks. I sometimes think if anyone could see inside some elses head - everyone would be considered weird! What helps me when I gets those types of feelings is gratitude. When life is really bad - and it has been lately, I think of 5 things I am grateful for, things like my comfy bed, my shower - don't have a water saving shower head, love it. Sometimes its that the day has ended.  Just stuff like that. Lifts me up and helps me keep going. The good and the positive are all through our lives, just have to look REALLY hard sometimes to find it.

[Turkish]

Everybody's weird; folks we consider "normal" are just people who are weird in the same direction we are.

Hey eeks, have you ever looked yourself in the eyes in a mirror and said "I love you" and meant it?  If you haven't ever done it, it will be weird at first, but I recommend it.  All you need is within you now.

That does seem like a weird exercise, but it's something worth trying, just to get used to the feelings it evinces. We did it with the at-risk youth we mentored (had them look into a mirror to tell us what they saw), and it tended to get through or make a point to even the most closed off youth. I was just watching the exercise for the first time, and I felt a lump in my throat thinking, "I'm glad I'm only here to support my youth, rather than doing it myself!"

eeks,

You mentioned your mother and her unresolved issues. Do you feel that as a child you were responsible for her feelings? At what age did you learn of her past abuse?

[eeks]

Regarding the self-love and gratitude practices, suffice it to say that I have spent some time in therapy dealing with the retraumatization that happens when I am asking for empathy and listening, or at minimum suspension of judgment (of the sort that I didn't get when I was being bullied at school, and on other minor but repeated incidents at home) and someone responds with one of these catchphrases.  When I requested no advice, I had a good reason.

It's not that people *can't*, it's that "can" quickly becomes "should".  You can love yourself.  Now why aren't you doing it?  Maybe it would be more accurate to say that telling someone in distress to love themselves is sort of like... .there's a farmer in a rural area,  subsistence level living, there's been a drought and he doesn't have any irrigation equipment.  The crops are dying.  And his neighbour comes along and says "Well I know what needs to happen here!  It needs to rain!"

But since we went there, I will add that my current understanding is along the lines of attachment theory, more specifically I am realizing more and more how many emotional issues and so-called mood disorders are relational in nature. 

The principles in the following link, specifically the idea that suffering is not "located in the person who is suffering", but rather an attribute of the interaction between that person and the environment (and other people), may seem at first to go against our current popular notions of "empowerment", but if you read carefully you will see that it does not.   www.midpsy.org/draft_manifesto.htm

[eeks]

Everybody's weird; folks we consider "normal" are just people who are weird in the same direction we are.

Hey eeks, have you ever looked yourself in the eyes in a mirror and said "I love you" and meant it?  If you haven't ever done it, it will be weird at first, but I recommend it.  All you need is within you now.

That does seem like a weird exercise, but it's something worth trying, just to get used to the feelings it evinces. We did it with the at-risk youth we mentored (had them look into a mirror to tell us what they saw), and it tended to get through or make a point to even the most closed off youth. I was just watching the exercise for the first time, and I felt a lump in my throat thinking, "I'm glad I'm only here to support my youth, rather than doing it myself!"

eeks,

You mentioned your mother and her unresolved issues. Do you feel that as a child you were responsible for her feelings? At what age did you learn of her past abuse?

I think one of the issues for me is not necessarily around self-love (despite previous response) but that if I were to love myself, then I would act like it.  And if I acted like it, I would realize how traumatic and distorted some circumstances were, and lose it on some of the people who hurt me/were ignorant/etc.  And because I have issues with anger, my FOO sent some mixed-up messages around anger, I think I reflexively retreat from the whole thing.

No, I don't feel I was literally responsible for her feelings but when I was in a conflict with an adult outside the immediate family when I was a teenager, I had to say the polite thing the person wanted to hear/extract myself from the situation asap.  I bring this up here because I couldn't get angry at someone who wasn't meeting my needs, but if someone else got angry at me (even using it as a manipulation) I had to respond with what they expected.

[vortex of confusion]

   

First, I want to give you some hugs of support!

Have you ever done any reading or research about being gifted? It might help you to understand yourself a bit. Here is an article about existential depression in gifted individuals: https://sengifted.org/archives/articles/existential-depression-in-gifted-individuals

No, I just feel too fragile and impatient right now to handle the typical small-talk that has to happen when you first meet people, and most of my friendships (the ones in the city where I live, anyway) have ended, either because they were lopsided (either they felt they were giving more than I was, or vice versa) or I was just too embarrassed to tell them "yep, still don't have a job."

It is not uncommon for somebody that has been identified as gifted to have a difficult time with small talk. I, too, was identified as gifted in school. I have always felt a bit awkward and haven't fit in like other people. It is interesting that, as an adult, I have found a few friends that I clicked with. After getting to know them better, I discovered that they too had identified as gifted at some point in their life. It can be a blessing and a curse. A lot of those people have had some of the same struggles that I have had, which are similar to some of the things that you describe.

I wish I could find the link now but living in an invalidating environment can do a number on a person. Something that is extremely invalidating is having somebody say, "Just do it." I found that on a link somewhere on this site. I wish I could find the link again. The gyst is that it is very invalidating when somebody else oversimplifies the problem. If it was all as easy as 'love yourself', it would have happened a long time ago.

Can you identify things that make you feel loved? I have found that it is easier to deal with things when I look at things in small pieces. I tend to be a perfectionist at times. That is a curse because my fear of failure will sometimes kick in and keep me from doing things. Is there something small that you CAN do and that you know you will succeed at? If so, do more of that. It's all about taking baby steps for me.

Hang in there!

[eeks]

 

First, I want to give you some hugs of support!

thank you!   

I have heard of "existential depression" before, and maybe I relate to some of it but ultimately I don't think it describes my situation.

I think mine is more about the "map" of the range of human emotions and how they can be expressed in relationships, and the underlying "rules" about emotions in my family growing up... .This emotion is never safe.  This one is safe to feel at home, but not in public.  This person can express this emotion, this other person isn't allowed.  Etc.

As a teenager, I was supposed to have an independent mind and do my own thing, not fall for peer pressure or anything superficial... .but always be gracious, polite, cooperative and never offend anyone.   That's not possible for one human being, and certainly not for one whose brain hasn't even matured yet and who is relatively lacking in life experience!

It was not put to me (or if it was, not emphatically enough) that others' offense is significantly if not completely determined by their own experiences and beliefs, not because "I did something that was rude and hurt their feelings", and I may choose to address their emotions if I would like to foster the relationship, but I am not obligated to soothe those emotions or be responsible for bringing the quickest end to the conflict (generally by foregoing my own interests).

Maybe more importantly, that there are constructive and destructive ways of expressing emotions, but every emotion is valid, has its purpose, and is trying to tell you something important, your job is to figure out what.

And so it feels like the issue for me now is this difficult choice between doing what will make me happy/pursuing my own goals and desires vs. making everyone else happy.

This brings me to another unspoken family rule, "it is ok for the parents to invade the children's boundaries, tell them what's wrong with them or what they need to "fix" or do differently, if they are correct about their assessment. "  The problem is, the surface content of the words ends up like a vector for a virus, which in this case is the parent's overwhelming emotions which they don't want to feel and would like to dump into the child.

I try to "re-narrate" some past situations with more emotionally self-aware thought bubbles or labels on my parents, such as "I am not happy" or "I do not feel I was good enough for my own parents, or for myself, and I am dumping that frustration on my child, telling her that she is not good enough to get my approval".   

I was just thinking about how, if I was struggling with say, finances or career decisions, rather than encouragement, practical suggestions or a reminder that he's "in my corner", my father would criticize me (there were a lot of "shoulds", detailing exactly what I should have accomplished by that point - re-narration "I feel sad, helpless, inadequate and unloved!".  And I then had a thought, it might seem a little "out there", but I wondered if my father criticized me as a smokescreen for the fact that he didn't have good life skills himself, and had no clue how to teach me or be a good role model.

Same with my mother, maybe, she believed she didn't know how to help me make friends in high school (I don't believe that was the case, she just jumped to that conclusion because she herself hadn't been popular, and either really didn't want to be or pretending she didn't want it was her way of dealing with it) and so rather than saying to me that she cared, but she didn't know how to help... .she tried to put a lid on my feelings, saying "being popular isn't important", the thinking seemed to be that if you can't get something the least painful way of dealing with it is just to instantly shut off the desire for it.  Which could be her dumping her feelings about her inadequacies as a parent, onto me.  And of course telling yourself to stop wanting something doesn't make it go away.  You may not be able to get it, true, but a compassionate and validating approach to the emotions is necessary in order to maintain integrity despite not having it.

ugh.

So yeah, doing what makes me happy, sounds simple enough, but it seems I'm carrying this burden of my parents' unprocessed emotions placed onto me, and invalidating responses from others who I might be able to bond with (instead of my residual dysfunctional bond with my parents' traumas, trying to finally "earn" their love... .) don't help either.

Money is a big one.  I find this is a topic where people tend not to "own" their emotions and the experiences that led to their beliefs.  It is very easy for them to instead express their personal subjective stuff as "just the way the world works" (because so many people feel that way?), thereby imposing all of that on others (the "virus and vector" mentioned earlier).

This is the tricky and interesting part.  I actually have deep capacity for joy.  So I'm not sad, I'm afraid to be happy, because I'm afraid of the criticism I will get from people who are working and making money and think I'm immature, irresponsible, naive, spoiled, whatever.  They may not use those words, but the moralistic tone is there.

For example, several months ago I was at a bar chatting with a man I'd just met, and I told him I was painting and drawing, and he said "Well, you have to do something practical."  (For 15 seconds or so, I sat there silently trying not to explode, and composing my response, and I realize now, reflecting back on it, that emotionally I felt short-circuited, disarmed.)  I forget what I said to him, but whatever it was he quickly took responsibility for his prior comment, saying that he had a photography hobby that he loved, and a day job he did not love, and was wrestling with that.  (He asked for my number but didn't call me, incidentally.)

No doubt part of why I react the way I do to comments like this by strangers (or non-strangers) is because of the issues with my parents as described above, where they felt they had the freedom to violate my boundaries with "corrections".  Really, unless someone is or plans on becoming personally involved with my finances, they have no right to say anything.

I've rambled a bit here, there isn't any sort of resolution to this appearing right now.  I feel distracted, a couple of things going on tonight, first of all earlier I was going to go to an event, but was so late I didn't bother going, and walking home meant going past uBPD ex's apartment building.  I looked at his balcony and felt such grief, like the kind where I'm intuitively reacting to something, I don't know what that means.  Plus I have been paying attention to a lot of emotions and physical sensations re: my own issues, I don't know where this is all leading.

[disillusionedandsore]

I believe Ive been wrestling with something similar the past year... .I'm noticing how often people try to define me... .  I am feeling exhausted from the effort of accurately putting myself as I know me across... .There seems to be so much projection,  distortion,  assumption,  judgement,  prejudice and bias... .I find myself post BPD relationship having a very low tolerance for this kind of thing... .There was so much emotional and verbal abuse... .

Is this something like you experience?