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Don't know what to do anymore

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  • #218141
    EscapeNeeded
    Participant

    Not sure what I’m expecting to be able to gain from posting but hoping for some direction. I’m 28F, from the outside I have a great life. I have an amazing husband, we have our own house, we have 2 great cats, we both have decent jobs, my work is boring, but the company is the best I’ve ever worked for, we don’t have to watch every penny. I even have a small side business that I started and we have family close by we see most weekends.

    But I just feel crap. I feel pointless. I have no goal. I have no aim. I have nothing I want to do. Except currently, run away. I just keep seeing all the people who are travelling, or have a camper and travel around the world, and I just want to run away and do that. We’re married less than a year, we had the most amazing honeymoon and I left the worst job in the world just before the wedding, to start at my current place just after the honeymoon. I feel I’ve done everything I’m ever going to do and this is it. I’m going to wake up at 60 and regret everything I did in my life, which will be nothing.

    I also keep panicking about death. I am terrified of death. We have both been very lucky in our lives, I lost all but 1 grandparent as a kid so it didn’t register with me as much as loosing my only Grandma did, my husband hasn’t lost anyone. I am dreading my phone ringing and it being a sibling telling me to go home, or my husband saying his grandad has died. I feel in a limbo waiting.

    I’ve put on weight since the wedding, but I can’t stop eating. I’m hungry all the time, and I boredom eat. But I hate exercise, it does not give me the feeling everyone says it should, how it helps depression etc. It just gives me headache and I hate the sweaty part and the aching afterwards. I’m too impatient, I want results after a week.

    I don’t have any hobbys, but I have nothing that interests me to start a hobby, everything feels pointless to even start, they all just feel like time-wasters until we die. I just don’t know what to do anymore. Mindfulness just doesn’t work for me, and meditation doesn’t either

    #218247
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear EscapeNeeded:

    It may be that your escape-needed current experience of life is not something new but something old. It may be the experience you had as a child growing up. We often re-experience our childhood experience. A feeling happens and we think: what is wrong now? But the wrong was in the past, and we keep experiencing he feeling that fits what was wrong in the past.

    What do you think?

    anita

    #218273
    Mark
    Participant

    EscapeNeeded,

    There are different ways to exercise.  A simple walk around the block for about 1/2 hour or longer helps depression.  Meditation needs to be consistent in order for it to work.  Experiencing the benefits can be subtle or not recognizable at all.  I would do it daily for however long and trust it is good for you.

    I wonder if you have always felt this way or was it something that made you feel this way now?

     

    Mark

    #218363
    EscapeNeeded
    Participant

    Hi Anita, I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you mean?

    Hi Mark, I just get so bored with walking so quickly, I wish we had a dog to give me a purpose to go out, currently I don’t feel too safe going to walks on my own after being spooked by some local lads, I’d have to take my husband along but by the time he gets home he just wants to eat and relax

    I can’t pinpoint when it started, I used to be a very happy person. Lately it just builds up and up inside me until I can’t take any more and I end up just bursting out crying. Last night was one of those times, except normally once I’ve cried I’ve finished, and I usually feel some small relief. But last night I just couldn’t stop crying it was a constant stream. Nothing entertains me anymore, I’m just so bored of everything

    #218455
    Prash
    Participant

    Hi

    Life is a journey that each one of us has to individually navigate. I have on some occasions felt the way that you are feeling currently and I want to share with you how I managed to navigate through those.

    I feel pointless. I have no goal. I have no aim. I have nothing I want to do.

    When I was telling myself these things, I realized that this was happening because I was looking for something special in the future. When I redirected my focus on the small things in my life – my cup of coffee that I relish, my family whom I love, my job that is not challenging yet I have something to go to – basically the things that I am able to do in the present moment, I was able to change the view to small aims, small goals and something that I want to do on a daily basis.

    I also keep panicking about death. I am terrified of death.

    Well, I can’t say I am not terrified of death anymore but I am able to look at in a different way. The reason I am terrified of death is that I fear I will miss what I have when I am not there anymore. That gives me all the more reason to really look forward to what I have and what comes my way. About the death of dear ones and the fear of the phone call informing me about it, I decided to be proactive so that whenever I feel something like that I remind myself to give them a call and remind myself of how much I love them.

    I’m too impatient, I want results after a week.

    Something that did give me immediate result was not any kind of sophisticated meditation or mindfulness but just the practice of slowing my breathing.

    Hope some of this helps

    Take care

     

     

    #218473
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear EscapeNeeded:

    I will explain. First a summary of your share: you have been married less than a year, have a boring job, working for the best company you ever worked for (salary, benefits, people, I imagine), have a small side business that you started, family close by, two cats. And you feel that you have no goal, no aim, nothing that you want except one: to run away, to escape (escape needed is your user name). You want to run away and travel around the world.

    Before you got married you had “the worst job in the world”. You  left that job just before the wedding, then had “the most amazing honeymoon”. Following that you put on some weight, “can’t stop eating… boredom eat”

    As a child you lost family members, “lost all but 1 grandparent”. You are currently dreading, you wrote, getting a phone call regarding another death. “I feel in a limbo waiting”

    My input: it may be that before you got married, you had hope that when you leave the worst job you ever had, then, at that time in the future,  you will be happy, and you had hope that when you get married, then, at that point in the future, you will be happy.

    Those two things happened but the happiness part didn’t happen. Now there is no job to quit and no wedding to take place. And the amazing honeymoon is in the past, none to anticipate.

    I think that as a child you suffered anxiety as a result maybe of family members dying. Maybe you were alone with the fear and that fear remained for a long, long time, days and nights seeming very long, maybe, as the fear festered in you. You felt in limbo waiting as a child and you are still experiencing the same waiting (“I feel in a limbo waiting”).

    (I am thinking that it is this fear that is driving you to eat, needing to do something to make the long, long boring days move along, maybe. The physical discomfort of exercise increases your anxiety, so you avoid it).

    Is my understanding correct?

    anita

    #218717
    EscapeNeeded
    Participant

    Hi Anita, yes I think you are spot on, last time i felt like this the main feeling I had was why aren’t I happy? I wouldn’t say the loosing people affected me that much when I was young – I lost 1 grandparent when i was a baby and the other when i was young, I wasn’t that close to them it didn’t really bother me so my grandma dying when i was about 24 was the first real experience I had, and so far have not had to experience it again (touch wood).

    I have yet to find something that i want to do that entices me to actually try it. I’m so bored, but yet I know I’m also lazy and don’t want the years of hard work it could take to change something

    #218793
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear EscapeNeeded:

    So you were not afraid as a child that relatives will die. Then what was your fear/ anxiety about as a child?

    I ask because you want to escape. Figuring out what it is exactly that you want to escape is necessary so to accomplish the escape you want.

    anita

    #218947
    EscapeNeeded
    Participant

    Hi Anita

    I was and am scared of dying myself, when I learnt about death, I remember I asked my sister what she thought it was and she had said “it’s nothing, just blackness forever” and I would go lay in bed close my eyes, lie as still as I could and imagine that forever. I used to feel ill and the only way I would feel better was to go sit on the stairs so i was near my family – bad nights I’d say i felt sick and my mum would let me sit up a bit longer with them.

    I’m scared of me dying now, but also my family like the added pressure.

    I think that may be putting pressure on me to want to enjoy life, but how can I when we’re stuck working 5 days a week in boring jobs? I try to do as much as we can on the weekends, but it’s not enough knowing I’ll be spending 70% of my time in an office

    #218949
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear EscapeNeeded:

    I think I understand better. You have been scared all these years, ever since you were a child, of that “blackness forever”. I have a few thoughts at the moment, I will let them develop as I type to you.

    Your solution to “blackness forever” has been to escape the forever-feeling in your job, in your life, whatever is boring and feels like forever. You think that if you lead an exciting, unpredictable perhaps, non routine, very active life, then there will be no forever-feeling to your life now.

    I think you were scared of this thing: the forever-feeling now. Not death later, really, but the feeling of death now, that forever-boring-this will never end feeling.

    I think it is this very feeling that you want to escape.

    Before I type anything else, I will ask for your thoughts at this point.

    anita

    #219167
    EscapeNeeded
    Participant

    Hi Anita

    Possibly, yes. But i also know that i have a good life, and that it is a stupid thing to give up and run away to do a reckless thing like run away or, what has been my current ideal, to buy a camper and just travel. I’m tied down here anyway, and I’m too lazy to learn anything to excel myself any further – I don’t want all that essays and assignments etc again. But I don’t want this to be it. And i know that I am the only one who can change that, which just makes me more frustrated

    #219173
    Mark
    Participant

    EscapeNeeded,

    You want to run away
    You are scared of dying
    You don’t have any goals
    You are bored and get bored quickly
    You don’t have any hobbies or anything that holds your interest
    You are lazy
    You burst out crying randomly
    But you use to be a very happy person.
    I wonder what changed from you being a very happy person to someone who is afraid of life.
    Can you pinpoint what happened to change you from that very happy person to now?

    Mark

    #219207
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear EscapeNeeded:

    Your life is good on the outside, but not on the inside, not in between your ears, that is. I think you are afraid, anxious. You are waiting, waiting for something bad or good, waiting. And I think you are tired of waiting. In nature there are three reactions to fear: Fight, Flight, Freeze. You didn’t mention anger, so I have nothing to say about the Fight reaction, in your case. You are considering Flight, running away from your life and traveling the world.

    What I do see in your experience as you shared it, is that you are in Freeze, stuck in the third reaction to fear. Frozen and waiting. Freeze is an animal’s reaction to fear when Fight or Flight is not possible.

    I think it is time for you to attend psychotherapy with a capable therapist. It will have to be one that understands your impatience, your reluctance to do work that doesn’t pay off quickly. Because you don’t have to watch for every penny, as you wrote, therapy is a good, good idea, I think.

    I don’t think you are lazy, as in a character flaw. I think you are tired of waiting for a better life on the inside, because,  on the inside, it hasn’t been good for a long, long time, maybe ever since childhood. Good times here and there, yes, but on an ongoing basis, it wasn’t good, was it?

    anita

    #392261
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear EscapeNeeded:

    I doubt that you are following your old, short thread, but it would be exciting if somehow you will be reading this and reply. It’s been 3.5 years since you submitted the five posts on this thread. It was more than a year before anyone in the whole world heard of Covid-19, a time when most people had no fear of being around other people, a time of economic promise. It was a time before the 2020 and onward severe escalation of extreme weather events related to climate change… the good old days. But…  not really.

    You wrote back then, at 28 years old: “from the outside I have a great life“: at the time you left the worst job you ever had for a job with the best company you ever worked for, you started a side-business, had an amazing honeymoon with your amazing new husband, owned your own home, and yet, on the inside, “I just feel crap. I feel pointless. I have no goal. I have no aim. I have nothing I want to do. Except currently, run away… I also keep panicking about death. I am terrified of death“.

    When you were a child, you asked your sister what she thought death was about, and she said: “it’s nothing, just blackness forever“. After she said that, you did the following: “I would go lay in bed close my eyes, lie as still as I could and imagine that forever. I used to feel ill and the only way I would feel better was to go sit on the stairs so I was near my family – bad nights I’d say I felt sick, and my mum would let me sit up a bit longer with them” –

    – This blackness-forever was imprinted in your brain as a child and that imprint did not disappear because you changed jobs, got married etc. External circumstances do not undo strong neural imprints.

    I’ve put on weight since the wedding, but I can’t stop eating. I’m hungry all the time, and I boredom eat” – the pleasure that eating sometimes provides does not dissolve the forever-blackness, it does not turn the lights on.

    “I hate exercise, it does not give me the feeling everyone says it should, how it helps depression etc. It just gives me headache and I hate the sweaty part and the aching afterwards” -exercise does not turn the lights on either.

    “I’m too impatient, I want results after a week” – anyone living in forever-blackness would be impatient, wanting the lights on ASAP!

    “I just don’t know what to do anymore. Mindfulness just doesn’t work for me, and meditation doesn’t either…  last night I just couldn’t stop crying it was a constant stream. Nothing entertains me anymore, I’m just so bored of everything” – there is just one way to escape the forever-blackness and turn the lights on, and that is to figuratively, in the context of quality psychotherapy, go back to the stairs where you sat during those bad nights, and reconnect to what you felt then in the circumstances that existed then, then process the thoughts and feelings of that time, undoing that blackness-forever imprint in your brain. When enough of that old imprint is dissolved, your life on the inside will change and better match your life on the outside.

    anita

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