<p style=”text-align: left;”>Dear Anita,</p>
 

Thanks for your response. Can I get back to your message later? Because right now my intrusive/obsessive thoughts are getting more frequent again, and I have begun to feel hopeless about them.

Thanks,

Kshitij

Dear Anita,

I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what will it take for me to get over this thing. I will complete first year of my masters in a month’s time and I am still in misery over this thing. It’s tiring now, please suggest something

Thanks

Kshitij

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Dear Anita,</p>
I am preparing my dinner right now, kind of helps. But I am talking in a larger perspective, the intrusive thoughts have become frequent from the past few days and now I feel tired and hopeless about them. What can I do?

Thanks

Kshitij

Dear Anita,

Thanks for your insights and kind words. Its been a rough week, and I feel emotionally exhausted by having either intrusive or enraged thoughts. It was almost a loop, when the former faded the latter began to float. Not sure how I will manage with it. Nevertheless, I tried sitting with my intrusive thoughts yesterday and am writing some points. This might be a long post so please read it according to your convenience. When I introspected; deep down somewhere, I felt grief, grief that was so heavy that I am not able to cope with it even though my reality is different from what my intrusive thoughts make me imagine. I had felt this intense grief when I was facing the issue with scholarship and it has remained within me, refusing to fade away. Never in my life I had felt such an intense pain, such an intense grief (not even during the time I was in the worst of my health and I know what that was) that was unsurmountable. Whenever I spiral into intrusive thoughts, I feel hurt inside which I felt during those days as well. Hurt because the entire situation was uncalled for, it was because a bureaucrat found it satisfying for their  whimsical reasons to keep my application pending. I had met all the eligibility criteria, and over a very trivial matter that I had clarified with an official clarification from my university, that officer deliberately withheld my file. This left me hurting and thinking about it hurts me even today. I was on the brink of losing the single biggest opportunity of my life till now all thanks to them. This unfairness added to my pain and hurt and filled me with despair unexperienced before.

The third emotion I felt within me was hopelessness and we have had talked about it. As you mentioned above, the thought that ‘no matter how much I tried, things would always go worse’ appears to be in the core of the problem. I agree to this possibility. I felt hopelessness because I felt tired of seemingly endless challenges and being on survival mode constantly. I had already endured a very difficult 2020-21, struggled with panic attacks/anxiety in 2022 and before even six months could pass since a considerable healing of my anxiety, I got rocked by this situation. I was hoping 23 would be the year where I would get some good things in life and move ahead but instead I facing all this, for the first time I was in a literal and total mess, I felt a darkness around me and I had no clue about anything unlike the previous times when I at least knew my path to recovery. To be honest, I was even tired of ‘recovering’ from things, I felt that all my energy and life is being consumed by these challenges and things happening one after the other. That is why I thought maybe giving up was a better choice, I lost all hopes because all I could see was pain, misery, misfortune and difficulties. Just when I had thought that I have overcome some major challenges, I was hit with another. I am able to remember these many details at the moment but I know I was on the verge of slipping into depression back then, and I decided to gave up on my wellbeing because I had absolutely no energy and I was emotionally reacting this way. (not something I am very proud of.) That is why whenever I get into a spiral of intrusive thoughts, I imagine myself depressed, I imagine myself isolated, drowned in misery and weeping on my condition. I imagine myself turning into a bitter person suffering from grief and pain. The real problem is that some part of me feels that all of this would have been the reality had the scholarship situation taken a different turn, and that is why it makes me scared, anxious and fearful. Seven months have passed by, and I still feel that I would have ended up like this, I feel the same grief and hurt creeping up in my intrusive thoughts. I still feel that I would have lost all my hopes and gotten into a downward spiral. I feel scared for myself, what would have I actually done in ‘that’ reality if I think like this in my anxious thoughts.

Now about my problem with father. I think that my relation with him did not make me think that I can never succeed because I could not succeed in having a good relation with him; I gave up on that long ago. I think his problematic behavior ended up showing in my self esteem, in my self worth(remember I mentioned externalization of self worth?) Because I had to bear up with a lot of ‘sermons’ from him, criticisms and disapprovals from other members of my family; I began focusing too much on ‘achieving’ things, in pursuit of ‘showing everyone’ what I could do through my decisions and career. Now I see, this showed up in my workaholism and my desire for external achievements and approvals. During the scholarship issue or even before it happened, I think I attached my self worth with this opportunity. I saw my peers advancing in their careers and doing great things, and all that along with the existing dependency of my self-esteem on external things, I got devastated when this situation happened, my self worth took a great hit and that contributed to my problems as well as my anxiety that went out of my control. I think that is one area where my father’s past behavior definitely impacted me because it had already damaged my self-esteem as a child.

It felt comforting to type down all these things.

Thanks,

Kshitij

Dear Anita,

Thanks for your replies. Being enraged for a considerable time of the day is indeed exhausting, I was in a loop of enraging memories a few minutes ago as well. It becomes very difficult to not let the emotions take over, it is even interfering with my studies at time.

On your reply dated 20th May- the officer certainly did that because they wanted to, it was completely intentional. I could see other applicants getting their files approved with ease, and even after submitting the required clarification multiple times, they just didn’t let my application proceed. The more I tried, the more personal it became for them. I don’t know why they did all that, but it was unjust, it felt cruelly unfair.

I agree that there was some unresolved anger because I took that anger on myself. I was frustrated, frustrated to the melting point, and I took that frustration on myself. It felt that I was taking some revenge by hurting myself. I can remember this because during that time, I simply refused self-care or any help, I began developing an apathy towards myself, believing inside that why should I put my efforts when all things have to happen this way. A part of my intrusive thoughts are about self-harming behavior (not physical harm) like discontinuing therapy, cutting off all friendships and relations, refusing proper diet and taking care of my physical health and even giving up my career aspirations and a desire for numbness. Such intrusive thoughts hurt me further, they scare me because if I am thinking these things even after seven months, what would I have actually done. It was a point when I began feeling anger towards life itself, because all I could feel was despair, defeat and hopelessness, I felt so much for pity for myself for having to face all this.  I would like to know more about solving this unresolved anger.

About self-esteem, you described it in an accurate manner. It wasn’t the case earlier, but as time went by (especially after graduating from my undergrad college) I began getting attached with this thing, and a point came when I attached my self worth to it. I feel that I got more and more attached to this thing with the worsening of the scholarship issue. And I don’t know why I should not have! It was the single largest opportunity of my life till now and it was going waste because of such a reason! All my hardwork, efforts and sacrifices seemed nothing.

I too feel a lack of self compassion in me, I feel that the only person who would look down on Kshitij is Kshitij himself. The outer world doesn’t judge me, I judge myself. Its me who fixes my self worth on my external achievements and my work. For some reasons I have developed a habit of self sabotaging, of being kind with everyone but me. I sometimes feel that lack of self compassion is the very reason I suffer so much from these intrusive thoughts, because I cant let them go, I cannot do what is required for me to find some peace and solace.

A side note- I read a few things about OCD and intrusive thoughts (and I am not self-diagnosing at all) and I have realized that probably my intrusive thoughts are also a sort of compulsion. But, I am not making any kind of decision on this.

Thanks,

Kshitij