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Dear Anita,
The relationship to my parents is great. I love them very much. But they split up when I was 11, and I’ve become very reliant on my mother, and later on my girlfriend, for direction in life. My mom is a worrier, careful and socially a bit isolated. I picked up some of these traits and made semi-safe life choices. Now I need to work on my independence, self confidence, decision making – and learning to love myself again. Living away was a way to do that, but there is no need for it anymore. I sometimes feel regret for having moved at all, because now I have to choose between 2 good places to live, and leave 1 behind. Also because I can’t be there for my mother & sister when needed.
I’ve been diving into my past in therapy, and can see where things went wrong. I’ve always tried to be the good boy, neglecting my own feelings when my parents divorced. I did not have many friends in high school, and was insecure, but I did not know how to express this to my parents. My biggest goal was to become cool and find a girlfriend. When this finally happened when I was 20, I put all my energy into my relationship, never asking if it was right for me. Career wise I always had the feeling things would turn out great for me, but I never set concrete goals. Because I didn’t know and things were OK. Now they are not, relationship and career wise, and I see that I’m lacking, as you put it, a foundation. I don’t know what my purpose is.
But how does knowing this help me?
I had hoped that my last relationship would be something to hold onto, doing projects and traveling together, but since the breakup I’m not so sure. We are back in contact. She’s also battling depression right now, partly as a result, and considering to move back to Latin America next year. We both want to be together, in a way, but it does not seem like a steady basis at all. This hurts even more.
I worry about where I want to build my life, since I have so little time before I possibly have a job again, or a relationship, that will limit my choices. I’m dreading the moment to go back to Berlin next week, because that will be my final destination – from there I have to do something real again. And I have no clue what. If I’m not sure I want to live there, why apply for jobs there? I’m dissatisfied with my living situation, but what good is moving flats if I’m possibly moving country next year? I worry about which path to take, which skill to develop, whether I want to do another education (if I can even afford it), and besides all that… when I will finally have control over my brain again. The depression is eating me up. I have constant headaches, anxiety, and a lack of focus, making me feel even more powerless. In the end, I’m doing nothing. I’m at home, doing little things and thinking, worrying. I feel useless and incapable of anything. I’ve lost myself.
Sorry for writing so much, I’m trying to put it all in perspective for myself. I have not found anyone online who’s struggling with all this at once – most people have at least 1 thing clear (living situation, relationship, job). I don’t and it freaks me out. How do you build a foundation, when there is nothing anymore to hold onto?
Thanks for reading.
Dear Peter,
Anita makes good points. You are trying to run before you can walk. I sense that you feel under pressure to “run”, get a job, have a social life, a girlfriend, etc. I understand work, relationships etc are a moving treadmill and we can feel threatened to be left behind. In my case, I was left behind and am still behind 🙂 The world didn’t end 🙂 Maybe the old life has be let go completely before a new one can come about. Surely it can only come about when we feel serene, without problems, without anxiety, a feeling of strength that is not “self-worth” or any of that stuff, since the self is only the past, put together by thought.
Myself, I know problems cannot be solved by analysing them, but only being aware of them completely, which means not avoiding them, not seeking entertainment or rushing to talk to someone every time I feel anxious or confused. The confusion or anxiety means there is disorder in me, which is the burden of the past that I have not dealt with, and also the constant focus on “me”, my happiness, my life, my “self-worth”, and all of that. Both of those have to be dealt with. I had a very isolated and lonely teens, which resulted in my feeling so low that I became an alcoholic. Thankfully I stopped at 26 and am 8 years sober now 🙂
I always thought the old life ended when I stopped drinking, and that, like I said above, a new life would appear. But it hasnt magically appeared. I have not dealt with the disorder of my teens, which still haunts me in the form of recurring dreams, where im isolated and alone, just like i was in those years. Small wonder im isolated and alone today. I am also unemployed, so cheer up, you are not alone. I dont have a girlfriend either. You probably have things I dont have, like skills. But Im not miserable. I know its a crazy world, so I dont mind if i have to stand alone in a wilderness while I become aware of the reasons for my isolation, which ive touched on above, namely, being unaware of the burden of the past which has not been dealth with and therefore understood. Surely, only understanding can cast off a burden like the past. Also, as i said, as long as im constantly thinking of myself, my loneliness, my past, then im bound to isolate myself and be unable to healthily join others in economic and social life.One other thing, and in this we are alike again. I also felt the need to be “creative” or talented in some way. We live in a competitive society as you know where people feel they are worthless if they are not special or unique in some way. We are not happy to just be ordinary. I was just like that, so are most people. Everyone wants to stand out and excel in some field. But i eventually saw the ugliness of that in myself, since everyone cannot be special, and that surely what is important is a harmonious world where people don’t suffer, have enough to eat, animals not being tortured etc etc, not my own shoddy, petty little desire to be admired by peers. Once I saw that, I was happy to be simple.
So I wish you the very best, I hope I have not given any advice, other than as Krishnamurti would say, to be “a light to yourself”. You have a journey to walk for a time, dont be afraid to be alone with your problems, dont run away from them if you can. Try and observe them, not analyse them, since they are really you rather than separate things, and also tra and be aware of your past, which got you here, and why you came to feel hurt and anxious, and if there was a better way you could have dealt with it than being hurt. I thought others were responsible for hurting me. If abuse is very severe, that of course will be so, but in situations that are more long term and chronic, there was things we could have done better, ie not being hurt through feeling sorry for ourself so much. Whichever, I truly feel we cannot just “release” the past as an act of will, it must be understood and then slip away of its own accord when the disorder has been understood and thus made orderly.
@brianjf: Your post really speaks to me. Thank you so much for sharing. Congrats on being sober for 8 years, that’s amazing 🙂 I’ve mostly given up on alcohol too, it really messed with me.
It’s so true what you say about working through personal problems. Constantly sharing is not bringing me much further, and everyone’s advice is different. Worse: it leads me to realize no-one can really help me.. I just do it because I feel I’m not fit to solve these issues, and I’m obsessed with them 24/7. It needs to get off my chest. But as someone recently told me: sometimes you have to let your problems ‘compost’ in yourself, so you can use it to grow a new version of you.
I think the teen isolation is a key factor. It did not allow us to connect to others in an experimental and truly social way. For me, it means I’m overly obsessed with myself, and it sounds like you are too. But I like that you’re working through it and have found a sense of optimism. You probably do have skills – at least your writing and life advice skills are competent to say the least! Are you engaging in social activities? Meeting new people?
The creativity pressure is a big thing. I’m attracted to creative people, and that makes the pressure higher. I’ve worked my way into the independent animation and game design fields, know hundreds of people there. They crowd my social networks and have a big influence on which events I attend. But it frustrates me to no end that I’m not really creative in these fields while dedicated others pass me by on all sides. Especially games are moving fast, and standing still means being left behind, which increases the pressure. It has squeezed the fun and excitement out of it. I’m completely frozen trying to figure out if I want to draw, design, do sound, produce or write, and after that: how the hell I’m going to make a living doing that. Several students that I advised 8 years ago are now world renowned designers. I don’t need to be, but I’d at least like to know what I want to do or be. How can I not know what I want to do at this age?
Fear of getting too old is what’s pushing me to run before I can walk.
I’m working to improve myself. My lack of discipline, my failure to plan ahead for the future. So for me, forgetting about the future is very hard to do – that seems like the thing I’ve been neglecting all along.
I’m working on making myself more stable every day, and recognizing my problems. Thus far, it has mostly led to me regretting the past, lamenting missed opportunities. My life feels wasted, even if people tell me that’s insane. I hope this will change, so I can constructively work on my future. Rationally I know there’s a future – I just need to find the optimism and fun again.
Dear @anita, thanks again for you insights.
There is a need to go back to your childhood because there is a scared little boy there, waiting to be rescued and YOU are the hero he is waiting for.
This makes a lot of sense. I am no longer being mocked in school or controlled by my parents, so I don’t have to rely on others anymore. It’s just so hard catching up on social skills that I missed in my teens. I am doing a bit better, but I’m still far from being confident in even my daily activities. I’m now celebrating a month of vacation with my family, but I’m terrified of going back ‘home’, alone. Slowly though, I am getting better at it.
As my psychologist said: you have to be your own healthy adult, and guide your inner child. This image helps me a lot. One voice in my head responds to emotion (child) and the other voice then asks what is good for me (parent).
You will understand that there was nothing wrong with you; that there is nothing wrong with you but fear. With Empathy for yourself, with the understanding your difficulties stem not from a faulty character, but from fear and fear alone, you will practice these things that you need to practice: empathy, gentleness and patience with yourself.
Every time I hear something like this, I get the feeling that I should give up on any ambitions I might have. I just can’t. This directly contradicts my feeling of wasted time, that I should act now, be brave, pick a damn goal in life already and go for it! It’s not just fear, it’s also indecisiveness. Maybe that’s a result of fear. I can’t decide what I want, and that’s why nothing happens. Even today, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with my day and as a result I feel I’m wasting time again, increasing my anxiety. I could be studying programming, I could be writing, I could be practicing my drawing or do marketing for my voice acting – but mostly it’s Facebook & worrying. Maybe I need to find a life coach.
Still, thank you for the kind words. I am trying very hard to be patient and empathetic with myself. I am trying to find out where I feel well, what is good for me. What I want and what I could give up on. It takes so much time and energy, but I have no choice but to hold through.
When you have hundreds of people in animation that you know and who are successful, so-called, its going to be hard for you to walk away from that.
It sure is. In fact, I don’t know if it’s possible. I could plan to give up on this kind of career, but some of them are very good friends, and why would I abandon them? Abandoning things has been a pattern in my life, so I won’t. But I am trying to, as you say, let go of the expectations of others. In reality, others even don’t seem to have many expectations of me. Some of them expect me to continue organizing and arranging things, because I’ve been doing that in my last 2 jobs, while what I really want is be creative. So you’re right there: it’s hard to reset people’s image of you.
Would be great if there was a way to try different careers again. Be a teacher for a while, work with animals, do woodworking, try something completely different. I guess that at our age, that time is gone. But I’m considering a way to make the creative parts of my life into hobbies, and find work in a different area.
Are you on the right road for you? Are you happy, even though you say you have no friends and no job? It sounds like you have become a very strong person, and I really admire you for that. But what I’m wondering is: is stepping away from your ambition not also a step away from purpose? Isolation, although sometimes necessary, does not seem constructive in the long run.
I will take your advice in allowing myself more time. But I already worry about how much time it should be.
Dear Peter,
I assume you have clothes, food, shelter, maybe even some pocketmoney :), so, why the *anxiety* to succeed or even just get established if thats a better choice of word? Of course we should give our energy to finding right livelihood, but should it be a cause for anxiety? Search for right livelihood has been very difficult for me, mostly due to fear, but it did not in itself make me anxious, I had (and still have to a small degree) social anxiety and fear because of my teens, just like you, but not anxiety about succeeding. I was and am aware that that is others expectations controlling me, the cause being that I/one has an image about myself which says “I’m capable, i have some capacity, i can do what others do just as well…” etc etc. So that is an example, a common, bare-bones one, and i proceed then to get hurt when the image gets threatened by my not living up to it, which has/is happening in yours and my case. But its just an image, and one I created myself. If we hold it, we are controlled by it until our dying day, or or more accurately, what we perceive others perception of our image to be. You seem a clever fellow, Im sure you see how utterly futile it is to play this game. We are only monkeys if we play this game, there is no freedom in life this way. We build up and nourish this image in our formative years as a defence mechanism, then it comes back to haunt us because we are controlled by the feeling that we have to keep up to it. Simple stuff, yet we seem not to want to give up on it. Pity.
“But what I’m wondering is: is stepping away from your ambition not also a step away from purpose? Isolation, although sometimes necessary, does not seem constructive in the long run.”
I tried to explain above how I personally (which I discovered mostly through J Krishnamurti’s talks) consider the image I have about myself, built up since childhood, to be responsible for ambition in its common meaning. In this sense, ambition has no meaning. So, can a man with no garden-variety ambition, with no image in his head that he is this or that, clever or stupid or artistic or whatever, find a purpose? Surely he can. To be personl for a moment, I would like to become a small urban market gardner because i think that serves a good function in life. But I dont need a mite of ambition or self-image to see that. Ambition means self-fulfillment, and that and right livelihood will surely never meet.
I am not trying to advocate that people isolate. That would be crazy. I think I said don’t shun being alone when the time to be alone is upon you, which it may be at this time, thats all. Life brings us what we need. If we find ourselves alone, it be what we need at that time. When you are surrounded by people/facebook, its very hard to have insight, because the images are whirring away. I harp on about that, but only because its the root of everything. Aloneness, which I repeat i dont advocate for in itself, has meant I have learned things about who i am and what it means to be a human being that I could never have learned if things went swimmingly, or were socially connected 24/7. I would not swap my position. I certainly would like to be involved socially and economically, but it has to happen naturally and organically as a person gets healthy again. If its being rushed, that is the image doing the rushing.
The inner child method is one Im familiar with and its helped a lot people, myself included. But I dont think it goes the whole way. I did it, I remember crying as I did it and feeling a sense of release, and while it did help, theres stuff it didnt get at, which is, in my observation, ones own reaction at the time of events. We have, I think, to see how our own behavior contributed to it. In my own case, my getting hurt, which was partly the fault of others, was also my own fault, since I had formed a certain image of myself that got then got injured. I thought I was such and such, gentle, kind, etc and then others trod on and were generally rought with me, and I was hurt. So my hurt was my own doing to a great extent. This can be hard to accept initally. When I see this, which is the work im doing at the moment, it integrates the experience much more deeply than just the inner child work alone. Any sage worth his salt has said that insight is the liberating factor, so there must be insight into the whole of hurt, not just any one particular hurtful experience, otherwise even individual hurts cannot be fully wiped away. That is my 2c anyway, for what its worth. As Anita pointed out and which i see myself even this last month, there is more energy and clarity when past hurts are recalled and dealt with properly.
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