Home→Forums→Emotional Mastery→Depression is ruining my life
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February 21, 2019 at 7:57 pm #281303
sadman11ParticipantI have everything that would make a man happy. A career and a beautiful and caring girlfriend. But I also have had dealt with lifelong depression. I’m so depressed that it’s ruining my relationship and my career.
I find myself insecure and accusing my girlfriend of cheating and arguing with her about the past all the time. I came to the point where she is so fed up she doesn’t believe that I love her or that I’m even sorry. And I’m always sleeping to the last minute and doing minimum amount of effort.
I’m always crying myself to sleep and contemplating ending my life. I’ve caused so much damage already and I don’t even know if it’s reversible.
I’m sorry there’s not enough details here, I’m just struggling to find the words.
February 22, 2019 at 5:12 am #281349
AnonymousInactiveHi,
Sorry to hear of your pain. I am sorry I don’t have much words of comfort, only I know how you feel. And it sucks. But if you hold on it will pass.
Have you reached out for support?
xx
February 22, 2019 at 7:39 am #281357AnonymousGuestDear sadman11:
“I have everything that would make a man happy. A career and a beautiful and caring girlfriend. But I also have had dealt with lifelong depression”-
we keep re-living our childhood experiences because our brains were formed during and as a result of those early experiences.
For example: a young boy alone and lonely, desperately trying to get the attention of his mother but failing again and again, tries to get her attention by being funny, making jokes, trying to make her laugh, sometimes she laughs but too soon she forgets about her boy and resumes a busy life, career, dating, leaving him alone. The boy feels very sad alone, feels like he is a failure, not good enough to be loved by his mother.
He then grows up and because he was successful at times making his mother laugh, he becomes a comedian, a successful comedian, so much so that he becomes an international comedian and movie star, playing in comedies, admired by millions of people all over the world, having houses and money and fame and opportunities, all the therapy one can buy and no less opportunity to be loved than anyone else, “everything that would make a man happy”, one would think.
Except that this famous man, getting the attention and admiration of millions, still feel sad and lonely because he didn’t and doesn’t have his mother’s attention. That boy doesn’t disappear over time, he is still there, experiencing the same thing.
Does this make sense to you?
anita
February 22, 2019 at 9:07 pm #281459sadman11Participant@anita That is a very accurate description of how I feel. I’ve been going to therapy but I feel like it’s only a band aid. They can only do so much. I’ve been looking for answers from within via meditation. Trying to complete myself from the inside out.
February 22, 2019 at 11:12 pm #281465
GLParticipantDear sadman11,
You’ve probably realized this by now, but you can’t force yourself to be happy. Happiness is an intrinsic value resonating deeply from within your heart, your mind, your soul, your very self. External object like a career or a relationship might be a byproduct of your actions, but it does not necessarily represent your happiness. But external objects is the focus for most people to place their value of happiness on since it’s easier to see and touch. Material riches is attainable, unlike the vague sense of happiness that many people prescribe to yet is utterly defeated when asked to describe what is happiness. At the same time, people are too focus on whether they are happy or sad, angry or cheerful. Which blatantly ignores the wide spectrum of emotions that human beings feel daily.
Right now, you are really focus on your depression while agonizing over your ideals of happiness. That agony is reflected on how you interact with those around you, especially your girlfriend it seem. You lament your state of depression so lash out towards those close to you. You don’t feel secure because you don’t understand the state of your emotions. You keep scores of your girlfriend’s mistakes and use it against her in your arguments. That behavior itself is damaging to your relationship and makes it about winning or losing in your relationship. You fear losing control of the situation, and of your relationship, so try to control the actions of your girlfriend with accusation.
How vulnerable have you allow yourself to be in your relationship? You’re insecure, but it doesn’t seem that you’ve told your girlfriend your insecurities. And you might apologize to her, but if your apologies are only made to resolve the minute fighting, how is anyone to believe that you understand why an apology is needed in the first place? You’ve also accused her of cheating, but have you told her your fears? What have you allowed yourself to be with your girlfriend?
Also, how much of this are you rationalizing your situation and how much of it are you actually allowing yourself to feel? There’s a difference between acknowledging that you have depression to the actual acceptance that you have depression. You can acknowledge something, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ignore it’s existence.
How much of your focus is external versus internal?
Last thing, who is responsible for your emotional health?
February 23, 2019 at 5:41 am #281471AnonymousGuestDear sadman11:
Like so many of us, I too re-lived my past and I did so for decades. I wasn’t aware of it, but have been for a while, increasingly so. When I look back on my youth being lost in that re-living, not having been available for a different kind of living, the sheer amount of my life having been wasted is overwhelming. But I’ve been on what I call the healing path since 2011, persistently, almost eight years. If I knew how much time, how much patience and how difficult it would be for me, I might have not started. Every so often along the way I imagined I was close to a… healed state but not so. There was more, and more to understand, more to understand on a deeper level, and then, even deeper. At this point I can see that we can never see all that there is to see, but I see enough to no longer be confused, to no longer engage in ongoing arguments with myself.
Notice how the part of your brain that is caught in the past may be wanting to resolve the conflicts of your past by focusing on your girlfriend’s past: “I find myself insecure and accusing my girlfriend of cheating and arguing with her about the past all the time”- I did something similar myself. I was obsessed about someone else’s past.
You wrote that you are looking for answers from within. So many, many answers are there, within you, in that incredible organ, the brain. Many of the answers are very simple but we can’t get to those answers because fear is in the way, keeping our awareness away like barb wire keeps trespassers out.
If you would like, we can communicate for a while. Maybe some of what I learned can help you and I have no doubt, some of what you learn will help me.
anita
February 24, 2019 at 4:48 pm #281603sadman11ParticipantYeah, sure. I’ve started to meditate and work on my mindset. I realized I put too many expectations on a relationship. I expected a relationship to make me happy, but all it did was made me depressed. Not because who I’m with, but because I pick out every little thing I don’t like in it and create arguments with it. I create false threats.
I’m starting to step back and see the bigger picture now. And am focused on my life and career which I feel my emotions are becoming more stable. I’m still struggling with my relationship because I feel I have lost a lot of respect from her. And not only that but I’ve started to see her flaws and I can see that she is emotionally immature. She withholds how she feels and never communicates properly. I believe this is due to her ‘daddy issues’ where she was abandoned by her father and so she is afraid that I’m going to abandon her so she tries to protect herself from being emotionally attached and isolating herself when she is struggling.
I love her a lot and care about her and I found that I put so much energy into our relationship going nowhere but down because I was going the wrong direction with it all. Now that I have stepped back and realized the bigger picture, it feels as though it is too late. The hole has been dug so deep, recovering will take a lot of effort. But in addition to all this I have to focus on my own health first because that is where I lost.
Sorry for this little ‘rant thing’. This is just where I see myself standing at the moment and in wonder of how I can go about fixing this mess I made.
February 25, 2019 at 5:44 am #281639AnonymousGuestDear sadman11:
You wrote: “(I) am focused on my life and career which I feel my emotions are becoming more stable”- keep this focus.
Regarding your relationship: if it continues to cause you this much anxiety and distress, better end it. But before you do, there is something you can do. It is simple but very difficult:
-what I figure is happening is that you are angry inside, from long ago, from the time you were a child and this anger is what is fueling your accusing and arguing with your girlfriend (“accusing my girlfriend of cheating and arguing with her about the past all the time… I pick out every little thing I don’t like in it and create arguments with it”).
If you adequately express your childhood anger (maybe in quality therapy/ group therapy, a professional setting of some sort), express it in words and feel it, you will remove your anger from the here-and-now relationship with your girlfriend –
-and place it where it belongs, in the there-and-then circumstances of your childhood, freeing your current relationship from this anger.
Simple but difficult. You are welcome to express some of that anger here. in your next post. If you do, it will be more beneficial if you use simple language, the language a child will use.
(It is this long ago anger, I believe, that is in the core of your depression, the anger itself and your frustration about how it is ruining your relationship now)
anita
February 25, 2019 at 5:33 pm #281827sadman11ParticipantI’ve been doing much better. I’ve talked to my therapist and also been reading a lot of articles on the psychology of what I am affected with and I feel I am gaining a better understanding of things. Sure there is some inner feelings of uneasiness, but it hasn’t overpowered me and taken control. I have subdued it into a small voice but now I have to keep it like that until it fades away completely.
February 26, 2019 at 4:42 am #281857AnonymousGuestDear sadman11:
Strong early emotions, those we had as young children, they are so powerful. We had them at a time before we had many words, before we read articles, when our brain was clear of the many neuropathways that were added later, throughout childhood and on. In that previously cleared brain, emotions vibrated loud and strong, clearly and intensely.
When these intense and ongoing emotions are fear or anger or sadness, and all these, biology makes it so that we are as numb to them as possible, pushing them away from our awareness so that we can function in life. But these emotions don’t go away until adequately expressed and until conflicts are resolved, for example with the parent involved.
anita
February 26, 2019 at 11:03 am #281897sadman11ParticipantI feel like I have resolved my emotions and I am in control of them now. So I want to start working on my relationship. I’m going to make a separate post in the ‘relationship’ topic of the forum.
Thank you.
February 26, 2019 at 11:09 am #281899AnonymousGuestYou are welcome, sadman11. I will be away from the computer for a short while and will be looking for your new thread when I return.
anita
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