Hi Javier

So many people have trouble asking and accepting help. Myself included. Like you it feels like something I’m just not capable of doing. Even when I do reach out their are parts of me that hold back. So frustrating getting in my own way. In my case I don’t think its my mind that won’t let me accept help but a deep routed fear of being vulnerable, rejected, asked to do something I don’t want to… so many fears. At the root of all the fears that I can’t and wont be Loved.  To live in the pain and loneliness of not taking the risk to love and be loved OR living in the pain of the fear of taking the risk and having it confirmed.  I am not a brave man.

I envy everyone, I’m jealous of peaceful and carefree they look. I’m not sure how to cope, how to live, how to get inner peace.

One thing I am sure about is that very few people are as peaceful and carefree as the look. Jealousy is a waist of time. No one gets to ‘know’ how another is experiencing themselves and Compassion only asks that we be kind, to others and ourselves, and not assume. A sure fire way of remaining stuck is comparing ourselves to others and thinking ‘if only’. In a odd way I think it gives us permission, a excuse,  to remain as we are even as we work so hard to grow and move forward.

Now I’m afraid that there are no options left

My gut tells me that the way out isn’t up but down and through. To feel what one feels without labeling or measuring. Sometimes we reach a point where all the self help and analyzing becomes a way of avoiding feeling what we feel. We keep on seeking to avoid finding.

I think of a person caught in a riptide our undertow, the more they struggle the more likely they will tire and drown.  The key to getting out of such a situation is to remain calm.

There is a time for all things. Up to this point reading through your post I picture someone who has and is trying everything except being still. If the problem comes from the mind, allow the mind to be still. That dos not mean having no thoughts but the practice of not attaching oneself a thought. Labeling , measuring , judging it, if only… our thoughts… Thoughts flow you are not your thoughts. Once can be still within the tempest of ones thoughts.

This year I start my meditation (and before I go to sleep) with the following from TS Elliot

I ask of my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;
There is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for I am not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall become the light, and the stillness dancing.

And Or

Be still and know that I am G_d
Be still and know that I am
Be still and know
Be still
Be

Sometimes it helps… In the time of waiting and stillness I float. The tide takes me where it will, but I participate, to tired to fight, I notice that calmly moving a little this way or that, I have influence on the direction…

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Peter.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Peter.

Dear Javier,

I am happy to hear from you. And I want to let you know that I am here, rooting for you.

The saddest part is that I need and want help, but my mind won’t let me.

As both Peter and Sarah said, our mind is often our enemy, telling us lies, distorting things, even giving us distorted images. It happened to me once, when I tried to meditate on Jesus, all I got was some distorted images coming from my subconscious or I don’t know where from. I was desperate.

What helped me was to call Jesus into my heart. I told him to please circumvent my mind, because my mind is polluted, and come into my heart. I begged him because I couldn’t bear living without love any more. I was desperate. And he did – I felt warmth descending into the upper part of my body, into my heart, and I felt loved. It changed my entire life. It gave me hope.

You may try something similar, Javier. Ask Jesus or Mother Mary to circumvent your mind and come to your heart, so you can feel their love.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Tee.

Hi Jarier

The challenge of the practice of stillness is to remain engaged with life as it is, detached to ones thoughts and feelings (you are not your thoughts or your feelings you have thoughts and feelings) but not indifferent or apathetic to the thoughts, feelings, experiences you have.

 Maybe the saying is right, you need pain and dark days to appreciate life to the fullest.

I might say we need the tension of opposites to become conscious of our experiences.  The appreciation is that we Get To notice and Be  The appreciation of the bitter and the sweet does open one up to all the flavors… but I will still avoid the overly sweet and the overly bitter as I learn better 🙂

I find it helpful to know others have similar struggles and how each road though different is also the same.  I know that sounds odd but I enjoy a good paradox. They  provide my thoughts room to play so that I might not attach myself to them.

Some times I imagine my mind or thoughts (its difficult to separate the idea of mind and thought.) as a pet dog. I walk down a street or in a trail and watch as the dog  sniffs every tree, run about, checking out everything and then I call it back to heal. To quietly walk beside me.  Their is a time to allow one thoughts to roam about and play, to leap and engage… and a time to heal and walk quietly.

Other times as I walk I imagine my self as a wheel and moving the point of which I view the experience from different parts of the wheel. As a point on the outer circumference. One moment I’m rushing forward the next the falling towards the ground, the next  everything is passing, the next I’m looking up towards the sky.  A bit of a roller-coaster feeling. From that perspective its understandable that I  might feel overwhelmed.  Everything either rushing towards me or a way from me. Flying towards the sky or falling towards the ground.

Then I imagine the point of focus moving down one of the wheels spokes. Its scary because as I move down everything appears to be happing even faster. Closer to the ground and further from the sky, everything happening with less and less time to notice and respond to the moment. Everything even more overwhelming and scary. I want to retreat back to the top of the wheel, to what I ‘know’… But if I keep move toward the center of the wheel a strange thing happens.  The wheel has never changed speed yet from this center point everything becomes ‘still’. The up the down the future and the past viewed all together in the moment. Nothing has changed yet everything has changed.  Nothing rushing away, nothing rushing towards me. This is the still point of the turning world. A point from which I can respond (dance) to the moment as it is.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.” – TS Eliot

At the still point their is the dance… I enjoy a good paradox. They provide my thoughts room to play so that I might not attach myself to them….

Dear Javier,

you are very welcome. I am glad too that I got to communicate with you, you are a very kind and caring person, and you deserve all the love and happiness in the world. I hope and pray that little by little, things will get better in your life. <3

Dear Javier:

In your thread, beginning May 8, 2021, you shared the following: at about May 2020, at the age of 41, you lost your job. Following the loss of your job, you lost your car and apartment. Having had no income, in about January 2021 (at the age of 42), you moved back into your mother’s apartment, same apartment where you grew up. Five months later, in June 2021, your mother moved out of the apartment to live with your brother and his family, and since then, you’ve been living in your mother’s apartment alone, unemployed, socially isolated and unwell, in and out of a psych ward.

You shared that during the 7 months of your posting here, you were offered all kinds of therapies and medications by the professionals whom you came in contact with, but none helped you.

Today, Dec 4, 2021, you are as unwell as you were when you first posted, May 8, earlier this year.

Here is what you shared regarding your experience of Emptiness (the italicized feature is my addition), May 2021: “I’m depressed all the time, and feel empty and lost… To be honest, I really don’t have any friends or any acquaintances I feel comfortable opening up to. Maybe, that’s why I use the forum… I lack the feeling of belonging; I feel isolated and cut off from the rest of the world… how to cope with my emptiness… Even in the company of family members, I experience feelings of loneliness”.

August 2021: “My mother and my family have all left me… I have this recurring nightmare, where I’m left alone in the ocean, drowning, all alone, no family, no friends, just me… I’m empty, completely empty inside“. September 2021: “still feel lost, empty…  My emptiness…  I’m dead inside and completely empty…The emptiness will never disappear or go away, which I know for sure”. October 2021: “I’ve always felt empty, depressed and useless. I felt empty when I was 6, in my teens, in my 20s-30s and 40s. And I’m afraid I’ll be feeling the same until my last breath”. Today, December 4, 2021: “I just wonder, have any of you felt any profound vacuum inside?… I have struggled with this intense chronic emptiness since I was a kid… it feels more and more like depression is a symptom of emptiness”.

You wrote in May: “I’m afraid I have… severe borderline personality disorder“- the feeling of Emptiness is indeed a hallmark of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Because you brought up BPD, and because I suffered from bpd (and therefore Emptiness) since late teenage years, having been diagnosed with BPD later in life: in early 2011, and no longer fitting the diagnosis- I want to look into the connection between your suggested diagnosis and your chronic feelings of Emptiness, that “profound vacuum inside”.

There is National Library of Medicine study available online (pub med. ncbi. nlm. nih. org) with the title: Understanding chronic feelings of emptiness in borderline personality disorder. Under Abstract, it reads: “Chronic feelings of emptiness are significant in the lives of people with… BPD. Feelings of emptiness have been linked to impulsivity, self-harm, suicidal behaviour and impaired psychosocial function… Chronic feelings of emptiness were experienced as a feeling of disconnection from both self and others, and a sense of numbness and nothingness which was frequent and reduced functional capacity. Feelings of purposelessness and unfulfillment were closely associated with emptiness, and most participants experienced emptiness as distressing… Most participants distinguished chronic feelings of emptiness from loneliness, hopelessness, dissociation, and depression“-

– so far it perfectly fits what you shared in your thread, including your stated distinction between emptiness and depression: “it feels more and more like depression is a symptom of emptiness“, Dec 4.

You mentioned chronic emptiness in your post today (“I have struggled with this intense chronic emptiness since I was a kid“). Back to the study, in Conclusions, it states: “Feelings of chronic emptiness are an important and challenging symptom of BPD which require clinical intervention. Strengthening identity, sense of purpose and vocational and relationship functioning may reduce the intensity of emptiness”.

In articles listed under “related articles” following the conclusions portion, it reads in part: “Chronic feelings of emptiness is an under-researched symptom of borderline personality disorder (BPD)… chronic emptiness is a sense of disconnection from both self and others. When experienced at frequent and severe levels, it is associated with low remission for people with BPD… Chronic emptiness may be related to depressive experiences unique to people with BPD, and was associated with self-harm, suicidality, and lower social and vocational function… We conclude that understanding chronic feelings of emptiness is central to the experience of people with BPD and treatment focusing on connecting with self and others may help alleviate a sense of emptiness. Further research is required to provide a better understanding of the nature of chronic emptiness in BPD in order to develop ways to quantify the experience and target treatment…. Results indicate that emptiness is negligibly related to boredom, is closely related to feeling hopeless, lonely, and isolated, and is a robust predictor of depression and suicidal ideation”.

And now, what all this means to me and my personal experience: Emptiness for me was beyond loneliness and depression, it was about the extremely distressing emotional experience of having no one to hold on to, and I don’t mean anyone out there to hold on to, but no one within myself to hold on to. And so, no one to hold on to within or without, I was frequently drowning. It makes me think of what you shared back in August: “I have this recurring nightmare, where I’m left alone in the ocean, drowning, all alone“.

This is the unique experience of bpd: often drowning, no one to hold on to, no one to depend on without and within. And so, the feeling of being alone is extreme, and the desperation is extreme. An extremely desperate person will latch onto ANYTHING, and FAST! Hence impulsive behaviors and suicidal ideation. The Emptiness of bpd has an urgent, emergency quality to it that doesn’t characterize depression and loneliness outside the bpd experience.

You shared a few things about your childhood that are perfectly true to my childhood: “The biggest fear, that has followed me… the fear of losing my mother. I dread the day it will happen… I love my mother more than anything in the world… I have always felt responsible for ruining my mother´s life… I just want to see her happy… I feel isolated and cut off from the rest of the world” (May 2021).

You shared May 9: “when I die, I’ll be gone and forgotten…  I feel like my life just passed before my eyes, so quickly, without me“- through all the years of my bpd experience, I was gone and forgotten within my own mind/ within my own awareness, and my life passed before my eyes without me in it. It is the sense of the lack of a me/ the lack of a personal identity, that has been so very distressing, creating frequent urgencies and emergencies.

You wrote, still in May: “I have to realize that there will be no one at my deathbed. I have to realize that I will be alone, miserable, and forgotten. I wish I could go back in time and change things“- Now, that I don’t fit the diagnosis anymore, now that I get to experience regular depression, but not the Emptiness, I know that when I die, there will be Someone at my deathbed: Me!

I did go back in time, through the process of healing, and picked up that lost and forgotten child that I was. I brought her back to me/ back to my awareness. Having her back with me, I am no longer alone and lonely and disconnected and confused and troubled and impulsive and desperate. My life doesn’t have that I-am-about-to-drown-any-moment-now quality to it, not anymore.

anita

Hi, Javier….

I have a reason for asking the following:

What do you want?

What/how do you want to feel?

Do you want things to be…different?

Would you accept or embrace change?

Hugs to you, Javier. Big, warm hugs.