Home→Forums→Tough Times→Feeling Worthless and depressed
- This topic has 7 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 7 months ago by songbirdsmuse.
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April 21, 2016 at 9:48 pm #102437khushiParticipant
I am 30 year old married woman. All my life I have struggled with low self esteem. I am socially very anxious, sometimes I stammer while I speak. I have no friends, I have no real emotional connection with anybody, not even my parents. I barely speak to them. My career is not going anywhere. Even though I am highly qualified I am making peanuts. I find myself questioning very often, do I even matter? My life has no purpose, no relationships, I am often lonely and sad. I have no one with whom I can communicate my problems. I feel my husband doesn’t really understand it. And he has the habit of using my weaknesses against me at appropriate moments, which I think is very mean. I don’t know how to find meaning in my life. Believe me, I try but I just am not able to change things around. I feel so powerless, I am on the verge of giving up everything. What do I do?
April 22, 2016 at 5:22 am #102443adarshParticipantHi, I can understand your hopelessness. But don’t give up on life. Just hang on. Things will become better for sure. There will be light at the end of the tunnel. Even i went through tough times in my life. But i didn’t give up and here i am still breathing,still alive. Keep your faith in GOD(because even if you give up on GOD ,he won’t give up on you). I will tell you what and all you can do to feel better everyday. Spend time in nature, do meditation, do simple breathing exercises and try to think of GOD instead of your problems. Remember that u are unique in this world. you are special.
April 22, 2016 at 5:38 am #102444InkyParticipantHi khushboo-a,
The truth is that None of Us Matter AND All of Us Matter! It’s one of those Zen things. You are part of the web of life whether you think your strand matters or not!
What will (probably) help is joining something completely new. Go to a new place of worship, get involved with the local library, join a gym/rec center, and/or a new club or guild (we have an Artist’s Guild where I am). That sort of thing. Give the place a real chance. Every year take a class, go to an event, be on a project.
Have a Pot Luck Party. Invite your neighbors. Invite your acquaintances, your husband’s friends, work colleagues, or people you’d really like to know. Introduce people to each other. They will know that you were thinking of them and will warm their heart!
Good Luck!
Inky
April 22, 2016 at 11:07 am #102460VesperParticipantkhushboo-a,
First of all – you matter! Never doubt this. We’re not all meant to be famous or dynamic or beautiful or rich, but we all have value. Every person on this earth has a purpose, and probably every person has also questioned their purpose.
On my wall in my office I have a copy of the Desiderata and I find myself reading it at times like these. One of my favorite lines is: “Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars, and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”
Another is: “If you compare yourself to others, you will become vain and bitter. There will always be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” That one in particular comes in handy when I’m feeling really useless. I remember no matter how low I get, there is always someone lower who might need me, and the better use of my time (rather than thinking about ME) is to reach down and pull someone else up, make someone else’s day, help someone else find a smile. It is amazing how much more valuable you feel when you brighten a person’s day, even a random stranger.
Hugs to you. Please don’t give up. It’s Friday and the sun is shining. Smile. 🙂
April 22, 2016 at 11:32 am #102464AnonymousGuestDear khushboo-a:
As I understand it, you had a very lonely childhood. Your parents did not attend to you emotionally. Maybe they fed you and sheltered you… maybe they bought you nice clothes and toys. Maybe they told you how to live your life, but they did not pay attention to how you felt all those years: didn’t notice when you were sad, maybe told you to “cheer up”- didn’t notice when you were afraid, lonely. And so you were lonely then and ever since. Am I correct in principle? Can you tell me more?
anita
April 22, 2016 at 9:37 pm #102511khushiParticipantThank you Inky, adarsh and vesper for your kind words. They mean a lot. Yes anita, My parents kind of kept to themselves. So anybody hardly spoke to anyone unless required. Apart from the usual, “are you hungry?” or “did you finish homework?” they rarely showed any interest in what was going on in my life. I remember an incident when I was 5 or 6. I had gotten hit my a ball while playing and my nose started bleeding.when I went home to my mom instead of consoling me she yelled at me that I deserved it for playing all day with boys.
To top it all, I am an only child. so there was no one to speak at home. My father had his own problems so he vented it out my humiliating me. And my mother never did anything to protect me from him. I was sexually abused repeatedly by a neighbor when I was 6 or 7 but I couldn’t tell it to anyone. I seriously considered committing suicide while in my teens. I know my parents are not bad people. They meant well and did their best but I always wonder how different my life would be if I were born someplace else.. somewhere better. I want to straighten things out in my life but I just dont know where or how to begin. It feels like just a big mess.April 23, 2016 at 7:28 am #102522AnonymousGuestDear khushboo-a:
I believe I understand your situation. In your original post you wrote: ” I have no real emotional connection with anybody, not even my parents. I barely speak to them.” No wonder you have no real emotional connection with your parents: they are the ones who were closed off to you as a child. You were the one attempting to connect with them again and again and they cut off those connections with a pair of scissors, figuratively, every time. So you grew up alone and went out into the world without the experience of connecting and being connected to anyone.
You grew up alone, unprotected and unattended. No child can grow up unprotected and unattended to day after day, year after year with no consequence. These childhood years are called our formative years because our brains are being formed then, millions of connections made or not made. So some connections not made are between people and comfort, people and protection, people and empathy. And so consequence is lonely life. Because we are genetically social animals, when we have no connections with the outside, or not even one connection that is adequate, we also lack that connection within: personal motivation, a sense of confidence, a knowing of what is going on and why.
Is it possible for you to attend good psychotherapy? It may be necessary for you to form your first adequate connection with a competent, caring psychotherapist. To experience there the nature of connection: someone to listen to you, really listen, give you accurate feedback to your feelings, SEE you for one thing, really see you?
anita
April 24, 2016 at 5:01 am #102582songbirdsmuseParticipantI am sorry your heart Is so heavy right now. The world is a very lonely place when you don’t have connections to anchor you and make you feel safe and loved. Just prior to several major life changes, I went through a similar state of mind. My husband at the time would use my worst fears about my life’s potential failures against me and intentionally make me feel small, weak, and vulnerable. I now know that he was sensing my awakening to the realization that I was unhappy with life and especially with my marriage to him. He used that to try and hold on to me by means of intimidation and and fear as if to say “You are not worthy, but if you just stay and continue to serve my needs and let me beat you down emotionally then I will love you.” (as if it was hard to love me and a noble sacrifice on his part to put up with me)
What I came to realize is that I had not experienced love. True love does not come with those kinds of conditions. I had disconnected myself emotionally from everyone because he was constantly reminding me that i was not worthy of love.
I began seeing a therapist weekly just for me. For no other purpose but to sort out my feelings. Through that endeavor I came to realize that I MATTER. How I feel and think actually do matter. I have to take care of me. No one else is better equipped to do the job. No one. And there are some things that only I can give to me.
My friend, if nothing else stands out in all of the loving answers you receive to your query please know this one thing…
The most important relationship you will ever have in this life, is the one you have with yourself.
What this means is…Before you can even know what will make you feel whole and happy and loved, you must love yourself.
There is no need to spend further time and energy feeling bad about the path that has lead you to this unhappy place. Important People in your life have failed you. They will continue to dissappoint you for humans are flawed. They can be dissmissive and unkind and they have taught you through repeated behaviors to feel the way you currently do about yourself.
But life is not a success only journey. Right now you have a beautiful opportunity to explore yourself and discover the world with new eyes. Put yourself first. Remember how to have fun, appreciate all of the wonderful things there are to appreciate about you. Know that you will make mistakes along the way, and that as you become happy Your life will begin to transform around you. You may encounter resistance from those individuals that don’t want you to change because it will require them to make adjustments they were not anticipating. Those that love you will get on board and those that don’t can be gently invited to get out of the way.
It will be hard to believe good things about yourself at first. But you will get better at it. In moments of doubt remember that we all walk this world together. No one person Is more or less important than the next. Work towards finding your center. You will need to put extra time, focus, and energy into yorself In order to acheive balance.
Then you will notice that a vast majority of things that took a great deal of effort before will start to sort themselves out.Happiness will come. You have to do the hard work of change, but you are worth every bit of effort it will take. Your life has meaning, you are good enough, you are smart enough, you are worthy, you have value, YOU MATTER.
Once you truly know that, you will be able to banish this darkness from your reality forever.
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