Dear Sam:

You are welcome. Chronologically re-arranged, you shared that you were bullied a lot as a child, and as a result, you have always been shy and never made many friends. When you went to college and when you started your first job, you lived with your sister. Sometime during your 20s, you began suffering from certain health issues. After a long time of suffering, back in 2019,  you finally found a doctor who was willing to help you, and you had a surgery in 2020.

Before Covid started, you were employed and lived in an apartment. When Covid started (Dec 2019-early 2020), your work hours were reduced and you had issues with crazy neighbors in an apartment above you. Also, your health issues were not resolved post-surgery, so you moved back in with your sister.

Currently, your health issues are getting worse and you are sure that you will need another surgery soon.  You have only one friend but she is busy with her kids, so you have no one to talk to, and you live with your sister who “goes into rants every few minutes about how she hates everyone on earth, wishes everyone would die, and also wishes she were dead too“.

In your current job, you are dealing with “a way too heavy workload“, the morale is low and your pay is “too low to afford rent anywhere“. Your efforts to get promoted within the troubled company you work for, and your efforts to find a new job, including in a different industry after you completed a certificate program- bore no fruits so far, partly because your ability to interview well and your mental health otherwise is suffering because you live with your sister. You want to quit your current job, but you can’t afford to lose your medical benefits; you want to move out but you can’t afford to pay rent anywhere.

“I just feel like nothing will ever work out for me. Every time I have started a new position and even when I got my own place, it always seemed like things would change for the better, but they never have. I have always tried to keep positive, but I can’t seem to solve my problems and feel like I am in an endless loop.  What can I do to get out of this?..  It doesn’t seem like there is any way out and I have been lost for a very long time”-

-I remember when I felt similarly when I was ten years older than you are now: my job and my living situation were terrible and I lost hope. What helped me mentally survive that time was to no longer wish that my situation would get better, to no longer desire that it would, and to no longer try. I remember thinking at the time about a little story or parable that I heard (paraphrased): a prisoner was asked, how can you free yourself (from prison)? The prisoner answered, by not wanting to be free. This attitude relieved me from a lot of mental-emotional suffering and stress. This attitude has a name- Radical Acceptance, which means to truly accept your situation and to no longer desire or try to change it.

It sounds counter-intuitive but it works: for years, I’ve been free from both challenges: a bad job and a bad living situation. When you free yourself from the desire to change your situation, you also free yourself from a lot of anguish and stress. With significantly less stress, you will have more energy and emotional resources to… change your situation.

I suggest that you start with radical acceptance. I hope that you will post again, so that we can talk about this attitude that I am suggesting and address the practical issues that you are dealing with.

anita