Life in compete chaos, could use some advice.

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This topic has 3 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 11 months ago by Anonymous.

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December 1, 2017 at 11:22 am #180251

Nomad
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I’m a 28 year old male, I was often kept in near complete isolation as a child, I grew up in an emotionally unhealthy environment. I struggled socially up until highschool when I finally got out of that house. By the time highschool was over I was lost, I just started to feel like my life had value and everyone starting taking about college but all I cared about was relationships. I didn’t want to go back to school and sit in any more rooms and learn things I had no interest in.

So i moved, worked in a restraunt in a small town and rented an insanely small room. I once again found myself isolated and becoming bitter. I moved again to the nearest city and found work a a bartender in a casino.

For the first time I started to feel like a person. I made a few friends, had started a relationship with someone who really valued me, I liked talking to people and I made enough money to start supporting a modest life.

Bartending flatlined financially and wasn’t going to last forever, drunks, a corporate environment and constantly being the bad guy all added up and eventually it came to an end.

I’ve lived in the same small apartment for 4 years, I took a job at a warehouse and I’ve never hated something so much. My anxiety is back full force, everything brings me to tears. I have four walls I’ve been staring at for way too long, I have no skills, I spend all my time by myself watching YouTube videos, I have a job I hate, I regret not going to college and I have no idea what I even like.

Anxiety has turned to panic, panic into depression, depression into constant suicidal fantasties. I want so badly to fight this, but I look ahead and I see slummy apartments, jobs I hate, being A 30 year old man who crises and never finds any kind of passion. I look at what my next step should be and there’s no ground to stand on.

The people on this site seem so understanding and I could really use some help or perspective. I’m so lost and so sad and I want so badly not to feel like this anymore. I want to want to live again. I simply can’t understand how to cope with this level of fear and pain.

Thank you all so much in advance and please mind any typos, I wrote this through a lot of tears on a phone.

December 1, 2017 at 1:03 pm #180265
Peter
Participant
“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Chaos is the law of nature; Order is the dream of man.” Henry Adams

“I want so badly to fight this, but I look ahead and I see slummy apartments, jobs I hate, being A 30 year old man who crises and never finds any kind of passion. I look at what my next step should be and there’s no ground to stand on.”

You have identified your problem and answered your own question. You know what your next step should be. The problem is looking ahead and imagining the worst. Living in this imagined future is leaving you with no ground to stand on because this future does not exist. How could you then stand on it? The first step then is to develop the skills to avoid this type of thinking/being. (We create what we fear so we must be careful with what we imagine. The good news is that this truth means we can also create what we hope for.)

This tendency to look ahead and imagine a future and then living in that imagined future present is getting in your way of creating space where you can discover yourself and maybe even find yourself content to live in the present.

When you notice that you are projecting fear into the future and living it now try the practice of pulling your consciousness back to the present without judgments. Visualize your awareness as if it were a dog. Call it back from this imagined feared future and visualize yourself putting a leash on it. Practice training your dog consciousness. Learn when you can let the dog explore, run and play and when to call it to heel. Eventually you will learn the how to direct your consciousness instead of letting your consciousness direct you.

When you learn to create this space ask yourself what was it that trigger your flight into the future? Practice observing Fear without labeling it. How much of it was False Evidence Appearing Real? How much of your experience is a result of the labels you created?

Chaos does not mean total disorder. Chaos means a multiplicity of possibilities. Chaos is from the ancient Greek words that means a thing that is birthed from the void. And it was about that which is possible, not about disorder. Jok Church

A possibility that is birthed from the void! A “Life in complete chase” a doorway into possibility! Open the door and walk though.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by Peter.
December 1, 2017 at 2:50 pm #180273

Charlene
Participant

Nomad you are not alone! I agree completely with everything that Peter has said, you have identified your problem and the solution already. Fear can be crippling you are living in fear of things that have not happened yet, I feel that in the past that I have experienced similar feelings to you and the all come back to the one feeling ‘fear’. Learning to observe your thoughts nonjudgmentally and bringing yourself back to the moment will help to ease your anxiety. I do not truly understand how you feel as we are all unique but a few things that have helped me in the past are:

1. Doing a ten minute guided morning meditation.

2. Doing a guided meditation at night time, usually before bed (YouTube is great, there is so many to choose from).

3. Learning that all of my feelings/emotions were not bad, just a very real, natural response to the fear I was feeling.

4. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT as it’s sometimes referred to. I went to my doctor to ask for a referral but due to large waiting lists he offered me a pack where I could go through the steps by myself. It worked for me, it helped me work through my suppressed feelings from childhood. It turns out that I continued to make the same choices/mistakes over and over and over again – until I dealt with the root cause (even though I didn’t realise what the root cause was at the time).

I also want to say before I go, that I think, opening up like you have today is probably the first step to healing! It was for me.

Also I got great comfort from this site reading articles about people who seemed just as messed up as me at one time but got through the other side. You are strong enough to deal with this!!

December 2, 2017 at 7:05 am #180309

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Nomad:

In the beginning of your post you wrote: “I was often kept in near complete isolation as a child”. Later in your post you wrote about your current state, at 28: “Anxiety has turned to panic, panic into depression… I look ahead and I see slummy apartments, jobs I hate… I look at what my next step should be and there’s no ground to stand on.”

We, people, keep living as adults the same experience we had as children. Even if you lived in a huge apartment and had a high paying job, you would likely experience the same “near complete isolation” that you experienced as a child. There will likely be a period of “high”, or temporary relief of anxiety, followed by same-old-same-old isolation, anxiety and depression.

Unless you heal from that childhood experience.

The “no ground to stand on” is that isolation, being alone, a scary experience for a child. We are born needy of others, of our caretakers, to be there for us emotionally. We are not capable of feeling that ground underneath us in isolation.

anita
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