Home→Forums→Tough Times→Need Frank advice about being stuck
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November 3, 2016 at 8:18 pm #119581IamThisParticipant
Ugh. I am not here to whine. I really need some advice. It seems like I am unable to affect any sort of meaningful change in my life and I have this overwhelming sense that I am living a script. I have zero ability to change even small matters.
For instance, I do not like the area where I live. It is desert and there is little opportunity to get out in nature. Everything is inhospitable. I spent YEARS trying to move elsewhere and got no response to my resumes. None. All I needed was another job in any other city. Nope. It was like there was a wall and I got the distinct feeling that I was not allowed to leave.
That is but one example. Honestly, I cannot name one goal I worked toward in my adult life that I have achieved. It wasn’t for a lack of hard work or trying, either.
There was only one year in my life where I was truly happy. I felt like life had finally begun. I had landed a writing job and it was terrific. I woke up every day excited. What followed was the single worst year in my life. I never could get back there, I was never able to find work writing full-time.
Even my health problems are untreatable. You know when you read, “We just manage the symptoms”? I have three disorders like this.
It is not that I don’t know what I need to fix this — I can tell you in painful detail what I want. And all of my goals are modest and completely reasonable. I just can’t make anything happen.
Thanks for reading.
November 3, 2016 at 8:43 pm #119585AnonymousGuestDear iamthis:
Maybe the three disorders have something to do with you being stuck, unable to affect change in your life. Would you care to share what these disorders are about?
anita
November 4, 2016 at 5:10 am #119591InkyParticipantHi iamthis,
I could go on and on about conspiracy theories and containment zones, etc. Sometimes it does seem like you’re living out someone (or something!) else’s script.
Try this. Fall in love with the desert. Tell The Universe 100 times a day how you love your life, and you love your environment. And don’t you dare change it, Universe! You are, finally, content. Start a literal Gratitude Journal to seal the deal.
The Matrix (or whatever it is) will simply Plotz. It will have a freaking cosmic stroke. It’s evil plans will be foiled.
You will be out of the desert so fast it will make your head spin.
BTW, this technique is used by people who finally find their soul mates. They stop looking and stop caring. Then they fall in love.
Best,
Inky
- This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Inky.
November 4, 2016 at 5:17 am #119593IamThisParticipantI was born with them. I also just accept it. But I also have this feeling like I have no control over anything in my life, like there is a path before me and I must walk that path. That would be ok if it wasn’t such a miserable journey.
One is a connective tissue disorder that docs don’t really try and pin down because they only treat the symptoms. I have low vision as a result, having gone blind in the past, but now struggle with daily. I had experimental surgery. I can see, for now, and I am hoping to get stem cell surgery sometime in the future. Before my eyes went bad, I was an avid reader, I would read three books a week. Now it is just too much a strain. My eyes hurt all day, every day. It is what it is.
That is just one thing. That problem affects my spine, all my ligaments, etc. Like walking (something I enjoy), sometime results in bone dislocation in my feet.
I also have PCOS. That effects my hormones and metabolism. I used to be a vegetarian / vegan, but my doc made me go back to eating meat. I just don’t ever physically feel good and I never have. Not really.
I have some neurological issue, a defect in the cingulate in my brain. It is a tiny spot, the size of a pencil eraser. You know what happens? My brain gets literally stuck. LOL. I have had migraines my whole life and narcolepsy. My sleep is messed up. I also have chronic, low level, untreatable depression as a result.
I would really like to experience a sense of mastery over something, a feeling of success. I would like to go after something, work at it a reasonable amount and have it succeed. The pattern seems to be a situation where I make a heroic effort for way longer than should be necessary, and in the end I fail.
Life feels like a sentence. It isn’t necessarily bad, it just isn’t particularly happy. It lacks meaning and purpose.
Thanks for caring.
November 4, 2016 at 5:34 am #119594IamThisParticipantInky,
Funny you should mention this. There was a person I was romantically attracted to, but it just wasn’t going to happen. We became friends instead. As soon as I stopped being attracted to them, they wanted a relationship. And now that I have given up on ever finding love, I get asked out all the time.
The problem is that often these things feel like a carrot being dangled in front of me, like a test or a way to suck me back in. Sometimes I get fed up and refuse to play along. Like I go through my day and can predict what will happen, like, “Watch, my vacation time will get denied.”
After awhile, I will be given something I want, something to make me start trying again. I will resign myself to living here and I will try and make the best of it, like, “What can I do that will make me like living here?” I will then start getting calls for jobs in another city, and I get excited. But then the jobs are all wrong, like working nights or it doesn’t pay enough to live on.
It is like life is a cosmic bait and switch scheme.
November 4, 2016 at 7:04 am #119597PeterParticipantThe nature of change is that it happens slowly then all at once. What I means is that we tend not to notice the string of small causes and effects until we notice the moment that of the big effect.
You say “I have zero ability to change even small matters”. The irony being that making that statement is one of the small causes that isn’t being noticed. Will the statement push you forward or will it be one more brick in the wall of the effect that is stuckness.
Viewed in this light the statement “I have zero ability to change even small matters” can only be false as every breath you take every thought you have, though the impact may be small, effect change. The difference perhaps is between active and passive Do we write our stories or do our stories write us?
One of the ways we get stuck in our stuckness is to expect change to happen immediately and exactly as we imagine. Such hope for change is more likely to prevent us from seeing and so nurturing the small causes that might actually lead to the change that would get us unstuck.
I think to influence the change that we want we have to create space to notice the small causes and nurture those that point in the direction we want to travel – however at the same time always aware that the direction we think we should go might not be the best path to get there.
- “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us” – Joseph Campbell
- We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot
When I read your post the word that came to mind was pause and then Claude Debussy quote “Music is the space between the notes”
When stuck in quick sand or a strong undertow the first step to getting out is to stop struggling.The first step in getting out of our stuckness is to remember to pause. The Pause is not simply an absence of content but intention that creates the content. Without the pause you would only have noise.
“In bullfighting there is an interesting parallel to the pause as a place of refuge and renewal. It is believed that in the midst of a fight, a bull can find his own particular area of safety in the arena. There he can reclaim his strength and power. This place and inner state are called his querencia. As long as the bull remains enraged and reactive, the matador is in charge. Yet when he finds his querencia, he gathers his strength and loses his fear. From the matador’s perspective, at this point the bull is truly dangerous, for he has tapped into his power.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a BuddhaStopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going by David Kundtz
November 4, 2016 at 1:41 pm #119639AnonymousGuestDear iamthis:
These are serious disorders, limiting symptoms: eyes hurting, head hurting (migraines), falling asleep uncontrollably (narcolepsy, as I understand it to be), feet hurting when walking.
Your one year writing career- did I understand correctly: you wrote for a living? Do share more about that year as there must be clues there as to how to get in-stuck presently. What was so exciting about that year and were your disorders less serious during that year (how long ago?)
anita
November 5, 2016 at 6:50 am #119649IamThisParticipantAnita, I still write and get paid, just not full-time. That year, I had a job which was writing. I worked incredibly hard with long hours and loved it. I was in an okay relationship, certainly not a great love, but I was happy. It was like everything finally came together for me, like life had finally begun. I woke up every day excited about what might happen. I think it was that enough things were going right, that I had hope for the future.
That lasted exactly one year.
The job changed, the relationship got difficult,then it was a series of crises for the next few years that sort of settled into a malaise. My life never recovered. I kept thinking I could be that happy and fulfilled again because I had it once upon a time. I don’t think my expectations were out of line, I just wanted a meaningful job that didn’t feel like slavery and a relationship with someone who cared as much as I did.
I never got those things again. I am left with the real possibility that I don’t have those things because I am incapable of being happy, or that it is not my path. If that is the case, I really don’t see a purpose to this life. I do try to help others and make their path easier, but even that seems rather pointless any more.
I just don’t get it.
I have spent my life being spiritually focused and I seem to be far more miserable than the people around me who are materialistic. I have not achieved any of my goals and I am unfulfilled, lonely and unhappy. I understand that this is no one’s fault but my own, I just want someone to please explain to me why.
Why is happiness seemingly impossible for some of us?
Why do some of us feel we are “not allowed” to have a good life?
November 5, 2016 at 7:49 am #119652AnonymousGuestDear iamthis:
Clearly you need a good CHANGE. You need to get up in the morning wondering: what will happen today that I am not expecting? What will happen to day that will thrill me?
We all need change, a positive change, once in a while, at the least. But your life has been the same, same old same old. So you are stuck in sameness, which you call a Script.
You wrote: “I have spent my life being spiritually focused and I seem to be far more miserable than the people around me who are materialistic”- the materialistic people who get a new car or a new dress, well, they get thrilled by getting something NEW. And you too, you need something new. Something more reliably thrilling, I hope, than a new material item. (That thrill doesn’t last long, and Marketing is built on this fact).
I need to understand what you mean by: “Why do some of us feel we are “not allowed” to have a good life?”- allowed by whom?
anita
November 5, 2016 at 6:33 pm #119714IamThisParticipantHow do I get something new?
November 5, 2016 at 7:01 pm #119716AnonymousGuestDear iamthis:
Brainstorming…:
Regarding changing location: You shared that you write for a living, part time- is it from home? If it is, you can continue to work from someplace else, a place not at all desert-like, instead, a green place with lots of trees and water falls, like the Pacific Northwest, if you are in the U.S. If you work in an office, and have some savings, give your month notice to the landlord (if you are renting) and move someplace where the rents are low but nature is plentiful. Look for a job there, any suitable job.
Regarding changing relationship status: go on Match or Plenty of Fish (google)- I think the latter is still free. With effective way to go about it, you can find a good man and build a good relationship within a few months (where you are or better, in the changed location).
anita
November 8, 2016 at 6:36 am #119908VJParticipantDear iamthis,
I went through all of your posts and I do have a deep understanding of all that you are going through. Sometimes it does happen that things go on in such a way in our lives that we have to say something as below.
“Why is happiness seemingly impossible for some of us?…
Why do some of us feel we are “not allowed” to have a good life?”Right now I do not want to say anything on your job situation and I will comment on it if/when I have anything to say.
I want to suggest something on your multiple health concerns. And that is about ‘The Healing Codes’. It can act as a ‘one thing’ for all of your health issues.
The Healing Codes, are a simple and powerful self-healing system and a form of energy medicine. (don’t worry it’s not a medicine to consume). Every time you use a Healing Code, it activates a physical function built into the body that consistently and predictably removes the cause of illness and disease from the body. It basically activates our immune system which then heals the issues by itself, just like our immune system would gradually heal a wound on the leg.
The official site for the Healing Codes is at -> www(dot)thehealingcodes(dot)com
There is a book on the actual procedure and it is available on the below link.
The book has everything you need but if you do not have the time and patience to wait till you finish the book and have the required financial capabilities then you can also consider Personal Coaching on this process, which is done by a Certified Healing Codes Practitioner. You will get all of that information from their official website (above). Read out the number of positive reviews on Amazon to know how it is helping people.
You may also want to read the success stories of various ailments here –
Who knows while solving your health issues you would become a successful Healing Codes practitioner or may be even do writing for it which would solve your other issue of wanting to experience a sense of mastery over something and a feeling of success over it? I’m sure you have heard of such success stories wherein a problem in someone’s life became the reason for success in their life. By the way, Dr. Alex Loyd (also the co-author of this book) developed this technique after his wife Tracey “Hope” Loyd had severe depression for several years and couldn’t find anything to cure it and today has reached/touched many people’s lives using the Healing Codes.
Take Care,
VJNovember 12, 2016 at 6:34 pm #120220IamThisParticipantThank you, I will take a look.
November 13, 2016 at 5:22 am #120240VJParticipantHi Dear iamthis,
I now have a chance to suggest you something on your non-health related areas of life (of course it can be applied to health too)-
This will be helpful especially on your below need for change-
“It seems like I am unable to affect any sort of meaningful change in my life and I have this overwhelming sense that I am living a script. I have zero ability to change even small matters.”1) Short Intro
http://www.dralexanderloyd.com/the-love-code2)
Begin with the FREE video series and then follow your inner guide on what to do next
http://www.dralexanderloyd.com/videos/the-love-code-video-seriesWarm Regards,
VJ -
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