Saman,

There is one word you used that qualifies your situation as an emergency; suicide. People tend to take care of their physical problems, but because of the stigma attached to them  by society, people disregard their mental health for fear of being labelled as not normal. The truth of the matter is your mental health is just as important as your physical health, and, I think in some situations such as yours, it is more important than physical health. When I was going in 3rd grade, it was the summer before, my step-dad decided to get rid of “the problem.” That would be me. So he took me to a family on the Dakota reservation called Rosebud. He said I would be spending the weekend with this family. That weekend turned out to be a little over 4 years! Talk about feeling worthless. When he dropped me off I remember him saying that he hopes that I amount to something, but said he had  his doubts. Well “the problem”, me,  went ahead 2 years and graduated high school at 15. It wasn’t until relatively recent, after his death, that I found out that he was not my biological father-I was led to believe all those years he was. When he was in the hospital dying of cancer, I went to see him, still n to knowing he was not my real father. The visit was brief. So I decided to step up and be the man and say, “Well I have to go. I love you dad.” He didn’t say anything. As I was walking out, I turned to him one last time and said, “Ya know this is the last time we will not see each other and you can’t even say I love you to me.” His answer was, “I never did.” My answer was, “I thought you were going to tell me something I didn’t know .” He died that evening.

How about this bit of history. I went to Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attack on America. I was married with one beautiful daughter. I had 30 minutes to say goodbye. I will never forget the look on my daughters face. I was there for barely over 13 months straight, literally without a break. 13 months of failing to save lives. 13 months of PTSD in the making. Still suffer with PTSD and survivors guilt, although because this is not how I want to be, I did many things to get a hold of those maladies. I wondered why everybody was getting letters on a weekly basis and not me. I got 3 letters the whole time I was there. My time in Afghanistan ended because I got hurt so bad that I could not walk for 9 months. It took a good year before I could walk again. When I left rehab in Germany to go home, I found out why I was not getting much needed letters. It was because my now ex was doing things with her new guy that newly married people do. If that wasn’t enough, I became yet another homeless veteran, even though it was 3 months. Still it was a very degrading thing that happened. What a welcome home. I took a long look at my life and said that this life is my life and this is not how I want my life to be. It mattered not what people said about me or thought about me. What mattered was how I thought about me. I remember while being homeless, I looked at myself in the polished stainless still mirrors in the bathroom at the beach. I stared at my self and told myself, I love you. I gave my self a hug and repeated the I love you several times.

Do not ever let anybody define who you are or what/how you want to be. NEVER EVER do that. I am not saying to you or anybody else that my story is worse than yours, or hers, or his. It was my hell. I tell people that as long as you feed your demons, they will feed you. Own your life my friend. Love yourself. Be the you that you want to be. But please, get some professional help for the suicide thoughts. When I was paralyzed, I’m not going to lie to you. I had a brief thought of offing myself. The initial reason I abandoned this thought was the vision I had of my daughter when I left. She wanted her dad to be strong, not a coward and weak planning a selfish act. Be strong my friend. Love yourself. Please. You are worth it.

Dear Saman:

You wrote: “I started to hate the drugs as much as I hate myself”- I hate myself, you wrote. Unfortunately, hating oneself is a common human experience. I believe only humans do that, turning aggression against self. (Maybe some animals when caged, overcrowded and distressed, as well). It starts with aggression from the outside turned against a person, most often in childhood. Then, what follows, is that part of the brain takes on the job of aggressive expressions against self.

That aggression against oneself takes place in the form of self talk, the thoughts going on in one’s brain, negatively criticizing, attacking, shaming, bullying.

Those self attacks keeps the person in an ongoing state of anxiety, because the person is, in affect and effect, under ongoing attack. And understandably, depressed.

There is a way to detect those thoughts, then insert a different kind of self talk, come up with thoughts that are congruent with reality. For example, an aggressive thought may be: “You made a mistake! You can’t do anything right!” A corrective thought congruent with reality would be: “It is okay to make mistakes. Everyone does. I do a lot of things right. I just didn’t do this one thing right.”

As you correct your own thoughts, the distress is diminished. Over time… you stop hating yourself.

anita

Saman,

Thank you for taking the time to write to me. I am grateful to you for doing so. My growing up experiences, the ones as a child, were not happy at all. The words I heard were the exact same ones that you wrote about-Worthless, useless, failure,no one likes you, unlovable, evil person. It took time for me to realize that these words are/were lies. Now, when something sparks those memories, I am totally unfazed by them, because I know they were lies. Those words came from somebody that was in my life that had a profoundly negative soul, for whatever reason. Saying those words to me was his denial so to deal with that, he chose to project that on to me. Those words were more of a reflection of himself-inside. By him not taking responsibility and accountability for his actions, he took the weak coward way out by assigning blame, guilt, hate, and resentment on to me. I learned very early to distance myself from him. In the beginning the space I gained was minimal, but it was enough to let the light shine through. Distancing myself from him gave me the space I needed to discover the real me, to be the architect of how I wanted my life to be. It opened a whole new world for me. It was actually pretty cool. From the very beginning I KNEW those hateful words were not true. What I did know is that they were lies. It is understandable that you forgot your childhood. Like mine, it was probably dominated by those words. Your suppression and repression of those memories are a very normal defensive mechanism. But those two defensive mechanisms are not without their consequences. There are many expressions of such consequences, such as what you are psychologically and even perhaps physically experiencing. To surrender to and find attachment to the lies you have been told, hold absolutely no value. There is no need for you to own them. I want to share something with you that I find to be so true to me even to this day. I learned this when I lived on the Rez:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Too often people feed their demons inside of them and I tell people that when you feed your demons, they will feed you. The demons you have been fed are the lies that somebody else believed. Saman distance yourself from these people so that you can have the space you deserve to create the life you want. Discover the truth, and that truth is who you are inside because it was you who created it. Please stay in touch. Your life is a story that I really do care to hear about.

I wish you all the love, peace, and happiness life has to offer, for an eternity longer than a lifetime. It is the least you deserve.

Hello Saman,

I hope you are somehow better now from the wisdom of everyone here especially PearceHawk. I myself am going thru strong anxiety, leaving my homeland, my family, a high paying job, and migrating to a new place. I don’t think I need one yet, but based on your situation, please try to seek professional help. Severe anxiety and depression are linked to imbalance of chemicals in the brain. Mental health professional nowadays have an array of tools to help severe cases. Mental health is just as important as physical help and should not be seen as taboo. I pray that the both of us get better.

Hello PearceHawk,

Man, it seems you went thru some really really tough times. It’s amazing that you pulled yourself out of it. You are my idol. I hope I’ll surviv my ordeals as well. Hope you are doing well now.

Dear Saman:

You wrote: “these voices have been there as long as I can remember, it comes natural to me”- these are strong voices, combinations of words and strong emotions. You don’t only hear something like: “you are worthless”, you FEEL it. You think it, feel it, and believe it.

You know of people who feel and believe whole heartedly that something is true, and yet you know it is not true, correct? Maybe certain religious people…? They feel and believe it, yet it is not realistically true. Same for you.

It does take work and time, lots of patience to no longer believe those words. I hope you take on that work.

anita

Saman,

all you need to do is to start believing that you can really change your situation.

You need a lot of positive input from others but the most important input is that you make yourself.

We all are carrying some amount of life-negating behaviour patterns, limiting beliefs and such.

It is our privilege to get rid of them so those poisoned patterns will not affect you or anyone else in the future.

By design you are not created to be a victim of any situation that life may throw at you.

If you need to verify this, just ask the Designer…

Some of us are built to be very sensitive to emotions and sometimes it may be difficult to get rid of them.

But as said when you are feeling stuck or depressed you need to start moving. Any direction is fine as it is a start.

Find the things and people that give you even a sparkle of joy. And then stick to them no matter what.

You might find some practical relief from practising yoga, the style of yoga depends on what your physical condition is.

And the best if you can get a therapist, I believe that CBT (Cognitional Behaviour Therapy) would be the most effective in the long run as it will give you tools how to transform you internally for good.

When you own the tools you do not have to borrow them anymore.

All the best and even better!

Hi all,

I have been following this thread and been debating to comment.  This is the first time I have posted on this site, but have used the site awhile for inspiration.  I suffer from depression and severe anxiety.  I just recently got divorced from my wife of nearly 25 years.  Our only child decided to forego college (which would have been paid in full by us) to become a United States Marine and will be deploying to the Middle East this coming January.  I have our longtime dog who is aging and in declining health very rapidly.  Depression runs deep in my family and I suffer from it pretty regularly.  My challenge is I worry constantly about the future and the “what if’s”…to the point it sends me so far down the rabbit hole it prevents me from counting my blessings.  The what if’s are plentiful – what if my job gets bad and I lose income ( I am commission sales), what if something happens to my son, what if I lose everything…… you get the idea.  I have never seriously contemplated suicide, but I have many times hit that low point of feeling hopeless….tired of this crippling way of thinking dragging me down.  I now live alone with my aging dog.  I even worry about her dying!!!  I do have a strong support system with my siblings as many of us live with this disease.  We all inherited this from my father.  He has tried suicide 3 x and failed each time thank God.  Today he is 84 and thriving.  Saman you are not alone.  I am a highly successful business professional without financial problems, but my biggest worry has been that I will lose it all.  I feel it is all happening now.  When in reality that is not the case.  I am experiencing spme significant loss in my life right now, but not all is lost.  I have learned to be an advocate of my own physical and mental health.  I wanted to share my story because we all have our triggers or life experiences that take us to those dark places.  If you have not sought therapy I highly recommend it.  Do it first for yourself ….. take the steps as hard as they may be AND do it for your daughters.  Trust me my friend they are worth fighting for!  I am in the middle of a pretty dark struggle right now and writing this has been very therapeutic!  You are not alone.  I am not sure if this is helpful, but I too am here if I can be of any help.