Help How do I find an intrinsic reason to live?

[siouxsie]

as the title says..

I feel like the only reason I'm still here and drag myself out of bed every morning is because I have to for my kids. Obviously by deciding to have kids I sorta made a commitment to stay in this world. But having no other reason to be alive besides for the sake of others has become hell lately. My life is in pieces basically. My marriage is falling apart and I'm not sure if it actually is fixable. I often struggle financially. My physical health has rapidly declined lately and it looks like theres not much doctors can do about it. And to make matters worse, the only perspective I have for a better life - actually getting my degree in something I love doing - is falling apart as well. I have a big exam in less than 2 weeks. which I feel like I will fail cause im not really well prepared cause ive been in this big black hole a lot lately. i already failed it once. i can take it three times. but I was close to ctb after failing the first time and im not sure I'll be able to cope with failing a second time. Everything is falling apart. I dont really have much of anything to look forward to. so how on earth am I supposed to find the inner strength and a reason to live? I'm in therapy, I take my meds as directed. And yet, the most important part of recovery is missing..

 

[Kalista]

It's all the same for everyone. It's with you trying out new things. That's all life is is a series of activities that we do daily. People continue to live for the smallest of reasons that gives them enough enjoyment.

And how do you find that one thing? That's going to be difficult with all the other things in your life crumbling around you. It drains you so much that it makes it difficult to do anything else. There's far too much happening in your life and one solution is to cut one, two or more of it out. I would say that's one of the biggest steps you can do before finding that one reason to continue living.
You're doing far too much on your own, it seems, and you can't do it all by yourself. Someone needs to be there to really help you with it all and who understands what you're going through. When I say help you with it, it means someone who can take a decent amount of the heavy load off your chest, but this isn't realistic unfortunately. Many people don't have that kind of support and that's why we fall into this state of hopelessness.

Just because you're in therapy and taking meds doesn't mean things will get better. If you can somehow lessen the huge amount of stress certain things give you, then that's a better start than doing anything else.

 

[Linda]

as the title says..

I feel like the only reason I'm still here and drag myself out of bed every morning is because I have to for my kids. Obviously by deciding to have kids I sorta made a commitment to stay in this world. But having no other reason to be alive besides for the sake of others has become hell lately. My life is in pieces basically. My marriage is falling apart and I'm not sure if it actually is fixable. I often struggle financially. My physical health has rapidly declined lately and it looks like theres not much doctors can do about it. And to make matters worse, the only perspective I have for a better life - actually getting my degree in something I love doing - is falling apart as well. I have a big exam in less than 2 weeks. which I feel like I will fail cause im not really well prepared cause ive been in this big black hole a lot lately. i already failed it once. i can take it three times. but I was close to ctb after failing the first time and im not sure I'll be able to cope with failing a second time. Everything is falling apart. I dont really have much of anything to look forward to. so how on earth am I supposed to find the inner strength and a reason to live? I'm in therapy, I take my meds as directed. And yet, the most important part of recovery is missing..

I was in a big black hole when I did my finals at university. But, by some miracle, I passed. (And, by another miracle, I survived the black hole and am still here today.) Calm down as best you can, try to do a bit more preparation in the few remaining days, take the exam and hope for the best.

As regards your question "How do I find an intrinsic reason to live?", I have often been asked questions like that. Sometimes it comes in the form "How do I find a purpose in life?". I have observed, many times, that it doesn't usually work quite like that. You can't go looking for a purpose. (Well, you can, but it probably won't achieve anything.) What seems to happen is that a purpose finds people. I'm not going to say that any higher power is at work here, as I'm atheist and don't believe in higher powers, but it certainly sometimes seems like that. The best you can do is put yourself into situations that make it more likely that a purpose will find you or that a reason to live will find you. Try to keep going for a bit longer. Take it one day at a time. When your exam is out of the way, perhaps put yourself into some new situations, if you have the energy to do that. Connecting with other people, in whatever way best fits your situation, is often helpful.

Good luck.

 

[lita-lassi]

 

[CrescendoChiller]

[Wanted to mention that a lot of my life-affirming attitude has come from a book I've been reading (and have been finding a lot of satisfaction and peace towards life with - the most helpful book I've read so far in my pursuit of recovery. If I didn't have other books I wanted to read and grow from, I'd intend to keep re-reading it over and over.) -- "When Thing's Fall Apart -- Heart Advice for Difficult Times" by Pema Chodron. If nothing else, I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to try and understand more how life could be okay to experience when it includes pain/threats of pain/uncertainty. You might be able to get the audio book for free on Amazon with their membership trial]

The best "Intrinsic reason to live" that I've found so far has been in the idea that: If I reduce my experience to the sensations I have and nothing more -- ignoring any sense of right/wrong or good/bad (even when it comes to ideas of pain or loss) and trying to imagine every sensation I experience as being neutral, and appreciating the literal bizarreness of everything related to the sensations of "being alive" (appreciating how incredibly weird it is that I can see things, smell, hear, feel sensations and emotions), I can entertain enough of a possibility that having and maintaining any sort of experience is more interesting and preferable than having no experience.

That's how I've gotten to a place of being able to imagine getting into a car accident, or losing everything I have and becoming homeless, or developing a painful health problem, and imagining those situations as things that I could actually still appreciate being alive to experience (at least in theory). That idea/belief is what keeps me from responding to every pain/threat with "well why not just kill myself -- that would solve anything/everything."
Because if I hold my focus on my active experience a certain way, "there is no problem that needs to be solved -- everything is literally just an assemblage of sensations, and they don't have to be anything more than that".

It is an attitude that requires active effort/focus to have though. I actively have to remember to change from my natural/habitual reaction to a difference focus. I very much liken it to something like the young-woman/old-woman optical-illusion picture, where if you focus on the same sensations in a different way, you literally get a different felt experience. In this case though, it just requires a lot more effort and practice on your part.
The willingness to put in the effort to maintain this focus for me comes from the belief that "'existing' by itself/on it's fundamental level, is preferable to not experiencing anything. And it is possible to have this".

Once you've gotten that figured out, then it's less about "escaping pain" and more about "moving towards an experience that sounds satisfying/good/better" -- choosing how you use this moment to lead you to your next, or what "broad idea/goal" feels good to move towards. That's where finding a "purpose" might come into play, as a source of empowered-direction.