Discussion Observing your own 'journey'.

[Forever Sleep]

When did you first think something was wrong with your life? Or, yourself even? I remember struggling socially from a very young age. Certain situations made me so nervous, uncomfortable, unhappy.

The really bad stuff happened when I was 10, when my Dad remarried. At that point, suicidal thoughts came in. I had been sad before- missing my deceased family members but, this was different. This was a misery so bad that I wanted to be free of my life.

I guess in my late teens, I started to think things were wrong with me. I started reading all sorts of self help books. I think I probably still thought there was a solution at that stage. Maybe I still thought that right up until my late thirties. I continued to at least try to keep turning things around.

Do you suppose there's just a point where you settle for where you're at- both in terms of your life situation but also your habits- your thought processes, your coping mechanisms? Even if you know they may not be the healthiest, they have gotten you through so far.

I'm not so sure I have the belief in 'recovery' now. I'm not sure I even want it. Can life be rewarding enough for the effort required? I'm doubtful. My 'rewards' so far have been fairly lacklustre.

Where are you in this thought process? Can you still imagine ways to turn things around? Do you still have hopes or interests? Do you have the energy to attain them? Or, are you more settled or resigned to where you're at?

My other 'problem' is, I'm terribly stubborn. While it can be a positive attribute- I have been stubborn towards achieving things in the past. I can be just as stubborn about not participating and, giving up.

 

[SomewhatLoved]

I think right from the start. We know that genetics plays a role in psychology, and I think I was born with something.

I was always grumpy as a baby according to my parents. Even then, I never wanted help. I was stubborn. Never smiled. Difficult. Always played alone, didn't really get along well with other kids in general.

Fast forward some 20-odd years... I am still stubborn, don't want help, don't "play" well with others, and have a terminal case of RBF. Pretty much a recluse at this point.

Of course along the way there were more specific details and experiences, but I feel like my character as a whole seemed to have been generally defined before I was even old enough to remember things.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

I've never had the feeling there was sth wrong with me or with my life. Certainly, there's nothing wrong with me.

The fact I'm suicidal is purely a result of the circumstances I was (and still am) exposed to - a big failure in life (financially).

I still have hope left that things could turn around in the far future or at least stay at the same low levels as they are rn for quite some more time.

The more time passes after I hit rock bottom over 2 years ago, some interests are recovering over time - it's a very slow process though.

But as long as no major incidents are going to kill me with worsening circumstances, then I'd say I still have some hope left for the future.

 

[cowboypants]

I knew something wasn't right when I was around 5-8. It was almost solidified i didn't have a good dad by 8. Mom wasn't there emotionally and wasn't really active person.

She kept pitting dad against me and he is like a raging maniac even now. He can act really normal. These things started taking a toll on me before I could even turn 10. I wanted to die so badly at those times. Somehow with my coping mechanisms I was able to survive so far.

I had hope until I reached my mid twenties. By then i would have seen multiple psychiatrists. More than decade of on and off medication. I only understood that they were narcissists around that point. I read as much I could but i found i don't have much motivation in life. Im also pretty stubborn ig. I've set a deadline that my late 20s is gonna be it

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

I just started thinking logically rationally. But it happened only recently as an over 18.

For example why do I have to do all this work a job chores, deal with problems, deal with bad people , put up with bad flus, diseases, injustice oppression etc

Then I felt pain. It was shocking how bad it was. Nothing is worth the worst pain

Then horrible things happened to me

That's just a start. Now I think I will never want to live or exist under any circumstances

 

[areyousafe??]

Towards the end of high school, I started getting very depressed - crying, suicidal thoughts and self harming every day. I thought to myself that this didn't seem normal, so I took myself to my doctor, and he prescribed me antidepressants and referred me to a psychiatrist.

During school, I had very few friends. I was socially awkward and to be honest I preferred being by myself. The past 2 years I developed social anxiety.

I've been on antidepressants for the majority of my life now, and this year I stopped taking them because I feel too depressed to keep taking them. Everything feels hopeless and pointless.

I made up my mind that this will be my last year, but I will have a go at "recovery" before I leave. I've started on new antidepressants, I'm doing regular therapy, trying to practice mindfulness, self care etc. I'm a shell of a person.

 

[avalokitesvara]

I don't believe in a journey or a story of my life anymore. Every day is just the same thing, it doesn't matter what objectively happens. I haven't got a future. My past is just a big jumble of chaotic random events. Nothing ties together to make any sort of sense. There's no overarching story. I used to spend a lot of energy analysing my life and my choices and thinking about how I could shape the future. But now I know it's all random, I have no control. What I call me just an organism that is under extreme control from biology and economics, forces far higher than this individual sack of cells. What I think of as my will or my personality is just a brain talking to itself to try and piece together something stable out of the absolute chaos that is every living moment. I don't believe in a self anymore. This gets clearer and clearer, and now I'm just prioritising minimising my suffering if I can, to get through each day, because I was born even though I never wished it and can't die even though I wish it.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

I don't believe in a journey or a story of my life anymore. Every day is just the same thing, it doesn't matter what objectively happens. I haven't got a future. My past is just a big jumble of chaotic random events. Nothing ties together to make any sort of sense. There's no overarching story. I used to spend a lot of energy analysing my life and my choices and thinking about how I could shape the future. But now I know it's all random, I have no control. What I call me just an organism that is under extreme control from biology and economics, forces far higher than this individual sack of cells. What I think of as my will or my personality is just a brain talking to itself to try and piece together something stable out of the absolute chaos that is every living moment. I don't believe in a self anymore. This gets clearer and clearer, and now I'm just prioritising minimising my suffering if I can, to get through each day, because I was born even though I never wished it and can't die even though I wish it.

totally agree . i'm just a bag of cells. a brain , brain cells. there is no self . the self is an illusion created by the brain, and only itermittently as the video below shows.

and i saw this video . i agree with what she says in this clip. that's not to say i agree with everything else she says. just started reading her book especially what she says in the last minute or 2 , totally shuts him up. and he's a neuroscientist too i think .see the look on his face at the end of the video.

ask the question " am i consious now ? " "Yes but what was i conscious of a moment before?" . she says i wasn't consciouus of anything a moment before i asked the question " am i coscious now?" . there was just an animal reacting and multiple parralel brain processes going on at the same time. only when i asked the question "am i conscious now?" only then the brain brought up a model of the self and a model of a stream of consciousness. there wasn't a me before i asked the question nor a model of a stream of consciousness.

so i say did we exist in that moment before we asked the question? i say no becuase there was no me. Josha bach also said we don't continously exist. certainly not in a dreamless sleep.



these and many more neuroscientists say there is no self. also in the book attention schema, and "Ego Tunnel".

 

[Pale_Rider]

Well having grown up in an abusive home I was regularly verbally/emotionally, and physically abused. Even if I could have been "normal", that was precluded as I always felt less then, because I was told I was. As I entered adulthood I was numb. My little often fronted , as my protector wasnt as developed yet. So I had to spend my 20s growing up. In reality on of my protectors was developing. I also had another possible gatekeeper deeply enbeded in me. Of course I had no concept of all this at the time. We were just who we needed to be at the time. When it did come to light that's when we knew for sure we were different. It's also when a new animosity laden existence began. It's like a cosmic joke that one person would have to go through so much. That one person could become so damaged. That the cope is " well I have it better then others, because I wasn't killed". Then when I do attempt to ctb people who "care" would finally show up to stop me. Tell me "it's going to be ok, and will get better". It doesn't get better. It just keeps going. It never stops.

 

[eattwinkiesseejesus]

Third grade... my teacher pulled me aside into the hallway for a one on one and I started bawling... she wanted to congratulate me on how well I was excelling and I had so much anxiety being alone with someone or having to take a compliment that I was literally in tears. Teacher kept trying to figure out if i was ok telling me I wasnt in trouble but the opposite... yeaaaaahhhhh, things like that started very young for me and realized I wasnt as stable as all the other little boys and girls

 

[TAW122]

I'd say when I was about middle school or so, due to the strict authoritarian parenting my parents had but also just my social ineptness as well as just life sucking in general. While I never thought of CTB as CTB (before I learned of the term), I did have an understanding of the concept of 'death'. There were a few times where I wished I were dead, even before my adolescence years. I would say that I never fully knew about CTB until almost an adult, just about 1-2 years before I was 18.

Throughout my adulthood, I've struggled and wrestled with how the world was so anti-CTB (which ironically only made me want to die even more) along with many other things I realized that I was 'different' and just incompatible for this mainstream world of normies and the average person. I hated societal rules and norms, and often went against the grain and I always questioned "why" I had to do the things that people do, but rarely, did I ever find a satisfactory answer and it only frustrated me even more.

As I entered early adulthood and post university life, I found the existential dread of the wageslave life, and adult life and generally I feel like it's just not worth it, then on top of personal and external disappointments as well as society in general, I've decided that yeah sentience sucks and the sooner I check out the better it is, less time in sentience (existence) less opportunity for unnecessary suffering.

 

[Apathy79]

I'm in a slightly different basket.

The first and only time I seriously considered ctb was when my nerve pain flared up for 9 days when I got covid a few years ago. It had always been lingering and flare ups were getting more frequent, more severe and longer, but never this consistent and severe. I didn't really sleep in any real sense of the word for 9 days. From about day 3 onwards I would get the nerve pain jolt, then collapse into rest, get jolted again a few seconds later, and repeat that seemingly endlessly, until I eventually went to the emergency room (at the suggestion of someone in SS chat) and got sedated while it ran its course. I had covid at the same time which is what redirected my immune system away from this longer term nerve pain, but the covid symptoms were completely irrelevant compared to this.

The worst part is not knowing when or if it will end. If I knew it would "only" be 9 days in advance, it becomes workable. But there's no way to know. Certainly its not a state I could live in permanently, which might be the inevitable state as my immune system gets weaker with age and can no longer suppress it.

But I don't have any sort of world view that says life is nothing but suffering. I'm happy enough with my life for the most part. I'm still in the self help phase at 45 for areas I'd like to improve. You ask can life be rewarding enough for the effort required? Which is my framing too as a generally lazy person. I'm now wondering if viewing the effort as negative is the limiting belief - whether meaning is found in the effort.

If I find a cure for this nerve pain or it doesn't progress as I expect, I doubt ctb will be the way I go.

 

[Satori Komeiji]

I think a lot of it for me just comes down to genetics. Who I am now just feels like an extension of what I was like when I was younger. I have always been quiet, difficult to talk to, opening up only to my few friends. I've always been a bit of a loner, needing long hours of doing things by myself to remain functional.

I have always felt misunderstood for as long as I can remember, all the adults in my life didn't understand my thought process or why I did things the way I did. Often the more strange and unusual parts of me were suppressed by adults, causing me to close in on myself even more. I think the depression and suicidal thoughts started around the age of 10. No specific event caused it though. There were rough times growing up, sure, but generally I had a good life growing up. Loving family, middle class, had plenty of games and toys, all that.

I'm not even too sure why I was suicidal back then as I don't remember much from that time. I think I just felt like a strange abomination who would never be understood by anyone and would always be a weird, lonely person and well, I wasn't wrong.

I also hated school. Obviously most children hate school but I couldn't stand it. School to me was just an embodiment of everything wrong with me shoved in my face every day for 5 days a week. I had bad grades so those adults that I wanted to make happy got upset with me. I wasn't bullied but I was alone. Being alone isn't so bad on it's own but it's much worse when you're forced to go somewhere where everyone has friends and you don't.

It got much worse in high school too. Most of my time in high school was spent in one teachers classroom, I ate lunch in there and asked to go there for most classes. I credit that teacher with being the reason I graduated.

Now I spend most of my very exciting post-high school adult life sitting here, in bed, on my laptop, occasionally going to work so that my family doesn't hate me any more than they probably already do. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I'm now wondering if viewing the effort as negative is the limiting belief - whether meaning is found in the effort.

I think it has to be to be sustainable. You have to find fulfilment/ some joy in the effort because the journey takes time and we may never even reach the hoped for destination.

I used to feel fulfilled in my creative endeavours. That was my crutch in life. It did a brilliant job for a long time. In that sense, I've been lucky. Now, it's feeling more along the lines of a chore- like everything else. Not completely- thankfully. Just not the same as it was.

I'm so sorry about your health issues. I think poor health just makes everything unbearable. I can relate slightly to being in intense pain and fearing it may never end. I had gallstones a few years back, with a stone eventually moving into the bile duct. I really didn't know what to do with myself during the attacks. The pain was so severe. Between my reluctance to see doctors and the ineffective NHS, it took months to diagnose. I'd pretty much diagnosed myself by the time they took enough of an interest. Then, they were actually very good- to be fair but yeah- it felt like walking on eggshells for a good long while, terrified that anything I ate would cause an attack. It was a miserable period although oddly, my mood was better because I was enjoying my work more.

I always feel so bad for people suffering with health issues though. It terrifies me to be honest, how susceptible we can be to horrible things.