Recovery is hard

[Foresight]

It's unreal how hard. I feel very alone. Climbing out of hell takes more strength than I think I even have.

 

[Rd2nowhere]

My hand is out to you. You are not alone.

 

[Pluto]

I am feeling the same way. The hardest part is that I don't really know what all the effort is for.

 

[Foresight]

I am feeling the same way. The hardest part is that I don't really know what all the effort is for.

Most definitely. I've lost sight of everything worth living for in my years of descent. I have yet to regain sight of what the fuck im even doing here.

I always admired people like you who put time into spiritual studies. I can't even do that because I get overwhelmed by how much we have to learn and overcome in that journey.

 

[Rd2nowhere]

The word I use is hope. There is hope.

 

[Zegers]

Honestly, I've frittered away a lot of time thinking that "things will get better" when they don't and you're at the same point, now I've decided on ctb because it makes the most sense to me.

 

[Hollowman]

I'm so lost I can't even imagine what recovery would be like.

 

[bed]

been in the system for a decade or so roughly in different stages of recovery. I can sympathize a bit, it is very hard to get out of the hole and maintain balance in life.

I don't know why but one quote a MH professional told me has stuck with me throughout all these years. Paraphrasing since it's been a while, "there are no backward steps in recovery only sidesteps. you still retain all the info from each battle you have fought."

Not sure how i feel about it personally but it's stuck with me. Maybe it'll resonate with you. Wishing you the best in your recovery and be kind to yourself.

Bad days will come regardless, that's just life but they shouldn't come as often.

 

[Niko66]

I feel this so much, I've been trying so hard the past few months, even a few months is more than I can usually muster, so much effort to do little things, little things that have so little outcomes, chiselling away at the seemingly endless mountain of issues and trauma, not knowing if I am truly even getting anywhere, seeing the most little improvements for your biggest efforts if any improvements at all. Seeing it all start to go down the drain after a handful of extra bad days. Having to pretend I am ok around people, having to keep playing the role of a human being though I hardly feel like one anymore. The loneliness when the only person who knows me truly and supports me is literally on the other side of the world and everyone around me make me feel isolated, inadequate, defective. A fuck up. Worthless. I want to feel safe and accepted, I want to belong. I want my physical health to get better and be in less pain yet months of exercise and I can't seem to make any progress except some temporal pain relief that goes away as soon as I skip a day.
So much guilt, physical and emotional pain all to achieve the ever elusive "well being" "happiness" "meaning". I am so fucking tired, I want to lie down and unknowingly never wake up again. I don't want to kill myself, yet the pursuit of recovery is so full of despair and suffering. So fucking tired of hoping for the better days that never have come, for changes that seem unfathomable to reach after having endured the traumas on the past, I just don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, I dream of it, I hope for it, I try to make my way towards it but it's not getting easier. It's so overwhelming. I just want so desperately a respite, some happniess, some lucky break. People talk about highs and lows but I look back and the lows are so low and the highs are so low.

And that is all, today, tomorrow, afterwards, back to trying, back to pushing through, hanging in there, masking around others, pretending I am fine, isolated. Enduring the physical pain, the negative emotions, the self hatred and the reality of my worthless miserable existence ever present in the corner in my eye as I suffer this whole recovery thing. As I go about my day telling myself that if I stick with my efforts for another few miserable years slowly it will get better. Going to bed and imagining what life could be like, what could happen if I really try and keep trying, clinging to that distant dream to go for another yoga class, another therapy session, another self reflection, another day at work, another scary jump out of the comfort zone, another med to try, another appointment, career, fitness, relationships, pursuing success which deep inside I feel too damaged to ever achieve. And yet while I am alive what alternative do I have? A life of equally miserable dissociation, avoidance and pointless suffering with the certainty that it will never get better if I don't make it better or the death which I don't feel ready to act upon.

I just wanna be held by someone who makes me feel safe and to be told it's ok. I don't want to recover, I just want to be... deserving of love, acceptance, care and able to do good for people I care about.

 

[Foresight]

I feel this so much, I've been trying so hard the past few months, even a few months is more than I can usually muster, so much effort to do little things, little things that have so little outcomes, chiselling away at the seemingly endless mountain of issues and trauma, not knowing if I am truly even getting anywhere, seeing the most little improvements for your biggest efforts if any improvements at all. Seeing it all start to go down the drain after a handful of extra bad days. Having to pretend I am ok around people, having to keep playing the role of a human being though I hardly feel like one anymore. The loneliness when the only person who knows me truly and supports me is literally on the other side of the world and everyone around me make me feel isolated, inadequate, defective. A fuck up. Worthless. I want to feel safe and accepted, I want to belong. I want my physical health to get better and be in less pain yet months of exercise and I can't seem to make any progress except some temporal pain relief that goes away as soon as I skip a day.
So much guilt, physical and emotional pain all to achieve the ever elusive "well being" "happiness" "meaning". I am so fucking tired, I want to lie down and unknowingly never wake up again. I don't want to kill myself, yet the pursuit of recovery is so full of despair and suffering. So fucking tired of hoping for the better days that never have come, for changes that seem unfathomable to reach after having endured the traumas on the past, I just don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, I dream of it, I hope for it, I try to make my way towards it but it's not getting easier. It's so overwhelming. I just want so desperately a respite, some happniess, some lucky break. People talk about highs and lows but I look back and the lows are so low and the highs are so low.

And that is all, today, tomorrow, afterwards, back to trying, back to pushing through, hanging in there, masking around others, pretending I am fine, isolated. Enduring the physical pain, the negative emotions, the self hatred and the reality of my worthless miserable existence ever present in the corner in my eye as I suffer this whole recovery thing. As I go about my day telling myself that if I stick with my efforts for another few miserable years slowly it will get better. Going to bed and imagining what life could be like, what could happen if I really try and keep trying, clinging to that distant dream to go for another yoga class, another therapy session, another self reflection, another day at work, another scary jump out of the comfort zone, another med to try, another appointment, career, fitness, relationships, pursuing success which deep inside I feel too damaged to ever achieve. And yet while I am alive what alternative do I have? A life of equally miserable dissociation, avoidance and pointless suffering with the certainty that it will never get better if I don't make it better or the death which I don't feel ready to act upon.

I just wanna be held by someone who makes me feel safe and to be told it's ok. I don't want to recover, I just want to be... deserving of love, acceptance, care and able to do good for people I care about.

Wow, I relate so much to everything here. Scarily so. I wish I was happy to relate but I'm just sorry you're going through this too. I have no answers. I really appreciate you sharing because I feel so alien in this life. I've never been good with expression and this sums up my experience of recovery as well. I don't want to give up but good god is this a battle.

 

[Foresight]

My anxiety/ptsd causes chronic pain too. It causes some kind of pain deep in my hip joints and also a burning sensation on my skin. I feel like I'm on fire.

 

[Niko66]

Wow, I relate so much to everything here. Scarily so. I wish I was happy to relate but I'm just sorry you're going through this too. I have no answers. I really appreciate you sharing because I feel so alien in this life. I've never been good with expression and this sums up my experience of recovery as well. I don't want to give up but good god is this a battle.

Thank you, I am sorry you are going through what you are too, at least I am "glad" we can find the smallest consolations in relating with others. The "normalcy" of the world and of a "healthy" average life feels so alien to me too. Things that "should" be easy and can be so overwhemingly difficult, there is such a disconnect and feeling of distance between ourselves and our lives to what those things are depicted to us as to how they should be like, it feels to me so much like I am such a defective failure for not living up to what others can do, full of guilt and shame yet at the core of it we are all humans and there's very real and material reasons as to why we struggle the way we do, and we can see that a bit in all the different people that are likewise struggling.

I hope some day we can say that the struggle was worth it. Or at least worth something.

My anxiety/ptsd causes chronic pain too. It causes some kind of pain deep in my hip joints and also a burning sensation on my skin. I feel like I'm on fire.

I am not even sure I even explicitly stated that was the case for me too so a bit "funny" you mention it, after all the tests I've done I can only guess stress and trauma are what's wrecking my body too as everything seems to be "fine" when checked unless it's some unlikely rare disease going undetected. The chronic pain doesn't go away regardless of what I try. Mostly digestive issues which are very tied to stress presumably and likewise a lot of back and joint pain despite having been months now doing pain relief and rehabiliting exercises. It freaking sucks, the circular loop of misery causing more misery is so unfair :C and knowing that you can hardly do anything about it because the cause in the first place seems unfixable and is barely even acknowledged by modern medicine, I feel you and I am sorry.

 

[virgilwalks]

Your life matters. Hope is a difficult and slippery slope but you're trying and that's what is important.

 

[Zegers]

hope you can recover, honestly when I think about this... i feel like I'm more interested in the afterlife than this... I could work or do some random things until I die and in the meantime have a miserable life but it's not something that motivates me.

 

[Foresight]

I'm doing better today. I didn't mean to make others feel hopeless. A little journal like post but...

When I've tried to recover and move forward in the past I just kind of blocked out the trauma and pain I'd been feeling my whole life. I would just focus externally and workout my body and try to advance in my career and create the appearance of a well adjusted person. I would attempt to cover up my scars and try so hard to pretend like nothing happened and I get to make a new life now. This time in recovery I am going into the depths of what's going on inside me. That's where the battle started. I'm being so real about where I am, what I've been through, and where I want to go knowing full well I can never seperate myself from my past. I'm really facing the mirror and allowing that pain to surface. It's been a nightmare at times. I want to be real about the process. On other days I thrive. It's like an investment chart, I'm going up over the year even if there's volatility day to day and month to month.

I'm releasing this tight, ugly hold my trauma has over me. I'm severely agoraphobic but I started to garden recently. I'm allowing myself to stand outside in full view and soak up the sun and fresh air. I have a facial disfigurement and I've been looking right into the mirror in the worst lighting that shows all the damage. I've been working on my body posture. It's amazing how trauma will manifest in the body. I would always cross my legs and wrap my arms tight around myself. I noticed when I started practicing opening my body wide I could feel this fear in my muscles. It's hard to explain. I would feel my nervous system freak out and try to wrap my body back up in a tight, protective stance ready to be struck. I just keep my body in that open stance and let that fear flow through until it's released. I started to rewrite the narrative in my mind that I have a facial difference. It is a disfigurement but I don't have to carry the weight of that word and the ugly perspective people have about others who look different. I'm a beautiful person inside and I deserve to feel that beauty. If people want to attack me over my health issues then that says more about them than me. I'm working on self love, acceptance, and trauma release. It's a lot but some of the ways I've grown through this work is so worth it. My dissociative habits are falling off. I danced around my kitchen this morning free and happy in my body and my mind. I'm scared of a lot of things but I think what scares me the most is letting this world eat me alive and never get the chance to feel the freedom that comes from recovery. That's why I keep at this recovery process even when it's hard as fuck. The days where I'm screaming, crying, losing touch with reality because the trauma is so severe come and go and I still get the chance to dance, laugh, learn music, advance my career, love my husband and pets, garden and eat fresh, delicious foods, read, write, communicate with others. Never ending list. I'll always respect that I might bow out in the end given the weight of my situation but I'll be damned if I don't get some days of release and free flowing love in the meantime.

 

[rainwillneverstop]

Oh it is hard, so hard and draining.
There will be moments when you will doubt on yourself, when you meet set backs, but it won't mean failure because those are character building days.

Your work described sounds impressive, and it sounds hard what you have gone through.
I wish you the best and if you need to vent, feel free to vent.

 

[noname223]

I'm doing better today. I didn't mean to make others feel hopeless. A little journal like post but...

When I've tried to recover and move forward in the past I just kind of blocked out the trauma and pain I'd been feeling my whole life. I would just focus externally and workout my body and try to advance in my career and create the appearance of a well adjusted person. I would attempt to cover up my scars and try so hard to pretend like nothing happened and I get to make a new life now. This time in recovery I am going into the depths of what's going on inside me. That's where the battle started. I'm being so real about where I am, what I've been through, and where I want to go knowing full well I can never seperate myself from my past. I'm really facing the mirror and allowing that pain to surface. It's been a nightmare at times. I want to be real about the process. On other days I thrive. It's like an investment chart, I'm going up over the year even if there's volatility day to day and month to month.

I'm releasing this tight, ugly hold my trauma has over me. I'm severely agoraphobic but I started to garden recently. I'm allowing myself to stand outside in full view and soak up the sun and fresh air. I have a facial disfigurement and I've been looking right into the mirror in the worst lighting that shows all the damage. I've been working on my body posture. It's amazing how trauma will manifest in the body. I would always cross my legs and wrap my arms tight around myself. I noticed when I started practicing opening my body wide I could feel this fear in my muscles. It's hard to explain. I would feel my nervous system freak out and try to wrap my body back up in a tight, protective stance ready to be struck. I just keep my body in that open stance and let that fear flow through until it's released. I started to rewrite the narrative in my mind that I have a facial difference. It is a disfigurement but I don't have to carry the weight of that word and the ugly perspective people have about others who look different. I'm a beautiful person inside and I deserve to feel that beauty. If people want to attack me over my health issues then that says more about them than me. I'm working on self love, acceptance, and trauma release. It's a lot but some of the ways I've grown through this work is so worth it. My dissociative habits are falling off. I danced around my kitchen this morning free and happy in my body and my mind. I'm scared of a lot of things but I think what scares me the most is letting this world eat me alive and never get the chance to feel the freedom that comes from recovery. That's why I keep at this recovery process even when it's hard as fuck. The days where I'm screaming, crying, losing touch with reality because the trauma is so severe come and go and I still get the chance to dance, laugh, learn music, advance my career, love my husband and pets, garden and eat fresh, delicious foods, read, write, communicate with others. Never ending list. I'll always respect that I might bow out in the end given the weight of my situation but I'll be damned if I don't get some days of release and free flowing love in the meantime.

"I'm a beautiful person inside and I deserve to feel that beauty. If people want to attack me over my health issues then that says more about them than me. I'm working on self love, acceptance, and trauma release. It's a lot but some of the ways I've grown through this work is so worth it."

These words are so true. Forget the assholes who judge you by how you are looking. It is similar for me to the people who mocked me when I was psychotic/delusional. These people are scum and they don't deserve our attention. You are a wonderful person who deserves to be happy. I hope your fears and sorrows won't eat you alive anymore. Or at least it gets a little bit better. Sometimes even small steps in the right direction can give us so much.

Sending a lot of hugs and love!

 

[whatevs]

I am feeling the same way. The hardest part is that I don't really know what all the effort is for.

If we don't have a reason we are not recovering. I mean, I normally feel like you, I don't know what it is all about. At best it feels like escaping by running forward with the busyness, struggle and efforts. I guess Foresight put it well in that we just want to not live in fear and be able to enjoy simple things. If you don't have that, it becomes hard to stay around.

I realized long ago that just like Osamu Dazai I had lived all my life terrified of other people, and that's more than enough to drive anyone to suicide, like it happened to him. Just being able to overcome this would make feel hugely accomplised. So, what is it all about, Pluto? Simple things, simple things that are out of our grasp, and that have destroyed us. In my case it would be 'simply' to be able to be consistently around people and not be ashamed like some kind of criminal when I see a familiar face outside.

 

[Angi]

Wow. So much beauty and useful thoughts, all in one thread. Thank you!

I feel this so much, I've been trying so hard the past few months, even a few months is more than I can usually muster, so much effort to do little things, little things that have so little outcomes, chiselling away at the seemingly endless mountain of issues and trauma, not knowing if I am truly even getting anywhere, seeing the most little improvements for your biggest efforts if any improvements at all. Seeing it all start to go down the drain after a handful of extra bad days. Having to pretend I am ok around people, having to keep playing the role of a human being though I hardly feel like one anymore. The loneliness when the only person who knows me truly and supports me is literally on the other side of the world and everyone around me make me feel isolated, inadequate, defective. A fuck up. Worthless. I want to feel safe and accepted, I want to belong. I want my physical health to get better and be in less pain yet months of exercise and I can't seem to make any progress except some temporal pain relief that goes away as soon as I skip a day.
So much guilt, physical and emotional pain all to achieve the ever elusive "well being" "happiness" "meaning". I am so fucking tired, I want to lie down and unknowingly never wake up again. I don't want to kill myself, yet the pursuit of recovery is so full of despair and suffering. So fucking tired of hoping for the better days that never have come, for changes that seem unfathomable to reach after having endured the traumas on the past, I just don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, I dream of it, I hope for it, I try to make my way towards it but it's not getting easier. It's so overwhelming. I just want so desperately a respite, some happniess, some lucky break. People talk about highs and lows but I look back and the lows are so low and the highs are so low.

And that is all, today, tomorrow, afterwards, back to trying, back to pushing through, hanging in there, masking around others, pretending I am fine, isolated. Enduring the physical pain, the negative emotions, the self hatred and the reality of my worthless miserable existence ever present in the corner in my eye as I suffer this whole recovery thing. As I go about my day telling myself that if I stick with my efforts for another few miserable years slowly it will get better. Going to bed and imagining what life could be like, what could happen if I really try and keep trying, clinging to that distant dream to go for another yoga class, another therapy session, another self reflection, another day at work, another scary jump out of the comfort zone, another med to try, another appointment, career, fitness, relationships, pursuing success which deep inside I feel too damaged to ever achieve. And yet while I am alive what alternative do I have? A life of equally miserable dissociation, avoidance and pointless suffering with the certainty that it will never get better if I don't make it better or the death which I don't feel ready to act upon.

I just wanna be held by someone who makes me feel safe and to be told it's ok. I don't want to recover, I just want to be... deserving of love, acceptance, care and able to do good for people I care about.

This is so beautiful, and so relatable. You picked me up in the mud I am currently stuck in with the first paragraph, washed me with sparkling resolve in the second, and with the third paragraph you put me back were I am by stating my most private wish, the one I would never have dared to spell like this, for how unrealistic it sounds and for how much that hurts. If this is not the perfect storyarc, I don't know what is.

It has been a hard day and a hard week and really needed to feel a little less alone today. Thank you for sharing this.

I'm doing better today. I didn't mean to make others feel hopeless. A little journal like post but...

When I've tried to recover and move forward in the past I just kind of blocked out the trauma and pain I'd been feeling my whole life. I would just focus externally and workout my body and try to advance in my career and create the appearance of a well adjusted person. I would attempt to cover up my scars and try so hard to pretend like nothing happened and I get to make a new life now. This time in recovery I am going into the depths of what's going on inside me. That's where the battle started. I'm being so real about where I am, what I've been through, and where I want to go knowing full well I can never seperate myself from my past. I'm really facing the mirror and allowing that pain to surface. It's been a nightmare at times. I want to be real about the process. On other days I thrive. It's like an investment chart, I'm going up over the year even if there's volatility day to day and month to month.

I'm releasing this tight, ugly hold my trauma has over me. I'm severely agoraphobic but I started to garden recently. I'm allowing myself to stand outside in full view and soak up the sun and fresh air. I have a facial disfigurement and I've been looking right into the mirror in the worst lighting that shows all the damage. I've been working on my body posture. It's amazing how trauma will manifest in the body. I would always cross my legs and wrap my arms tight around myself. I noticed when I started practicing opening my body wide I could feel this fear in my muscles. It's hard to explain. I would feel my nervous system freak out and try to wrap my body back up in a tight, protective stance ready to be struck. I just keep my body in that open stance and let that fear flow through until it's released. I started to rewrite the narrative in my mind that I have a facial difference. It is a disfigurement but I don't have to carry the weight of that word and the ugly perspective people have about others who look different. I'm a beautiful person inside and I deserve to feel that beauty. If people want to attack me over my health issues then that says more about them than me. I'm working on self love, acceptance, and trauma release. It's a lot but some of the ways I've grown through this work is so worth it. My dissociative habits are falling off. I danced around my kitchen this morning free and happy in my body and my mind. I'm scared of a lot of things but I think what scares me the most is letting this world eat me alive and never get the chance to feel the freedom that comes from recovery. That's why I keep at this recovery process even when it's hard as fuck. The days where I'm screaming, crying, losing touch with reality because the trauma is so severe come and go and I still get the chance to dance, laugh, learn music, advance my career, love my husband and pets, garden and eat fresh, delicious foods, read, write, communicate with others. Never ending list. I'll always respect that I might bow out in the end given the weight of my situation but I'll be damned if I don't get some days of release and free flowing love in the meantime.

Also wow. One day I want to be as beautiful as you are. I am still quite thunderstruck by Nico's post, but when I have digested it some I will move on to your post, which smells like the lovely flower of hope.

My anxiety/ptsd causes chronic pain too. It causes some kind of pain deep in my hip joints and also a burning sensation on my skin. I feel like I'm on fire.

Same here. My therapist says the burning right under the skin is a well-known sign for getting too close to unprocessed trauma. Sometimes I have it constantly for a while. Sometimes it subsides, but it reliably returns when I get triggered. The localised pain may be storing specific unprocessed pain. You could try to listen to you body what your hip joints are holding. For me, it is a particular kind of abuse sitting in there. I hope to process it one day, to the point the pain will go away. On a less voodoo and more physical side of things, you could try training your piriformis muscle, it helps me with the hip pain. As for the lower back pain, the correlation between this and trauma is even proven. Sadly this does not make it hurt any less, but somehow explained pain is easier to bear for me.