Question:
I wonder if you have any advice. I feel like I am a hopeless case. My name is Billy and I have been suffering depression for the past 3 years. It goes up and down in intensity and can last for weeks/months without a break!
I struggle to get out my bed, I struggle to find anything good with my life and the people in it, I struggle to keep a job down. I am currently out of work and have been unemployed for a few years now! I have no clue what I want to do and what will make me happy. I feel low and sad all the time because of it. I don't understand life, myself or what I really want.
Everything seems to come quite easy for others around me, or either they have this thick skin that I don't seem to have, to manage to pull themselves up and get on with their lives. My life isn't going anywhere, I am not even sure if it's supposed to. It's all what family, School, friends, the media all say. But I know I need money to have a roof over my head and food in my stomach - but that is another stumbling block, the minimum wage is so bad, everyone struggles on it. After paying rent, council tax, bills, food bills, for the kids. . .there is nothing left over. It's like living to work with little or nothing left over. So, I can dream about living the big lifestyle (whatever the heck that is), but that only fills me with dread, because I don't want to be famous, I don't want the responsibility of being so rich and worrying about money all the time, and I know that won't last, so, what's the point?
I wish life wasn't so complicated and I wasn't forced to work. Even going into education, I am pretty much a simple man and struggle to absorb any kind of new information. I lack confidence. I was brought up from a tough back ground. It's like I had never a chance and still don't!
I always feel life pushes against me. Anything I think I will find enjoyment in, turns out I hate it in the end. I really try to pull myself together, but the effort takes so much energy that I only feel worse. Family around me keep telling me to force myself to enjoy life, to take some interest, to at least 'try'! I know I am frustrating them, but I just cannot help the way I feel. And what is worse, I can't pin point what makes me feel this way. I can't blame it on anything, it's just this energy inside of me that makes me feel so helpless, so much despair and unhappiness and all I can do is be forced to watch it and feel it! It's horrible!
Sitting with the feeling is really bad, this only makes my mind try to figure out what is wrong, so it throws up every bad images, memory and thought as if the brain is trying to help me out. It's not, because I simply have no idea why I feel this force of energy inside of me and I have now stopped trying to analyse it. There is just no hope!
I don't want to take anti-depressants, I always feel they make me feel 10x worse. My family get angry about this as they think I am playing victim now and I am not helping myself. They tell me to force myself out my bed, force myself out to even meet with them for a cup of coffee (like that is going to make everything better) I know definitely what I don't want. I just don't know exactly what I do want and never have.
It's like I need to re-educate myself in what happiness means. I am not a spiritual person. A friend of mine directed me to your site and says you give good advice and it has worked well for her. So, here I am asking for help.
Thanks, Billy.
Response:
A solution to all of that is to let yourself feel however you feel. If there is despair and great inner discomfort, how much longer can you attempt to free yourself from it? When will you see that all attempts to fix it are no longer working? This may increase the despair at first, since an energy inside may feel that there must be some way to fix all of it, but none of that has worked.
Let yourself feel however you feel, not because it will make it better, but because fighting how you feel, or trying to feel differently, has now become a futile effort.
Adam