Lived Experience Forum

[Chris]

This is me. I have only come to realize  this a few months ago. Up untill this time i was on auto pilot. An unconcious sometimes concious decision to keep people out. This includes family. Strange i know. Why would my family want to hurt me. I have this very long standing notion that i cant tolerate any more pain (emotional that is) from anyone. I just cant cope with anymore.

Its like my life is a movie that i am watching. I see life hapening around me but there is no connection.  I feel nothing.I am afraid of people. I always have been. Ive always been a fringe dweller. Afraid to participate, afraid to get close.  I have never been good with small talk.

Ive tried very hard to  change with the help of therapies  and therapists,  and to be honest i dont know if its helped. Yes i have more awareness,  buts thats as far as it goes.

So thats me. Thats my life

[Appleblossom]

I have spent a lot of time feeling very disconnected and quite depersonalised too @Chris ... decades.  I found exercise and music helpful to reclaim my feeling and emotional qualities and get out of being too cerebral.

If you have experienced a lot of emotional hurts it makes sense to me that you are at your limit in taking in more ... self protection is important.  The issues around defensiveness and self protectiveness are fairly subtle and from what I can see most people take a lifetime to work it out.

[Chris]

Hi appleblossom

Sorry i havent ment to ignore you here, i just am having trouble  getting my head around all this stuff in my head.

Yes being emotionally hurt over and over again. I got to a point as a young adult that i had had enough and i wasnt going to let anyone hurt me again intentionally  or not. So i switched off. And thats where  I am still at some fifty odd years on. I feel like this is something that will never really change as i am so super sensitive to it. Worse than a scared little rabbit.

[Appleblossom]

Its ok @Chris I wasnt feeling ignored.  I am reading about the history of kibbutzim after watching a lecture by anthropologist.  Just reading about it fits in with some of the issues you must be facing with 3 generations under one roof. I have had alot of good interactions on this forum .. its not as simple as I rub your back and you rub mine ... and you never know when someone will reply immediately or whether their inet connection has gone.

I have a busy head too ...I just start with one thread of thought and take it from there.

[Tight-Control]

Hi ,

Check out Ellen Langer on youtube/TED Talks.. she is really interesteing about " auto pilot living ".

Hope this helps .

Yes I felt that autopilto for years , its like watching movie where every charater is speaking but you are not.

[Peter_Pan78]

withdrawl is natural when you're struggling (been there done that).  My recovery came about because I stopped hiding how crap I was feeling in social situations (didn't focus on it though) and just accepted 'at this moment I feel crap.  I don't have to have a reason, I just feel crap at this moment'. The more I accepted feeling crap, the less crap I felt.  I became more social as I felt I didn't have to fake 'being happy'.  I could tell people, 'not feeling so crash hot today' and move on.  It's actually ok to feel crap (though society tells us we need to always walk around with a smile on our face and portray "happiness").  Happiness isn't always reflected in a smile.  I'm happy more than I'm not these days, but I don't always have a smile on my face.  I only use my smile when I'm genuinely happy.  I don't want to waste a smile lol

[lostit]

Yes, Chris. I do. And the wheels start falling off for me about November most years. But I'd been in denial of ostricising and islolation for so long previous to that that It never stopped me from presenting an upbeat front. It was only when certain pieces of my life started to reemerge that I started to sense how alone in this world I was.

The more you know, the worse it gets, seemingly. So you might say ignorance(/denial) was bliss for a few years.

All I can say for you is that some of are made to walk that path. I try to be accepting of it but sometimes I get a bit jaded with it all and end up writing big long angry tirades about a careless, selfish society etc.

I do some pictures with my pastels, just colouring in one panel at a time seems to calm me. And I try some creative writing at other times.

I hope you can manage the more difficult times and keep from sinking to low. 

[Rusalkin]

This is my first comment, so hope it's ok.

I've felt like this since a depression at 16 yrs old & even though I've " done well" in the world, raised a child & know I'm a good person. The sceptre of that & the stigmatisation of it by both my family & DV perpetrators has been huge. 

I'm recovering from PTSD & a ton of health challenges. 

Feel grateful that this is being talked about. I've had 1,000 ways to deal with the detachment from the world.

Music, dance, raising my boy solo when he was young & now my parrots absolutely have been my refuge. Thank you for this space to be allowed to talk about " it" without people bolting. 

Recently, I lived overseas, in my original homeland. What struck me, was that in body language & manners there, people do not expect constant grins  & hellos until they know you, let you into their world a little. Then, once you are trusted ( doesn't take long) you are absolutely ok as you. To the extent that when I mentioned to some new friends that I had some health challenges, the first question was " have you been unwell with a depression?". It totally blew my existing paradigm. 

Best thing, to be able to carry a quiet cocoon there & not feel obliged to be happy. 

Consequently, I just felt totally safe & huge joy.Since I've been back,I've adopted a less eye contact when in out & more subtle smile. That seems to be working really well to help me stay grounded & in my body.

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[CherryBomb]

Fantastic first post @Rusalkin. It's great food for thought - how different societies/culture understand, accept, and support mental illness. 

What is perceived in depression here in the West, can be understood as something else in different cultures. And there are different social standards for how we go about managing it. I think it goes to show, that we are, in large way, shaped by our environment, but we needn't be passive in this. We gain new insigts, and new approaches as you have done.

Can you tell us more about their paradigm in your home country? How would they support someone with depression? 

[Rusalkin]

@CherryBomb well there's plus & minus about it. 

Even though in the community, depression is " just another illness" & when it's a country that has had so many wars & losses on it's own soil, there's lots about how people view the world that's different. 

The sad thing is, that due to the economic hardship & politics that don't have good infrastructure, the main "support" is families & alcohol. 

The alcoholism rate is horrendous, around 40% of deaths & I believe suicide rate is high compared to Aus. 

There's a lot of stigma & fear of psychology, preferring the kitchen table ( I like conversations there, people don't  interrupt & it's ok to speak as long as you need to in turns & people listen) & many many cups of tea. 

There's some new TV shows that have shrinks working with family & relationship  problems people have rather than debilitating mental health.But lots on anxiety. There are bits on positive psychology as well, but what's good is that it's all presented at far greater depth. It's a well read, educated society so mass media goes deeper. You can't compare depth there & say the U.S. Reality TV doesn't even exist, no one watches it except teens. More serious mental health problems have psychiatric care, drugs & there's still a culture of sanatoriums. 

Dont know if that helps. Don't worry, there's a dark past with psychiatric hospitals used as prisons & for punishment. So some if the fear around that, is understandable as there's people alive who remember.

What I saw in say body language & culture, was very much about resilience. Having said that, there's a lot more real happiness in terms of seizing simple pleasures, friendships, walks in the park, seeing art & music is everywhere. People dress up on weekends & go strolling rather than power walking.

Australians have so much more, but aren't as basically happy. Driving everywhere, big houses, status seeking, mortgages. 

I'm sure others here,have seen more happiness in much less affluent societies.

There's a competitiveness,materialism  & shallowness we have, that seems to disconnect us here  from that which all human beings really love to do, simple stuff.  

Oh everyone in my homeland carries around books to read, on the metro & in parks. They can't afford to eat out as much as we do. Maybe that's it, literature 

Does that make sense? Thx for reading 

still getting my head around the emoticons use, just had smiley winks in very inappropriate places in

text!!!!!