@street19
I hear you. Life can be unreasonably shit sometimes..
When you’re dealing with intense pain everyday, it feels like you’re living in hell. And while the world around you is going on as normal and people don’t understand why you can’t play the game - even blaming you for not being responsible/in control of your emotions, it just compounds the problem.. The truth is that you’re not able to because you’re debilitated by this pain.
Please understand that this is a mental illness - It’s not you - you are a great person and you still have the goodness of life at your core, it's just that you got sick and now need time to recover.
Take time.
Tend to yourself in whatever way that may be.
Even if it’s not “positive” or “productive” by other’s standards, even if it’s just lying around and waiting for things to settle. You don’t have to meditate if you don’t want to and you don’t have to rebuild your life right now. All you have to do is take your time and do whatever is right for you. Whatever will help to make you feel stable and strong and hopeful again.
Think back:
What made you happy as a kid?
Where have you found refuge/solace before?
What makes you come alive?
Find the things that make you feel happy to be alive in this world and focus on them. Do the things that you know you like and if they don’t work, do something out of the ordinary - explore.
Listen to your favorite music in a dark room. This really helps to process emotions at an subconscious level. When I really connect with the music, I find it incredibly healing. Pay attention to every little sound and let it take you on a journey. I also find this helps with mindfulness.
Exercise/movement is great at circulating pain so that it doesn’t get stuck in your heart or mind (but I know this is the last thing you feel like doing when you feel this way). - In general, shaking the body shakes up the mind and emotions. It gives you strength, resilience and momentum; gets everything flowing, gets your heart and brain pumping and working again in proper order.
Keep reaching out online and especially in person to anyone who has helped you in the past. Relationships make us happy. Especially intimate, loving ones and ones where we feel understood and close to the other. In my experience, there is nothing more powerful than connecting with another person.
Find a teacher/guru that you admire and learn from them. Use them as a role-model, imitate their actions, get into their mindset and emulate them.
Try to study depression/suicide as an objective phenomenon. It’s an affliction that many people struggle through silently, or in their own ways and understanding it as such can help you change your perspective on it and even transcend it.
Help others who feel this way. You probably understand something about depression/suicide that is unique and that someone else in the world needs to hear from your perspective. You have a piece of the puzzle and you have probably figured out ways of coping with it that would help others and that only you can share.
Depression is so subtle and insidious because the whole time you really believe that the pessimistic, defeatist thoughts/feelings are the Truth. But they’re really just illusions - part of this crippling pathology that slowly sucks the life out of you. It traps you in fear, hopelessness and low-self esteem and it’s because it’s in the mind that it’s so tricky and easy to fall into. It’s because you believe it’s your self when actually it’s just malevolent ideas and memories accumulated over time and identified with. When you have no means of detaching from them and identifying yourself in being and awareness again, you don't have the stability to navigate yourself back to love and happiness and unconditional positive regard again. The depressing thoughts become your only reference point and that’s when they take over and why you start to believe they're true. This turns into angst and hatred and disregard for yourself and the world and can spiral out of control into suicide.
These thoughts happen specifically when stress and pain become too heavy for the body; and so you want to throw the body away - but this is too drastic and permanent a solution to a problem that is temporary and can be cured with some changes in lifestyle. Whoever the “me” that you think you are now will grow and change and not be the same “me” in time.
The answer is in finding ways to increase pleasantness, to relax deeply (however this may be), to foster well-being and increase contentment by doing good things for your future self. When you’re in a slump, practice acceptance and understand that it'll pass and when you’re motivated, build on your strengths/passions/talents.
I know it might be hard to see from here but as @TJ Reeves said, when you overcome this hurdle, you'll look back on it as one of your greatest sources of strength.
