If I don't solve my health problems by the time I turn 18, I might just kill myself

[Vision]

My life has been stripped away from me.

I can't function. I can't feel anything.

Completely emotionally numb. Can't cry, can't be sad, can't be happy. Just empty and dead, going through the motions.

The goals and vision I had for my life? The vision that made me excited about life? The goals that I was eager to work towards? The things that made me engaged with life?

Gone. They're gone. I suddenly don't care about them at all. They don't have the same spark they used to have.

My list of my top 10 values? Nope, no spark anymore either.

It's like I've completely lost my personality. I've lost my real self.

I'm currently 16. The reason why I'm considering setting the deadline at 18 is because I don't think I can continue living like this for much longer.

I couldn't have ever imagined life being this terrible before I got hit with these gut issues and problems. Could you imagine that the thing you were most passionate about could suddenly be something you no longer care about, or find enjoyment in at all? I couldn't have imagined it without experiencing it.

I've forgotten what it feels like to feel good. I've forgotten what it feels like to feel alive and engaged with life. I've forgotten what it feels like to be productive. My life has turned completely upside down. I went from being someone I was proud of, ambitious & hard-working... to struggling to get out of bed.

I have close to six figures saved up from my previous Life Purpose (before I knew what a Life Purpose was), but none of it matters because I am deprived of my greatest wealth, the basis from which I experience life; my health. I've already spent thousands on health treatment with little progress. I don't know what to do at this point.

The advice I've seen for anhedonia is to do things you previously enjoyed regardless of how you feel, so that's just what I've been doing, not as long as I used to though.

As I'm writing this I'm contemplating why I'm even making this post... I think I am just desperate for hope - someone, or anyone, that wants to show me some light at the end of the tunnel, please consider doing so. I don't want to kill myself at a certain point in the future, I want to end this suffering, and this just seems like a surefire escape. My life is slipping away before my eyes and the only thing I can hold on to in order to continue living is hope, which I am losing bit by bit everyday.

Edit: For context, I’ve been dealing with debilitating health issues for the past year. 

I’ve already lost a year of my life to SIBO, and I am still battling it to this day. My SIBO is the cause for these issues; Depression, anhedonia, low energy, low motivation, brain fog, fatigue, food sensitivities, probably more that I’m forgetting.  

I have had tests done, which show that my neurotransmitter production (dopamine, serotonin, GABA, etc) is low all across the board. 

I’ve had eczema and insomnia for basically all my life, so SIBO isn’t the cause for those two, but it made those two conditions worse. It’s so severe that my skin is bleeding every day. I can barely sleep.

I can’t continue living like this for long. I hope I don’t end up following through on this plan and that my health issues will resolve, or at the very least, reduce in severity. I just want my life back.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Vision

[Gili Trawangan]

You are extremely young. Don't do anything that you would regret.

I can tell you that I've had lots of health issues when I was younger. Lots of different ones, they were painful and chronic - or so I thought - I was depressed, desperate, went through a lot of suffering.

Gradually, they subsided. One by one. Skip to the present day. I've just turned 40 and I'm super healthy and happy. And have been for a very long time.

Life comes with challenges. The challenges are what makes you grow the most, they provide incredible and profound lessons. You didn't come into this world to get an easy ride.

So take a step back, and understand that this is a challenge. This too shall pass.

[happyhappy]

@Vision whoa whoa dude...#

I saw u were the same one who recently got depressed and got prescribed with SSRI's. so note that emotional numbness is sometimes a common side effect of them. 

Or, u might be having depersonalization/Derealization like I do . SSRI's are nor much effective in that sense.

but emotional numbness, meaninglessness, existential rumination plus anxiety and feeling unreal, depression are commonly linked to DP/DR

Edited March 7, 2022 by happyhappy

[happyhappy]

2 hours ago, Gili Trawangan said:

You are extremely young. Don't do anything that you would regret.

I can tell you that I've had lots of health issues when I was younger. Lots of different ones, they were painful and chronic - or so I thought - I was depressed, desperate, went through a lot of suffering.

Gradually, they subsided. One by one. Skip to the present day. I've just turned 40 and I'm super healthy and happy. And have been for a very long time.

Life comes with challenges. The challenges are what makes you grow the most, they provide incredible and profound lessons. You didn't come into this world to get an easy ride.

So take a step back, and understand that this is a challenge. This too shall pass.

tbh, that was some great advice...helped me tooo..

[OBEler]

@Vision so for how long Do you have anhedonia? What Do you think is the cause

Consider You are in puperty right now. This is always stressful Phase for every young man. But ok you are in extreme dark place right now

Nothing stays the same, just have some faith(I know as young boy this cannot be graspt) 

[PepperBlossoms]

"Our failures are stepping stones to our successes." 

I was thinking about hope a few hours ago actually - hope that things will get better - we notice new things and experience new things just by existing and those changes bring about more changes for more new things to notice and experience.  The stuff you are focusing on now you probably won't be focusing on in a few days/week/month from now - life can change pretty quickly and quicker if you do things to change it.  Also just moving to a new room in the house or putting on some different music or changing the lighting or talking to new people or putting on new clothes or reading a different book or eating different food or doing a different activity - doing stuff to change your environment can make a big difference too.

I too was feeling like my life purpose was meaningless.  It can be an sad/upsetting experience to feel like we worked our way into a corner and then have to take a step back a little bit out of the corner for how to proceed.  Also, sometimes it is hard to stay interested in the same thing and we need stuff to change it up and we can always go back to the stuff we liked a bit later - whether that is a few hours/days/weeks/years whatever.  Or it could be that we can keep the same general life purpose but it just has to be tweaked some and it may take a few hours/days/weeks to figure out how to best tweak it.

Life can be a garden to grow whatever you want (to a varying degree) and sometimes we decide we don't want to grow say potatoes anymore and want to grow watermelons instead.

I had the same general idea when I was say 19 where said that I would kill myself at 25.  I have had some very sad moments but I made it past that and am still here today and you can too.  When we feel in a dark place, it can feel like things are never going to change and we are always going to be sad.  Life has ups and downs and the ups are great and the downs feel horrible.  The downs don't have to last forever though and things can get better or get different.  Life is so unpredictable that you really can't predict what the next month or even year or years are going to be like.  You are not alone and many people have similar thoughts of feeling sad/hopeless but people do make it through it.  You can do it too and you can make it through this!

Edited March 7, 2022 by PepperBlossoms

[PepperBlossoms]

In a way, we have to endure some negative stuff to make positive stuff.  We have to work on resiliency and coping techniques to make it through the negative part and sometimes we just have to take a step away and try again later.  If we didn't endure the negative part, we may have never gotten whatever it was we wanted.

One can also ask, well what positive stuff could possibly come from this negative stuff?  One can use their imagination to try to identify/come up with some positive potentials as well as re-assess if one should switch to something else that may have more potential than what we are currently operating with and focusing on.

[Cathal]

@Vision haha this is funny to me because when i was 19 I told the counsellor I would kill myself before i'm 24 (im 25)  and because i couldn't feel anything either i was hopelessly searching for answers and pills and medication and therapy for ways out of being dead inside,

well honestly after all this time i don't know how to convey the message to you in one post, because there is so much understanding and i'm not sure to what degree you mean with your gut problems are causing you suffering itself or it is causing you suffering because you wanted something and the gut issues are preventing you from it - there's many things to cope and pretend to feel alive for a moment or two, but essentially it is truly a journey you'll undertake yourself because you are just buried in your attachments

 feel free to pm me anyways, talk to me about what your life was like. what is your family, friend, relationship situation and so on 

[Vision]

4 hours ago, Gili Trawangan said:

You are extremely young. Don't do anything that you would regret.

I can tell you that I've had lots of health issues when I was younger. Lots of different ones, they were painful and chronic - or so I thought - I was depressed, desperate, went through a lot of suffering.

Gradually, they subsided. One by one. Skip to the present day. I've just turned 40 and I'm super healthy and happy. And have been for a very long time.

Life comes with challenges. The challenges are what makes you grow the most, they provide incredible and profound lessons. You didn't come into this world to get an easy ride.

So take a step back, and understand that this is a challenge. This too shall pass.

@Gili Trawangan How long did it take for them to subside? 

I’ve been trying to find a silver lining with this, but I just can’t. 

When I ask myself “What’s the lesson here?”, I just get ‘blank’. My SIBO came out of nowhere, maybe if I knew the root cause I’d have an answer.

2 hours ago, happyhappy said:

@Vision whoa whoa dude...#

I saw u were the same one who recently got depressed and got prescribed with SSRI's. so note that emotional numbness is sometimes a common side effect of them. 

Or, u might be having depersonalization/Derealization like I do . SSRI's are nor much effective in that sense.

but emotional numbness, meaninglessness, existential rumination plus anxiety and feeling unreal, depression are commonly linked to DP/DR

 

Not recently. My depression & anhedonia came from SIBO, which I’ve had for a year. I wasn’t depressed before I got SIBO. 

I already had a degree of emotional numbness before the SSRI, maybe it made it worse? I don’t know. My anhedonia seems to be progressively getting worse as the months pass by. If it got worse from the SSRI should I stop them or just push through? 

How can I know if I have DP/DR?

Your username sounds so easy-going. I want to be @happyhappy

 

[Vision]

@PepperBlossoms 

Thanks for your post. 

I haven’t been able to see anything positive come out of this at the moment, but maybe I will in the future, I don’t know. 

56 minutes ago, catcat69123 said:

@Vision haha this is funny to me because when i was 19 I told the counsellor I would kill myself before i'm 24 (im 25)  and because i couldn't feel anything either i was hopelessly searching for answers and pills and medication and therapy for ways out of being dead inside,

well honestly after all this time i don't know how to convey the message to you in one post, because there is so much understanding and i'm not sure to what degree you mean with your gut problems are causing you suffering itself or it is causing you suffering because you wanted something and the gut issues are preventing you from it - there's many things to cope and pretend to feel alive for a moment or two, but essentially it is truly a journey you'll undertake yourself because you are just buried in your attachments

 feel free to pm me anyways, talk to me about what your life was like. what is your family, friend, relationship situation and so on 

@catcat69123

I appreciate it, thanks.

Did you eventually find a fix to not being able to feel anything and being dead inside? 

[Gili Trawangan]

33 minutes ago, Vision said:

@Gili Trawangan How long did it take for them to subside? 

Let me put it this way, they didn't go until I stopped obsessing about them. I had to learn how to keep going, how to have a good life despite my health problems. Only when I was genuinely not bothered about them anymore did they leave me. When I wasn't even thinking about them anymore. You say you can't see the lesson yet... the lesson is acceptance.

I'm talking about genuine acceptance, not fake acceptance (when you pretend to accept something just so you can get rid of it).

Like I said, you're very young and it's normal for you to not have developed this type of acceptance yet. By all means, try to solve the problem. But also, learn to be happy despite having problems. Again, challenges are a part of life.

[Cathal]

@Vision yes, going deep into what I ran away from my whole life and understanding my emotional needs - the only motivation running me to do that was an awakening experience, I think a psychedelic experience will benefit you immensly but maybe being 16 that's a too young/tricky to do

[Loba]

Oh no, don't harm yourself you're just a baby still!  You have your whole life ahead of you, it will get better.

Have you spoken to a dietician about this?

 

[jake473]

The body is in the state it's in because of its history. It would always make sense if we were omniscient about every interaction that ever happened. Every health problem makes sense, but we never have the information we need before it happens. But that means never fully lose hope, be strong. Research health, and find out how your symptoms relate to each other. I don't know how to help you. 

[Barbara]

Ok, you are in a hard place in life right now. 

Let me put this, this way, no matter who you are and what your life is, you're going to face challenges. You might see your healthy friends, and envy them for their health, for their vivacity, but I assure you, they suffer too. Even if an objective perfect life was possible, we would still suffer. That's life. I mean, is it? Or is that Us? Is the life that has to change or are we the ones who have to change? 

I think it's us. And change here would be a change in behavior/ mindset, from resistance mean acceptance and gratitude. Of course, you are in a hard place in life right now and that is so difficult to see. But you know, it takes Vision and reflectiveness. Look at your life. Did you ever want something sooo bad, and then you got it and then it didn't matter anymore? Or maybe it solved some things but brought a different load of problems? Ask yourself, why would this be different? It only varies in content and grade. 

As Gili said, the lesson is acceptance. And that's something you'll cherish throughout all your life. I even dare to say that you'll feel like this disease was a blessing. It thought you how to appreciate life at a young age.

Either way, allow and notice all your feelings. Don't be too hard on yourself. Just notice how sometimes reactions invade your body or thoughts enter your mind. Make what you want of them, either that's shove it away or embrace them. Simply notice yourself doing it. And then, don't give so much value to it. You'll notice they'll come and go and the less attached, the more peace you'll find. Other than that, I'll say, start journaling if you haven't already. Keep track of your days, write as it flows and what you're grateful for. This takes as little as 2 minutes of your day and the outcomes may be really great. I recommend the Journalistic app. If you have IOS you can use it on safari. It's really simple and has cool features.

Wish you well

[Lincisman]

What is your current diet looks like?

Have you tried carnivore diet?

Just trying to provide practical solution here.

[Vision]

7 hours ago, catcat69123 said:

@Vision yes, going deep into what I ran away from my whole life and understanding my emotional needs - the only motivation running me to do that was an awakening experience, I think a psychedelic experience will benefit you immensly but maybe being 16 that's a too young/tricky to do

@catcat69123 

What do you mean by “going deep”? Was it shadow work or something of similar sort?

7 hours ago, Gili Trawangan said:

Let me put it this way, they didn't go until I stopped obsessing about them. I had to learn how to keep going, how to have a good life despite my health problems. Only when I was genuinely not bothered about them anymore did they leave me. When I wasn't even thinking about them anymore. You say you can't see the lesson yet... the lesson is acceptance.

I'm talking about genuine acceptance, not fake acceptance (when you pretend to accept something just so you can get rid of it).

Like I said, you're very young and it's normal for you to not have developed this type of acceptance yet. By all means, try to solve the problem. But also, learn to be happy despite having problems. Again, challenges are a part of life.

@Gili Trawangan 

I can try accepting this, but I would also need to have something to look forward to, right? I can’t look forward to anything because I can’t feel anything. Nothing makes me feel good anymore.

I used to be extremely passionate but I am the polar opposite of that now.

I would rather feel negative emotions rather that no emotions. I want to be sad, I want to cry, I want to be angry, at least maybe that would let me process this better and give me some relief. 

But I can’t even feel that, just “blank”.  

[Thought Art]

Sounds like the old "this will last forever trap" 

We are bad at knowing what the future holds... (It's gonna be okay )

[Vision]

5 hours ago, Lincisman said:

What is your current diet looks like?

Have you tried carnivore diet?

Just trying to provide practical solution here.

@Lincisman Yes, I’ve tried the carnivore diet. 

All it did was reduce a few symptoms, not to a large degree. 

5 hours ago, Barbara said:

Ok, you are in a hard place in life right now. 

Let me put this, this way, no matter who you are and what your life is, you're going to face challenges. You might see your healthy friends, and envy them for their health, for their vivacity, but I assure you, they suffer too. Even if an objective perfect life was possible, we would still suffer. That's life. I mean, is it? Or is that Us? Is the life that has to change or are we the ones who have to change? 

I think it's us. And change here would be a change in behavior/ mindset, from resistance mean acceptance and gratitude. Of course, you are in a hard place in life right now and that is so difficult to see. But you know, it takes Vision and reflectiveness. Look at your life. Did you ever want something sooo bad, and then you got it and then it didn't matter anymore? Or maybe it solved some things but brought a different load of problems? Ask yourself, why would this be different? It only varies in content and grade. 

As Gili said, the lesson is acceptance. And that's something you'll cherish throughout all your life. I even dare to say that you'll feel like this disease was a blessing. It thought you how to appreciate life at a young age.

Either way, allow and notice all your feelings. Don't be too hard on yourself. Just notice how sometimes reactions invade your body or thoughts enter your mind. Make what you want of them, either that's shove it away or embrace them. Simply notice yourself doing it. And then, don't give so much value to it. You'll notice they'll come and go and the less attached, the more peace you'll find. Other than that, I'll say, start journaling if you haven't already. Keep track of your days, write as it flows and what you're grateful for. This takes as little as 2 minutes of your day and the outcomes may be really great. I recommend the Journalistic app. If you have IOS you can use it on safari. It's really simple and has cool features.

Wish you well

@Barbara

Thanks for your response.

Yes, I’ve been journaling for 2 years, it helps me think better. I haven’t heard of that app, I’ll give it a go. Thanks.

How can I accept missing out on opportunities because of these problems? Due to my low energy and fatigue I can’t effectively do anything. 

14 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

Sounds like the old "this will last forever trap" 

We are bad at knowing what the future holds... (It's gonna be okay )

@Thought Art 

For me it’s not “this will last forever”

It’s “this might last too long”

 

One day I hope I’ll be able to look back at this and think to myself: “I made it through that”. 

[happyhappy]

14 hours ago, Vision said:

Not recently. My depression & anhedonia came from SIBO, which I’ve had for a year. I wasn’t depressed before I got SIBO. 

I already had a degree of emotional numbness before the SSRI, maybe it made it worse? I don’t know. My anhedonia seems to be progressively getting worse as the months pass by. If it got worse from the SSRI should I stop them or just push through? 

How can I know if I have DP/DR?

Your username sounds so easy-going. I want to be @happyhappy

 

Do not stop SSRI's unless ur psychiatrist recommends. 

Emotional numbness comes from a variety of conditions as I 've learned. Maybe as u got SIBO, u may have had an anxiety attack+depression and ur brain might have pushed emergency buttons to protect ur brain by numbing out. this is common for the brain to be numbed out as to feel emotionless when dealing with emotionally difficult conditions like depression. 

and this IS TEMPORARY  as u can see from the dozens of post from folks who have resolved all these.

as per DP/DR , try researching a lil bit on ur own. it is one of the most misdiagnosed conditions out there as it has anxiety and depression as half brothers. anyways, feel free to PM me anytime if u ever need someone to chat or waste time with

 

5 hours ago, Vision said:

I can try accepting this, but I would also need to have something to look forward to, right? I can’t look forward to anything because I can’t feel anything. Nothing makes me feel good anymore.

I used to be extremely passionate but I am the polar opposite of that now.

I would rather feel negative emotions rather that no emotions. I want to be sad, I want to cry, I want to be angry, at least maybe that would let me process this better and give me some relief. 

But I can’t even feel that, just “blank”.  

Ik it can be a lot for u from my own experiences with the numbness and meaninglessness that sets in. at this point , i think u would  rather stay in bed entire day that doing anything as everything feels distant;UNREAL. - am i right?