Am I too far gone?

[EdenJoy1]

I don't know if it would ever be possible to feel part of this world, connect and be happy. Has anyone done this much later in life? I have been at this since my 30's and now 61.  I just can't seem to fit in, feel connected, or feel anything.  I just plod along, hoping, praying, cleaning up the messes.

[woodsgnome]

I'm slightly older than you, and know well the territory you're speaking of -- sensing a frustration with not arriving at some forever happy zone. I'm not convinced that such a place is more than a temporary illusion, aided by the media-driven messages promising giddy results if one does this or drops that.

Instead of waiting for the magic moment when life will change, for me it's seemed that slowness might even be the best pace, especially following critical injuries like often result from having c-ptsd. Once I dropped the lofty expectations that old cliche about taking slow steps began to make more sense.

I don't think everyone's life follows a fixed timeline. While I'm dragged down by much of the trauma I've endured, I've also found openings in the cracks, where I found light I'd never expected. These mostly small surprises seemed related more to things like self-acceptance (NOT defeat or despair) than grand expectations.

Some things got, if not wholly ideal, at least okay. A lot of this has been slow and disappointing, though. The key still seems to be to chisel the expectations down to what I can truly handle. And to drop thinking about it so much, and telling the inner critic to scram.

It might seems like I've found some perfect way to deal with a world that often doesn't make sense to me. Growing up embroiled in senseless trauma, I couldn't even make sense of the next moment, let alone the world  .

Still, I wanted to share my sense that 1) you're not alone and 2) despite so much disappointment, life also can take surprising 'positive' twists; plus 3) these can happen at any age.

May you find more peace, starting with self-compassion. 

[EdenJoy1]

I've been depressed my entire life, being born to a depressed mother and suicide runs in my family. . Can you tell me what helped you?

I'm slightly older than you, and know well the territory you're speaking of -- sensing a frustration with not arriving at some forever happy zone. I'm not convinced that such a place is more than a temporary illusion, aided by the media-driven messages promising giddy results if one does this or drops that.

Instead of waiting for the magic moment when life will change, for me it's seemed that slowness might even be the best pace, especially following critical injuries like often result from having c-ptsd. Once I dropped the lofty expectations that old cliche about taking slow steps began to make more sense.

I don't think everyone's life follows a fixed timeline. While I'm dragged down by much of the trauma I've endured, I've also found openings in the cracks, where I found light I'd never expected. These mostly small surprises seemed related more to things like self-acceptance (NOT defeat or despair) than grand expectations.

Some things got, if not wholly ideal, at least okay. A lot of this has been slow and disappointing, though. The key still seems to be to chisel the expectations down to what I can truly handle. And to drop thinking about it so much, and telling the inner critic to scram.

It might seems like I've found some perfect way to deal with a world that often doesn't make sense to me. Growing up embroiled in senseless trauma, I couldn't even make sense of the next moment, let alone the world  .

Still, I wanted to share my sense that 1) you're not alone and 2) despite so much disappointment, life also can take surprising 'positive' twists; plus 3) these can happen at any age.

May you find more peace, starting with self-compassion. 

[woodsgnome]

I've thought a lot about your question, Edenjoy; about what it is that's helped me; and a lot that hasn't. As I have rampant perfectionism, it's hard to answer and I'm never quite satisfied with what I come up with. It can vary from day-to-day. Plus I have a constant fear of being misunderstood. 

I've done the same complex sort of thinking about the many facets and multiple abusers of my youth, but also how I fell into a pattern where I allowed people to abuse me almost into the present. None of it made sense then, and makes even less sense now. So I've been trying to turn that around -- I guess that's called changing my attitude, mellow out grandiose expectations which always seem to fall short. That in turn may reflect the perfectionism I spoke of.

In the case of my expectation of others, I was desperate for someone to trust who wouldn't take advantage of me. But I'm also harder on myself than on anyone else. Although I've had some vocational/social service sorts of occupations, I also live alone in a very lonely spot, but that's by choice. So that's a huge part of what I've done. It's like I knew early on I needed major recovery, but also needed a place where I could be alone to go about it.

While that situation landed men in a more peaceful environment, living this way of course has cut me out of any potential for much of any 'ordinary' social life. That said, I did have a wonderful 'pseudo-family' of about 6 friends I cnould finally trust, all of whom died in short order within the last few years. It's set me back, I know; but the key has been, like so much else -- adapting.

Adapting equates to self-acceptance and other notions I strive for; more attitudinal sorts of healing, I guess. Mind you, lots of self-acceptance can be painful, but something else I learned growing up in such turbulence was that pain is survivable, though not preferable. While I'm mostly speaking of emotional damage, the physical elements have also crept up on me; some of them resulting from years-ago abuse, along the lines of 'the body keeps the score'.

I've been through a long series of therapists going back a couple of decades, though I didn't find one I felt compatible with until around 5 years ago. Her approach dovetails with my own. Her concept of therapy, while founded in her own depth of knowledge, is also based on the concept of not doing therapy FOR someone, but WITH them. That's helped loads, to have a T who regards me as fully human, and not just as a patient to be fixed in a predetermined way.

This is already too lengthy, so I'll just touch on couple aspect of what I've done in this process of self-compassion which came about mostly through dogged and extensive reading to discover what I used to call self-help but nowadays regard more as self-realization. Acknowledging the worst but also sensing what's best. This is more about my inner workings, which I call 'being' in lieu of 'doing'. Among the best of these readings were ideas expressed by writers named Jeff Foster and Tara Brach, to give just 2 examples.

Okay, just one more mention. Filtering in the back of my ego-mind's view of all this was a sense that something was still missing. I felt this way extremely early, and was always more attuned to that -- the basic idea that there's more to life, and people, than the pit in which I grew up. Grew up? Okay, relatively; as I remember as a youth not wanting to ever grow up if it meant being like 'them'. The inner sense of searching for that something else has driven most of my life's turns, again in favour of what I valued more than what I was doing.

I'd better stop -- this reflects something else I know. Which is that I really don't know. I just follow that inner instinct that there has to be something better; and something beyond mere ego or mind.  I hesitate to say spiritual as that's such a loaded term, but what I'm saying relates closely to exploring that as well. Much to my surprise as my early abuse took place within a very pseudo-spritual context, but it took years to realize that.

  I say all of this with hesitation, as everyone's path can be so individual, dependant on so many factors. It is complex, for sure. But I'm still drawn to the road less traveled, it seems. My life grew out of abuse I've given up trying to understand, beyond the surface realities. Some might think of some of what I've tried as radical, even; but in my quest for self-acceptance and basic sanity, I still follow that 'something else' quality.

This is far too lengthy, but I've never mastered sound-bite discussions either. So I hope that can be accepted. Thanks for being here, Edenjoy.