sleepie

So many things trouble me, I think I may be in the wrong place. I use SR to vent a lot. I do need to quit drinking- but there is so much troubling me that has nothing to do with drinking. I think I am just irreparably broken in some ways due to my experiences, my biology or both. In the end, no amount of talking, therapy or anything really, can ever help me live or be loved- or be okay with the utter lack of love or nurturing in my upbringing... or the abuse, humiliation, and psychological terror I endured. I'll never feel like I exist, or that I have feelings deserving of respect... or that I am desirable or worth anything. I'm tired of trying to convince myself differently. I can't really bring myself to be enthused about living in a hateful world where children can be made to suffer in the hands of adults for years and years, hidden from anyone- in private and very personally tailored terror. Do abusive people choose me then as an adult- or do I choose them? Or do I simply deserve them because in reality, my worth is equivalent to that of a steaming pile of dogs***, as I was told all my life? My very relatives are abusive to me still to this day. I have lost so much over things I had no control over at all, in ways that have affected me profoundly. I was made small and powerless from the very beginning of my life and when people were supposed to protect me they hurt and hurt me. Why? Am I horrid? Stupid? I just don't know anything anymore.

franie

Hi Sleepie you sound so much like I was. I too endured many years of abuse at the hands of my father, I too felt that I was disgusting and dirty and deserved nothing better than to be treated as I had been treated in the past. However, things can and do change. I only have just over a month without drinking but it is amazing. I chose to deal with my childhood problems (one year of therapy and counting) then my drinking problems - that's just the way it worked for me. But it did work. I will always have the history I have but I do not always need to let it distroy my life. I have a long way to go and am sure that it will not be easy - but it is a start. You can make a start - not an easy option but a possibility.

My thoughts are with you.

Veritas1

Hi. Maybe just try not to figure out why, or analyze anything at this moment.

My sponsor always tells me that. Just stay in the solution, she would say. If we stay in the problem, it gets bigger...especially stuff from our past...we just can't figure it out, or change it, so just go forward.

It takes action...doing stuff in the now, positive things, to keep your mind and life in the now creating the life you desire.

Don't worry about all that other stuff. Try to let it go.

I think that you are welcome here, and keep posting.

Happy New Year

Benowhere

Please, seriously consider getting some help from a doctor, and a referral for proper therapy. Simply 'keeping busy' and 'living in the solution' will not fundamentally help you, I think you already know this. Also, be very careful about people 'suggesting' the 12 steps as the solution for you. You will be told to 'find your part' in it, and possibly told to apologise and make amends to people who hurt you. None of this serves to help you in any way. You totally sound like you feel worthless and powerless already. You certainly don't need more of this.

TigerLili

I think having a therapist who can help you with the abuse stuff is really important. Drinking and using certainly helped me cope with my abusive past, but it was ultimately just further destruction.

sleepie

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I tried therapy for many years, when I could not afford it but tried so desperately to help myself. Last year after attempting to take my life, I was made to go to an awful state hospital and then referred to a therapist who I now see. It's all state funded as I have been underemployed and uninsured for awhile now. My therapist is very good, however each night it's only myself at the end of the day. I go to bed alone alone, sad and scared- without any reassurance that my world can be a safe place... Reassurance I have never received. As someone once put it to me- "I never promised you a f***ing fairytale". I know. But does that mean life is nothing but a nightmare? Am I missing something, or shouldn't one be able to expect to feel safe sometimes- and have that expectation met? I have never felt safe. I have never been safe.

Benowhere

Sleepie,
I wish there was something I could say, some little turn of phrase that would help you in some way, but there's not really. All I can tell you is I am a mental health professional, and people HAVE improved in their lives over time. The most successful are people who decide to make the best of a bad hand that life has thrown at them, and persevere through all the pain that you are feeling right now.
I could suggest a couple of alternative therapies that are out there, but I doubt that it's allowed on this forum, so I won't. However, there is a book called 'The Journey' by Brandon Bays you may connect with. Maybe look it up if you like.
There is always hope, I swear it.

franie

Sleepie - I too have problems feeling safe. I know what it is like to be in a room full of people and feel isolated. I can only say that for me it did get better - not completely (I don't know if that is possible). They only thing that I can say is that I had to confront my past (not in the physical way - my father was dead for a start). I had to confront all of the disordered thinking, the reasons for that thinking and I had to challenge that thinking. Staying in the solution not the problem is, for me, not an option. I tried for many years to bury my past to live my "happy, settled, successful life" - for it to bite me on the bum at the most unexpected times. I know that this caused me to drink.

Please don't give up hope - I know that it is possible to start to make things better.

TigerLili

I think it's true for a lot of us that life doesn't feel very safe. It's good that you have a good therapist. It takes time for a person's interior experience to evolve and shift to a better place. Keep talking to your therapist about it. We may never have the happy, carefree life that other people without abusive pasts seem to have, but I know that we can find fulfilment and happiness despite what happened. Finding the right therapist is a big step and it sounds like you have made it that far. Yes, it's just us at the end of the day, but over time the therapy will make that easier and less fearful. There's a lot of pent up, unexpressed emotion that kind of has to come out when we start effective therapy. I know that it's possible for you to get to the point where you do feel some sense of safety and control but I also acknowledge that the journey you're on to get there isn't an easy one. The way you feel today won't be the way you feel forever. Staying clean and sober will help immensely. Drinking and using just ties us to the pain and prevents us from really moving forward.

Isaiah

The effects of abuse are going to be with me all my life. Pretty sure of that now at 30 and still dealing with it. Subsequently, I then got mental health issues and addiction issues on top of it all. Also, unless I get rich to afford plastic surgery, will probably spend my life with some very large and noticeable scars on my wrist. So yeah, it hasn't been a pretty ride.

Still, there was never a point in the relapsing post-suicide part of my life where I had a revelation that my life was going to start improving. I had no reason to think it would be anything but more bad luck and depression. All I did was try to live by my therapist's maxim, "If you can't make things better just don't make them worse." But things are getting better in small ways, not in anyway I predicted or planned for. Still not great but it's a direction up.

Thing is, I am free to deny any improvements in my life or the possibility of there ever being any. I can say I will never be well, and in doing so, plan a life ahead of me that I know will be awful an miserable. Trying to have a positive life is hard because it's often beyond our control. But sabotaging your life is easy, and a lot of people choose self-hate and inevitable unhappiness because they'd rather have control of something than be happy.

I know I'm hit with that fear of something inevitable all the time. I've never had a relationship work out in my life, so why shouldn't I dump my girlfriend even though things are going well just to save us both the inevitable fact that I am not worth loving? Why bother going back to school when my record is full of so many things that would keep a decent employer from hiring me? Why bother staying sober, as my childhood sexual abuse and borderline personality disorder are never going to let me be stay sober? I am in a place now where I know logically none of these things are inevitable at all, but give me enough fear and lack of faith and I will make them happen, then use that as proof that they had to happen.

Dee74

There's a lot of good advice sleepie - I dunno I can add to it or add anything new to stuff I've said before.

I know about being damaged, and having hateful bad things happen undeservingly...and about being abused, and never feeling safe, not feeling a sense of belonging, and feeling alone.

It was a long journey for me to make my way through that forest - it took a long time, and hard work to free myself from the layers of what other people had told me I was, and what I'd told myself....

All I can tell you is drinking is not helping you in that process.
Wherever it is you have to go to free yourself from the past, drinking won't get you there, sleepie.

You need a lot of courage to face the past, a lot of honesty - and a clear head.

I know you have the honesty courage and determination to make it to a better place one day like I did

D

franie

Isaiah - you put that so beautifully. Your point of view really stuck a note with me. Glad that things are beginning to get better for you. I do hope that they continue to do so.

CarolD

Perhaps this latest slump came about because you
spent time recently with toxic people....

BullDog777

beautiful wisdom...

DayTrader

Sleepie.....your first post (in a different fashion) basically described the Step 1 in AA....to a tee. Can't stop drinking (or, at least, stay stopped), life is horrible for me whether I'm drinking or not, and no human-based process has solved my problems...

In the AA book, on page 60, after the 12 steps.....there are the "A, B, C's" - which you eloquently described A and B:
a) that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives
b) that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism
c) that God could and would if He were sought

--I believe I understand the place you're in....as does just about everyone who's recovering or recovered in AA. I've heard it referred to as "working step 0" - the work we do prior to coming up empty-handed and have, really, no other option BUT to try the AA program / work all the steps. While it "feels" horrible....in a way, it's a good place to be -- hitting bottom on an emotional, psychological, and intellectual level.

Most of us had to try everything we could think of.......and find that nothing worked.......before we truly gave the steps a fair shake. Not all that glamorous, but that's how it has to be for a lot of us.

There's no doubt in my mind you CAN have the life you want.....the fears, the anger, the feelings of being unsafe and unprotected.....etc etc.....there's NO DOUBT that can and will all go away. Maybe you'll find a way to do it yourself, or maybe you'll find the right combination of therapy/meds/friends/etc, or maybe you won't be able to do any of that and you'll have not choice BUT to turn to some power that's greater than you and ask He/She/It to do for you what you're not able to do for yourself. That's precisely what we in AA had to do......and for the ppl who've done that...and surrendered to the WHOLE process, it's worked 100%.

Benowhere

The 12 steps are NOT a panacea and should not be promoted as such. Why are people allowed to get away with saying this? Is this an official AA forum? If so, why isn't it announced as such.

There are a massive amount of people who aren't suited to sitting in groups 'sharing'. But the big book bashers here have to insist it is the answer to everything from addiction to mental illness, physical illness, pain relief etc.

Unethical.

Nyte Byrd

No one stated that they are. Some people merely share their strength, hope and experience from their own AA experience involving the 12 steps from their learnings of it being a 'thinking' problem, rather than a 'drinking' problems in the hopes maybe it can offer help to others.
Is that so bad?

The same reason you are allowed to get away with saying what you shared. Or are you unique?

Is it an unofficial AA forum? If so, should it be announced as such? AA has been an important part of many peoples' recovery. Granted, it's not for everyone, but when it's obvious, NOT attending meetings isn't working for someone, offering the suggestion to do so, surely isn't threatening anyone. Apparently, it seems to be a sore spot for you for some reason.

Yes, I am aware of some people who don't have what it takes to be teachable and sit and just listen. And it's why some of them don't stay sober too long. Just read some of the posts here who just try to rely mainly on internet support.

The only one I see here bashing anything is you. The only thing anyone else did was share what worked for them in identifying with their own involvement with the steps.

Nothing unethical about anything other than suggesting AA sharing or suggesting shouldn't be offered on this forum. According to you, maybe all AA'er sharers on this forum should just cancel out of here, would make someone like you perhaps feel more at home?

BullDog777

i can't help but think, Sleepie...maybe you're not as screwed up as you think.

you're in a crappy position right now with alot of things but i don't know how happy joyous and free i'd feel if i were in your shoes.

maybe this is exactly how everyone else would feel... and maybe this is just a natural reaction to an F'd up situation.

I know that you suffer from depression, anxiety, tourettes, addiction and childhood trauma and maybe there is no short answer to any of this right now. Maybe the answer is just to try to address baby steps and do a little more every day.

As long as you're doing the best you can, it's all the world can ask from us.

I hope you feel better soon.

Benowhere

Oh dear Nyte Bird, feathers ruffled? What's that spiritual axiom again? Resentment the number one offender? 'We must cease fighting anything'?Where's your steps now?

Nyte Byrd

:rotfxko

My friend, reread your post. It's very clear who has a resentment and whose feathers are ruffled.

I am the first AA'er to say that no one should give anyone outside professional advice for 'other' problems, and maybe for someone like yourself who may have them for all I know. We are not doctors.

But I do take exception for someone who thinks they have the right to dictate who should post on this forum.

Having been sober the past 23 years in AA, it surely would more than take someone like you to ruffle my feathers with such a Boo-Hoo post.

And what would someone who doesn't sit in on meetings know about the steps? So, please, don't try to speak about things you aren't qualified to speak about.

And, please, spare us the complicated words. No one's impressed, lil fella.