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Direction


Ralph

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I cut back on my meds to make them last until my next pdoc appointment, and predictably my depression got worse. I was feeling like I could handle it, but I ended up drinking, so I could not have been handling it that well. I keep thinking that I can drink and get away with it, but with a mood disorder the after-effects are more severe for me than for normal people. I can try to remember that but short term thinking gets me every time. I still have some alcohol and I know I shouldn't drink but I can't bear to pour it down the drain. I'm not ready to quit. It's too much of a crutch and I don't have anything to replace it with.

I must be getting better, though, because I am starting to think about what I should be doing with my life. I've never had any personal direction before, so this is going to be hard. I can't help but imagine that I would feel better if I could choose a direction and go with it. Also I have been thinking that instead of trying to deal with my pain I could try creating more positive experiences, which means achieving goals, which means setting goals, which means having some sort of idea of what I want to do with my life. As I look back on what I've done so far, I see a lot of regrets. Wrong decisions made in ignorance and fear that brought unwanted results, or decisions that were right for the me of 15 years ago that are not right for the me now because I am a different person.

I never intended to live to this age when I was younger, so planning ahead didn't make sense. I'm clearly not very good at making decisions, which leaves me reluctant to do so now. However I am going to have to or else I will just keep marking time, running out of the limited life I have on this earth without accomplishing anything. And that is possibly the scariest outcome of all - would it be more of a regret to potentially go in the wrong direction, or to choose no direction at all?

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Do you have any interest in reading psychology books yourself? I've been reading Heinz Kohut's Restoration of the Self recently. The sense of direction you are talking about sounds kind of like some things he wrote about.

Since I had a fragmented and "disordered" personality, it's been helpful to read about what a healthy "self" is like. But when I tried to read the book a couple of years ago, I couldn't really get it. Had to deal with the dissociation first, I guess. So, I don't know -- it's a thought, though. (I hope that "counts" for something.)

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Oh, Ralph, I don't know what to say, except for that... I can relate to a lot of what you describe (I'm just very lucky not to have fallen into an addiction (if we don't count chocolate ;-) - sorry; I know it's too different and I don't want to make stupid jokes in this context...)) :(.

Particularly this:

I never intended to live to this age when I was younger, so planning ahead didn't make sense.

For me, it still lasts: I don't "intend" to live for a long time. Not because of suicide, but because of this damned world full of danger. But I realize that we should live and plan as if we were sure to have "some" future and as if it was "influencable enough by us".

would it be more of a regret to potentially go in the wrong direction, or to choose no direction at all?

I love this question! My opinion (and also my personal experience) is that you may choose your own judgment: If you choose a direction and then (later) it seems "wrong" to you, you still may be able to convince yourself that it was not wrong - it was just not as good as you wanted it to be in the moment of the choice. Yes, there are always some reasons to regret, but... there are also means to overcome the regret, as, for instance, when you realize that... you've done what you could and/or that things might have been even much worse.

I think that as you feel such a need for a direction (as it's visible from what you wrote), then "a wrong" direction would be better than none. (Later, you can always search for reasons why it wasn't really "that bad".) However, I feel that it takes a lot of courage to make a choice...

I wish you good luck... You really deserve to be finally happy...

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