How do you go on when you can't go on?

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I have so many problems that I feel I can't go on anymore. Everything's a mess in my life, I am in absurd, impossible and very painful situations at work, with family, socially, and I have health issues. I am so alone I never have anyone to discuss anything that goes on in my life with another person.

You close your eyes, take a deep breath, make a drink of some kind to comfort or soothe, grit your teeth, eat something that tastes extra good, smell a flower, punch a pillow, listen to some music, bear with it, trust in the unlikely, forgive the unforgiveable, go into a closet and scream or yell, go window shopping, take a nap, take more deep breaths etc., etc... And most of all, remember there will always be days like these but somehow, someway the next day manages to seem more tolerable than the one before. I can never remember this for the life of me when I'm have one of those days however! Try as I might, it's always just a matter of getting through it.

I hope you can get through it and feel better soon. Do something nice for yourself and trust you will make it through.

Oh Greentea, as I have said before, if only I was close enough to reach out with a cup of tea for starters.

This sounds like the situation I was in around a decade ago; no job, no money, no friends anywhere nearby, bullying neighbours, several health issues leaving me unable to walk and only able to be out of bed for a maximum of two hours a day. My world was so dark, I was not even able to watch television because it hurt my eyes or listen to the radio because the noise was too much. Honestly, I hoped so much that my next sleep would be my last. There is no quick answer, just continue to feed yourself and do the basic essentials of life. If you can get help from outside like a local church or organisation, that would be wonderful, though I am not sure how things work in your country.

Maybe there is help online somewhere, somehow.

Anyone else? What can Greentea do?

how do you go on when you can't go on.

habit.

nothing more than habit and the feeling that I can't give up 5 minutes before the miracle

Merle

Your not alone greentea, I am out of work and my family hates me, and I am always sick, I have diabetes
and some other health issues, I know life feels bad right now, but I know it won't always be like that.
I know alot of my own problems are cause by a bad internet addiction, which I have to somehow get under
control. Anyhow, how do I go on when life is crap, well I try to hope things will get better, and sometimes it
does, even if its a little thing that brings a smile to my face.

Last edited by spudnik on 09 Sep 2008, 12:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've run into some difficult situations out in the desert, when I had a long ways to go and little means to get there.

Required an essential upgrade of Lao Tzu. He missed something very important.

People always quote him, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

Like that's a help. Take one step, and you've still got a thousand miles to go, minus one step. Not much of an improvement.

What I eventually figured out was that a journey of a thousand miles is merely a sequence of single steps. There's nothing else involved. If I keep taking single steps, one after the other, that's all I need to do. I'm making the journey.

Sometimes things get really rough. It's hard to keep going and harder still to see a reason to keep going. Still, as long as you can manage to keep putting one foot in front of the other, you're still going.

Sometimes that's the best I can do, but it's the only thing I really need to do.

You just do it.

one foot in front of the other.
don't look back, you can't change what's already happened.
learn from your mistakes.
don't let people push you into things you don't want to do or that "feel wrong" to you.
excuse yourself from obligations if you are over-committed. you needn't explain, it's your life.

in a few instances i just picked up stakes and moved a few hundred miles and started over. most of those times i had very little money in my pocket. not the best way to go, but it worked.

-this, too, shall pass -

my grandmother used to say that it'll all seem a bit more clear in the morning. it usually does, but it's not usually better. if you get a good night's sleep, though, you'll be better able to deal with it all.

It's the first time in my life that I feel the problems are too big for me to try and do something about. They're just too big for me to handle. I've told a couple people, but they don't have any ideas either.

then stop thinking about them for a bit. I have learned that problems I have can't be solved when my brain hasn't changed enough to see things in a different way.
I mean. . . I HAVE to change my attitude within my self to see solutions to problems I already have. So if I can do something else for a while, something that takes me out of myself it gives me a different place to stand to see things in a different perspective.

I still have the problems, of course, but I also have a different way of relating to them, and they start to unravel easier.
does that even make sense?
Merle

I know what you mean; I tried to do that for about 5 days, but it didn't work... Maybe I should wait longer...

Today I came to work after 3 1/2 weeks of sick leave for my eye operation, and found a new person doing my lovely job and sitting at my lovely desk. I was transferred to a corner nobody uses because it's so ugly, in a room without windows, and told not to do any work for now. I don't know if I'm being fired or not and if yes, when... I've been in this situation for 3 months already, one day it's sure I'm being fired, the next it isn't... I gave this job my life, working even 14 hours a day often, and the end result was this. And I can't look for another job the way I look today after the operation and with my eye problem.

My sister, who doesn't talk to my father and I, has taken our mother to an institution because she's very sick. My dad and I have no way of getting any info about the state of my mom and if she'll ever be able to return home. I have to make a decision about getting rid of the house and what to do with my father. I don't even know where to start, or if I should assume my mother is never coming back home. We don't even know how much the institution will cost us and if we can afford it at all. My father is very old and sick too.

oh, honey, I helped my elderly parents until they died, I know, I know. . .
we are so much alike, chinashopbull, you and I.

I do pray, and I am sending all the energy I can muster to you right now.
because you are me. . .

Merle

There's an approach I've found that helps me. I don't know if it'll have any relevance to you. If not, no harm done.

I always operate alone, and I often have to figure out how to do complex projects I have no idea how to do.

I hate to steal an idea from the nazis, especially since half my ancestors were jews, but I'm not too particular. I'll steal ideas from anybody.

The approach is the blitzkrieg, developed to avoid a repeat of what happened on the western front in the First World War, where both sides encountered impossible resistance, so everybody had to just sit there, totally miserable, and nothing got accomplished.

The strategy of the blitzkrieg is to simply go around strong points of resistance and move through areas of weak resistance. Strong points of resistance are surrounded and isolated, and in the process they grow weaker. Meanwhile, a lot is getting accomplished by focusing effort on the things that are relatively easy.

My life these days doesn't involve a lot of tank warfare, but I often use the same principle. When I'm faced with a task I have no idea how to deal with, I look for some part of the task that I do know how to deal with, something relatively simple, however small and trivial it may seem, and focus all my attention on that small part of the overall task.

That way, I'm actually accomplishing something that I need to get done by temporarily ignoring the things I can't figure out.

When the easiest part of the job is finished, I look for the next easiest part of the job and focus all my attention on that.

When nothing's left except the things I found impossible to figure out, I look for some part of the impossible problem that I can figure out, however small and trivial, and get that done, then move on to something else I can figure out.

Eventually, I notice that I'm done.

Lao Tzu was talking about how water wears away rock, creating canyons and valleys:

"That which is of all things most yielding can overcome that which is most hard. This is known by all men, yet utilized by none."

Sometimes I push through out of sheer spite.

CanyonWind, thank you for that wonderful strategy idea. I'll certainly apply it !

Merle, I did feel the vibes you sent me!! At the time you wrote your post a few things moved from being stuck. I just got home now, so I hadn't seen your post, but I did tell myself that someone must be sending me good vibes.

So my father is helping me think of a solution for him and make decisions, which is already a lot of help. And at work it doesn't seem like I'm being fired, at least the boss is acting like I'm there to stay. Even though my situation there is bad, I still have a job, which is exhilarating for me at this time when I can't look for a new one. I'm still deep in the mud, but it's not as desperate as it was a couple days ago...

I have no words to thank everyone here for being there during these hard times...! !!

Thats brilliant Canyonwind; its kind of like how I used to get my housework done. I would look and feel helpless and never knew where to start, so I would maybe just choose to polish the table and then maybe just empty a bin and yes, you are right, eventually all the little things got done, maybe over several days, but they did get done