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I feel like a failure at life, love and work
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What's happening to me?
I don't understand it. My wife loves me. I am starting up a new business that everyone that sees what I am doing say that I will kill it.
But I constantly want to curl up in a ball and cry my eyes out. For most of this year my self doubt has always been nagging at my sub conscious. Everything that I am felling inside is a massive jumble that I can't understand.
During a particularly stressful week at work about a month ago where the construction of my new business was derailed completely I started to think back to 2003 where I failed at an attempt at taking my own life. I found my self wishing for the first time in many years that I had've succeeded. My father died in September 2000 and being a young man I tried to drink away what I was feeling. It culminating wanting to end my life. I ended up seeing a clinical Psychologist and was prescribed antidepressants and was on them for 6 month whilst seeing the Psychologist. I put it don to unresolved grief issues and have been for the most part fine. I was getting the occasional dark periods where I was floored for a week or two but I just put that down to normal mood swings.
I have shut my self off from every one in my life. I have no friends that I talk to and I am completely estranged from my entire family. I haven't talked to my brother for nearly 5 years and now recently my sister has stopped talking to me to the point where she has blocked me on Facebook and is talking about me to my mother and brother.
I am a replacement child and have been told that by my mother. My oldest brother was run over and killed before I was born and my mother didn't handle well and had me. During a particularly nasty argument we had she told me that I shouldn't have ever been born and I wouldn't have been if my brother hadn't been killed.
I feel the overwhelming sensation of guilt all the time. I went to the movies on ANZAC day and didn't enjoy myself. I felt guilty for trying to have fun. MY wife was away in Melbourne this week and told me that she was going out for dinner with old friends. I went out and got pizza and felt guilty for doing so.I feel guilty for writing this. I feel like I have let my wife down and don't deserve to have her.
I used to drink very heavily all the time and have resisted the urge to do so again so far but I found myself standing at the door of a bottle shop yesterday and barely stopped myself from buying a short term forget session.
I am sick of this. If I am going to be like this for the rest of my life. I don't want to put my wife through that. She doesn't deserve that.
But I can't stand the thought of doing something to make her sad. I hope this makes sense to some one as I can't make any sense to any of it. I feel like a failure at life, love and work.
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Hi there Mick
Welcome to Beyond Blue and “good on you” for finding the site and then providing your post. It can take some effort and courage to come and type down events within your life, but please know that everyone on this site are either fellow sufferers (or these even some who are former sufferers of mental illness and they choose to stay here to assist others – just brilliant, I might add) and there is never any judging by the folk who reply here – what’s given though is understanding, care, advice and above all else, support.
Man, you’ve got a lot going on in your post and I’m going to give it a go of breaking it down bit by bit to work through it with you.
Ok, so this new business that you’re starting up (and may I say, well done again for getting out there and doing it), this is the one that others have suggested that it’ll go really well once it’s up and running, yeah? However a month ago, you’ve mentioned that it’s derailed completely. I’m not quite sure what that means? Does that mean that it’s no longer a goer? Or is it just in a state/stage of postponement for a short while?
So it was over 10 years ago that you saw a professional psyche and were on anti-depressants as well. From what I can gather, you came through that period and out the other side and apart from occasional bouts of dark places, you were for the most part, going ok?? Is that me reading it right? If that was the case, it sounded like a very good result via your psyche and the matching up of the anti-depressants.
Mick, there’s so many others on here who are having really hard/bad times with regards to family members – it’s such an incredible shame that this is the case, but too often it seems to be a major factor (or at least a solid contributing factor) to one’s mental health and as a result, self-esteem is largely reduced as well. Why this happens, I have no idea – I just shake my head everytime I hear of instances like this – like yours. And if your family situation is as I read it – my suggestion to you would be to place all extended family members into the same category as you’ve placed your brother – lose contact with them. It just seems that any contact that you have with them, particularly your mother is going to be detrimental to any healing that your self-esteem and mental health is concerned.
You’ve said that your wife loves you – and I have no doubt that the feeling is vice versa’d as well 🙂 - but I don’t believe that you’ve let her down at all. You’re just doing it tough and you need to seek out some professional help to assist you with the factors that are causing you to feel so low, so guilty, your grief, etc.
Can I just say that I believe firmly that you haven’t failed in life, love or work. This was near the end of your post, but I refute those claims – just because you’re battling with mental issues does not mean that you’ve failed in life; it’s a mental illness that you’re fighting against and that illness is an awful disease – I believe you’ve been through it before and come out the other side – and I reckon with the same kind of assistance that you received last time, that you’ll come through again – and THIS time you’ve got the love and support of your wife to be there to support you and be by your side.
You have not failed in love – reason being, you are married to a beautiful lady and you are both very much in love with each other – failure? I think not. 🙂 And lastly with work – you’re out there doing what so few of us would ever have the (excuse my french) balls to take on – going into business for yourself and ok, so it’s currently derailed, but in time, it could very well get back up again and as you said, that there were plenty of others who reckoned once this gets going, you’ll make a killing with it. Brilliant again Mick.
Sorry this has been such a long post – I will finish off now just by saying, that you sought professional help last time – my high recommendation to you is that you commence NOW to seek out professional help so you can commence tackling these issues.
Mick, I hope that some of what I wrote made sense and that you can post back as well.
Kind regards
Neil
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