Life must get better than this!

[Freedom14]

Gday, I feel like I need to get this off my chest! 
I’ve been struggling again for the past 7 months. It has turned me back to substance abuse again to cope/switch off and I’m getting worse. 
It all started when I broke off the relationship with my partner but still stayed friends and lived together. Little did i realised how much it affected her, I found out eventually that bills weren’t being paid, she also lost her baby sister (stillborn) and still to this day battling with anxiety, Depression and multiple problems with her body after the covid vaccine. I took on the role to look after her and it was very stressful at times. Trips to the hospital and doctors. Juggling a full time job as well (6 days a week) coming home tired and exhausted I still had to maintain the house,

cook, clean and play with our 2 beautiful dogs. That was when I started using again it gave me energy to do things around the house that needed to be done. Work was becoming really depressing and a work colleague who I thought was a true friend turned out to be a narcissist and had psychologically abused me to try turn me against my partner ever since I put my focus on her wellbeing. Since I realised for who he truly was I tried to expose him but it seems he’s playing the victim. Pretty much all my work mates are now belittling me and gaslighting me. I feel like they’re trying to set me up to fail. 
it’s been so frustrating and confusing as I just want the truth as to why ?!?!? Why are you doing this to me ?!? 
because I have turned to substance abuse I have been missing out on work more and more. If I keep this up I will lose my job.
The person who I get used to get the substance from, I know him well and again I thought he was a good enough person but in that 3 month period he must have seen how down I was at times and decided to use me and emotionally abuse me as well, when i confronted him. He somehow managed to turn people against me and made him look like the victim. Great!!! 
My partner and I have recently decided to rekindle our relationship and give it another try. She is dead set against my substance I use and I am trying to stop! I’d get as much as 5-6 days clean then relapse. I’m at the point where I feel like I’m going to snap and go crazy and use violence because inside I’m soo angry at them for taking advantage of me and I’m angry at myself because I just want to stop! 

[Sophie_M]

Hi Freedom14 Welcome to the Forums and thank you so much for your post. We know that is takes a lot of courage to reach out and share what we are going through, we deeply appreciate it.  It sounds like you have been going through a lot recently and you are putting a lot of energy into supporting your partner. It is so commendable to be a support to people who are important in our lives, we hope you can show yourself that same care.  We think it might be useful to give us a call on 1300 22 4636 so we can help you talk through some of these feelings. If you are feeling exhausted and angry, sometimes having someone to talk to can help. Thank you again for sharing and for being a part of this community. We hope you will continue to post and find other conversations where you can share your unique perspectives and experiences.  Kind regards,  Sophie M

[therising]

Hi Freedom14

I've found it's one thing to start waking up to a whole lot of stuff in life, it's another to know which direction to take once having woken up. I can recall thinking plenty of times in the earlier part of my life 'I wish I was a more conscious person. I wish I was somehow more enlightened'. As they say, be careful what you wish for. Becoming someone who's far more conscious of things definitely presents a lot of challenges. One of the biggest challenges, in my opinion, would have to involve 'I can sense/feel everything I'm now more conscious of'. So it kind of makes your a far more sensitive/feeling person. Another way of putting it is 'You can't feel what you're not conscious of' or 'Ignorance is bliss'.

In regard to substance abuse, I get it, I really do. As a gal who's an ex binge drinker from way back, I drank largely for emotional regulation. It can be easier not feeling the tougher emotions, the ones that can be so telling. Whether they're the emotions or feelings that tell us, in one way or another, we can't stay in a job or relationship that depresses or stresses us, we can't stay in a state of not changing, we can't live this part of our life without some form of skill development, we can't continue with the belief systems that are destroying us, we can't keep working in a state of exhaustion or something else, the tough emotions or feelings tend to direct us away from the kind of life we're suffering through and toward a life that's going to serve us better in a number of ways. I suppose you could say feelings are a part of an inbuilt compass of sorts, one that provides direction.

Do you feel one of the challenges to look at could involve coming to better understand and manage your energy? Looking at emotion from the perspective of 'energy in motion' or e-motion, it could become a matter of learning how to identify exactly what each energy feels like (each individual emotion), what it's telling you and how to manage it, when to create more of a particular type of energy and how to naturally do that, when to vent and how to do that naturally and constructively, when to sit with an emotion and wonder about it or analyse it constructively, when to seek guidance in identifying it and/or managing it and so on. If you find yourself sighing a lot lately, that would be classed as 'venting'. There are so many different ways of venting: Through extreme sports, through not so extreme sports, through breath work, through massage (kneading tension out of the body), through talking it out with someone, through working it out at the gym (a work out) and on it goes. Could be a combo of some or all of those things. It sounds like you're facing what feels like a pressure cooker lot of emotions, potentially explosive. Do you feel if you were to begin finding ways of understanding and naturally mastering your energies there'd be the need for the substance (an ingested form of chemical energy)? If you could find new ways, new skills and abilities, could you naturally come to need it less and less?