a way to describe this…feeling?

[Guest_41029127]

As the title suggests, I’m looking for a way to describe my current … state? or hoping someone else has a similar experience. FYI I am currently in year 12, and yes I am safe 🙂

Since I was in about year 5 or 6, I think I hated living. Not necessarily suicidal ideation (though there were many instances of it), but I was very pessimistic about life and thought everything sucked, so even if I felt happiness (emotion) I don’t think I was truly happy with life. 

But around the start of this year, I stumbled upon things that had really resonated with me, and something had shifted within me. For the first time I felt like I really wanted to live, and that life was beautiful. Even when I experienced setbacks, I still had the strong feeling of wanting to live, and that I was capable of things even though I was struggling. Essentially, even though I had times where I didn’t feel happiness (the emotion), I felt like my state of being was happy (?) And I was still the same pessimistic person, but I felt like some kind of miasma (as strange as that sounds) was lifted from me. 

That was basically how I felt for a good many months, until maybe a month or some time ago I ended up discussing with a teacher about mental health support, and I won’t go into details, but mid conversation I was struck with an immense wave of depression/hopelessness/disillusionment that no one would ever help me and that I would never deserve help… and essentially ever since then it feels like that “state” of happiness has disappeared and I returned to my longstanding state of…some kind of hopelessness.  

It feels like I’m back to square one. Though I also think I’m a bit more resilient to suicidal ideation so maybe square one point five. 

So I want to know if theres a way to encapsulate what this experience is. Or if anyone has experienced a similar thing before? 

[smallwolf]

not sure if this answers your question .... and whether or not in the conversation you were triggered in some way? but, I had times where I felt that I had reset also, or that was what I believed my brain told me. I was talking about this with my psychologist and she told me to look at it this way... 

think if it as a walk up a mountain, there are times when you get stuck or blocked, and will have to backtrack a little, or go down into a valley, but this this exercise, you will find another route towards the top. At some point the valley will have to go upwards and you find this other path that may become easier, and onward to go again. But when you were in that valley and struggling, you were not as low as when the journey first started.

Now.... there were times when that being in the valley felt like I was also going to go down into a tunnel or cave. And while in that dark place, I could occasionally see light (in my mind) and thus would continue walking until I had made it through.

In your post, in the last bits you said, square one point five.

It might not seem like it, but you are on the right track. But in your thoughts and in posting here.

Listening ... 

[therising]

The warmest of welcomes to you at this time in your life, a time that's not just challenging with school but challenging in general. 🙂

I can relate to what smallwolf mentions. I find life to be somewhat of a landscape. When the emotional environment changes around us, we can feel it. When the people we travel with along our paths change or become of influence, we can feel that too. When our perception shifts, that's another one that can be felt. Personally, I've found what helps me navigate or get a sense of where I'm at is emotion or feelings. Bit like a compass. 

I've found (when exploring life's landscape) what also helps involves using more than basic emotional descriptions, such as happiness, sadness, anger etc. For me, they're too general and don't define exactly where I'm at. As a sensitive gal (who can sense), I have to know exactly what it is I'm sensing. For example, I could either say 'I feel happy' or I could say 'I sense peace', 'I sense absolute joy', 'I sense excitement', 'I sense optimism/positive vision' etc. They all relate to happiness but each has a rather distinct vibe to them and with that in mind, I'm then able to pinpoint whether my unhappiness relates to a lack of one or more of those things. Am I unhappy because of a lack of vision, because of a lack of peace, because of a lack of excitement and so on? In other words, what would be the cause of my unhappiness.

I can't help but wonder whether the teacher you spoke to led you to suddenly sense yourself on a completely different path, toward a part of your landscape that feels perhaps a little dark, a little hopeless and maybe even a little lonely in parts. Did you feel them guiding you in the right direction or a direction that feels wrong for you? Did you feel them offering you an enlightening vision that inspires a sense of clarity or do you feel yourself more in the dark than ever before? All feelings are telling in one way or another. If you were to gain a better sense of that conversation, what comes to mind in regard to when you felt that sudden shift? I imagine you felt the downshift for good reason.

I'm wondering whether something else worth considering involves what resonates with you personally. Are you someone who's more so focused on mental wellbeing or someone who's a bit of a combo kinda person, who likes to combine a sense of mental and soulful wellbeing? Of course, physical wellbeing comes into it too, such as how we look after our nervous system when under stress, for example.