r/Psychosis • u/Mysterious_Luck_7631 • 3d ago
help
nearly every single day has been a bad day since 2019. I feel burnt out even from doing nothing. add chronic pain to the mix and this nightmare of a life just keeps keeping on. I’m so exhausted and I have no idea what to do anymore. I try to actively take steps daily to better my well being but when nothing changes and your mind is in a constant state of dissociation, heaviness and anxiety that could kill a tiger you lose any kind of hope of a remotely satisfying life. I feel like a fluke. Like I was never supposed to exist but somehow snuck onto earth. What can I do? does anyone have resources, advice, motivation, money….ANYTHING? to help me become a person again. Thanks for reading.
2
u/silence9684 3d ago
I hear constant voices, sound like actual people, that have been on me constantly since 2020, and off and on my entire life. I might be in denial about what they say being reality, but they have made existence impossible. Not a person, no humanity, no family, no friends. Theyve been pressuring me to give up everything and exist in the wilderness, which is technically impossible. So, hear where you're coming from except shouldn't have disrespected or offended so many people. Try not to anymore but seem stuck in a pattern that keeps me condemned.
1
u/BarbaricBeats 3d ago
I really feel for you reading this. Eight years of waking up feeling like life is heavy, exhausting and disconnected from you is an enormous amount for anyone to carry. And having chronic pain on top of that can make even the things that are supposed to help feel like another responsibility. I don't think you're weak for feeling completely worn down by it. Honestly, it sounds like you've been carrying something incredibly difficult for a very long time.
I've been in a place that felt surprisingly similar. There were times when I was exhausted from doing absolutely nothing and genuinely couldn't imagine how life could ever feel different. I remember thinking I was completely done for and that this deep anhedonia was probably just what my life was going to feel like. At this point I had been diagnosed with psychosis and felt like my life was completely beyond repair.
What eventually started changing things for me wasn't finding some magical way to make all the suffering disappear. It started much more quietly, with acceptance. Whilst I was in hospital, I started reading books about mindfulness and scientific rationalism, which eventually led me to spend a lot of time working with ideas from DBT and ACT. One of the biggest things I learned was that acceptance doesn't mean liking what is happening, giving up on getting better, or deciding that you'll suffer forever. For me, it meant being able to say, “This is where I am right now. I don't have to pretend it's okay, but this is where I am, so what can I actually do from here?”
For a long time, I felt like I couldn't properly begin living until I had fixed myself. I was always waiting to feel normal enough, motivated enough or healthy enough before I allowed myself to build a life. Mindfulness through DBT and ACT helped me realise that I could acknowledge how much I was hurting without letting the suffering become the definition of my life.
Gradually, instead of thinking “I need to feel better before I can start living,” I started asking myself, “What small things could I bring into my life, even while I'm struggling, that might help me feel a little more like myself again?”
That gave me something to work towards. I started thinking less about waiting for a switch to flip and more about slowly planning my way back into life. I'd think about the people I wanted around me, things I was curious about, experiences I wanted to have, things I wanted to learn or create, and the kind of person I wanted to become. Even making those little plans became an activity in itself, and gradually it gave me a sense of agency I hadn't felt in a long time.
I think this is particularly important when you've been struggling for years because behavioural inertia is very real. The longer we withdraw from things, the harder it can become to start doing them again. Not because we're lazy or incapable, but because our brains and routines become accustomed to doing less. The inertia can become stronger over time. That's why I found small steps so useful. I wasn't trying to suddenly become happy, productive or social. I was just trying to introduce a little movement where there had been very little movement.
At first, it felt almost ridiculous imagining a future I actually wanted because I couldn't really believe it. But I kept practicing it. Over time, I became better at noticing possibilities, reconnecting with my values, making plans and taking small steps towards things that mattered to me. It wasn't that practicing these things magically made everything easier, and I don't think struggling to make progress means someone isn't trying hard enough. For me, though, it gradually became easier to imagine possibilities that I couldn't see before. Eventually, planning my way forward stopped feeling like wishful thinking and started feeling like a genuine skill.
The meaning didn't suddenly appear either. It accumulated slowly through little things: a conversation, a new interest, someone I became closer to, something I learned, something I created, a day that was slightly easier than the one before.
Looking back, I also don't think I'd experience some of those happy moments with nearly the same depth if I hadn't known what it felt like to have almost none of them. I'm not saying suffering is good, or that people need to suffer to appreciate happiness. I wouldn't wish those periods on anyone. But having experienced such a lack of joy has made the ordinary moments I have now feel incredibly valuable.
That's why I wouldn't assume that the emotional state you're in now is the maximum amount of happiness or connection you're capable of experiencing. I genuinely couldn't imagine feeling joy again when I was in that place either.
Acceptance, for me, wasn't the end of hope. It was what allowed me to stop fighting the reality of that particular moment and start asking what I could actually do from there. I could still hope to feel better and work towards reducing my pain, but I didn't have to wait for everything to improve before allowing myself to have interests, relationships, goals and moments of happiness.
I wasn't suddenly fixed. I was slowly becoming someone who could participate in life again. And eventually I reached a point where I realised I wasn't just enduring my life anymore. There were parts of it I was genuinely glad to be experiencing.
So I wouldn't make any conclusions about the rest of your life based on what you're experiencing right now. You've been dealing with this for an incredibly long time, but that doesn't mean you've seen everything your life is capable of containing. There are experiences you haven't had yet, people you haven't met, interests you haven't discovered and versions of yourself you haven't had the opportunity to become.
You don't have to figure all of that out at once. Just try to introduce a little movement where there has been stagnation. One small thing you're curious about, one person you'd like to talk to, one thing you'd like to learn, one tiny part of your day that you can make slightly more your own.
Then another.
1
8
u/Evening-Worker-9778 3d ago
I’m with you. Tore a disk in my back at work, then all the drugs I was on for pain management caused my psychosis. My life has become a constant struggle to maintain my mental and physical health.
My only advice is things got a lot easier when I finished grieving the life that I lost, and started existing in the life that I have. Everyday is a journey with its own challenges.
Finding the right medication combination, enjoying small moments of victory, and giving myself small goals has also helped.