
Ask HN: Has anyone earnestly given up and managed to come back from it? - throwawaycg48
In a few months I&#x27;ll be on the wrong side of 40. Honestly, I would throw the last 40 away in a heartbeat if given the chance. I was an only child born to narcissists. I spent my adolescence as a military brat moving every 2-3 years. It was brutal at times but I got really good at reading people, having the reset switch pushed on my life so often and being forced to brave yet another wave of a new &quot;community.&quot; What I generally saw in others wasn&#x27;t good. One of my early memories being at a new school and watching most of a class taunt a kid whose entire body has been terribly burned. This was probably second grade and was the beginning of a pattern I&#x27;d witness. I&#x27;d go on to try to befriend and defend outcasts but I felt it was sort of a losing battle, that the world was just going to grind them up regardless (cue starfish analogy).<p>I went on to work in a lot fields before landing in programming and had a knack for getting into places where I could see behind the curtain. This is ultimately what I think gutted me. I was disillusioned again and again seeing the gulf between what really takes place and what most believe happens. Should happen. This occurred in the military, medicine and law enforcement. I was shaken repeatedly by what I saw and deeply dejected.<p>My guts finally gave way in earnest about seven years ago after experiencing burnout at a job that was knowingly running me into the ground (I left). I&#x27;ve just been staggering forward resentfully while trying to numb myself since. While I&#x27;m fully aware of how unhealthy it is but I&#x27;ve isolated myself to the extreme nonetheless. I always felt divorced and frustrated by people but the alienation feels too far gone now. I&#x27;ve been through the gambit of treatment options and providers. The drugs, therapy, none of it seeming to make a difference. Now, I&#x27;m beyond tired. I have no interest in another 40 years. Has anyone clawed themselves back after being so far gone for so long?
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tanzbaer
I hope others with more experience will be able to chime in. I haven't gone
through anything this severe, but I have paid a lot of attention to the
problem of suffering. I found secular Buddhism to make a lot of sense to me.
The main premises are that all suffering is rooted in our mind. We suffer when
something happens that we don't want. We either lose something that we're
attached to or we get something we want to avoid. I started paying more
attention to this and found that every time I'm angry, sad, upset, frustrated
or dissatisfied it's because my mind is unwilling to just accept the way
things are in the moment. The buddhist path is a quest to change your mind in
such a way that it does not cling to things that are not. The result is
supposed to be happiness in yourself, independent of circumstances. I can't
say that I've made much progress or gained a lot of experience. This is still
new to me, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

Maybe it's something to look into foe yourself. Resources: Book: why buddhism
is true by Robert Wright The mind illuminated by John Yates

Website with lots of interesting audios: culadasa.com

Also, you may want to try therapy. From what I've heard it may take a while to
find someone you click with, but it can be very well worth it.

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tomhoward
Yep, I've been through it - lived a life that sounds vaguely similar to yours,
and hit rock bottom through burnout starting about 12 years ago, and only
started to emerge about 3-4 years ago.

Life is pretty good now. Still not perfect, but getting better enough for long
enough to give confidence that the future is bright and worth putting in the
effort for.

For me the turnaround started when I embraced non-mainstream subconscious
emotional healing techniques, which gave me a system for working through past
traumas, fears, resentments; all the emotional baggage that weighed me down,
one grain at time.

These practices helped me to understand why I felt these feelings, and to
learn healthier ways of thinking and conducting myself, so I could let all the
baggage go and progress in life with more confidence.

There's a few of these techniques around.

NET (NetMindBody). Psych-K. Holotropic Breathwork. EFT. Hypontherapy - the
Milton Erickson version or the Dolores Cannon methods. Family Constellations.
Plenty of others that I'm not so familiar with.

It's a journey and if you're like me you'll need to engage different
modalities on the way to get to things on different levels and from different
angles. But if you stick at it long enough, it works and things get better.

All that said, if you're at risk of harming yourself or others, you should
certainly see a conventional therapist and seek their advice before
undertaking any of these approaches.

These techniques are all perfectly safe, but are not a replacement for
psychology or psychiatry if you're in a dangerous place.

For more info, look for books/talks by Dr. Bruce Lipton and Dr. Gabor Maté.

And feel free to email me if you want more advice. Address in profile.

Love and best wishes to you.

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anonymous794613
I'm 44, and I think I've given up. I've been battling this feeling for almost
7 years now, but I've started to come to terms with the fact that my
perspective on life has pretty much settled: it's pointless, and nothing
matters, not even family. The only thing that used to spark joy in my life was
sitting in front of a computer and hacking away at random stuff. Now I sit in
front of a computer and stare at the screen for a long time and say to myself
"what's the point?" and just open HN, read a couple of articles, and that's
it. For some background: I have a special needs child who requires constant
care and attention; in addition, I have a wife who's had her share of PTSD
from early childhood that she still carries with her to this day, and it's
manifested in non-stop arguments every day over the tiniest of issues. I
haven't tried seeing a therapist yet; I don't know if I ever will. Maybe one
day. But right now, the only thing that keeps me going is that I have faith in
God (I'm a bit religious), and that He put us on this earth for a reason, and
that this life is supposed to be about trials and tribulations to separate the
good from the bad. But I'm getting very close to the end of my rope, and I
don't know if anything will ever bring me back. Pray for me.

