Not sure what's wrong with me

I'm just always preoccupied with how meaningless life feels to me. I mean I just can't stop asking myself "What's the point?" Everything sounds so intolerably boring to me, even things I used to like, even love doing. I need to get back into therapy I know, but I'm so self conscious about it especially when my parents are around. They don't really "believe", for lack of a better term, in the concept of mental illness and I really think they feel like going to therapy is an admission of failure in some way. I have had two major failures in the past 5 years and they have really had a terrible affect on me. I failed at my first real job and decided to take the "You can't fire me I quit" approach. I think it was very soon after that I gave up on my dreams. After a couple years I tried going back to grad school and writing my MS thesis, but since I had basically given up on my dream of being a professor it was a nightmare. I failed my thesis defense back in April and have let the deadline to try again fly right on by. I was making the edits they wanted but my e-mail exchanges with them were less than encouraging, they seemed underwhelmed by the new data I was trying to incorporate into my thesis so... I just quit trying. I have given up, but I want to "ungiveup", if that makes any sense. I'm just rambling now so I'll shut up.

Hello annoyedgrunt84: I'm sorry you're having such difficulty. From what you wrote, it sounds sort-of like you're in a bit of a pothole right now & having a difficult time working up the enthusiasm to get yourself out. It's been allot of years since I was in grad school. But it still sends shudders up my spine. I often have dreams where I've stopped going to classes & so I'm going to quit school. So it's still on my mind all these years later!

Is there still a possibility of completing your thesis? Could you contact the school & see what, if any, options are available to you? Getting back into therapy sounds like a good idea. A therapist may be able to help you develop a plan to "ungiveup", & provide you with some support in your effort to get going again. It's so difficult to accomplish this when the people around you don't support your efforts. My best wishes to you.

what's wrong with you? you're depressed. you are suffering from a depressive illness, and absolutely no part of that is your fault. you need adequate treatment: in this case, therapy.

Is this dream...
genuinely your own?
someone else's dream for you that you absorbed?
a dream sold you for the seller's profit or ego?
etc.?

We are in a gloomy era of "adjunct professors."

All that aside, depression and anxiety are real problems to address.

Failing many times is the only sure way to get to success. Inventors know this all too well. You can't create a great product without failing a couple hundred times. Even Einstein said something similar to this. Do not fear failure, easier said than done I know.
But failure is a stepping stone.
It is being one step closer to finding out what does work, and that's a good thing.
We all fall many times. If you told a baby he had to walk without falling down once, he'd never learn to walk.

I do think being a professor was my dream, both of my parents were school teachers so education is really important to me and I have developed a deep empathy and sympathy for what they do. I just thought that teaching at a college level might be better for me because I would really get to delve into a subject fairly deeply rather than skim over it. I am beginning to realize now though that research isn't really for me. I wanted to teach and engage interesting ideas and I didn't really care about writing papers and so on. I love my parents deeply they just grew up on farms and have more of a pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality. And tough love can be a valuable thing, it just isn't everything I need right now. Like I said my brain is stuck on how pointless everything seems to me. I have thought about trying to contact the graduate school and see if I could just get my degree on a non-thesis option. But it has been 8 months, I have probably burned that bridge.

If you like teaching and education but you don't like research or writing papers, perhaps you could look at other jobs in the school industry such as elementary teacher, middle school teacher, high school teacher, or even other positions in that field.

I think we can all relate to the "what is the point of it all?" feeling. When you strip away the distractions of life and really dwell with your own thoughts, you begin to see through the thinly veiled illusion that society has set up for us. We are kind of like hamsters on a wheel, running in circles and carrying out repetitive behaviors because those repetitive behaviors are necessary to keep society under a measure of control. If it wasn't for that hamster wheel, life would be very different and the safety and security that we enjoy in our society wouldn't be there at all. So, it's not hard to see why the wheel is set up the way it is. But there are those of us who see through the BS and realize that what we are effectively living for is a complete mystery and, from our limited perspective, it all looks like nonsense. What is the meaning of life? Not a person alive has the authority to answer that question.

The problem is, once you realize this you can't "un-realize" it. I constantly compare it to the decision to take the red pill in the matrix. Many of us relate to Cypher's character...the one who was willing to betray his friends to re-enter the matrix and forget about the truth of the real world because the truth was so bleak, dark, and dreary.

We experience that same disconnect. Nothing we do ultimately seems to matter. If you look at the scope of the world through a long enough lens, life on earth will one day be burnt up by the sun and everything that we have ever known or will know will be gone. That is depressing on a level that I can't even begin to describe. It takes the fairy tale notions we were fed as children and just craps all over them until the fairy tale that once inspired exists like poison in our veins.

That being said, is there any hope for us to find a meaningful existence when we let the gravity of that truth settle in? I think it depends on the perspective you take. I think we can dial back our view of the world and zoom in on just the aspect of the world that encompasses our time here. Is it necessary that our actions have meaning in some objective or permanent sense? Why do we feel that our actions have to extend beyond our lifetime in order to matter?

We've been gifted this experience during this very short window of time. We are the universe contemplating itself and, when it all comes to a halt, will our individual existence be more than just a speck...a vapor in the wind...that disappears as quickly as it is formed? If that's the case, and if there is no objective meaning to our lives, then the only solution, I think, is to find the subjective meaning of our lives. To realize that this is all we've got and that each moment we have is precious. And, in that sense, the purpose we live for no longer extends beyond our life, but it encompasses our life. What could I do with this life that would create the deepest meaning for myself and the people I love? I think when you find an answer to that question, an answer that creates an emotional reaction withing you so strong that you cry, then you will be able to come to peace with the meaninglessness of it all. After all, it's a product of our own ego that we need our lives to mean something more than what they are. When we accept our true position in life, I think we can begin to move beyond the despair that comes from the lies we were told as children and find true joy and peace in the moment.

In the end, though, you need to answer that question. What drives you? What inspires you? What causes you to change your momentum? These are the things that will bring greater peace to your life as you lean into them and focus more fully on them. Everything else just sort of dissolves like salt in water.

Also, I find great peace and solace in this video:



I definitely encourage you to watch it. It puts everything into perspective and I think he does so in a way that is so peaceful and serene.

^"We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight ask himself if it's him or them that's insane"-Bob Dylan "Vision of Johana"

Hi annoyedgrunt84,

You sound so much like me, it made me smile a little. Just this morning I asked my father "what's the meaning of life?" and countless times I just ask myself in between tasks "why am I doing this?", "what's the point and what is my end goal?. I never used to be that way though. Like you said, I just "gave up" and one day, all of a sudden everything I did seemed to have its meaning taken away from it. You're not rambling, I want to "ungiveup" too. Similarly my family do not "believe in the concept of mental illness" either so I know lonely and frustrating It can get. Therapy or any form of treatment was not encouraged by my family growing up as I get the feeling they think of it as a little pitty party meeting to create excuses for yourself. I think you should remember that your parents beliefs are not your own and so you can seek treatment and live by your beliefs and whatever helps you cope. The "failures" as you put them don't define you their just a part of your journey to where you want to go. You can choose to see them as failures and they may feel like failures, hec society may see them as failures but are they really? Define your own success. Education is a tough one, I'm in university so I know how "deadlines" and critical feedback can really intensify depression and lack of motivation. My advice? Keep trying, It sounds like pretty poor advice, but do all that you do for you. The pace, the journey, the struggle, I don't think It really matters as long as you're happy at the end of it.
Sorry about the length and I'm even more sorry if this was not helpful at all but I wish you the best of luck