[insertname]

Ok...so....I've been trying to figure out for about 9 months what I'm sad about, and I kind of feel like it's been under my nose all the time, because it seems to come up into my thoughts a lot and yet I couldn't understand why I felt this emotion like loss.

The story is that I had what is probably termed a somatoform disorder, or conversion disorder, I dont' know what it's called. It was kind of like CFS, except I always believed it was stress-induced and tried to get psychological help for it (doctors kept trying to find physical causes because they would ask me how I felt emotionally and I would say - fine, but this is how it works with me). I was right, incidentally...

So anyway. I had debilitating fatigue. I mean I couldn't live a normal life at all. I had been a high achiever and was kind of 'on the cusp of great things' when it started and then it took away 6 years of my 20s. I did barely anything in that time, all I wanted to do was sleep. I did work, but I got fired a lot or had to leave to go on the sick. I did occasionally try to have a go at the career I wanted, but I was so tired I couldn't concentrate. I quit a lot of stuff because I just got so tired I couldn't continue. My leisure life was zilch. I didn't have the energy. I never had any fun.

I want to be able to move on from that now that the exhaustion is over and believe that I can just pick up where I left off but I feel like nothing will ever go right. I feel desperate for my career to go well now, especially as I had so much potential before, but I feel so behind and I feel like I will never have the things I dreamed of.

I guess I feel like I've pinpointed why I feel so lost and why I feel so much disappointment and grief in my every day life. I keep working at it and keep trying, and keep waiting for my life to 'start' and for me to feel like the achiever I once was. But I feel like I've lost it all - that it is all ruined - and that I will now have to settle into a more mediocre life. It's almost like I think I had one chance...

I know this is irrational, but it feels true. I'm sorry I'm posting a lot at the moment, I've just been trying to figure everything out.

Has anyone been here before?

[sideblinded]

insertname, I can so relate to your story here. I have also been where you have been. I lost my career to mental illness. I struggled before and during my career but at least I had some purpose. I feel lost now that I am on disability due to depression. I am very disappointed as well at how my life turned out. It isn't irrational to feel a huge loss because of what mental health disorders have done to our lives. It is ok to feel what you are feeling. It is grief. It is loss. It is so very sad. I really feel for you.

There is always hope, though. I feel that there is always a remedy to a problem. Thanks for sharing and helping ME to know that I am not alone.

[insertname]

Originally Posted by sideblinded

insertname, I can so relate to your story here. I have also been where you have been. I lost my career to mental illness. I struggled before and during my career but at least I had some purpose. I feel lost now that I am on disability due to depression. I am very disappointed as well at how my life turned out. It isn't irrational to feel a huge loss because of what mental health disorders have done to our lives. It is ok to feel what you are feeling. It is grief. It is loss. It is so very sad. I really feel for you.

There is always hope, though. I feel that there is always a remedy to a problem. Thanks for sharing and helping ME to know that I am not alone.

Thank you for sharing. I can't even begin to explain how much my career meant to me. I had been so driven - I still am really - and I used to excel at a bunch of things because of that trait - i.e. I just worked really hard because success was so important to me and I believed in myself. That was such a part of my identity that I feel like my whole sense of self has been taken away.

I'm really glad you shared actually, although I'm so sorry to hear you're in a similar place, because all year I've been saying to myself 'yeah, first world problems'. I mean, I have a job and in other people's eyes I have success, I have my health back, I have friends, I live an active life, there isn't actually anything wrong, it's just that I didn't have the success I believe I could have had. I don't have the high flying lifestyle I was vying for and that I worked so hard to achieve. It's what I wanted since I was 10 and I knew I had to work hard to get it so I put my all into it and then as soon as it was within my grasp I got ill and it was all taken away. I've always felt that nothing says 'middle class problems' like 'I wanted to work in TV but I've had to settle for PR!' - haha - but for me it really does hurt...

After I wrote that last post and it was out in the open, though, I did think to myself - hey, you can choose to look at it that way if you want, or you could choose to accept that there's no telling what will happen in life and if you love doing something you should just keep at it without needing the success, because it only makes you miserable. Maybe I will become the high flier I wanted to be, maybe I won't, but maybe I will find happiness another way. If I stop thinking 'nothing is going to turn out how I wanted it to' and start thinking 'I don't know what's going to happen, something great might happen, isn't life exciting?' then I'm sure I'd feel very differently...

Would that help you or do you think your situation is very different?

[dancinglady]

I feel the same as you. After DBT I have to radically accept my second class life and be ok with it. Mental illness robs us from our lives. As I did you need to grieve who you would have been without mental illness and accept your life as it is. Changing your attitude is all that is left.