[Partless]

Though I've heard this from a few different sources, there is that saying that, People who have an answer to "why" they're alive, can live with any "how." It could be something as spiritual as God/religion or as worldly as maximizing their sensory pleasure. Some say their children are their lives and they are the reason they put up with a lot of difficulties in life. For some it's their work.

From time to time I've worked on "meaning" with my therapists but was never able to make any sense of things. Having lost my religious faith some years ago, I never found a replacement. Neither in "actualize your potential" nor in the more random "your meaning can be whatever you want it to be." BS! I can't consciously decide that X must now give my life meaning; it has to be doing so, already. There has to be a deep powerful connection already, the way religious faith used to be.

Today when I came back from mom and dad's, the depression hit me hard. It's the realization that nothing changes, nobody changes, history repeat, people repeat, same looks, same discussions, same hostilities, same shortcomings....I haven't been able to change myself nor others in ways to bring about what I wanted, which was a happy healthy family. That is what made my life meaningful when I was younger. Or the idea of a happy healthy family. The potential for a happy healthy family. My life outside was filled with bullies, crazy teachers, fears of all sorts. I needed a safe loving place. I needed something to hold on to when all else got bad. It was God. Then it was my family. When I got too much suffering, I lost connection to God. When my sister was hospitalized, and my parents mistreated her, I lost the idea of happy healthy family. We had been unhappy for a long time, had health problems, but that was the nail in the coffin.

My therapist said your sister won't be the same, your parents are older and will die one day perhaps soon, you have to do things for yourself, make life on your own before it's too late. She said you have to grieve these losses first. But God knows I grieved, I cried, I wrote poetry, I looked at pictures, but something is missing. Something keeps pulling me back and doesn't let me move on. A single call from mom about my sister's condition (even if nothing emergency) screws me up for weeks. At times I won't even answer the call, walk around with fear and guilt.

So today I thought maybe it's my life that's meaningless. That I need to find meaning some other ways. In some powerful ways. Almost like a scientist who is about to discover something huge, like cure to heart disease. Or someone who can bring peace to Middle-East. I need some huge purpose, something so powerful. Like as if God spoke to me in person. Something so powerful that will make everything else look unimportant in comparison.

I was once watching one of those medical reality shows and an ER surgeon was talking about how his wife passed away a few months ago when she was run over by a drunk driver, that his wife was his everything, but that he had to eventually come back to work because "we're saving lives here, I have a duty to my patients." I need something like that.

Sorry if my post is stupid, I'm having a bad day, I have very few people in my life with whom I can talk about these things and feel lonely tonight and had to share this....

I agree, I think meaning is a really really important thing. Maybe it comes with being depressed that there seems to be no meaning - is it a chicken and egg thing? Is it the depression that causes the person to feel that life has no meaning? If the depression fades then meaning in life can be found again. But feeling that life has no meaning can reinforce the depression? Like you I also found meaning in god when I was a teen, but I too moved away from that. At times I have found reflecting on philosophical issues and the meaning of life to be a helpful thing, somehow I feel there is a meaning. I have tried writing it here (what I see as the meaning) but I have deleted it. I'm not depressed, so is that why I feel there is meaning?

I think before therapy I looked for meaning.
Now having been in therapy I don't.
Our inner life's have no concept of time and place. They like newborns just want to be 'held' and not abused. When I focus on that, life is just something that happens alongside that. Life is just details.

Therapy has not helped me with that.

No not for me. Therapy rationalises a lot of what i think, i put too much meaning into things.

Therapy wasn't were I found meaning in my life. Therapy helped me get through my history and learn to handle my present so that I could go back to finding the meaning in my life that was there all along. I had just been so ill and so consumed by depression and anxiety that I had forgotten how to see it and how continue making meaning in my life. But it was always there.

[iheartjacques]

Have you read "man's search for meaning" by Frankl? What do you do when you have an hour left to live? Would you find meaning in that?

[unaluna]

Partless, that is the best post youve ever written. I kind of suspected that it was written after a visit to the parents. A call from my mother can send me into a downward spiral for too long also. Thats the life they have chosen for themselves. What can give your life meaning, is you choosing a life for yourself. Remember the parable of the talents. You are called upon to do the best you can with what youve been given. No excuses! No burying your talents.

[Elisabetta346]

When I briefly was in it no ! That was me, I decided to create meaning. Therapy it provided me some insight on how I can change my thoughts and behaviours on how to do so and then I did it

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[feralkittymom]

I don't think meaning is found in huge, external ways. I think it is the daily engagement in small ways that reflect one's personal beliefs/values through which we create a meaningful life. Action motivates: the active participation in our own lives creates the full expression of the meaning. The usefulness of a daily practice--whether it is religious, meditative, reflective, or behavioral--is often that it provides a space within our consciousness that allows our inner talent/desire to come to consciousness.

There are a lot of memoirs in which people describe the daily rituals that have led to such awareness. For me, such moments are clearest through engagement with nature/animals. While I'm not religious, such practice encourages a spiritual consciousness that enriches my life. It facilitates the letting go of life-negating emotions and dysfunctional control, and invites self-acceptance and joy.

Therapy helped only to the extent that it removed the obstacles to engaging in this way, and gave me an experiential model for the positive emotions that were possible.