The price of poverty.

[chairmanmeow]

Its pretty clear to me at this point where everything is broken, I was robbed of the resources to get a life together from the start and now I feel robbed of the resources to get better. I have no money, my nerves have been cooked beyond reason, sure Ill find another job that pays little eventually, but even when I talk to people that should be helpful with this they just wanna shove emotion muting pills at you, the same emotions that need to be reprocessed. I need grounding I need attachments but have started to avoid them alltoghether. The desire for them has gone... and when you have attachment issues you need attachments to work on lol. Iv found that few people in this world even care, and the ones that do, cant do or wont do much for me. I dont want to live a half life, I dont want this muddled sense of self, the fog of derealization, and the physical suffering my body puts me through in the face of stressors, the emotional disassociation. Relationships ground me in healthy ways but at the moment I feel so outta sorts a burden on myself yet alone anyone else.. and fear a lot of fear iv been hurt so bad when I talk about it I feel as if im talking about someone else. I have a direction I want to go but even thinking about it becomes paralyzing, im stuck Im not sure how to move forward anymore...   
And thats a problem, I cant just go thru the motions and lead a meaningless existence ya know, Ill find my balance find some work distract myself some more, but this will be here just as it is waiting... I need to be proactive but Im not sure what to do anymore.. I cant be the only one who found such a position here which way is forward? Im outta sorts.

[Butterfly]

It must feel terrible to feel so stuck in your situation. Some time ago I came across a book that helped me called "getting unstuck" and it was just what I needed to give me some direction. It might have been the one by Timothy Butler and also What Color is your Parachute helped me figure out a job path that worked. It was a start. I hope y find a way to get unstuck that works for you. 

[arpy1]

chairmanmeow, got to say i can understand everything you say, to be so stripped of resources.   and knowing that to have a chance to heal you need at least some interior resources even if you can't have the exterior resources. i know exactly, because that is pretty much where i have got to, too. what i am trying to do is to get well enough to go back to work (been off a year) before i runout of money completely (which is not far off).  i can't seem to do it somehow. and that is so frustrating and yes, paralyzing - i know what u mean.

i don't do relationships at all at the mo either, for the same reasons as you.  this site is the only place i interact with humans.

very often, my head is so screwed,  i have to just take this day, the one i am in at the moment, and say, ok , i will do one thing today (even if it's just washing up the dishes). and i will feel proud i did it. and doing it is the contribution i made today to my getting better. that is all i could do. but i did it.

i am having to keep realising that the only thing i can do is to keep working on trying to rebuild, very slowly, my interior resources. keep working towards repairing, healing enough of the damage that i can maybe start to do a little job in a while. and from there  take another step and just keep building on each step at a time.  three steps forward and two steps back sometimes!

the hardest part is that it is taking so much longer than i imagined it ever would.  it is so much what i never wanted for myself. but this is what i have got. i wish it were different, but it isn't. i wish it would go quicker or that i would find a good therapist and be able to afford to get better quicker.

but that isn't what i have got. i have got this, here and now. and i can either go forward at this very slow snail's pace, or choose to not go forward at all. my only alternative is to give up. i can't do that. i can't accept that i can't make this better.

maybe, dear chmw, just for the time being, having these virtual relationships here is all you can manage. that's ok. it's something, and it can be really helpful, becos of the safety of anonymity, and the fact that people here 'get it'.  and some of the things u read here can be really helpful too.

and really, i know what you mean but i think that it isn't a meaningless existence. if you don't compare it to what others have, or to what you expected/wanted.    it is meaningful because it is yours. and it's the journey to recovery that you are taking. that is full of value and meaning. to learn to heal yourself might be the most meaningful thing you ever do in your life, it's that important. 

am supporting you in this, chmw, and i hope you can keep up the bit of hope that all is not lost. there is a way on from here. i just hope you will be kind and patient with yourself, tho i know it's hard.  we're on the same road.  sending you 

[steamy]

I feel the same, the task at hand is so great that it gets me down. Only now at almost 50 years of age I realise more than ever before how this has held me back.

Thirty years since I started working and I have  gone from job to job, I have not been able to make good of any opportunity that I have had, I have had so many golden opportunities, jobs alll over the world but have been fired so many times i am almost getting used to it.  Its hard seeing those that came after me fitting in and going from strength to strength. Where I should be.

Nobody has any empathy for people with mental health issues, even if we are doing our best. I am a prosthetist, I design limbs for people with amputations. If an amputee runs a marathon the world applauds them overcoming their disability. The truth is that we are running that marathon day in day out, but we have our physical body in fact but we struggle with our minds, nobody sees that inner struggle and outwardly we might be awkward socially, have no respect for people in authority and be idealistic to the point of putting our values in front of our own needs.

I am lucky that I have had some nice relationships, I think women see potential, in their men, although eventually they get tired of waiting for it to be fulfilled.

I have a beautiful boy, although I was completely against having kids.one came along and I find it hard raising him, always very conscious of what I am saying or doing in case I might be misinterpreted. I am at least able to understand how hard it must have been for my mother with two kids 18 months apart, day in day out, not being able to manage her depression. Awareness is a big thing in relationships.

All I know is that must do my best to be kind, gentle and loving, despite what I think and feel. All of the extrinsic stimuli
Are simply distractions. It's true, we are what we are and we only have now, as much as I am deadly tired of struggling struggling struggling against everything and failing, so much I often wonder what my life is really worth. I feel like a terrible loser most of the time.

Now I am unemployed again, my former employer was a narcissist and I refused to play his game, I have debts that I am on the verge of defaulting,  they are not large by modern standards but big enough to be a proiblem. We live outside my home country and have no welfare assistance. This is a big worry for me. I do think that my cptsd contributed to the accumulation of that debt, not being able to negotiate when employers fail to meet their obligations.

Personally, I don't ever see myself being able to function like my peers. We have to ta km e each day as it comes and try not to worry about the future.

[tired]

My parents wasted the resources that should have gone to their children. We are all poor now. 

[steamy]

My folks are the same, they have everything, deny ever inheriting money from my grandparents which they have blown on new cars and junk.they constantly repeat that their kids don't deserve anything. They can't fathom how it might be that they have been an instrument in the outcomes of their offspring.

They live by the adage, well, our parents did it to us and it did us no harm. I believe that I could function in a manual job, but it's very different when you try to operate in a middle class professional environment. Malcom Gladwell devoted a chapter of his book "outliers" to a genius called Chris, who had abusive alcoholic father and working mum, he was unable to complete his degree having to work as a postman while he studied, he was unable to communicate his needs with the college faculty in a way that his middle class peers would be able to.

Gladwell talks about the seen but not heard mentality, sit down and shut up, of bringing up kids in working class families, whereas in the middle class families encourage curiosity and asking questions of doctors and other professionals. Middle class kids grow up with a very different view of how to interact with the world.

He compares Chris to people like Bill Gates whose family had connections at Washington state university, he was able to use their computer at 6am for an hour everyday. In the 1970s the machine at Washington was one of the few that the public could access. Gladwell's point was that we don't live in an egalitarian society, Gates is brilliant but also had a lot of lucky breaks and resources most people don't get. The likely hood of Gates succeeding was much higher than a kid from a working class abusive background.

While I am no genius, my problems at university, both economically and communicative seem identical to those of Chris, I took time off to earn money so that I could complete the course. I once noticed a scathing memo on my course tutor's desk from one lecturer about my attitude and taking time off. The other thing is that while we cannot communicate our needs, people from the middle class, who more than likely, lived at home and had their studies funded by parents, don't have a clue what it is like to struggle through with very little income for four years.

[EmoVulcan]

My family was one generation out of poor, hard working union people.  All gains are gone now, just like the industry, the pensions, the retirements.  Never expected an inheritance, did not finish college as tuition tripled in as many years. CSA derailed me into a physical, emotional abusive marriage, we had a child with MD.
Now I live in a tent, never able to work more than 3 years at a time, and now with diagnosis, life record, destroyed credit...I get it, I am not likely to work for anyone ever again.  But, I do not want to, I just dont have the want to.  I Do not know what is to come, go one day at a time, trying to learn and help myself as I can.  I hold on knowing I truly have not gone without necessary food and water, kind of hard to be grateful all the same.  Without resources it is a tough spot. Been angry a lot of and on about not seeming to have options, supporters, or choices that offered hope most of my life.  The ones that did evaporated with burst bubbles, my increasing desirability, and exhaustion.  Back to one foot in front of the other, I could just sit here and die, but that could take awhile.  Do what you can, when you can..it has to turn around any minute now.  I am certain.