What a tangled web I wove

Lie after lie, deceit, manipulation, wanton disregard for anyone near me and the list goes on. Sometimes aware of what I was doing and sometimes not. Instead of stages of grief I have my own steps...self destructive behavior, guilt, shame, pain, numb, panic and my eff it mode ( I'm sure I left out some steps). Rinse and repeat. I have and will probably continue to destroy any and everything good in my life. I take one step forward with progress and fifteen steps back. With it comes thoughts of harming myself but not to worry, to chicken to do anything about it. I wallowed in this web I wove and ironically I am the one who got stuck. Eff it all people, eff it all. Tired of dealing with it but no rest for the wicked. Very angry that I lost motivation to change my life so quickly. I realize this is very negative. I mean no disrespect for those who post positive thoughts. I just can't seem to shake the state of mind I'm in.

To me it seems you can't shake this state of mind as you have so many negative thoughts flooding in at once.

Try taking a deep breath, go do sometime nice for you like a bath or a walk and then sit down and either write them all down or try and arrange them one by one. I would also suggest writing some good things down along side. These don't have to be well thought out great things, just simple up lifting notes about you like: I can cook, I have a passion for ... and see if this helps.


Allow the thoughts to come in and instead of applying them to being you, sit back observe them and look at them with curiosity.

I really need to stay away from the computer at night. Especially when there is lack of sleep involved. I woke up this morning and feel incredibly stupid for what I wrote. Most of it is brought on because of having to much time to think. I have a lot of time in the day as well to think. I just think more rationally/realistically during the day than I do at night. Doesn't make sense. It's like a switch is flipped when my loved ones go to bed. Oh, and sorry for my language in my earlier post. I know I have better vernacular than that.

Hey we all do it, thinking can become a b*tch sometimes

The good thing here, is you're at that point where you know what you're doing doesn't work. The problem with that, what are you supposed to do next?

Well, it seems a few people here who are doing fairly well (including me) tend to sort of give up on trying to do anything. We got up, went to work, went home, just sort of sleep walked through our relationships. We didn't really try to do anything.

When you give up trying, it will all come to you. If someone is upsetting you, feel it, recognize the emotion and where it came from, but do nothing. Everything you are doing is obviously not working out. Not doing anything will be a clear advantage.

Once you can give up on giving a crap if people like you or not, once you get your fulfillment from within, you'll take monster steps. It takes a little time of doing nothing and giving up on fixing relationships to get comfortable with self though. Don't try, don't lie, don't talk much more than you have to, don't fight, don't think about it. Don't even try to not try. Just give up all effort. Any time you feel effort, just stop. If you do think about the things bothering you, close your eyes and just focus on breathing. Never think. Thinking is our problem. We've been thinking of ways to fit in, thinking of ways to build good relationships and thinking of ways to be happy. It never works, so just stop thinking.

In the short term, if you stop thinkikng right now and start breathing, you'll have peace. In the long term, if you do that every day, you won't really make idiotic mistakes because it takes a lot of thinking to mess up our lives as bad as we do.

its ok not to always feel like you can be motivated to work on things... we all feel like giving up sometimes. you can recognise you can feel that way without having to give up - its ok to say "###$ it, today i dont want to think about any of this $#%^!" sometimes you need to the actually wanting to give up happens less and less severly the more you heal problems.

there's something in all that advice i think, same as advice OneBraveGirl gave me when i was floundering around trying and trying, and not knowing where to go next, "just lie still". stop thinking so hard, just breathe, and exist, and be aware you exist. see what happens.
recovery doesn't come with a manual, there are things you can know that can help, but when you think too much it can sometimes do more harm than good. once you've started, if you stop fighting it (and we all do, we just don't realise what we're doing) there are times when it just carries itself.

hope you're doing ok

Beautiful_Disaster wrote: I take one step forward with progress and fifteen steps back.

Right?

Lots of good advice and support. Thank you. I hope I can be of some help to all of you and others someday. I don't have much to offer yet, other than I can relate to others stories/dilemmas/trials/tribulations etc. At the moment I am okay. Again, thank you. Now I'm off to just exist and breathe.

Beautiful_Disaster wrote: I take one step forward with progress and fifteen steps back.

when you take the negative slant off things with the exaggeration!, i think recovery can often be 3 steps forward and 2 back, but not always cause you are going backwards, sometimes from where i've experienced things, you take a big bite of recovery, which takes a massive effort, and then sometimes you can go arrgghh! as in some way you're not 100% ready for it yet, or something else comes up that you have to overcome before you can get there. also its hard work, you make a big effort and then it tires you out - sometimes that's another reason there's a need to resort to old coping mechanisms at times. sometimes there really can be a temporary 15 steps back at times (for everyone not just the OP), but at those times i think its more of an "i need to hide here in (familiar negative place)" than really being 15 steps back. at a deeper level, progress can still be being made in the long run. i think its still important to try not to, and not to get stuck there for too long, but still when it happens now and then, sometimes its revisiting being 15 steps back for other reasons, eventually at times ive found its cause you're ready to let go, and need to go there to do it. i've done it at times, you can still be making progress, setbacks are just that, setbacks, not walking backwards.

Okay, that's got me thinking again. I think I get what you're saying Katana. Mildly confused, but I think I get the gist of it. Forgive me sometimes it takes a while for things to click.