Coping Skills?
I don't know how to begin this entry. I'm tired of my entries being depressing as I can only imagine how much it sucks to read my whining all of the time.
Anyways, to put it lightly, life has sucked for me. As in really, completely, nastily, sucking big time. I don't know if I can talk about all of the events that have hurt me in the past year or two. I don't want to re-hash them at the moment, as they hurt enough without me having to explain them in detail. I never expected for my life to hit such a low. Everytime I start to get back on my feet and move forward from one traumatic event, another one steps up just to add to the mess. I'm not handling the stress, anxiety, and depression well at all anymore. I feel strongly that I'm losing all of the things that make me happy, and all of the things that I have worked for.
I feel like the only thing I really do these days is cry, and the few times I'm not crying, I'm willing myself to not cry. My appetite is just gone, which is a common way I've reacted to extreme stress in the past, but it's never been this badly. I also tend to react to stress by being unable to sleep for any large amount of time. And when I do fall asleep, it's nightmare after nightmare. Every moment that I'm awake I'm rehashing the bad events in my head, sometimes imagining a way to make them better, but most of the time beating myself up and blaming myself for letting things get this way.
I'm hard on myself to say the least. I don't know if it's related to my childhood, but the prevailing theory is that the cause is that I had to take on the responsibilities of an adult very early on in life. So now I'm a perfectionist, for one reason or another. I have to be a leader, and I have to be the one shouldering responsibility. It's just who I am. In times of moderate or low stress, I am perfectly happy being that person. To an extent, I even enjoy being the person that others come to for advice and problems. In times like this, though, these characteristics of mine are a detriment.
I can stop blaming myself for everything bad that's happened this past year. While some things certainly resulted at least partially due to my mistakes (I'm only human, after all), many of the things that have happened have either been someone else's fault, a combination of fault, or just the universe being shitty. But even knowing this logically, I am constantly beating up on myself. I can only think of all of the things I must have done wrong to cause these issues.
So, to the point of this post. I need help. Very, very badly. I am not controlling my stress or anxiety well. I can't seem to shake my depression. And I just absolutely seem unable to let things go. I just cannot move on. This is just not okay anymore. It's tearing me apart and if I don't learn how to start coping soon, I think I may finally just break.
So, friends, please help me by giving whatever advice you have. What mechanisms do you use to get past stress? How do you sort through things in your mind and let bad events go? How do you move on? What are some techniques I might use to cope? Anything would be helpful, and I need your help coming up with a game plan.
Thank you! I will appreciate your help and support more than I can ever express (although I promise to try).
Love,
~Rachel
P. S. I'm sorry for those of you who may have contacted me and I did not get back to. I sort of feel like I'm behind on life and not catching up at all. Maybe I have an excuse because of my current shitty life, but I still think this is one of my faults, not connecting with people when I'm in duress.
Anyways, to put it lightly, life has sucked for me. As in really, completely, nastily, sucking big time. I don't know if I can talk about all of the events that have hurt me in the past year or two. I don't want to re-hash them at the moment, as they hurt enough without me having to explain them in detail. I never expected for my life to hit such a low. Everytime I start to get back on my feet and move forward from one traumatic event, another one steps up just to add to the mess. I'm not handling the stress, anxiety, and depression well at all anymore. I feel strongly that I'm losing all of the things that make me happy, and all of the things that I have worked for.
I feel like the only thing I really do these days is cry, and the few times I'm not crying, I'm willing myself to not cry. My appetite is just gone, which is a common way I've reacted to extreme stress in the past, but it's never been this badly. I also tend to react to stress by being unable to sleep for any large amount of time. And when I do fall asleep, it's nightmare after nightmare. Every moment that I'm awake I'm rehashing the bad events in my head, sometimes imagining a way to make them better, but most of the time beating myself up and blaming myself for letting things get this way.
I'm hard on myself to say the least. I don't know if it's related to my childhood, but the prevailing theory is that the cause is that I had to take on the responsibilities of an adult very early on in life. So now I'm a perfectionist, for one reason or another. I have to be a leader, and I have to be the one shouldering responsibility. It's just who I am. In times of moderate or low stress, I am perfectly happy being that person. To an extent, I even enjoy being the person that others come to for advice and problems. In times like this, though, these characteristics of mine are a detriment.
I can stop blaming myself for everything bad that's happened this past year. While some things certainly resulted at least partially due to my mistakes (I'm only human, after all), many of the things that have happened have either been someone else's fault, a combination of fault, or just the universe being shitty. But even knowing this logically, I am constantly beating up on myself. I can only think of all of the things I must have done wrong to cause these issues.
So, to the point of this post. I need help. Very, very badly. I am not controlling my stress or anxiety well. I can't seem to shake my depression. And I just absolutely seem unable to let things go. I just cannot move on. This is just not okay anymore. It's tearing me apart and if I don't learn how to start coping soon, I think I may finally just break.
So, friends, please help me by giving whatever advice you have. What mechanisms do you use to get past stress? How do you sort through things in your mind and let bad events go? How do you move on? What are some techniques I might use to cope? Anything would be helpful, and I need your help coming up with a game plan.
Thank you! I will appreciate your help and support more than I can ever express (although I promise to try).
Love,
~Rachel
P. S. I'm sorry for those of you who may have contacted me and I did not get back to. I sort of feel like I'm behind on life and not catching up at all. Maybe I have an excuse because of my current shitty life, but I still think this is one of my faults, not connecting with people when I'm in duress.