Lately, I feel like I want to scream all the time.

I'm trying to do better and be better. I truly am. I no longer want to run away from my reality or my problems. Ideally, I want to face them head on, in a healthy manner. I'm failing miserably so far. My current streak of abstinence from p/m/o is only 4 days but it's the longest I've had in several weeks since I've been under a ton of pressure and stress with regard to my health as well as my finances and work.

Next to nothing is going my way. It seems to me that for every step I take forward, I take several steps back. I just can't seem to make any progress. There are seemingly countless instances on a day to day basis when I find myself wanting to scream or take a baseball bat to something. I guess I don't know how to cope. I know there's no quick or easy fix for any of the situations I find myself in and I'm beyond overwhelmed.

Any advice?

 

Hey man, I can only share what has helped me and Im going to try and articulate myself because it's not something that can really be captured by words. I know this chaos that you are talking about, I think we all do. It's like the world tries to break us and we are left wandering why.

So what now? Should we find a religion to take our minds away from the suffering that is so apparent in our lives? Should we just accept the suffering as something that is part of the human condition? Or maybe become ambitious and strive constantly to be better and better? I have come to realise that all this is a process of chasing ones own tail. There is no end to it and no actual discovery. Just ideas and effort, lots of effort. Lots of suffering. Things go wrong, we become miserable, things go right we are happy only until the tables turn again, and they will, Its Natures law.

I struggled with this for a while, I knew I needed to face my problems head on but I could not figure out how. I started thinking about Nature. The trees, the mountains, the earth and its seasons and all the endless stars in the universe. For eternity, the universe is in a state of absolute order and truth. Whatever happens has a cause and that cause has an effect and on and on without fault. This law of cause effect dictates that there is no permanence to anything. I found this important to try and understand because why suffer for something that is, by its very nature, changing? I don't want to make this too long so my advise here is to discover how you can sit with the unpleasantness of life and not react to it. In another way, when something unpleasant arrises in the mind, like anger for example, can you learn how to go into your body and feel the anger because it has a sensation and that sensation is the reality of yourself. You want to face the problem head on and this is what it means to do that.

This is maybe not easy to understand but the message is simple. Know who you are by being present with whatever reality you face in life. Feel it and learn to stop reacting to it. Natures law of imperminance will come in your favour because the attachment that is causing the suffering begins to weaken and the mind can be in its natural state of joy. I believe this is what it means to be awake.

 

Thanks for that. I do often think about the adage "This too shall pass." It's in the back of my mind a lot as I continue to experience a lot of discomfort in day to day life. I wish it wasn't the case but there's not much I feel I can do about it for now. It'd be nice to be able to be positive and have a healthier outlook but I guess I'm stuck with the mind of an addict while I navigate through these turbulent waters.

 

Do you think this might make things worse in any way? As an example, this morning I felt like this while driving in traffic. I wanted to punch my steering wheel. I have a short fuse because of a combination of p/m/o and stress and lack of sleep. It's been very cyclical throughout the last decade or two.

 

Undoubtedly, one of the worst parts of my situation is that I've known for more than a decade that p/m/o causes more problems than it [temporarily] solves. But I guess that speaks to how deep of a hole I've been in. The fact that I haven't been able to give it up, knowing what I know, is telling. You're absolutely right, though. Everything you wrote there makes sense and it's the truth.

This is something else I have a tremendously difficult time with. Family matters really affect me and they have for as long as I can remember. I come from what was once a war-torn country. Some family members still experience post-war syndrome or battle with post traumatic stress disorder. It's next to impossible to interact with people like them and a few are in my immediate family. Beyond this, I'm an empath in the general sense and a lot of what I see around me and in the world at large, including the part of the world where I'm originally from, really gets me down and makes me feel hopeless.

I know that I need to get all of it to stop manhandling me. I guess I just haven't been able to accomplish that yet.

 

When something really throws me over the edge, I do the same thing. I'm definitely very flawed in that regard.