u/algernonishbee

Hi everyone.

Long story short, I spent the majority of my young life isolated and depressed, carving a path to sobriety after losing someone deeply close to me to opiates. I also grew up in a emotionally abusive household. It took a long time, but I’ve managed to build some degree of community, friendship, and participation in the world into my life, and have so much to be grateful for.

However, I am often pulled back under the water by trauma response, family relationships which are still deeply toxic, and the overall dread that arises when I ingest any degree of information in regards to the direction the world seems to be heading.

Now I can analyze, rationalize, and sometimes compartmentalize, but the simple reality is that the emotional and psychological foundation upon which I am building my life often feels like a sandcastle on the shore. I often feel that I am compensating for lost years and pain, and end up over pursuing joy or peak experiences to prove to myself that I am worthy and life is worth living. When I return from these experiences, or when something goes wrong, I feel debilitated. I often feel guilt for pursuing these experiences in the first place, feeling weak, selfish, and helpless looking at the larger scope of the tides of civilization.

The fragility and reactivity of my psychological framework is unsustainable and keeps pulling me back into depressive, ruminative, and cruelly self critical states of mind which rule me till something happens that helps me pull myself out. The short periods where I feel vibrant, alive, confident, and dare I say like a pretty awesome person feel like an illusion, a mirage, while the depressed version of me is the real one.

What do?

Sometimes life hits you with those 2-3 weeks where you don’t have any rest. You’re running around juggling 15 different obligations, pursuits, etc. The period passes, and you’ve made it through, but you just feel burnt out.

One of these periods is ongoing. My mental health was probably the best it’s ever been right before it started. I watched it disintegrate and go back to old patterns in real time. Now, I’m just exhausted.

The hobbies I have, the pursuits I have, all of it has transformed into another weight rather than something to use to rest and enjoy myself. I find myself fantasizing about being moss on a stone. Cold, damp, soft, there. Just… moss.

What do you do to recover your emotional and psychological stamina when life hands you a period of time where you end up overextending trying to fulfill everything on your plate to the best of your ability?

Do I just have low stamina? I can’t imagine having kids. I can’t imagine having that persistent responsibility with such significant outcomes.

I’ll give some conversational context to try and illustrate what it feels like from my perspective.

My mom is divorced and has tried to get me to fill the emotional and supportive role she lacks in lots of ways. I consistently challenge this. It’s a fucking exhausting dynamic and I almost went full no contact multiple times.

I was on a climbing trip. My mom calls me Sunday morning and says I broke my arm, you weren’t here I couldn’t reach you. Her neighbor took her to the hospital.

I said okay we’re gonna figure this out, I’m on a trip with 3 other people and it’s an 8 hour drive, I gotta speak with them. She gets deeply angry says “so I’m not a priority” and hangs up. I call back a couple times while trying to break through her emotions just being like obviously I’m going to help but you need to be able to have a normal conversation. Long story short we all pile in the truck and drive over. They have a great time in that area and I help my mom, though really it was about the emotional need of “in this situation my son will be there for me”.

I’ve been driving her to her doctor’s appts, grocery shopping, etc. For context she is an hour and a half drive from me.

She calls me today saying my brace is loose and I need groceries. Full shopping trip a week ago. I’m feeling incredibly burnt out. The last time I was there to help her she just kept piling small things on while showing no genuine understanding or appreciation for the effort I was putting in. I say “can you ask your neighbor for help with the brace and I’ll see about arranging a grocery delivery for you”. She gets mad and hangs up.

Her underlying expectation is that her injury means that I should be willing to drop everything and help her at a moments notice. Important note, when I asked her about her neighbor and why she was unwilling to ask him she said “he works his ass off and has his own problems”. I blew up a bit and said so do I. She’s unwilling to ask a neighbor to help with a 5 minute task, while protecting his rest, ignoring my life, and giving me the expectation of a 3 hour round trip at a moments notice. I understand the vulnerability of tightening a brace and asking a near stranger for help with something like that. Truth be told if she expressed genuine gratitude and appreciation and not the expectation / obligation that she is owed my time and effort, I would’ve driven over no problem.

I have no doubt that part of her wants me to have taken time off of work and reorganized my whole life around consistently being there as a companion and support structure while she’s dealing with this injury. I made it clear from the get go that isn’t what this is going to look like. I will help with what she needs the ways I can, not with her wants the way she wants.

I basically left it at let me know if you need groceries I’ll have them delivered and haven’t followed up about the brace. This was an hour ago.

Edit: Thanks everyone. This was much needed perspective.