Trying to hide every day

Welcome, @GreenTree,

Hearing you about days feeling long. I have often had that feeling. Is there any reason for hiding your feelings during the day? Is it about the people you are coming in contact with?

Relate too about times where my sense of self has felt like it is in fragments instead of a whole. Feeling the need to hide ourselves for whatever reason, can be confusing that way, and can create tension in our sense of self.

Feel free to talk more about how you are feeling as you wish. A tip: if you would like to reply to anyone on the forum, or to me, just type an @ symbol and a little menu of usernames will appear. If you were to tag me this way, it would look like @Mazarita.

Well wishes and again welcome.

Hi @GreenTree ,

It can be daunting to be in a very dark place where you can no longer see who you truly are.

Perhaps you could go out in the sun more often, try a new activity each day, journal your new experiences every night.

Make a list of new activities, it can be like a bucket list or as simple as a task list, say a picnic in the park, gardening, hiking in the mountain, visiting an island, walking down the alley capturing photography, a coffee with new friends, joining a new social club, baking a new recipe, cooking a light vegan meal, volunteering at the zoo, etc.

Just try to keep things moving in life, you'll eventually see the light.

Whenever I am in my down period or procrastinating over work, I will push myself to do new activities to keep things moving and exciting, eventually I will get back to routine. Otherwise, I do find myself stuck in the rut and my medical issues will creep in.

Take care!

Thank you @Mazarita , life is long so many rules of how we should live our lives. Grow up, buy a house, have kids and save for retirement... I just want to mix up my life and maybe it might not be financially safe or possible, but I find it hard to move forward right now. My story is long but the short version is I have been depressed from a very young age to the point I can't remember much of my childhood at all. But the feeling are coming back all over again after years of moving forward and it feels like I can't breath through it. I do try everyday for my 2 kids (18 &16 year) and they are what gets me going each day. But they are slowly moving away from me and my hours and days are really messy. Much more to say...

Thanks @Lilaca

I grew up in Nature (The Dandenong Ranges) with my 2 sisters. Most of my memories come from photos or things my sisters tell me. One thing I do know is mum sent us to the forest by ourselves at a very young age and we were not aloud to come back for hours... I think we had some fun, but my sisters told me if we came home to quick Mum would lock us out of the house. My sisters and I often say now after nearly 50 years that both mum and dad maybe would have chosen not to have kids if society didn't tell them to back then. We just often found ourselves just moving around them, they weren't bad or abusive, they just didn't play with us. Mum had a really bad childhood and looked after her 3 brothers from a very young age, Dad grew up as an only child and was helping his mum all the time. So I think that they were both done with family life before they had there own, I do think they tried to bring us up but they had no support from their own mums and dads.

I have reconnected with the natural environment and the air and energy is so nice, walking it my thing. It's just hard to focus on getting out a lot of the time as life gets in the way. I just wanted everything and everyone to stop so I can go for a walk in the hills but resposabliies and what society tells us is right and wrong get in the way.

Four months ago I asked my husband for a separation after 20 years. But I have been thinking about separating for about 9 years and have worked hard to be here for my kids and to see if our relationship would get any better. It's been a roller coaster 4 months waiting to talk to a couples therapist as my husband has issues with communication and we have found it hard to work out what we should be doing.

Tomorrow is our appointment and I am feeling sick, in this last 4 months my moods have been up and down every few hours, each day I am think what is the best thing to do, I have been trying for 9 years to tell him how I feel and it hasn't made anything better. He hasn't been communicating for a long time now and I found out over the last few weeks that he said he stopped talking because of me and my mood swings over the last 16 years, it start when I had postnatal depression with my second child. My family and friends don't think it's all my fault but it's hard to believe them when I know it must be hard to live with a person with such big and ugly mood swings. Some days I still love him and then others I don't think I can live with him in the same way. I feel I need to move forward and he is just happy the way things are. The appointment is only for one hour and I know (as I have seen 3 different people over 16 years) that we won't even get to talk about everything we need to in that hour and then it will be should we go back or do I want to go back. Shit it's going to be so hard to sit there and not get unto the he/she does/doesn't do that, as our history is hurting us now.

Hi @GreenTree I can relate a little. I've been married over 20 yrs and in many (practical) ways my husband is great. Does thoughtful and helpful things without being asked for example.

But the communication has been virtually none existent from day one.

I'm not easy to live with (bipolar and ptsd) but I try really, really hard for him and the family. Every bloody day

I'm having a particularly horrible time atm with flashbacks and a whole set of memories that have triggered a bad episode and he's just not there for me verbally or emotionally. Literally absent.

My psychologist says not to make any big decisions while I'm particularly unwell and I'm gritting my teeth and following her advice.

I feel v guilty for feeling so resentful and lonely because of the good things mentioned above.

But the reality is I'm starting to think I'd be less lonely if was actually alone and didn't have a partner to actually expect communication from.

Sorry, long post. But just trying to say I sympathise. I cried so hard I spewed after a horrible flashback yesterday. It was so frightening and opened a Pandora's box of memories I'm still reeling from.

He brought me water, tissues and a blanket and gave me a hug.....then disappeared off out side and did his gardening. After I said the one thing I wanted was not to be left alone.

When he came in, he asked how far back should he cut his roses, not "how are you"?

I know your session will be annoyingly brief but I hope you get something out of it.

I guess at least he's agreed to go. That may be a good sign.

I know you must feel very lonely. Good luck.

Hi @GreenTree ,

I used to live in the outer east suburb close to the Dandenong Ranges. Gosh you would have been so close!

Hope you weren't afftected badly by the power and telecommunication outage. I heard even Bayswater went off for a short while.

Your story sounds like Hansel and Gretel. I love kids and kids' stories. I tutor them arts and crafts.

Now that you have your own family, I hope you will be able to create the best family that you could ever imagine. Depression is anger turned inward. The issue with your parents would have been in the past. It would be good to focus on taking small steps too create the family that you would have wanted. If you focused too much on your parents, you might just repeat the same mistake like them.

Try new things everyday on how to strengthen the family bond, eg. family outings, picnic, meals together at home, have a heart to heart conversation as a family, etc.

Hope you feel better soon.

But my childhood is a bit different than yours. I grew up with parents living in different countries. While I was living in that suburbs, all the neighbours who were in the 60s were telling me how their parents never cared and they were just angry with it. Mine was never there, but because it happened when I was so young at an age of 8, that's all I ever known in this life. I have always enjoyed my freedom and didn't think much about it. I lived in a house of around 80 kids aged 7-18. We had friendship. None of the kids wanted to get close to the guardian, we ran away, hid ourselves or pretended to study whenever they were around. But we were safe there. The kids were well behaved because of strict rules. No one smoked, drank alcohol, had wild parties or on birth control. The male guardian smoked though. The guardian was a couple with 4 kids. We avoided them like plague.

Reflecting back, I grew up without much parental authority, it sets me up to a live of independence and self reliance from a very young age. No complaints, I always get to do what I want. I live my life based on my values.

Thinking of you today with the counselling appointment @GreenTree