I fear i have mastered retreating into fantasy and am wasting my life

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9 Comments

I've had a nagging worry the better part of my life (24 now) I've somehow developed the capacity to disassociate mentally, so I have a barrier between me and the anxiety I sense about me not being where Id like to be in certain areas. But by safeguarding against these feelings of negativity I've lost the drive to really adamantly work on them. To put it another way, I'm so lost in my imagination, that I don't care to work on my life, because I don't feel that it's even mine. Like it is just some shell of a life that nobody inhabits. And I really don't feel the level of joy in accomplishment or disappointment in failure I believe others have and I used to have as a child. I know this may sound like general apathy, but I'm convinced it's something more drastic. My thoughts are so different than those around me, I rarely ask what my plans are or what I'm doing, in high school I just wouldn't go. At jobs I will quit over the smallest things, same in friendships and romances. And very occasionally (like 3 times ever) I feel this sudden sense of inhabiting my body and an overwhelming guilt and like I lose this power I've developed of suppressing all my feelings.
I was maybe too hard on myself as a kid and this was a way to avoid a constant feeling of inferiority, but now fearful as I may be of facing the truth, I see being a zombie like this as a complete waste.

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55% Normal
Based on 11 votes (6 yes)
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Comments ( 9 )
  • rayb12
    6 years ago

    And I still have an irrational fear of homework and girls

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  • sonu95
    6 years ago

    I think it's a very good way of surprresing your negative emotions. U become more positive like this but don't get to much involved in it at the point of losing focus in your work.

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    • rayb12
      6 years ago

      Yes in this sense it is very effective. My issue that it separates me from enjoying the benefits of owning those emotions. So while the positivity is there, my experience is much more akin to watching a character be positive than embodying this (my) life :/

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  • rayb12
    6 years ago

    I have absolutely no idea my two thoughts are go back to school and put myself out there with girls in a highly vulnerable way. As failing at both of these seemed to be what preceded me originally shutting myself in 14.5 years ago

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  • rayb12
    6 years ago

    Traveling has helped a ton with my mood and confidence, as has some very affirming relationships I had when I was 18, but I don't know if I will ever feel like me again. My mind knows that it can run away from very unpalatable feelings, the cost is I don't get to feel like I'm actually this person, the good and the bad, but my mind doesn't seem to care about that, and will dwell in a fantasy land indefinitely

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  • rayb12
    6 years ago

    Day to day I don't have any broad goal, just fantasies about women, and some lofty philosophical or creative goals that don't really exist. I have a hard time loving myself and having the level of confidence I'd like to.

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  • rayb12
    6 years ago

    I'm a bit unsure what to do now as I've read Buddhist and Taoist literature that basically says the goal is to have detachment from your emotions. But I want just the opposite! I also have surrounded myself with a counter cultural understanding of the world, and not to be pretentious but believe I was thinking on a much more sophisticated level than the work I was given in school, however the one time I can point to when I felt better was when I completely conformed to the expectations of my parents and society

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  • rayb12
    6 years ago

    I also have had relationships I've worked at, eaten and slept better, cut out internet entirely, apologized to people, embraced my creativity and personal aspects of myself, and tried to focus on my passions and the people closest to me. This all has had 0 effect on the chronic alienation I live with. The one time I can point to where I felt a very slight but existent difference was when I was 17 I had dropped out of school at the time, and I began fixing my sleep cycle and doing some work to go back. And even that really was just a nice shift in my mood and confidence, I still had the wall up nice and strong

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  • bubsy
    6 years ago

    That dread you feel is the dread in knowing the day was wasted, that you didn't do anything difficult to improve yourself/create anything. Consider your hobbies: how many of them are centered around consuming things, like videogames or netflix?

    Make something. Work out. Read, learn a skill. Do something difficult that lets you sleep at night without regrets.

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