Ask HN: How do I get my life back in order?
The first few months I cried every other day, I would scream my lungs out and cry in my car. It helped to cry, after which I could get on with the rest of my day. The crying eventually gave way to a need to rebuild my life. I took every opportunity to be social, exercise and do good work, all of which made me happier and my life was starting to look good again.
But in recent months, I have been losing motivation and the activities that used to give me joy no longer do anything for me. Nothing interests me anymore. I am no longer motivated to solve problems, make money or do anything really. I just work enough get a paycheck, binge watch TV and occasionally go out with friends. I have become unproductive, feel constant anxiety and regret.
My judgement has become cloudy and I have trouble making even everyday life decisions. I find myself making decisions that I in hindsight usually regret. Even with all the agonizing, overthinking, reasoning, coin tossing and deliberating, I find myself making wrong decisions. The regret and failure of that decision manifests as an anxiety attack. I am tired of feeling this way!
How do I get over decisions that I know I screwed up on? How can I think more clearly and make better decisions? How do I get my life back in order?
As others have suggested, talking with a qualified clinical therapist may be a reasonable way to coming to find a peaceful place for your friend's death and to live with your grief in healthier ways.
A qualified clinical therapist can bring understanding and insight to the grieving process. This doesn't mean that your loss isn't unique, just that people tend to encounter similar patterns when grieving and these patterns are normal and can be dealt with in healthy ways without ignoring the reality of personal loss.
My childhood best friend, Leonard, was struck and killed by a car Thanksgiving night, 1984. Writing that made me sad. The loss is still there after all those years. But I've found a place for it and it would be worse I think if I didn't still feel the loss. My friend Phil was in the Marine Corps when Leonard died. He'd known him longer than me. The Corps would not grant him leave for the funeral.
All these years later, sometimes when we talk, we talk about Leonard's death because it hasn't gone away. But mostly we talk about our families and friends and our work and the joy in our current lives. Because that doesn't go away either.
Good luck.
I wouldn't say that the Leonard shaped hole in my life has become smaller. It's more that my life expanded to places beyond the old neighborhood, into interesting work, alongside a spouse and then a child, and always some dogs, and the hole is a smaller part of my whole life on the day to day, without changing the degree to which the hole is part of who I am.
I don't think there's much else to say, really. Get well, and the rest will follow.
Strategy: There are very basic strategies for getting tasks done these days now more than ever, and they're all well documented, with people even outlining the potential pitfalls and benefits of the strategy. If your goal is to make friends, there is a strategy for that: Take up salsa classes, or a cookery course. If it's to make a million dollars, there are blueprints for that: Set up vending machines in every store you can find selling bubblegum.
State: State actually comes first before strategy and the idea is to get your mindset right before doing any task. Remember it's body first, and then the mind. The mind essentially runs off the body, so you want to nourish it. Eat healthy fats, avocados. Do Yoga. Make your gut biome more diverse with probiotics. Anything to make tasking seem more frictionless and effortless.
Story: Story is tied in with identity, and so much of our identity can be hacked. Your story doesn't have to be set in stone. Sometimes its useful to throw out your current narrative and replace it with an entire new one. Also: Nobody actually cares about your story. If you're telling yourself the same things over again and again in your head, you will start to believe it, so tell yourself what you want to hear.
Start with small steps. Over thinking and over reasoning is a way for your brain to avoid what you are actually feeling. This is normal because we are all inclined to avoid unpleasant feelings. Slowly try to get in touch with those feelings, even if they're painful. The more you try to avoid them, the more they will linger, and the more you try to suppress them, the deeper your depression. Getting in touch with those painful feelings are actually not as bad as you fear. It can actually be cathartic.
Along with all the suggestions to see a qualified therapist, I would recommend reading some of Pema Chodron's books. There's one in particular that may be relevant for your situation called 'When things fall apart'
I won't wish you good luck, because luck will not make things better for you. This will take some time and a little effort to work through. You have already taken the first step by reaching out. What you do next, and the skills and lessons you will learn through processing this experience will grow you as a person. Remember - one step at a time.
But seriously: my advice to you is to find a pastor/cleric you can trust and talk to him about your situation (many are in fact trained grief counselors). I too lost a good friend some years back, and my faith and my relationship to God were really what brought me through the time of mourning. Please at least consider it.
Consider going to school and studying something perhaps unrelated to engineering. You'll meet people and be given a perspective you won't pick up on the internet.
Go outside, start working out (walking, jogging, lifting, swimming, rowing). Do something in meatspace.
I saw a psychiatrist. I took medication. We talked. It helped. I stopped the medication 10 years ago. I am thankful I admitted I needed someone to help me. I wasn't qualified to help myself and I didn't see the "light at the end of the tunnel" without them.
You can't right any wrongs until you understand why you wrong'd in the first place. People will understand.
Good luck. If you need a helping hand getting started this community can help.
I'd recommend therapy and a trip to the doctor. If it makes it easier, call your physician and take this with you to explain. He or she might be able to recommend a psychiatrist or therapist for you as well.
If medication is recommended, I recommend taking it. It doesn't mean you'll be on it forever, but it will make it a whole hell of a lot easier to work through this to get to the non-medicated point.
Given time, you change and adapt. A great majority of dysfunctions put themselves right if you wait.
If you are patient with yourself you shall be fine. I repeat: be patient with yourself.
Here is my hypothesis or idea of why this sort of thing happens to us.
The brain is this complex organ and when it undergoes stress such as bereavement it shall put you in a certain state, such as low mood, because some part of it not under your conscious control has decided to do this. Seeing this as an error, could be an error. To put it another way, when you injure your leg, you cannot walk on it because of pain. Pain tells you not to hurt yourself more so. The same is true of mental troubles, only instead of pain, it is a lowering of mood. Perhaps this should be understood as a safety mechanism.
In most cases if you run on autopliot for a period of time, perhaps some months or years, you shall recover. In some cases you need to change your environment in some way, but your intuition should be the judge of that.
This is a reality millions of people live with (and millions more would love to have). You'll probably get used to it over time.
Close friends often know our trigger buttons better than we do. If he were here today-- what do you think he would say? What do you think he would do to help pick you up?
There's already several excellent suggestions here. Rigorous exercise is known to help alleviate depression. Honor his memory by making a decision today-- do get moving, start rebuilding.
If you feel related and want to chat a bit, let me know! I'd love to chat with someone about this.