Dealing with never having lived

[habraha]

I'm 31 now. I have dealt with depression and social anxiety since I was 10. I have never received help from therapists or other supposed health professionals (in fact they all made my depression worse). Recently though, I have had a number of realizations and don't feel like there is anything personally wrong with me. I've seen a hypnotherapist who has very been helpful, and I have taken plant medicine. Both made me realize that I'm okay and enough.

However, I have lived most of my life without truly living. I can say that I hated my life for the last 20 years. Now, that I can move forward, I realize that I'm just angry because those years were not good at all. I don't see how I can live the rest of my life out without having had good experiences in my teen years + 20s.

I pretty much have to start my whole life over. I just don't see how this is possible or how someone can live without having lived for a huge chunk of their life.

Part of me doesn't want to work toward making a better life because it's like I'm building my life on a pile of crap. Nothing will ever change the fact that there's this huge period of time that I can never get back.

How do you move forward when you feel chained to this idea that you never lived/don't have experiences?

 

[meetapple]

I am 49 and I definitely didn't live my youth fully. You are still quite young and your mental health seems to be good in its current state. Forget about your youth. You can't do anything about it anyway. The sooner you put it past you the better off you will be. In my case my symptoms were such that I couldn't live my life fully even after my youth. I still think about my youth but would have been happy if I could lived my life from 30 on well.

 

[habraha]

I am 49 and I definitely didn't live my youth fully. You are still quite young and your mental health seems to be good in its current state. Forget about your youth. You can't do anything about it anyway. The sooner you put it past you the better off you will be. In my case my symptoms were such that I couldn't live my life fully even after my youth. I still think about my youth but would have been happy if I could lived my life from 30 on well.

Thanks for your perspective!

 

[Noob]

I hear you, i am near that age too. And the last 15 years I didn't do much but playng games and watching videos. I didn't hate it all the time, because getting out there and experience stuff is a lot of work too. And i had selfsteam problems, depression and just some general laziness who made me self imprison myself. I still fight these emotions to this day... When i get over some bad stuff, there's always some new problem to bring me down. Living is so hard.

We probably still have time to get out there and have more impactful experiences, but we get to sort ourselves first and try to take some steps to it. Before more 5, 10 or even 20 years pass....

 

[Pluto]

I'm nearing 41 and in the same position and I can agree with @meetapple above. It is possible to let go of the past and turn a new page at your age. But from late 30s, trying to start off making a life while also dealing with the symptoms of ageing becomes an utterly unworkable - not to mention insanely painful - proposition.

 

[motel rooms]

How do you move forward when you feel chained to this idea that you never lived/don't have experiences?

Keep reminding yourself of this:

Recently though, I have had a number of realizations and don't feel like there is anything personally wrong with me. I've seen a hypnotherapist who has very been helpful, and I have taken plant medicine. Both made me realize that I'm okay and enough.

It also wouldn't hurt you to remember that 31 is hardly old age & that many people will never get a second chance at life.

 

[chocolatebar]

I'm 31 now. I have dealt with depression and social anxiety since I was 10. I have never received help from therapists or other supposed health professionals (in fact they all made my depression worse). Recently though, I have had a number of realizations and don't feel like there is anything personally wrong with me. I've seen a hypnotherapist who has very been helpful, and I have taken plant medicine. Both made me realize that I'm okay and enough.

However, I have lived most of my life without truly living. I can say that I hated my life for the last 20 years. Now, that I can move forward, I realize that I'm just angry because those years were not good at all. I don't see how I can live the rest of my life out without having had good experiences in my teen years + 20s.

I pretty much have to start my whole life over. I just don't see how this is possible or how someone can live without having lived for a huge chunk of their life.

Part of me doesn't want to work toward making a better life because it's like I'm building my life on a pile of crap. Nothing will ever change the fact that there's this huge period of time that I can never get back.

How do you move forward when you feel chained to this idea that you never lived/don't have experiences?

I feel you. Everything you wrote applies to me. I'm desperately trying to ignore my (absence of a) past and live something, but it's not the same as doing the things while truly young and I'm still empty...
Everyone will say that we're relatively young, but everything around us will remind ourselves that we're not young anymore

It hurts

trying to start off making a life while also dealing with the symptoms of ageing becomes an utterly unworkable - not to mention insanely painful - proposition.

I can feel the pain just from reading about it...

 

[medjooled11]

There's only one solution.

Forget the past, and start living!

 

[Grey-zoner]

I'm facing the same dilemma and am also 31. Very little consistent work experience, and have been miserable since a teenager. Living with parents.

"I don't see how I can live the rest of my life out without having had good experiences in my teen years + 20s."
I wonder the same. As other posters responded though, it's not a bad age to remake your life. In principle, I know this, but it's hard to know where to start--it's supposed to be, I guess. Just start making decisions, and different ones from the past.

 

[Sherri]

Your only 31, you can still achieve so much if you find the strength in you, try baby steps towards a new life now that depression is gone. Motivate yourself it's the best advice I can give you, don't look back one day when you much older and regret not taking life in your hands when you had the chance, I know 50 plus people making career changes. Good luck.

 

[Julgran]

Go forwards and try not to regret things that you had no control over earlier in life.

We will all be here, supporting you on your journey

 

[goomsoom]

Kind of in the same boat lost a lot years and nothing was working for me. Still it's hard but as you get busy with life, time flies, after a point your past do not matters. Sometimes you may feel lonely and depressed but that's I guess is life.

 

[Centende]

Yeah sounds real familiar I am sorry there is someone else going through it really sucks

 

[moths]

i feel you. i've missed out on so much. i feel like i'm dead already sometimes, because i'm certainly not living. it feels like it's too late for me to figure out how to truly live, because i've been this way for so long. i have no idea how to move on and build a new life, and i'm not sure i'll ever figure it out. it's good to know i'm not alone though.

 

[goomsoom]

If only we could express ourselves freely in our society and meet people like in this forum,thread things will become easy. I feel not being able to find someone who can understand us makes it very difficult to move on.

 

[AllMyDreams]

I feel like I'm starting over later in life too. It helps to tell myself that yeah, I missed out on a bunch of things, but everyone's missed out on a bunch of things they could have had, because everyone has only one possible life. So you're not any worse in that sense than anyone else. Also I try to view my bad or 'nothing' experiences as no better or worse than anyone else's 'good' experiences. I tell myself: my experience is unique and contributing to the full experience of humanity. No one else will have it exactly like me and that's special.

And, sometimes I say that even though I started 'life' late, that just gives me the chance to be more of an inspirational story to others later on.

 

[dead2thisworld]

My mother sexually abused me when I was 5 or 6 and I completely buried/repressed all memories of the incident. Her boundaries were very porous to say the least. One day I came home from high school early and overheard her discussing my journal entries with her friend over the phone. I loaded my .22 carbine and came very close to shooting her though she didn't have any inkling of my intentions.

I struggled With alcoholism, drug addiction, marijuana addiction, suicidal ideation, and extreme self harm with razor blades and knives for years. Finally, around age 28, I became sober and all the suppressed memories came flooding back. The problem is I lost my formative years to all manner of addiction, promiscuity and avoidance tactics. While my peers were getting established in career tracks and marriages I was busy passively destroying myself and trying not to suicide.

Now aged 59, am basically a teenager in an adult body. Sexual abuse wreaks tremendous havoc on one's self-esteem, vocational situation, mood, and sense of safety and well-being in the world. My mother died of cancer prior to my epiphany about her treatment of me. Thus all my therapy had to be done via role-playing etc. I'm now single and childless with no solid footing in the world of work or career.

It's said the unexamined life is not worth living. Well the converse is also true. The unlived life is not worth examining. There you have it!!!

 

[yellowjasmine88]

I spent most of my life depressed or extremely anxious. A type of anxiety that ruined everything, social life and my body. Had bad family environment with parents always fighting, then I never finished any school, didn't make many good friends later and then it all broke apart for me in a type of madness at age 26 where I did some drugs and finally decided I couldn't do it anymore. I decided to ctb. Have been attempting it on/off ever since. I'm 30 now.

 

[TooConscious]

I've just turned 30 and it's quite the game charger, I'm getting flashbacks of laughing whe I was 18 with a suicidal friend about the idea of being alive even past 25, even 20 I lived each year as if it would be the last sometimes I had hope of trying to hang on but never had long term prospects. I really struggle with resentment.
And now I'm 30 it's like a half way point for most people's lives and my health is bad and unless spirituality is true and you can truly heal disease yourself then I'm fucked.

I do believe we somewhat manifest our reality but whether there is a cruel shadow self making my existence pure hell, or I am just split into a war like consciousness.
I'm just so tired, nothing would shock me. Humans really hurt me, badly, society is sick but unless other people say suffering is wrong nothing will change.
Sadistic Hypocrites all around.

 

[RareSoul]

Habraha, the realisations you came to are optimistic. There is no need to see your "dead" past as an obstacle to future living. You can think about it in terms of rebirth. You were dead, but you can be alive. There is a film "Oldboy", in which the character escapes from an extremely long captivity and he doesn't dwell on how many years he's lost, but insted he becomes a man of action. I hope that you will find the strenght to become such a person. I hope that I will find it, as I identify with a lot of what you've written about.

 

[cooldude420]

me had to rebuild afte 30, it very hard. but me did it. u can too.

 

[Undroto]

That hard wake up of lost time can be a hurdle in itself. I've wasted too much time mourning what was or never was. I think also I was being a little too precious in thinking my specific pains were "extra" unjust or unbearable. Now that I've endured a few worst-case scenarios, I see the world didn't end (completely), I did survive - though it wasn't pretty. I'm still figuring it out (actually, that's debatable) - I'm still working on figuring it out, I think. Everyone of us was a complete beginner at everything once or twice.

The world we live in makes it easy to think we can know everything. My depression convinces me there's no hope. I do know though that I don't know everything.

 

[JoeFailure]

Habraha, the realisations you came to are optimistic. There is no need to see your "dead" past as an obstacle to future living. You can think about it in terms of rebirth. You were dead, but you can be alive. There is a film "Oldboy", in which the character escapes from an extremely long captivity and he doesn't dwell on how many years he's lost, but insted he becomes a man of action. I hope that you will find the strenght to become such a person. I hope that I will find it, as I identify with a lot of what you've written about.

But dude that guy in the movie ends up...well you know

 

[Julgran]

Life is like a box of chocolates - your never know what you're gonna get

If you have the strength, keep going and see where it takes you. You can always return here if you decide otherwise.