How do you cope with the psychological effects of this?

[maxim117]

Man, this thing has been fucking full on. I’m not really talking about the changes to brain function like derealisation et al., but more the changes in outlook this thing has caused. Even if I woke up tomorrow with the exact same body with the one I had before all this, I’d still feel fucking defeated and broken. If I’m being honest even coming here feels sort of humiliating, even though it’s really the only place I can go where people can understand.

I just feel like a cripple, not just physically but mentally. I used to be so strong but now I feel so weak and despondent all the time. I saw someone else here say it’s like coming home from war and honestly it feels like that in a sense. I feel like I’ve gone through so much trauma and awful shit that there’s just no way to go back to my old self even if I wanted to.

I’m just so angry and helpless all the time. I curse God or Merck or whoever else I can blame for this every single day. I hate them for doing this to me. I feel like my old life has been denied to me and now I have to pick up the pieces of this stupid, broken self.

How is this fair? How can shit like this happen? I sometimes think “well people die in car crashes all the time so at least that didn’t happen to you” but in some sense I feel like I’d have preferred that since at least I wouldn’t have to suffer through this mind-fuck of an experience.

I just want to forget this ever happened every single day. I’ve already been through hell before this so I thought I was going to get some respite but no, apparently I have to suffer even more. I don’t know who the fuck I am any more. I don’t know what I want. I just don’t care about things like I used to. Even the stuff I used to love, like sex, movies, going out with friends, etc. This experience has made me bitter and sour and hateful when before I used to be so full of life.

Fuck all this. No one, no one at all, not even serial killers should go through this. I’ve been pushed to limits that go beyond the suffering most people can think about and now I’m left feeling shattered. The universe feels cruel and stupid when I used to find so much joy and pleasure out of it.

Anyway, rant over. Maybe this is a heavy topic but I need to get this out or else I’ll go crazy. Just fuck it all. Fuck it, seriously.

[TFD]

I’d love to say that I have brilliant, complex coping mechanisms, but I don’t.

I just clinge my teeth and live another day.

What keeps me going is that I have hope, and things to try.

But yes, I feel like I don’t even know who I am anymore. It’s fucked up. It’s like I’m a bunch of thoughts and behaviors with no identity behind to orchestrate that.

It’s awful.

I’m living the kind of life that puts people’s problems in perspective and makes them think “Gosh, I’m glad it didn’t happen to me”.

[LazarusRy]

@maxim117 well said! It’s like were dead but being kept alive, paralysed and unable to do anything to change our situation. Nothing brings a break or relief from the emotional crippling torture. Acting and pretending to protect people from our pain and to also exist in some sort of fucked up way is the best we can do. When I’m around people and experience their company “my son and the few I want to be with” I reflect and know I would have once felt joy, happiness, love and fulfillment. Yet all I feel is emptyness, despair and alone and always worry that I may have behaved or said something out of turn because of how abnormal this feels. It’s absolutely criminal what were being subjected too while the perpetrators profit from this. I think there would have been outrage if Harold Shipman received a bonus for his acts and I actually believe what Merck has done is worse and on a much larger scale. Dying inside around the clock wtf. I pray that God will help and come to our rescue. That’s my hope it really is I pray for it everyday. In the meantime we just have to keep going, mimicking those emotions and one day they might switch back on… If this takes me out “not suicide” at least I know I gave it my all.

[orthogs]

You ask, ‘why me?’ Well, why not you? The universe is inherently indifferent. You just got to focus on what you can do to make your very short time on earth more meaningful. As long as you can move and do things you can make things better for yourself and others.