How would you deal with feeling betrayed by life?

Darling, I know how patronizing this sounds, because I was 27 once too, but… you are only 27!! Things sometimes seem bad and that’s very often because they actually are bad; don’t let anyone tried to tell you that you just have to buck and it’s all about attitude and all that, because life really does hand you some crap sometimes. But that being said, attitude can make a difference. There have been times in my life when I have lived on nothing but a few very small crumbs of hope. But you are way, way, way too young to give up on yourself and to give up on life.

I think you need to stop feeling like a victim.

I am sure you have much to be thankful for and the whine fest is not serving you.

You were born and here you are.

You can be a miserable wretch OR you can be happy.

Everybody feels betrayed by life at one time or another, I seriously doubt your ‘story’ is any more or less traumatic than the avarage “life done me wrong” soundtrack.

Do you listen to country music too? :-/

And what @coloma said.

@colomo Are we the good cop/bad cop? Or am I just the enabling, co-dependent cop?

Take control of your life instead of feeling like life is controlling you. For example, if you do not like your financial situation then get a second job. Or, go to school to get the job you want. Or, take an honest assessment of yourself from a relationship standpoint, identify and change what you do not like, and decide to not settle for less than you deserve. If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten!

@lillycoyote

Haha….I’m just tellin’ it like it is…us ‘mature’ types. lol

@Moegitto

I am not putting you down, only sharing a truth.
Yes, life hands us crap sometimes, and there is also a lot of fun, love, beauty that is yours for the taking.

Your suffering from YGGS ( Your Grass is Greener Syndrome). Every decent person has felt like that at one time or another. The secret is to really look at yourself and see what you are doing wrong. If people are walking all over you is because you let them. If people are getting ahead is because they either are excellent at what they do or they know how to manipulate. Take night classes, study harder, work harder.
If people seem to be in good relationships, and you don’t, maybe your putting people off with the whining.
Whinning will make you seem insecure and weak and a victim as already said.
Nothing you can do about other people, but plenty you can do to change your life, set new goals and find happiness in the little things. The big things will come. But if you don’t know how to find joy in the little things than the big things will never make you happy either.
Be happy in yourself and stop looking for external happiness. That will only happen once you learn that your are happy in who you are.

Here’s the thing. When I married my husband, we promised some things to each other. If he broke some of those promises, I would feel totally betrayed. But life is different. Life doesn’t make any promises. Life doesn’t promise that it will do right by me – life doesn’t even promise to stick around for the next five minutes. I could be hit by a falling asteroid and smashed to smithereens – but that’s not a betrayal because no promise was made to me about how long I would get to live.

So, what it sounds like to me is that you expected some things from life (and good things, too) but life didn’t step in to fill the promises you made to yourself, or which were perhaps social constructs (like “life is fair”). And as they teach in recovery programs, “Expectations are premeditated resentments.” It’s not life’s job to fill in the pieces of your puzzle – all it gives you are (hopefully) the opportunities to fill them in yourself. It gives you time, and not even a neatly planned amount of it. You never know when it will run out.

Something that may help is to look at and examine each of the things you expected from life, but where life has failed you. Where did you get the idea that you could expect these things and have them delivered? Was it something you learned growing up? Was it something you read in a book? And if you can get to the root of these things, figure out what you can do to move on if these expectations are not met. More precisely, learn not to expect things. It’s kind of a “go with the flow” thing. And then if they are met someday, you can be pleasantly surprised, because you weren’t expecting it. ;)

I always learned, from society and stuff, that I would grow up, get married and have kids. Well, I didn’t. I had lots of crushes ‘n stuff, but no one stuck around. I felt like I had gotten a raw deal. Time eventually came when I had to realize, maybe around 30, that I probably wasn’t going to ever get married, and so I started planning to make the best possible life in the light of this realization. I set up my own retirement accounts, I started to plan my own dream, to look at what would make me happy. And when I started trying to make myself happy, you know what happened? I actually met a guy who was attracted to the dream I started building for myself. We fell in love and I got married when I was 35. And because I’d long quit expecting it, I was totally blown away by how happy and unexpected it was. :)

So there’s still hope. You just have to figure out how to get where you want to go, despite not getting everything you want. Can you do it? Is it worth it? I think it was for me, but only you can answer for you.

No one cares (and I’m not trying to be mean here) “why you are depressed and angry all the time”. In truth, neither does a psychiatrist, as long as the appointment hour is filled on schedule… and paid for. Oh, he might enjoy it if you have a win or two while you’re in his office / on his couch / under his “care”. It might make him feel validated in some small way. But no one particularly cares about that, either.

The truth is that the only one who cares about how you feel—is you. (And maybe your mother, if you lucked out and got a good one who can care a bit without smothering you.) But even if people “care” how you feel, only you can do anything about it. There’s relatively little that anyone can do directly for you or to you to make you feel more than temporarily “okay” or “better” or “happy” or whatever it is you want to feel. You really have to do that for yourself. And it’s paradoxical, but you can’t have that as a goal, or it’s even more ephemeral and ultimately galling.

So you have to find your own wins. If I were you (and I have been) I would suggest that you cancel your future appointments with the good doctor and do something useful with your time other than contemplate your own navel.

Get outside yourself. Realize that 90% and more of the world is in far worse shape than you are: has bigger problems, can’t feed itself, can’t escape slavery, poverty, crippling illness or pain, and has real problems living from one day to the next, and trying to keep a family alive, too. And you feel angst. (I’m not saying that your feeling is invalid; I understand about feeling middle-class “bad”, and I know that to you it feels pretty awful. That’s real enough—for you.) If you do something to help one or more of those people get through a day, then you might actually start to feel good about yourself, because of… what? The comparison you’ll be making between how good your life really is, versus how awful theirs? By seeing that even though they have it so much worse in a material sense, they actually feel better? By making the world a better place, one hour at a time?

Who knows why? You’ll feel better, and that’s the main thing. Someone else will, too, and that’s a feeling not to be overlooked. If you end up being the kind of person who can take pleasure in brightening someone else’s day, your own life will be immeasurably better. It’s as close as I can come to a guarantee. And double your money back if you’re not satisfied.

Take a look at these pages and then reflect on how your life really isn’t that bad….your problems are minimal to non existent compared to most of he population of the world. Being compassionate in life and always knowing that somewhere in the world someone is either going through the same thing or worse than you are. I know at times it seems as if you are alone in your situation, but you are not…there are millions more with bigger problems.

Images #1

Images #2

Images #3

and if you look closely at some of those images any of our problems are dwarfed 1000 fold compared to theirs and by the looks of some I would say it is safe to say that they don’t think they were betrayed by life. believe me you don’t have it that bad at all

@earthduzt: been through all of that already, seriously too…

@CyanoticWasp: the military docs get paid regardless, that’s why I actually walked out of one of their meetings because the answer was to med me up and let me be.

@Coloma: regardless of how hard a person can try NOT to think of something, when you been through the stuff I been through, it’s not really complaining. More like a combining of different paths leading to one answer.

@laureth: not soo much betrayed at by life as in the way I “saw” life,treat people the way you want to be treated, do good and good will be done to you, etc…

I try to find positives in everything, I can even find the silver lining in getting hit by a car(time off work).

@Moegitto well the better for you then, if you have really been through that (extreme starvation, extreme poverty, disease, victim of war) and apparently you aren’t living like that anymore…well then I wouldn’t say you have been betrayed by life…I would say that you have rose above it and conquered it.

Try reading about karma. Because you don’t see “good” coming your way now doesn’t mean it is never coming. If you treat people how you want to be treated, you are already doing ‘good’ in the world and should feel proud of yourself. No matter how much I tell myself to behave the way you do, I find myself too selfish a person. I would love to have that peace of mind.

This is a kind of angst I think many of us have felt at some point in our lives. It feels awful, doesn’t it? As many have already said, the key to getting over it is to accept what is, and not dwell on what ‘should’ be. Lower your baseline… Do you have a roof overhead? Food to eat? Clothes to wear? Can you walk/breathe/see/feel? You’re ahead by a wide margin, compared to a great many people in the world. Make a decision, starting today: “This is my reality. Now… how do I make the most of it?” And then, go do it.

Your distorted cognitions and expectations are what shapes your negative views of your present life, and your future. Until you leave to take charge of your perceptions and cognitions, you will continue to experience misery and disappointment with your live. If you want to change the ways you maintain this miserable view of yourself and of “life”, contact me personally in the manner described in my profile. I wish you the best.

@Moegitto – There’s a reason that “golden rules” in a lot of the worlds’ religions are something like “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” It tells you how to act, rather than to expect. It’s not necessarily true that good things will happen to you if you do good to others. Likelier maybe, since what goes around comes around sometimes, but it’s by no means a guarantee. At some point, everyone has to learn that in life. What they do after that is the mark of what kind of person they are.

Life aint gonna change for you, you have to change for life. Like it or lump it plain and simple. Its all in the head…

@Moegitto

Re-wiring your brain takes time, but it IS possible.

Your brain has actually formed receptors and neuro-pathways that support your gloomy and negative outlook.

The more you cancel the negative thoughts and replace them with positives the sooner you will re-program.

This is a FACT!

We DO create our own reality and your entire being has been feeding your ego with negativity and doom & gloom prophecies.

You are what you think, as you are what you eat.

Feed too heavily on darkness and you will dwell in the dark.

Just STOP IT!

You can do it!

@faye: I’ll try looking into this “karma” thing. Heard about it on the simpsons once, might as we’ll give it a try…

What @lillycoyote said – plus don’t say poo poo – you’re 27.

You are only coming in last because you are entering races you can’t possibly win. Enter the ones that you can’t possibly lose if you never give up!