is there any answer to this?

[emokid1]

Today i am just feeling so depressed and like i dont want to be here anymore. But i dont want to go to hell.

But i cant stop the memories in my head. I cant eat or sleep. Things just dont get any better. I try and look like im happy but inside im crying.

Sorry for posting such a negative thing. Im trying to get some help.

Samantha

 

[joey_downunder]

Don't give up emokid1. Some days are better than others. Right now it is probably hard for you to imagine how any good can come of what you have gone through. In the future you will be able to understand why God permitted you to experience these things.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. (Psalm 51:17 )

In the fear of the LORD one has strong confidence,
and his children will have a refuge. (Proverbs 14:26)

Through all this you may be tempted towards anger and bitterness against God. Do not give into it, run to Him for comfort instead.

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

*I would not have been able to advise a missionary's wife about a very challenging area she was moving to (remote section of Western Australia) if I had not lived there for several years and lived next door to a very difficult aboriginal family.
*I would not have been able to support a struggling christian seeker if I had not had a very destructive relationship in my teens.
*I knew several sexual abuse survivors who were able to counsel other women extremely well because they truly understood their problems.

You will develop a compassionate and non-judgemental heart through all this.
You will not judge people by their appearance or "seeming to have it all together" as you know what can happen behind closed doors.

 

[emokid1]

Thanks for your reply. I dont think God really loves me. in my head i do, but not in my feelings.

 

[emokid1]

this is hell on earth maybe

 

[Colleen1]

Today i am just feeling so depressed and like i dont want to be here anymore. But i dont want to go to hell.

But i cant stop the memories in my head. I cant eat or sleep. Things just dont get any better. I try and look like im happy but inside im crying.

Sorry for posting such a negative thing. Im trying to get some help.

Samantha

Hi Samantha, I think getting support face to face is a good thing. It can be a good resource with people who truly understand. I think the more we take care of ourselves by making healthy choices and dealing with abuse in healthy ways, the more healing comes bit by bit. Hang in there. Take care you're valuable; God loves you.

 

[Red A.]

I wish I had an easy answer for you, but I don't.

For me the only answer was the hardest. I had to forgive.

Before I could forgive I had to pray for the willingness to forgive. I said many of those prayers with the bile of hatred in my throat. I had to make the decision to forgive over and over. It took time. I would rather have eaten a bug than forgive them but in time I did.

They no longer have a hold om me.


You will be in my prayers.

Red.

 

[emokid1]

Yes I do feel lots of anger and unforgiveness to people who have hurt me. Im not sure how i can forgive them truly cause i know i should but its seems almost impossible. I tried face to face help and no one seems to really understand how to help me and i dont know how to explain. i just dont know where to start.
Samantha

 

[Colleen1]

Hi, Samantha. I would start by asking myself what I feel. Then I would ask myself why. This would be the very first thing I would do to try and understand what's going on with myself and problems. You're welcome to pm if you feel more comfortable speaking that way or you can just think about it. No pressure. Take care.

 

[Red A.]

Just as love changes a person so does anger. When I carry anger with me it effects every relationship I have. It sets me apart from others that have no part of the origional situation.

I need to remember that holding on to a resentment is like holding a hot coal with the intention of throwing it at someone else. By the same token, forgiveness is a decision not a feeling. If I wait for the feeling the coal has already done all the damage it will.

I just read a very good article on resentments. It may give you an idea on how to proceed. I will post it below as I cannot post a link yet.

 

[Red A.]

Anatomy of Resentment I—Entangled in Passion

by Fr. Cosmas

You might consider me a leading authority on the topic of resentments. No, I’m not bragging. I’ve gained my knowledge the hard way—by struggling against them, sometimes with success and sometimes not. This battle represents a big part of my spiritual life.

I have the benefit, though, of living in a place where I have some sound guidance for the battle. Our brotherhood has received a nice formula for the ascetic battle against thoughts: Do not resent, do not react, keep inner stillness. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, as people say about other things, it’s simple but not easy. Most of us probably have to work pretty hard at it.

And in spite of the simplicity—or apparent simplicity—of the formula, the part about resentments presents more of a problem than you might suppose, because we all talk about them (often accusing other people of having them) but we don’t always have a clear idea of what we mean by the concept. I’m going to try here to sort out what resentment involves and a few developments that can take place once we have them.

One thing that helps us to understand the idea is to look at the origin of the words associated with it. The verb “to resent” and the noun “resentment” both came to us from the French. The verb entered our language first, it seems, in the thirteenth century, while the noun “resentment” wasn’t attested until the sixteenth. The verb is a compound, going back to Latin elements, “re-“ indicating “again” and “sentire,” meaning “to feel.” So the basic idea is that we feel something again which we already felt.

Another guide to understanding the concept is to see how the Ascetic Fathers talk about it. Many of the texts we read in English translate the relevant Greek expression rather literally as “remembrance of wrongs.” In other words, resentment has to do with a memory of something someone did to us to wrong us. In reality, though, we can see that the Fathers speak about our remembering incidents in which we think someone wronged us. So this tells us that “remembrance of wrongs” begins with our taking something personally, whether the other person intended to wrong us or not.

When we put all of this together, we get a good notion of what resentment is. It’s a memory of how someone wronged us or harmed us—or at least that’s how we interpreted it—accompanied by one or more afflictive emotions such as anger, shame, or the like. It seems to be something that sticks with us. We can’t easily get rid of it.
In that sense, resentment is an example of our failing at the battle against thoughts. In his texts on Watchfulness and Holiness, St. Hesychios the Priest summarizes the stages in the battle against thoughts:

(46.) The provocation comes first, then our coupling with it, or the mingling of our thoughts with those of the wicked demons. Third comes our assent to the provocation, with both sets of intermingling thoughts contriving how to commit the sin in practice. Fourth comes the concrete action—that is, the sin itself. (in Philokalia, vol. 1. Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. tr. from the Greek and edited by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1979. p. 170)

 

[joey_downunder]

You can pm me as well IF you want to.

 

[Red A.]

We can say that we fail in this battle because a resentment represents a state of mind—and emotion—in which we have reached what St. Hesychios describes as the third stage, where we assent to the provocation, with both sets of intermingling thoughts contriving how to commit the sin in practice. We remain ready to use the resentment as a basis for action. At the very least we use it to interpret what happens to us in further interactions with the person we resent.
Here things become more complex, because the resentment can serve as a foundation for at least four more developments. It’s probably no coincidence that the terms for these all begin with “self.” Here I will just recount what I know from my own experience and my own struggles.

What do I mean when I say I assent to a provocation that consists of a memory accompanied by anger or other hurt feelings? Well, in ordinary English it means that I have made a choice to regard myself as mistreated. I pick out the facts in the situation that support that interpretation. I construct a narrative that tells a story of the other person’s guilt and my own innocence. I replace the plain facts with a more convenient version. I begin to engage in self-deception.
From there I move to the second step, self-pity. That is, I feel sorry for myself. I may ask myself questions like “why did this happen to me?” or even “why do things like this always seem to happen to me?” Instead of simply accepting the fact that life has its ups and downs, I view myself as a victim. I can express this in a variety of ways. Maybe I complain to others, for example, or maybe I just go around in a bad mood.

In the third development I come to believe that I have been a victim of unusually bad treatment, so that my rights have been ignored in a way that has not happened to other people. Therefore, I plunge straight into self-righteousness. In simple terms—I believe that I am right and the other person is wrong.

The fourth development leads me more fully toward what St. Hesychios calls the concrete action, or the sin itself. This development is self-justification. Once I convince myself that the other person has trampled on my rights—and not merely a single time, because by now I have started using the original occasion as an interpretive key to all further encounters with that person—I can then regard wrongdoing on my own part as simple justice. It is a convenient piece of rationalization, after all, to think that wrongdoing in response to previous wrongdoing just amounts to “evening the score.” It is the childish sort of reasoning that says, “But he hit me first.”

Once a resentment has become an unquestioned support for self-deception, self-pity, self-righteousness, and self-justification, it can be very hard to see that it originated in a choice. The first stage in getting tangled up in thoughts and emotions happened because of something someone else did. But the second stage, which St. Hesychios calls “coupling,” cannot occur at all unless I let it happen. The other person may or may not have intended the “affront” as something personal. The process toward resentment begins only if I take it personally. In fact, if the other person insults me or wrongs me intentionally and I brush it off, I never start walking down the path that brings me to resentment, let alone self-deception, self-pity, self-righteousness, and self-justification.

 

[Red A.]

Anatomy of Resentment II—Breaking Free of Entanglement

by Fr. Cosmas

We have some wonderful advice in the formula “Do not resent, do not react, keep inner stillness.” It works great if I stop myself in time. But what if I find myself already trapped in resentment? What then? Well, I will share with you what I know. As an old man of my acquaintance often puts it, what I have to say is based on my present understanding.

I’ve found it easier to get into trouble than to get back out. Since resentment tends to be a habit of thought and feeling for me, though, I jump right into it without stopping to think. Before I realize it, I’ve become horribly entangled. I quickly take things personally, attribute bad motives to people when I think they have wronged me, and rationalize my narrative with self-deception, self-pity, self-righteousness, and self-justification. I know how to do those things. In contrast, spiritual warfare has come into my life comparatively recently. I cannot expect the accomplishments a more experienced spiritual warrior would have. I don’t do very well at catching the tantalizing tendency toward thinking that “it’s all about me” the moment it appears. Not yet, anyway. I may get there. But right now I have my work cut out for me as I dismantle something I have already built. I need to be patient with myself as I move ahead.

One element of our brotherhood’s spiritual heritage is the observation that we enjoy more success in the spiritual life by remembering what we ought to be doing than by feeling guilty for our mistakes. I believe that and try to carry it out while I continue to undo my old unwholesome habits from the past.

A good first step in the process is to forgive the person I resent. In fact, one way to understand forgiveness is to consider it as a decision to let go of a resentment. You’ll notice that I call it a decision. To bring forgiveness all the way through to completion involves letting go of disturbing emotions such as anger and the thought processes that accompany them such as judgment. That takes time. But we have to start somewhere, and that starting point is the decision. As resentment begins with a choice to take things personally, similarly forgiveness begins with a choice to let go. This doesn’t mean that the feelings will disappear immediately. I have sometimes seen them linger on for years. But every time they came back, I reminded myself that I had made a decision to let go. In other words, I make the decision to let go and I reaffirm it as many times as it takes. I don’t expect this type of spiritual warfare to resemble a blitzkrieg. I prepare for a siege. Here patience and commitment count for everything.

I don’t suppose I will immediately stop thinking someone wronged me. And of course in some cases someone really did do me wrong. But that doesn’t really matter, because forgiveness does not consist in coming to consider the other person innocent. It consists in ceasing to stew over the matter. Even when someone did wrong me badly, I can still make a decision to stop dwelling on it. That step alone will release me from the fixation on details that lead to self-deception, such as picking out the facts in the situation that emphasize my innocence. Where self-deception has become part of the edifice I have built, I can begin to dynamite its foundations simply by sticking to my decision not to run through the story over and over.
As I consistently refuse to replay what is over and done with, I let go of what supports self-pity. Instead of looking at myself as a victim, I return to a calmer and more normal outlook. I accept life’s ups and downs. If something happens that I don’t like, it has no particular significance. Life happens. No big deal. There is actually a practical step I can take at this point, which is to stop talking to other people about how badly I think I have been treated, because one of the ways I support my view of being a victim is to retell the story so that I persuade other people to endorse my view of things. The decision to forgive, then, requires that I stop gossiping about the person I have forgiven. I can win my first battle against thoughts by gaining victory over my mouth.

 

[Red A.]

To combat self-righteousness, I don’t necessarily need to believe that the other person is right and I am wrong. What works more effectively is to let go of worrying about who is right and who is wrong. Does it matter? Really? Instead of putting my attention on who is winning, I can just remove myself from the game.

If I can keep tearing down my self-deception, self-pity, and self-righteousness, I probably won’t have much work left in battling against self-justification. When I get rid of those things, after all, out goes everything I use to prove I’m right. When thoughts occur to me that I can get back at someone, they will not belong to a whole package of me against them thinking, and they will stand out as being as strange as they really are.

In a full and balanced spiritual life, more happens than just the battle against resentments and everything built up on top of them. As I unlearn old and destructive habits I also form new and healthy habits. One place where we can see the connection between removing bad habits and acquiring good ones is in the prayer of St. Isaac that we say all through Great Lent. I’m thinking of the wonderful line where we ask God to help us see our own sins and not to judge our brother. The second part of that line concerns the spiritual battle against resentments. The first part of the line teaches me to pay more attention to my own sins. As I gain a clearer view of my own shortcomings, that new outlook makes the occasions when I judge my brother stick out like a sore thumb. Then I can’t escape noticing when I am trying to persuade myself of my supposed innocence, feeling sorry for myself, and plunging into self-righteousness and self-justification. In other words, the constructive effort to live the way God wants me to live places resentment and all its rationalizations in their true light.

The strategy in the war against resentment, then, has several elements to it. These can occur in whatever order I’m able to carry them out. But they include things like these. I undo the damage I have created by insisting that I’m right. I stop acting on those ideas. I look at my own sins instead of judging others. I remind myself of how I should act toward people. Last of all, so slowly that it seems to take forever, I begin to loosen my death grip on emotions like anger and fear—the feelings that accompany the memory of being wronged. When I manage to do these things, it brings me a new sense of happiness and peace. It becomes easier and easier to do what I ought to be doing instead of feeling guilty for my mistakes. As I put this plan into action instead of just agreeing with it in theory, it becomes more and more appealing and I start to enjoy the rewards.

 

[emokid1]

wow thanks Red. i read all that but not sure im understanding it properly. but the end of it sounds good. i just have trouble processing stuff sometimes and not a long concentration i guess

 

[joey_downunder]

Take the process of working through what has happened to you one step at a time. There is no rush.

Sometimes you may think you have dealt with one issue and it comes back again. God only lets memories or feelings through when He knows we are ready to do that.

When you are struggling turn to God for His strength.

 

[Red A.]

It is a long read for sure. As you engage the process of forgiveness it will become more clear. Like Joey said, this will take time.

One thing that wasn't really covered above is the hurtful thoughts that cloud our mind. Our instinct is to fight them, but fighting them just makes them dig in their heels and stay. When they come just brush them aside and work to replace them with something else. This is impossible without Gods help. Prayer is often helpful. To ask God to have mercy on those we are angered toward works.

Remember that what you do here has ramifications far beyond just the immediate people involved.

This also involves your relationship with God.

Remember the first word said by Christ recorded in the bible? It is repent. Now in the original Greek the word for repent means to turn around or to turn away. Every step we take to turn away from anger is a step toward God. As we refuse to allow thoughts of victimhood to occupy our mind, we turn towards God.

Remember that we do not travel this alone. Christ was beaten, humiliated and betrayed as he traveled toward the cross, and we are commanded to carry ourselves as he did. This is our opportunity to participate in life as Christ did in a way most people will never know.

However much you pray, pray more it has been the best tool I have had in my journey on this road.

You are in my prayers.

 

[Colleen1]

I've had to heal from various things and there is more to healing than forgiving. There are a lot of feelings and a lot of thinking one has to process and resolve. It will take time to do this and good support. We also need to be careful not to take on unnecessary shame that we shouldn't be bearing. One passage I find helpful and that reflects God's desire for us as people is Ephesians 3:16-19:
16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

 

[Criada]

I'm sorry you're struggling, Samantha.
Healing is a journey - it takes time, and you need supporty along the way.
Do you have a pastor or a counselor you can talk to? If not, it might be worth visiting your doctor and asking them to refer you to someone you can talk things out with.

Praying for you, sister.

 

[Merlin]

Today i am just feeling so depressed and like i dont want to be here anymore. But i dont want to go to hell.

you can only go to hell by rejecting Jesus

But i cant stop the memories in my head. I cant eat or sleep. Things just dont get any better. I try and look like im happy but inside im crying.

Sorry for posting such a negative thing. Im trying to get some help.

Samantha

Do you truly wish help or only to discuss the situation online?
Lovingly,