What are you supposed to do if your "negative" thoughts are accurate?

Well, I am sorry. It sounds like you've had a difficult and painful life and your current situation is not offering you what you need. I can only speak from my experience that there are few situations in this world that categorically leave one with no recourse at all. Also, in my experience, when I have gone into the emotion without any agenda than to simply be with it and explore it, it becomes less unenjoyable, and more edifying. It lights the path to constructive actions, however small. the process I go through is to 1) identify the emotion ("I'm feeling sad/angry/afraid..."), and 2) identify the internal reality that causes me to feel this way ("I'm afraid I will be rejected by my birth mother when I reach out to her" etc.).

When the emotion is met and sat with, it dissipates. Half the time, you don't necessarily even need to do anything else than to sit with it in a compassionate way. That is all that needed to be done. At other times, the emotion is calling to be expressed through words or actions. Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics said something to the extent of: "Any idiot can get angry. But getting angry at the right person, for the right reason, in the right amount, to achieve the right result, that takes wisdom." You will never escape unpleasant feelings like sadness, anger, or fear, because these are part of the natural guidance system of a human being. Even if you arrive as a great place among great people, mortality, aging, and loss are always hovering above us. But learning to use those emotions as a source of knowledge and guidance is what humane life has always entailed in the end.

I see frustration with the replies you're getting here. But you're smart enough to know your grievances aren't with the faceless strangers just trying to help you on Reddit, but with people and situations much closer to home. Anger is asking for resolution (with the right person, for the right reason, to the right degree, to the right ends). If you can't foresee any way the cause of your anger can be resolved, why is that? Do you lack assertiveness? Are the people involved just not amenable to seeing your side of the issue or not available? If no resolution can be sought (such sometimes happens; life is not ideal), is it possible to simply live in acknowledgement of the facts of the matter and move on to some other issues at hand?

If you need help with this, I recommend a social worker, as opposed to a therapist. Social workers have seen people in the most difficult of situations (drug addiction, homelessness, agoraphobia, etc.) and are trained to work them through it. Anyway, I hope you arrive at a better place in life. I don't know you. You may be an outright awful asshole, for all I know. But I hope you won't end your life because I have been suicidal at points in my life, and have now reached a point where I would never even consider it. I wish that for you and everyone who sees no hope of happiness.

/r/TalkTherapy Thread Parent