Has anyone experienced continuous random negative life events beyond their control?

I had a period of around five years during which
I lost three grandparents and an uncle in quick succession
Had a baby
Suffered severe blood loss and had a long period of recovery from birth injuries
Separated from my partner for a period of time
Suffered PTSD
Suffered verbal and physical attacks from in-laws (now no contact) including untrue allegations to police and SS (all proven to be lies)
Supported DM following DF affair
Had a car accident
Supported DS through an extreme year of mental illness

Honestly I look back and wonder how I survived because I dont think I could again.

However some people have suffered much worse and some not so much. Everyone is different as are their coping mechanisms

You have been lucky compared to me, but there are also people who’ve had it worse than me too.

It is not a competition.

So good on you for realising you need a bit of self care in the mental health department.

This. I think when struggling with depression there can be a tendency to think: bad things always happen to me. When those things are examined, either they are well within the norm of bad luck most people have, or they have actually happened to others close to us and we register the events with such stress they feel personal.
I could make a list of bad things that have happened to me over the past 15 years that would make life sound horrific. Or a list of good things that reads like a charmed life.
Both are true.

Hmm now let me see...

• Childhood spent with a violent abusive alcoholic father and overbearing yet emotionally distant mother
• The death of all four of my grandparents before I was 12 (3 natural causes at a fairly young age, 1 suicide)
• Said father managing to slowly kill himself with drink when I was 13
• Lifelong bullying due to undiagnosed ASD (diagnosed at 35)
• A relationship with a man who abused me physically, emotionally, sexually, and financially, forcing me to lose my home and have to rebuild my life with family and friends who'd cut me off
• A serious car accident that left me with permanent facial scars
• My mum being diagnosed with breast cancer (she's fine now)
• A hysterectomy aged 39 due to severe endometriosis which means I'll never have children and am now in early menopause

HOWEVER

Although there are times where I may have a little melt down about how life isn't fair, I've made it my mission in life to prove everyone wrong and to not let the past impact me so much. I've got a lovely home, successful job, education, great friends and family, I have hobbies, I travel, etc. It would have been so easy for me to give up on living my life, or end up in prison, drug addicted, etc. and many people would have explained away as to why. I know the things that happened to me weren't my fault, and maybe one day I'll be repaid even more with good things (but don't tell me 'everything happens for a reason!' or for once I may bite!)

Wow felt good to get that off my chest

Yes, definitely.
I've had a lot of really horrible things happen, including a series of awful events that were so unlucky it's almost unbelievable. I've also been hit with multiple health issues and disability.

I've never been able to work out how to "move on" or "get over it" and I really wish I could. I feel scarred and weakened by it all and I absolutely don't believe in "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". I feel it more acutely as I get older too.

I don't agree that everyone experiences this. Yes, everyone has misfortunes and bad experiences, but not everyone has really bad ones like being violently raped, their child being murdered, or becoming severely disabled (for example). And not everyone has these awful things happen to them again and again.

I sound like a right miserable moaner, but I'm really not! I always count my blessings and look for positives, and I'm grateful for what I have. I don't go round complaining or looking sad, and I'm day to day life I'm cheerful. But I do feel that these events have taken something from me and sapped my energy and strength, reducing my quality of life.

Having had a few myself in the past I find it’s left me with daily anxiety when, as I stand today have no reason to, it’s all in the past. All those bad things haven’t been anything Ive done but other peoples actions or decisions or whatever, but I’ve had to cope and live with, things that you just wake up on a normal day and then boom! Your life is instantly changed through no fault of my own, and leaves me feeling powerless and not in control, I now live every day (subconsciously mostly) wondering/worrying/anxious when I shouldn’t and have inner strength resilience that I’ve had to have to get on with in every day life. So I find it all cope able when life is “normal, happy, good” but I find that the slightest thing (nothing on the scale of the past) and it throws me right off and can sometimes take months to get over and move on from and just pushes my anxiety back to square one. It’s so frustrating. Things that other people take in their stride and it’s no biggie.

Yes, that's the classic book that came into my mind too.
Also for @Chocaholick I wonder if this book could make some sense of your health troubles which might not be as random as they seem.

Yes surely thats life

I wouldn't really describe a four-year long protracted legal fight to prove your innocence an 'event'. That sounds like an excruciating endurance test of your mental strength and resilience. You must have felt constantly under attack. No wonder it's taken such a toll on you.

No advice as I have none myself haha, but I get what you mean. I had an absolutely charmed life until I was 24, and since then (I'm now 35) it's been one thing after another, after another. Break ups, my parents breaking up, various difficult situations.

I am quite literally the simplest person ever, easy to please. I just want a warm, tidy home, food in my belly, and someone to spend life with. Me and DP life a great life within the confines of our home - but there's so much crap coming at us from outside. We don't deserve it!

Have you read the book 'The Body Keeps the Score' it's very informative about how trauma remains in the body and impacts then throughout your life. Given the SA you mentioned, EMDR therapy may be really helpful for you.

I mean, yes? For the last seven years, I’ve experienced about 3+ of the events @Bunnyofhope listed per year - add in hospitalizations and surgery.

Resilience is endless because it doesn’t really exist. It’s a man-made concept. You can have tons of it or none of it; it’s not dependent on how many of these events happen to you. With that said, your sympathetic nervous system is NOT endless, and it is 100% the determinant of how you feel about these things happening. Most humans will experience their sympathetic nervous system kicking in when these things happen, but I happen to know a sociopath who doesn’t feel flight or fight during stressful events, and as a general result, is extremely physically healthy (imagine if you never experienced stress over basic tragic events - but this type of processing was caused by childhood trauma, so their emotional health is meh).

Anyway, I’ve attached a bit about the sympathetic nervous system and what happens to our bodies when we feel under constant stress or threat. I’m so sorry if that’s been the last few years for you, @jjourneys

Yes. Like you I won’t go in to details but health and job and family related issues for us and people close to us, that are out of our control and horrid. Life-changing and in some cases life-limiting. I’m in therapy at the moment which is helping but I feel like I’m between the wheels of a grain mill, just being crushed under it all.

I know loaaaads of people who haven't experienced this. I guess the caveat there is that they possibly just havent experienced it "yet". But I'm talking about people in their 50s so not spring chickens

Yes, me.

Hideous traumatic childhood with addict parents… all that stuff.

As an adult, one misfortune after another, things just kept happening to me. Culminating in a few years where I was struck down by a very rare lifelong illness (my odds were something like 1 in 5,000) to add to my existing very rare (1 in 1000) birth defect. I then got pregnant and suffered a further rare (1 in 100) pregnancy illness, and an erroneous test result resulting in massive worry for months and an unnecessary amniocentesis (the odds of the original test being wrong were less than 1 in 300, but I was that 1). Post pregnancy I then had a worrying growth which completely baffled medics and led to a further stressful period of waiting for a biopsy and pathology where it turned out to be a very rare but benign tumour (1% of all biopsies in this area come back as the same type I had). Which of course I was grateful for but it was yet another ‘testing experience’ full of worry.

All of the above conditions were totally random and unconnected. You do have to wonder why some people just seem to have ‘luck’ like this but it never extends to anything good, like winning on a scratch card.