To not see the point in life?

[sunshinerays]

This has nothing to do with covid, I felt this way before covid and feel the same now.

I don't understand the point of life. It's repetitive BS. I try and do so many 'exciting' things and still feel it's a pile of crap most of the time.

I want to point out I'm not suicidal for a variety of reasons that I won't go into but I'm questioning how abnormal is it to feel this way or do lots of people feel this way but just pretend otherwise?

I have no reason to feel this way from the outside I have the 'perfect' life and people would be surprised if they knew how I feel.

Every day is - pointless (with the exception of the odd day here and there). Totally pointless in particular Monday to Friday I just see no enjoyment.

I feel like an entitled twat writing this post but have no one to talk to. I've tried counselling and it doesn't seem to fix the problem.

This is less about AIBU and more about reaching out to others I guess to see if anyone else is in similar situation 😓

One thing I will say, if you think life is unbearable as it is just pointless, mundane, repetitive tasks, DON'T have kids. Raising kids is the literal definition of a pointless, mundane, repetitive task. When you are wiping up the 1000th spill of the day or reading hairy maclairy for the 1000th time, you will think back on your current life as being exciting, full of freedom and variety. I have kids and love it, but as I said above, I don't mind pointless, repetitive, boring things.

Agree with raisinghost.

Life is pointless, it's like whoever said 'life is fair '.

All you can do is make the best of it, laugh when you can, help when you can and love when you can.

Humans are strange animals, there is always a need for deeper meaning or affirmation. Why can't we enjoy the now?

I have suffered from depression but I can still feel how lucky I am compared to others with truly awful lives.

No, you’re not alone.
I work, I clean and for what ?
I can’t even enjoy a glass of wine anymore as it wipes out the next day.

I am trying to think how to help as I am the opposite to you. I get pleasure out of nearly everything and feel happy nearly all the time. I don’t like taking the bins out either, but my mindset is different. I talk really positively to myself in my head. Once I have done the bins, I tell myself ‘well done, you have remembered to do the bins this week. And you have done all these other things this morning and you haven’t even started work yet. Talk about multi tasking. What an achievement.’ And I go indoors feeling pleased with myself that I didn’t forget and that i don’t need anyone else to help me with jobs I don’t like. Then I have to make my daughter’s pack lunch. If I analyse it, I don’t like doing it, it is the same thing everyday. But I make it better for myself in two ways. Firstly I put on a TV show I enjoy on my phone so take away the boredom of my task and secondly I challenge myself to make it better than I did the day before. That might be to do it quicker, with less mess, a perfectly toasted sandwich bun, whatever. But I also praise myself in my head when I have finished. I actually wasn’t conscious that I was doing so much praising but no one gives me positive feedback outside my proper job and I think you need it to keep motivated, so I spend a lot of time giving it to myself. In terms of my l overall happiness, I give myself things to look forward to. So I have Zumba on Mondays, Tennis on Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. I also have a short break or activity or day out booked in the future to look forward to at all times. It sounds like you do this too but struggle with the in between time. The other thing I do, is make sure I have good books to read in the house and good series I am really into, lined up to watch. I also make sure I have comedy based podcasts lined up for times when I have to do something boring like walk to the shops. I do have a child and she has made life more worth living for me. I think it would feel more pointless without her if I am honest so am not sure I agree with the people saying don’t have a child because it is monotonous. Being a parent and role model feels very meaningful to me. Still think you should get more counselling though, Just because your last sessions didn’t help doesn’t mean that trying someone else wouldn’t be helpful. Good luck.

Just because you're not suicidal doesn't mean you aren't depressed.

I have felt like this very often, but only when depressed. When I'm well it just doesn't enter my mind.

I need a kidney transplant so I can see my children grow up. If you see life as totally pointless and want to find some meaning, look into altruistic kidney donation, nothing like truly transforming and saving a life to give your own some purpose!!

The point of life for me is to enjoy it. I don't feel the need to prove my life is "worthy" or question why we're here. I have a wonderful DC, I like my job, I enjoy going on holidays and out for coffee and spending time with my friends. Covid has made things a bit shit but it's not forever.

I felt like this recently

Works just a load of ongoing repetitive stress
Kids I LOVE but I’m a single parent and almost counting the years down as it’s such hard work
Weekends are taking kids to sports and meaningful healthy activities

I’m not depressed but this feels like existing

I think a more meaningful work could help

I agree with @Waxonwaxoff0 I think that life is so beautiful, I get pleasure from small things. I remember looking at a disposable cup on the train : I had warm tea in it and I was en route to see my parents after a long time. I thought the cup was beautiful because it represented these things! On the other side, I am very scared of wasting my life and of losing it. I'm scared of losing the things that I love so much. I guess that, like a PP, I find familiarity, comfort and, yes, beauty in the mundane elements of life. Having children has made me more sensitive to both sides of the coin and I'm not saying I don't struggle. But I'm grateful to be here and grateful for what I have, mindful how easily it could be taken away. All this to say, I suppose it's a shift in mindset that might help. Here's a curveball: could it be that you're not letting yourself enjoy your life/find pleasure? Is something stopping you from feeling positively, like fear? When I think negatively I'm sure that it's usually fuelled by fear or letting myself enjoy something good in case it gets taken away.

I feel like this all the time, to quote MM I’m just existing, not living. I’ve tried so many of the things suggested on here but they don’t work for me - one of them was seeing a hypnotherapist but she asked me what would make me happy and I genuinely didn’t know the answer. I feel dragged down by the repetitiveness of life, of rushing and struggling to get everything done only to find that 5 mins later it needs doing again - the bins thing up thread sounds trivial but it’s spot on. I’m angry and irritable a lot of the time and the only thing that keeps me here is my daughter who I love more than anything and who needs me - but ironically is growing up and away from me so is physically around less. I’m resentful of other people’s happiness because I can’t find my own and I regret almost everything in my life so far apart from my daughter. I don’t know where I go from here.

Are you doing the right job? Hobbies? Are you mixing with the right people?

Where are you currently in life? What do you do? Job? Hobbies? Friends?

Ok so think about what causes you feel passionate about and what skills you like to use

It sounds like you need a shake up and a change but only you can do this

Op I feel similar to you at times. I've got to a point in my life where I've got everything I need and still don't feel happy. I was massively depressed this time last year and decided to have counselling. I ended up talking mostly about the decision about whether or not to have kids (I'm nearing the end of being able to make that decision), and realised that part of the reason I was feeling the way I was, was because I don't want kids, but can't see what a life without them look like. I think they do give life a lot of structure and make you feel needed, so not having that makes me feel a bit lost at this point in my life.

One thing I've accepted about myself is that I don't like work. It's not so much the jobs, I don't like going to work, I gain no satisfaction, feel no pride, no achievement, nothing. I'm a SAHM at the moment but otherwise I just see going to work as something I have to do to please other people so that I'm not judged as workshy.

I think it's sometimes better to accept the limitations of something than to go on a fruitless search for meaning in it.

I know what you mean polly
I had kids , without really thinking and with the wrong man
I knew he was wrong and I had them anyway
So know I feel like I have to give them my best , they didn’t ask to be born
So as unrelenting as it is , I’m like a robot moving forward
Trudge trudge trudge
When they are (rarely away) i flop

@sunshinerays if you feel like this now, adding children will make it 1000x worse. Life with children is 99% repetitive drudgery, with all your usual boring jobs on top. Babies and toddlers are groundhog day, then older kids you give your whole routine over to ferrying, organising, coaxing them to do things they don't want to do. I really think you would hate and resent the restrictions and boredom that comes with parenting.

Obviously there are good parts, but as someone who hates the drudgery (I know some parents enjoy it), it's hard.

The two things that leap out to me are a) you did benefit from an anti-depressant but can't take it now for other health reasons (did I get that right?) which suggests to me you are depressed and b) you are still locking yourself into your job- which delivers money, and stable relationship, and can't imagine stepping off that because then you wouldn't have so much money (so what?) and that would destabilize things with your husband.

You and your husband would cope- if you have an ok relationship, you can't make it contingent on doing one job indefinitely which you actively don't like.

If I felt like you, I would consider myself depressed. I enjoy pretty much every day on the earth strangely, and some terrible things have happened, even recently, but I'd still rather live through them. I do have bad days and sad days but my general setting is reasonably happy, I've no idea why, which is why I think medication would help you by resetting that default a bit higher. I don't love washing up or repetitive boring stuff, but I do have a very enjoyable job that makes me feel a tiny bit of value in this meaningless world!

I would write more about why I think life is worth living, but it would sound like a guilt trip and that's not my intention. I think you've backed yourself into a corner and feel trapped, and feeling bored and demotivated is your body's way of saying -change! I'd be back down the drs for some meds as well, no shame in giving yourself a fighting chance.

i take pills and just live in a happy cloud lol

such feelings tend to come from unfulfillement were were you wanted to do more but stuck with what you have for what ever reason.

I wanted to go to university study but poverty,poor education and disability had other ideas .So i made the most of it

generally going away spending time with those i love makes things better

I've struggled with feeling like this my whole life long, and for a long time I'd resigned myself to the idea that that was just how life was.

But a few things have really helped me over the years and now i struggle a lot less. One was having kids - seeing them grow up and change day by day really does give my life more meaning. Someone once posted on here that parenting is the only thing in life that's not overrated, and for me at least that's turned out to be true.

Also, (partly with the help of counselling) I learned to focus less on external validation - going for the next achievement the world tells me to - and more on what makes me happy. For me, that's art - both consuming and creating it. That realisation has made me reorient my entire career recently.

And finally, mindfulness has helped me: realising that these feelings, which I do still feel many times over the course of a week, are transient and don't mean there is something "wrong". Then I focus instead on small physical pleasures - the feeling of a hot bath, a hug, soil in the garden - rather than trying to puzzle things out existentially.

@Babyroobs what did you go into? I'm desperate to leave nursing I currently do it as like you describe it fits well around child and pay is ok for now

Hey OP. I’ve been there. For years and years, I faked my way through life, trying to find some way of filling the hole inside me. I got into a cycle of thinking I had found something, be obsessed for a week or so then back to square one. Two severe depressive episodes where by the time I recovered from the last one, I swore to myself that if I had another, I would kill myself rather than go through it all over again.

The turning point for me only really came 18 months ago. Browsing through iBooks for a book to read, a suggestion for Lee Strobels A Case For Christ was there. He was an investigative journalist and very much an atheist that went on a mission to disprove Christianity when his wife converted. Misery loves misery so I decided to read it and take some morbid pleasure in the confirmation that life is just pointless.

Well that book began something unstoppable. The more I read, the more I had to keep reading and by the end, I had begun down a path to faith and slowly, over the next year of reading more and more, researching, asking questions and that empty hole I was trying to fill, closed up. all those years of flitting from one thing to another, giving up, trying to try again, was over for me. The proof that it wasn’t just another fad being that I am still going strong 18 months later, practically a miracle in itself.

Now religion may not be for you and that’s fine. I remember when I was at my very worst with severe depression, I couldn’t even cry anymore. I couldn’t feel anything at all. Not joy, excitement, or even sadness. It was like someone had sucked the soul right out of me. Depression like that needs medical treatment. No amount of a better diet, exercise or whatever else suggestions will work. If this is your depression, please go to see your gp as soon as possible.

Yep makes sense!

Things I think make life worth living:

Live music
Funny people
Theatre
An amazing novel
Visiting new places
Cocktails
Art galleries

Basically human creativity is amazing.

@Newgirls the government doesn’t think these things have value. According to them they’re not ‘viable jobs’. So sad :-(

I hate durdgery but find children to be one of the things that has awakened my passion for life. Of course, you cannot neglect them so there are repetitive, practical tasks to do in order to avoid that but I find my children's intensity and curiosity energising I suppose. I absolutely loved reading to them and we often did things like perform Stick Man as a play to their Grandparents. I don't tend to be bogged down by routine though and I am spontaneous with them.

I do recognise these feelings but for me I think they arise if someone is trying to apply a completely pragmatic way of life on me- it is simply not in my nature to be like that all of the time.

'Drudgery' that should read.

You’re clearly desperately unhappy in your job but you say giving it up or switching to a lower paid one would put too much pressure on your husband and your finances. Do you know that to be true? Does he know just how unhappy you are? What does he say about what you do for work?