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

[jjourneys]

I feel like I’ve had 3/4 significant life events over the last 15 years that I haven’t been able to fully recover from over the long term.

I realise that chronic stress and anxiety can change the physiology of the brain and how we process and function over the long term, and I seriously think this is what has happened to me, but I feel I need a run of lucky breaks (or just 1 lol!) to bring me back to somewhere where I was before this started to happen.

I don’t mean to sound negative or filled with self pity, I’m actually a ‘glass half full’ type of person !! But I just have managed to get to a point of cognitive realisation of the impact of having to be constantly resilient. And that is resilience isn’t a neverending resource to tap into.

Ive actually started to write a book about it as a way of helping me process, but just wondered if anyone else had any knowledge or experience on the subject? BTW I’m 50 this Summer.

much love x

Everyday. i am amongst a hateful crowd but i stay positive and focused.

So much to relate to here. Some just unbelievable shit has happened. I feel exactly by PPs, that it affects me massively. My nervous system is shot, I feel like it’s on top of my skin most days. Here I am awake at 4am again. I’ve turned to Buddhism and meditation to try to let go and reconnect to my body with kindness.

Love love love all your experiences of adversity and just utter shite, but particularly the strength you’ve all shown in managing to keep on going despite that!

Ive started to write my thoughts down, of what I experienced, and how things changed me. Have any of you done this as a form of therapy?

One last question for anyone still checking in, does anyone think they’re cognitive decision making has deteriorated post bad experiences, than how they were before?

Or feel like their brain is scrambled in some way?

And could this be fixed with pharmaceuticals, diagnosis or therapy? Presumably putting in the therapy means months of work?

Hard to tell for me as a lot of my shit coincided with perimenopause and I was then diagnosed with ADHD...such fun 😂.

Re therapy, there's a lot of workbooks you can buy if you want to just investigate on your own. I used some materials supplied by our local counselling service as they offered me group therapy which is not for me, but found the tenets of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helpful.

I've also have online therapy which I found much easier to manage around a generally busy schedule, and just as helpful as seeing someone face to face.

It's basically just about finding what works for you.

I had such a bad few years a few years ago that genuinely started to believe I had a curse on me and there were dark forces at work. It drove me to that level of thinking, and I didn’t have any kind of mental illness that caused delusional thinking and I don’t generally tend to believe in anything religious/spiritual/paranormal. My exH became abusive after suffering from
MH problems, he then left me (which in hindsight was a blessing but I didn’t view it that way at the time) then took me to court to try and take our children away from me saying I was the abusive one, a narrative that was believed for a while, my home got repossessed because I couldn’t pay the mortgage because I was forced to pay lawyers fees for a court case built on lies about me, I got caught drunk driving (not something I’m proud of obviously) and lost my licence, I then lost my job as a driving licence was a requirement for it. But that series of events were all a knock on effect of the very first one. Many series of unlucky events are like this, not all of course, some are completely random. I don’t think there are lucky or unlucky people, rather people can go through unlucky or lucky phases - sometimes just randomly, but a lot of the time one unlucky thing causes the next & one lucky thing causes the next eg. A loved one dies and grief causes you to perform poorly at work so you end up losing your job, then your partner leaves you because you’re jobless and depressed. Or the other way round, you get an amazing promotion at work so you shine with happiness and good energy wherever you go, which in turn attracts people to you, so you bag yourself an amazing partner and a happy relationship etc etc.

I have a friend who has suffered trauma and tragedy one after the other. My heart breaks for her when I think about all she’s been through since we were kids. She threw herself into caring for others for a long time, but it’s catching up now. She’s had to be strong for such a long time and has pushed it away to cope. I’m hopeful she will take a bit of time for herself and process stuff in her own way.

I had a run of 4 significant deaths, one parent getting very ill, part of my house got flooded and badly damaged in a storm, a car crash, a serious illness for DH and losing my job and therefore us getting in a lot of debt within 3 years, as Covid kicked off. Felt like a comedy sketch the way stuff just kept happening. Anti-depressants and time were pretty much it!

My cognitive ability is absolutely scrambled.

I didn't get the luxury of 15 years to endure my run of traumatic events. I squeezed them all into 2 years.

• husband starting on the path to an emotional affair. Whatever broke inside me is still broken
• fell over and shattered my proximal humerus head. Had surgery to put it back together although I may only ever have 50% shoulder movement
• severe osteoporosis of the spine diagnosis
• fell again and tore ligaments in my wrist. These cannot be repaired so is permanntly splinted
• breast cancer diagnosis
• surgery for suspected uterine cancer (thankfully clear)
• further shoulder surgery and relocation of the biceps tendon
• my mother has just died

I want to be able to sleep again. I haven't slept for more than an hour at a time for 2 years. I am mentally, physically and emotionally drained.

Yes OP, this has been my life since Christmas 2012, when I had just turned 38.

December 29, 2012: Mum's breast cancer from the Nineties returned terminally.
2013 - took care of her
2014 - she died
2014 - best friend of forty years stopped speaking to me starting the day Mum died
2015 - lost other close friend, a cousin, because she was not there for me during the bereavement.
2014-2016 - lost a couple more friends due to the strain of my bereavement and them treating it like it was absolutely nothing.
January 2017 - husband walked out on me because of my weight. The marriage had always been difficult in parts but had got worse.
2017-2022 We try to work it out without much success
2020 - Covid happens and the company sells the office, and I lose all my fun work friends. We have been remote since then.
2022 - husband informs me we are done trying, I'm still too fat for him, and he wants to divorce.
Late 2022 - Dad diagnosed with terminal cancer. H puts the divorce on hold.
2022-2024 - Dad's dying. I move him with him and take care of him alone.
2025 - sorting out the estate takes all year, sister insists on selling our childhood home, my safe place.
Late 2025 - my home of 51 years is no longer mine.
Late 2025 up to now - still trying to recover. Fatter than I've ever been. Am a hermit.
The future: Now to face divorce and moving to a cheaper area.

Yes, the last 13 years have changed me beyond measure and I don't know if I'll ever get back to the person I was. The losses just went on and on and on and on, and they're not quite over yet. Still got to officially lose my spouse and also my marital home of 19 years.

TLDR:
Main Losses: My Mum, my dad, husband, my best friend, my childhood home, and my marital home.
Secondary Losses: Cousin, couple of other friends, work community, and my health due to the strain of all the above.

Good times.

Oh God, and I forgot to mention that perimenopause started for me at 43, it's now eight years later and I'm still going through it although I'm over the worst. It was sheer hell from about 2018-2022. So that was going on while all that other stuff was happening.

I'm only 51, and I've already lost both parents, been released from a terrible marriage and some bad friends, and done most of peri. These years have almost killed me but, looking for the silver lining, at least I've got a lot of life's stressors out of the way relatively early. (When I say life's stressors, I mean that most of us are destined to lose our parents and almost half of us will divorce, with a remaining percentage being unhappily married, and menopause is guaranteed too.)

When I feel bad about how much I've gone through, I remember that we all go through these things, and mine are done. (Except in the case of marriage, where a divorce or unhappiness isn't guaranteed, just very common.)

The only way is up! I just hope that my health holds out so I get a few years to have a fun life before having to deal with any serious illness (lots of cancer in my family) and that I can stay in my job, which I love.

Yes, and I’m about to go through a second menopause, aren’t I a lucky duck?

I was peri at 51 when diagnosed with estrogen positive breast cancer. After surgery and radiotherapy, they put me on hormone therapy where menopause is chemically induced and on top of that they gave me an aromatase inhibitor. So I went from peri to even less estrogen than a post menopausal woman in 1 week. It was hell. The following 6mos was torture with almost comically exaggerated versions of each menopause symptom before things settled a bit or I got used to them.

Fast forward to the 1yr scan and checkup and oncology suggests a beak from the ovary suppression (did I tell you I get shot up with an implant every month that causes a bruise the size of a dessert plate?) to see if I am naturally post menopause. I jump at the bait. So the past two months I have gone into reverse menopause or puberty II which has made me nauseous and unable to eat plus my face broke out like I was 15 again. I just saw oncology today and my blood test showed I am not menopausal, plus I’m having what feels and looks like a mini-period rn, so back on the ovary suppression by the end of this week.

hooray for Menopause II coming right up.

As for extreme side effects- I will list just one

During menopause I, sex got really uncomfortable and after 9 months, I had to stop. During this time, I’d make appointments to ask for help and the gyne just kept encouraging me to keep at it and prescribed a bit of lube. Oncology refused estrogen gel for the vagina- too high risk. Every time it was more pain, more blood, and me going back to the gyne. My smear comes due in January and Lo and behold gyne actually looks at my vagina and goes ´oh I see what the problem is’ my vaginal walls had fused to each other. It was only 1cm. She couldn’t even see my cervix with a transvaginal sonogram because she couldn’t even get any of it in. My vagina was sealed shut like a tomb on Indianna Jones complete with cobwebs.

So I was referred for surgery under GA. Two week ago, the surgeon cut through the tissue and took tons of biopsies (not got results yet) in case there was something malignant going on. Post op she joked I was the most extreme case she’d ever seen as what happened to me rarely happens but only at the age of 85-90 after being celibate for decades, usually widows.

Other than that, yes to forgetting things, yes to being irritable and grumpy, yes to extreme stiffness and bone pain. Yes I have osteoporosis diagnosed before staring the hormone blockers which make you lose even more bone density! and yes I am on biphosphates and yes to night sweats and hot flushes and horrible horrible fatigue. The pain in my bones wakes me up some nights.

I lived healthily, ate good organic from scratch, exercised, never been overweight, drink maybe 1 bottle of wine in a year…but that’s my kind of luck.

Oh and the cancer gave me an auto-immune disorder. Nice.

I'm only 51, and I've already lost both parents

Sorry to read that and just wanted to say you’re not alone. My mum died when I was 26 and my dad during Covid when I was 47. I’m also the eldest of my generation, so it was weird thinking, am I next? Especially thought that when I got the breast cancer diagnosis 4 years later.

Oh and after tempting fate with this post and saying my mum is fine it's now suspected she has metastatic brain cancer which of course is treatable but prognosis isn't good... I've just turned 40 and now forced to think about the rest of my life without parents, siblings, or a partner....

Similar here. Extremely poor health and extended uncertainty wrt said health have turned me into a different person.

I’m by nature extremely resilient, it would seem, but everyone has their limits and I will never be the person that I was.

I’m not a worrier but in the back of my mind I know that any serious event involving close family would send me over the edge.

(I keep on keeping on, though. Just answering your question 😊)

Interesting topic and I'm really sorry for all the crap everyone has been through.

Personally I had a lot of traumatic stuff from ages 15 - 35ish. Domestic violence, rape, stalking, child attempting suicide, severe mh health issues in my family, homelessness to name a few. I'm 47 now and except for major emergency surgery last year my life has been relatively calm for a while. However...the last 2 or so years I've just fallen apart mentally and physically. When it was all going on I just pushed on and stayed 'strong' and actually spent a lot of time supporting various people while trying to cope with my own shit. Now I feel like everything has almost caught up with me and my body has said that's enough, I've also found mentally that horrible things from the past I'd forgotten about coming back to me.

The biggest change I've noticed recently is my sympathy for a lot of things seems to have vanished and my tolerance for bullshit is non existent. Like a pp said I'm not one for dwelling or raking over the past, and I think I just needed time, and I do feel I'm coming out the other side now

I’m not sure I would classify your events as random or unavoidable OP. There would have been some opportunity to preempt some of those events and possibly avoid them.
In the space of 4 years I was diagnosed with breast cancer, DS had a stroke ( unusual for his age and linked to having Covid a couple of months beforehand) DFIL died and finally lost my DSis to aggressive pancreatic cancer.

To be honest I could add to that list going all the way back to my DMs untimely death 30yrs ago, the accumulated “life events “ have toughened me up so much that I have forgotten some of the worst. They do include DF dying after a protracted degenerative illness, DN needing open heart surgery, one Dsis having breast cancer and then diagnosed with Parkinson’s and finally other Dsis needing neurosurgery for brain tumour.

My DS describes it as one adrenaline bomb after another and has left the immediate family somewhat stunned for the last 12 months.

However, those of us still standing have now dusted ourselves off and are making the most of life. We do feel like a clock is ticking.

I’m not attempting to trump your life events but you may be able to see why I don’t see them in the same way. We judge our lives on our own experiences and for you your career and well being is first and foremost, 30 yrs ago I would have agreed with you. Now I see life differently and realise that your health is absolutely key to how you can live and enjoy your life. Without it, there is no point. Money has no impact on death or chronic illness. It may secure a more comfortable life but if you love being active then not being able to simply join in is devastating.

Absolutely not. You just reset and carry on. Carrying all that weight is not healthy and just creates misery. You learn to risk assess and act accordingly. Despite my “life events” I’m still here and owe it to those that are no longer here to live my best life.

I couldn’t possibly live the life I do carrying so much baggage. I learned early in my career to compartmentalise, it allows you to be happy, most of the time. I sometimes open the individual boxes just to revisit the events but most of the time they are locked away in order to live.

In my previous post it should have said DH had a stroke not DS

I love your description of your vagina. It made me chuckle in a sympathetic but fellow Indiana Jones fan way. Mine is currently virtually sealed due to total lack of libido courtesy of hormone blockers for breast cancer. I have the hormone levels of an 8 yr old girl and the libido to match. Just the thought of sex makes me shudder. It’s probably a good thing I have zero libido since it would be unthinkable having a libido I couldn’t use.

I come off the hormone blockers this year, hopefully, it will be interesting to see whether the libido returns. On the one hand I hope it does but on the other I can’t imagine ever wanting sex again.

Thank you xxx Wow, 26 is young to lose your mum. I'm so sorry. Reality blasted into my life when I was 24 and my mum got cancer, but I didn't lose her until I was 39. (She had a large tumour and should have had chemo, but they didn't give it to her. She might be here now if they had. The Nineties...)

So I lost my parents at 39 and 49, and the majority of my friends still have two healthy parents. And I literally don't know a single one who has lost both. I think it's because in the mid-Seventies, when I was born, most people had children in their early twenties, whereas my parents were a decade older than that when they had me. Which is pretty young by today's standards - 31 and 34 - but I can really see the difference between my experiences and an era where people had often completed their families before age 25.

I'm so sorry about your health woes. 💐