All I Feel is Empty Sadness

QUESTION:

HI

I had emailed you a few months ago about me starting college and realizing that I wanted to become a therapist. I started school in august. And it's been going pretty well. I had better control over my depression and anxiety. I have been seeing someone for the past year. It's long distance. She lives 5 hours away. But we haven't been official for the past month. Just slowly trying and seeing how things naturally grow.

The other day she told me about a girl she met who is in an open relationship and that they have a mutual interest. So she wanted to know if I still wanted to keep things the way they were for now with us. Free and open but still involved and letting things grow.

 I love her like no one else I've loved. And so I said yes that's fine. I'll talk to other people too. But I feel stuck. I can't pull out of this empty sadness and then I start to overthink and become almost manic about losing her to this other girl. I try to talk to other people but I have no interest in anyone but her. We've been best friends for 2 years. She's younger than me and still trying to figure herself out.

This has made me lose my ambition with my social life and it's starting to affect my schooling. I've tried reading the brain switch book but I can't give it my full attention. I need help rebalancing my brain basically. And stay focused on what I need to do in my life. But I do not know where to start.

ANSWER:

The first thing to do when you are in a negative space in life is to head toward something positive. Every thought you think is either negative or positive. Everybody has great battles to fight. No one knows when they are going to be thrust on a new and desperate battlefield of life. It could happen in an instant.

So never feel resentful of your own battle by comparing your battle with someone else's life who seems more fortunate.

If your friendships are unrewarding or shaky, it is logical to believe that there is someone else out there who might make a good friend for you.  It is possible to have an uplift from a conversation with a passing stranger. That is a positive thought. Look forward to meeting someone that you don't even yet know. That is a positive thought.

Think not that life is your enemy but your friend and if you are brave and courageous, you will approach your own skirmishes by thinking that it may be hard but you will be the stronger for them. If you have work to do, then do it without waiting for your life to "get better". Our life only gets better when we become better persons.

Empty sadness means that you are concentrating on the negative in your life. If you are sad thinking about yourself, think about someone else. Wish someone else well. I am now wishing you well and it expands my own life and sends me in a positive direction.

There is always some "next thing" that you can do to improve your life. Some small task that needs to be done. Look around and find one small positive thing to do. The second thing will then present itself. There is always some "next thing" you can to and this is always a good way to start when you feel stuck. Don't hold up your life waiting for some "big problem" to be solves.

Problems are never really solved. If they can be solved, they are not problems but work. We tend to park ourselves in what we think are overwhelming problems because do not want to exercise our courage and take on the day. When we take on our life with a good attitude, we just grow bigger than our problems and thus transcend them to the point where they are no longer problems because we have something more positive on which to focus our attention. Hope this helps.

A. B. Curtiss

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