Have you ever been trapped In a personal hell?

Yes, I was as a child. How did I get out of it? My father died.

Oh god @anniereborn , I’m so sorry. I don’t want to make you relive it.

I created a hell for myself at high school. I tormented myself there, for being so different from maintream thought. I only got out after I graduated, when I knew being different isn’t a crime.

Is a person in a personal hell if they do not know what it is like to not be in it?

I was once hired to manage a staff of 5 women. It was a job for which I was totally unqualified and did not deserve. The woman who did deserve the job had the galling duty of showing me the ropes. It was the sort of situation that no business could get away with today.

Yes. My first memories are wanting to die and trying to kill myself, but I was too little to figure out how to do it.

How did I get past that? It started with Jesus Christ. But after I became a Christian, I ended up with a lot of toxic people who called themselves Christian but sure didn’t act like it. They messed me up worse.

Only After I dumped them and found some genuinely kind Christians who really helped me get set free from tremendous emotional pain, self destructive behavior and severe depression. That was over 10 years ago.

I remember it all, but now it doesn’t hurt anymore. I have genuine peace, and even joy every day.

@dxs Suppose you come to realize it later or “looking back”?

Yes. I didn’t get out of it because I can’t. About two to three hours of the day are somehow normalish, the rest are debilitating, comatose or on auto mode. Medication is not helping much. I choose to sleep so as to not think.

I was in pain every day. It was a prison for me. I got out of it by finding a doctor who believed me and had done a lot of research in the area. His work is not really accepted as mainstream, nor are his treatments really a standard. He got me out of being in pain every day. Thank God.

All he really does is give larger doses of medications that are already used. He isn’t really doing anything that wild.

Yup. Twice. They fought dirty with lies and cheating. I told the truth and played clean. I won both times. Not bad for someone who embraces self loathing.

I just hang on.
I dont know who i am orwhat my future will be or if im doing the right thing. Pretty much dead inside.
But now ive got better. Things work out, but they do not turn perfect in one day.

@Adirondackwannabe Sadly my past intrudes on me often with PTSD. But this thread will do me no harm. I have gotten a lot better in the past 20 years.

I was six-years-old when I first attempted suicide. I tried again at age thirteen and again at age twenty-one. It has only been in recent decades that I realized I was an outlier. I thought about things than few even considered and lacked what people call common sense. A psychiatrist friend said that I had uncommon sense and should embrace it. It took a few years before accepting this. Though I usually have a central role in the organizations that I am a member of, I still feel that I am on their social periphery.

I was in a personal hell all through my twenties. I got out of it by getting sober.

I was in another hell while in an abusive marriage to a woman with mental health issues. Despite leaving 10 years ago, the escape has not been complete because of her claims on the children and alimony. But I am not in hell anymore.

Luckily, I’ve been through some hard times but nothing I’d consider “hellish” and certainly not anywhere near what others have lived through. My hard times have been short and never where I had no food, housing, medical care or was at the mercy of someone awful.

@Bill1939 That was heartbreaking to read. I’m so glad you are doing better now.

@Bill1939 it was indeed heartbreaking and tragic to read. I am surprised though that the suicide attempts did not come out later in life when we mature and see things from a different angle. Well done for striking a balance and using your obviously high intelligence to your advantage.

@ZEPHYRA, I think two things helped me not give into suicidal feelings. I was twenty-two when I last contemplated methods I could use to bring about my own death. The trigger was when the young woman I had been dating since high school broke up with me and shortly thereafter married a man she met while I was in the service.

Because I knew how much suffering I had caused my parents when I last tried to kill myself, I voluntarily became a patient in a state mental hospital. I came to realize that compared to the other patients there I was not so bad off. I left AMA and returned to work for an electronics company that manufactured radar-jamming equipment for the Air Force.

I started dating, took up folk music, acting and at age twenty-five entered an inexpensive college with assistance from the state’s rehabilitation agency and having been honorable discharged from the military received support from the federal government. Despite these positive activities, I continued to struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide. I decided that I would allow these feelings but understanding how much suffering suicide cause others to experience, refuse to act upon them. This choice and my empathy has allowed me survive.

As much as I would like to think that I am very intelligent, it fact my IQ was measured as barely above 120. Although the diagnosis of manic-depression (now called bipolar) did not exist when I was a child, it is clear that Mother suffered from it. I think that I developed compassion and a desire to help others because I had lived in this emotionally unpredictable environment. It also was why I earned a BA in psychology.

I had planned to go on to graduate school but lacked the confidence to leave my friends and begin a new life in a strange place. I considered staying and attending grad school there, however the head of the psychology department ridiculed my contention that emotion was critical to determining behavior; being Skinnerian based believed that emotions were merely secondary behaviors. Long story shortened, I still deal with depression despite working with several psychiatrists and psychologists over the years. My life could not be better, and though occasional thoughts of suicide still arise, there is no risk of acting upon them.

I was an English Ed. major in college and when I did my student teaching it was with an old battle-axe teaching 7th grade. Living HELL! I dropped out of college because getting a BA instead required a year of foreign language. I still don’t regret it. The battle-axe had taught, tried being a florist, and ‘fallen back’ on teaching. I’m glad I never had that option.

Battle-axes teach seventh graders?

In the time before your birth, @dxs. In the time before your birth in the rural Midwest. It was a time honored tradition even when I was a kid.

Slang. a domineering, aggressive, sharp-tempered person, especially a woman.

For instance, the first day of school she went down the rows, kid by kid, and told me which kids to concentrate on, based on family background. ‘Just make sure he has the assignment.’ for the kid who’s brother had been nothing but trouble. “You’ll have to keep after her, but she can do the work.’ for the girl who’s father owned the clothing store. Of course, my instinct was to do the opposite. Give the underdog a chance and let the privileged sink or swim.
Thank the gourd I never had to teach English.

@ibstubro That breed of teachers still exists and is still pretty rampant. I went to a Catholic school, trust me. They just spare the (literal) rod nowadays by court orders.

That’s too bad, @dxs. I’d hoped that the bar had been raised enough to run them off. I don’t necessarily mind strict, it’s the narrowly minded, overly opinionated that should be forced out.