At the rock bottom

Hello ,
I wanted to know how to keep going when you have no reasons to do so.
I get fine if I take some time doing the things I like but that fine is very temporary and stays only until I am doing something I enjoy.
I was trying to work today but I wasn't able to start because I started questioning what's the point of all of this and I got the answer that nothing really matters to me enough to keep going.
I do not just start things without thinking , sometimes I do but mostly if I try to suppress my thoughts or feelings , they come back stronger in some way or other.
If I keep trying to work despite my thoughts , a constant scream runs inside me. A constant rage , I feel like hitting the wall or throwing things or running. I also feel anxious and because of that my muscles start twitching.
All this makes it very difficult for me to focus and as I mentioned if I suppress or ignore my thoughts or feelings they come back stronger than before in some way or other. If my feelings and thoughts can be dealt later on , I do try that like for example if my grief interrupts me , I tell her I will come to her after ' X ' , ' A ' , ' Y ' etc and I do try to do that but when I have to work and I feel absolutely zero reason to keep doing it ( and you need to do it in order to survive on this planet ) then I can't bring myself to do it.
That work was my personal statement. I really want to go to this university or any other good University , I had to work on it though and yet I didn't. I want to go to the university without work but that's not how it goes and I understand.
Whenever I think I will have a good day , I usually end up having a bad one.
It's not a one day thing , it's constant. I just somehow get through it probably by distractions , from some people I love , other things I like / love , maladaptive daydreaming and just procrastination.
Also , I try breaking my task into parts and using pomodoro technique , today I just couldn't do it.
It happens other times too , I just try not to think much and procastinate or do something else.
Today , it was like something that was there all along , a realisation that was getting hidden because of all the noise. I have zero reasons to keep going and so I would like to stop here or go to my dream life directly without this long path.
I can be wrong but I don't think it's a mindset thing. There has been a lot of things ( grief : lost a lot of loved ones including both romantic and platonic , realisation that my family is toxic , my own degradation of mental and emotional health ) so I think my mind and body is done and it wants to shut down now.
For your information , I am not actively suicidal. I am not suicidal. I do think it would be pleasant if natural death comes to me even like at this moment but I won't do it myself , I just want to run away and be alone but that's not what I really want or maybe I do , I am not sure. I am looking for reasons and some tips and advice to keep going , the why , when I am in a place where nothing matters to me enough to keep going.
And , if you're wondering if I won't get any reasons then , I am really not sure what I will do. I think I will let a lot of time go and my dreams will slip away. I think it will get worse without reason or reasons.

Hi, Congrats. I’m sorry you are struggling. It can be very challenging when we have hard circumstances on our minds…it seems to be human nature (or common to most of us) to drift toward things that support the painful or negative things. So it is work to keep challenging those thoughts.

That is actually normal, imo. The problems or worries don’t go away just because we find something else to do for a while. I try to remember that the point of doing good things or having a nice time isn’t to make life great 24/7. The point as I see it is to have some positive things along with the challenging things. When the challenges come along, we can then think about the nice time we had, and maybe plan time to do something nice again.
Life is simply not going to be completely smooth and certainly not perfect. For me, I aim to find a balance; it’s not always the amount of time that I’m happy vs worried/sad. It’s knowing that my life has both good times and challenging times, and most importantly, that I can deal with both, no matter how much the challenges challenge me.

In my own experience, suppressing my thoughts or feelings keeps them quiet for a short period, and then when there is a quieter time or something else not too good is added to my hard times, KA-BOOM!!! The bad stuff swamps me, I’m in a jungle of negativity and hurt. Suppressing is putting feelings under pressure, and things that have been pressurized tend to explode and disperse hugely.
It’s one thing to suppress feelings or thoughts when we are with our colleagues or boss, when it‘s better to say nothing or we’ll make things worse, or when we need to support someone else for a bit (when it’s just not appropriate to let out our emotions all over the place). That said, it’s important in those situations to (mentally) schedule another time for us to really sit with our thoughts and feelings. Acknowledge them. Explore what has triggered them. Perhaps check the reality…is “everything” terrible, or are we feeling terrible about one specific thing? Is there truth in that, or are we using the very human tendency for negative bias (where we find “proof” that supports only the negative things we think/feel)? Is there ever anything good? How can we add in time for the better things?
If we have experienced a loss, then yes, we are likely sad, maybe angry, perhaps feeling it’s too hard. Have we had hard experiences before? (Probably yes…and yet, we are still here! We survived. Might not have been enjoyable or easy, but we did it. And we can keep doing it…until something better happens.
The good thing about thoughts and feelings: they simply “exist.” We do not have to act on them. We just need to feel our feelings…sad, grumpy, guilty, angry and so on. We don’t have to “do” anything other than feel them and acknowledge to ourselves that we are feeling them. Same thing with thoughts, which are often related to feelings. And both are part of that human nature thing where we drift to the bad more than the good. When we acknowledge them, we are no longer in fight mode. The negative loses power when we are actively aware of them…It helps us to feel more capable of dealing with things, even it’s unpleasant. Maybe we can’t control a situation or the feelings we have, but we can control what we do about those feelings/thoughts. How much or our power are we going to give them?

This one is difficult. I might challenge that every time you think you‘re going to have a good day it turns out to be a bad day. Every time? Nothing good happens in those 24 hours? I believe that maybe a bad thing happens and makes the day less than perfect. Is the entire day ruined, every minute of it? Did nothing nice happen (a smile, a laugh about something) even if it was short-lived? (Good is rarely a full-time event. Bad sure can feel like it’s full-time, though. But neither good nor bad are full time.) Maybe you expected/hoped for/thought you’d have a good day and something bad happened. Of course, that sucks. Did it really ruin everything? Or is that negative bias we humans have making things seem worse than they truly are in the bigger picture? This one is tough, as I said. Depending on the situation, maybe you have had expected good days truly ruined by something very bad. I don’t know what situations you are considering. I only know that I often have to review my perspective on what I think made things good and bad in my own life.

Honestly, sometimes even the skills and techniques that can help don’t work well. We find ourselves in a funk. Remember, we don’t have to act on our thoughts/feelings. If I’m in a funk, allowing myself to feel it often helps me to let it go sooner.

All the things that have led you to depression and lost hope are understandable: lost love, friendship; toxic family relations; loss of good health. I am not surprised that you feel tired and want to shut down. A shut down can be temporary, a time to sit with ourselves, our feelings. A time to reflect on them. And importantly, a time to consider possible ways to improve the situation. Even just noticing very small but good things, e.g., a cute dog, a lovely sunset, the feel of the breeze, can help. Those and host of other little things don’t make a whole life great, of course, but they can be good things to seek out and notice so that we see there is good even in the midst of a hard time.
Shutting down can be a rest, a time to acknowledge that life hasn’t always been perfect, but here we are right now, so how do we take or make the best of this minute or hour or day? What can we organize for tomorrow that will be good? Even something small — a treat, a walk in a favourite park, watching a funny show…

Reasons to go on living? So we get to experience the next good thing, so we make our time here the best that we “can,” given whatever hurdles we face. Perfect? Nope. 100% positive for every minute of every day going forward? Nope. But we can keep going when we know we are doing our best. We can clear the hurdles with determination, and if we get snagged on a hurdle, we can pause, regroup and formulate new plans for getting over the hurdle, or around it, or a new path entirely. There are always options.

I hope you don’t give up on your dreams. I see someone who is aware of what has caused hurt in the past, and of things that happen now that can hurt…and I believe that you can find the oomph to look for the little things that are positive. I’m not trivializing the hard things…they are hard. And the good things might not be as big as the hard things, but the little good moments can add up to a life that actually has a lot of good things in it.

I believe in you. You can do it. You have made it this far, facing some hard times…and you’re still here. That means you are strong, even if you feel worn down. The bad things are not your whole life. They don’t have to be, anyway.

You and making the most of your life and time are the best reasons for you to live.

Thankyou so much for this whole post , truly. It did helped me to think , maybe the point is not to be at peace or a sense of tranquillity all the time but such moments in my life along with all that I am struggling. Usually I stay in the anxiety mode when things go wrong so my day gets ruined but today actually I talked to someone about my grief and I don't really get to talk about it and I cried and when I was sitting on my chair to work , I cried too so I guess those were the good things because you do need time to cry .
I am really grateful for all that you have written , thankyou so much. Know that you have been of help and I think I will come here often to read this ! Thankyou so much I mean this , I really needed it. Thankyou.

@Congratsbaby You’re welcome. I’m glad it helps!