When All Hope Is Lost...

How Long Will You Last?

  • <1 year

    Votes: 4 22.2%
  • 1-2 years

    Votes: 2 11.1%
  • 3-5 years

    Votes: 3 16.7%
  • 6-8 years

    Votes: 1 5.6%
  • 9-12 years

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 13-20 years

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 21-30 years

    Votes: 2 11.1%
  • >30 years

    Votes: 6 33.3%

  • Total voters
    18

Ashiene

Well-known member
Imagine if your Social Anxiety Disorder will never improve, and you will never make a friend or get married or get a relationship or partner in your life. And you will keep degenerating as SAD devours you slowly.

You spend all your time alone, with almost no social interaction. Every day is the same repetitive cycle with no goals or ambition to fulfill. You are living a lifeless life.

You will be fired from any job you manage to get, within a few weeks. Every day your mind is filled with crippling anxiety, fear, multiple panic attacks a day, and endless worries about the inevitable fall into poverty.

Medications, CBT, any form of therapy will not work on you. No matter what you do from this point onward, you will never get better, only get worse.

Imagine all of this to be fact. Now, how long will you last before you go completely insane or succumb to final self-destruction?

(I am not posting this in Off-Topic because this is a SAD-related question even though it is a poll, and applies only to SAD sufferers)
 

Srijita52

Well-known member
I don't know how long but I'm too stubborn to succumb to final self distraction, I'll live but it'll be a miserable existance.
 

neohorizon

Well-known member
wow this is depressing :sad:


MAN, i'm not a victim, i'm a freaking warrior!

No matter how many things go wrong, battles i lose, i'll still fighting the war :veryangry:

Now seriously, i dont have the option of giving up or killing myself, i'm not here to live in vain and my family needs me! At least i have the curiosity to know how far i can get with this life (like a character from a MMORPG) :)
 

laure15

Well-known member
I don’t care about never getting married or a relationship or partner in life. Repitition is what brings order to my life. I get things done that way and without it, there would be chaos.

Some people spend many decades in jail and still live through it all.
 

Lea

Banned
wow this is depressing :sad:


MAN, i'm not a victim, i'm a freaking warrior!

No matter how many things go wrong, battles i lose, i'll still fighting the war :veryangry:

Now seriously, i dont have the option of giving up or killing myself, i'm not here to live in vain and my family needs me! At least i have the curiosity to know how far i can get with this life (like a character from a MMORPG) :)

If you have family that needs you, you still have something I guess. The OP is about when all hope is lost.
 

Flanscho

Well-known member
I can't answer that question. My SA was pretty bad in my early twenties, but it got better over the years. It's not possible for me to imagine to have no friends at all and never make friends, since... well... while getting to know new people always makes me nervous, I still know how to do it. So if I'd have no friends, I'd do just that: find new ones.
 

Kiwong

Well-known member
A lot of that has already happened to me, and I have fought and survived, and will continue to do so.

Running and photography is the music inside me that no one can take, and while I can still do those things there is hope.

There will be few friends and no lovers, there will be anger and dislike, crippling anxiety, the inability to hold a conversation, the possibility I will lose my job and not get another at over 50 years of age, there will be serious health problems as I age.

I will never live a lifeless life, I will always have goals and ambitions, those are facts for me.
 
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GhastlyCC

Well-known member
I don't know if I can last much longer.
I feel that I'm near the end of being able to live like this.
I voted 3-5
But I suppose that's being generous/hopeful
 

dallasthekid

Well-known member
wow this is depressing :sad:


MAN, i'm not a victim, i'm a freaking warrior!

No matter how many things go wrong, battles i lose, i'll still fighting the war :veryangry:

Now seriously, i dont have the option of giving up or killing myself, i'm not here to live in vain and my family needs me! At least i have the curiosity to know how far i can get with this life (like a character from a MMORPG) :)

im a warrior too!!! im gunna fight this battle till the end
 

Ashiene

Well-known member
Most of you do not understand the question.

This is a thought-experiment on mental resilience by imagining your life based on those circumstances I have given to you.

It is not a question about what you are now and how you will react based on your current life circumstances.
 
Most of you do not understand the question.

This is a thought-experiment on mental resilience by imagining your life based on those circumstances I have given to you.

It is not a question about what you are now and how you will react based on your current life circumstances.

A thought experiment?:idontknow:
Many of us are depressed and dealing with our own dire circumstances without needing to imagine ourselves in an even further disasterous life with no hope at all.:idontknow:
I don't understand the point of this?
 
My SA is probably as bad as it can possibly get, and been so for the last few years. But it was always pretty bad, but now i am almost 100% isolated for 24/7.

So that cannot get any worse, it's hit rock-bottom. I have zero self-confidence. BUT NOT ALL OTHER aspects of my life are as bad as they could be (not yet anyway). Having SA DOES NOT force you to keep getting worse & worse in all other areas. In fact is CAN IMPROVE certain areas (eg developing your interests, studying/learning, getting in touch with your yourself/alone-ness/etc).

But it does make life just that extra bit harder. As social isolation i think makes one even more anxious overall, which causes a whole host of problems with mood/feelings. Personally i am FIGHTING HARD not to "sink down" back into the cold/dark/black depths of misery & depression. But it requires a DAILY concerted effort, and takes quite a big chunk of my daily energy.

About how long i've got: I would DEARLY LOVE to say "<1 year". But the fact is i'm not a doer, only a thinker, and i lack any guts, i'm scared of change, and i have a stubborn will to live (albeit to suffer endlessly). So i entered ">30 years". I seem to have a penchant for endless, intense, torturous, almost-daily suffering. I suspect self-hatred/self-punishment is a large part why i do so. And my perfectionism does not allow almost any spontaneity at all. And ... and ... and.

The bottom line now is that i'm starting to think about my past & future lives, karma, and such. I'm STUCK in my hellsih existence, for the foreseeable future anyway. So i cannot escape that. So all i can do is to "manage" or "handle" my reality as best as i can. To do what i can (which isn't very much at all) to "take the sting out of" the more-or-less constant soul-destroying pain. One way that i'm trying, is by working on my internal thoughts, by trying to keep them always upbeat, replacing any overly-negative thoughts with more-rational, self-supportive, hopeful ones. And every single day i'm working on my daily routine. Tweaking it, changing it, adding to it, incorporating my various mental/emotional states into it. I won't give up (probably due to my obsessive personality!). But i also know that it's going to take time, maybe months, or even years.
 

Shenmue

Well-known member
Well I followed your instructions, it wasn't easy, but I tried my best to imagine what you mentioned. It seemed like I was staring into the abyss. It felt like all hope was slipping away from me, and my demise was imminent. But then, I imagined I was eating a bar of chocolate, and I started to feel great again. I also imagined I was Hugh Hefner (just not as lecherous) and the playboy bunnies wanted to ravish me. But I said no, not tonight, I have a headache.

I guess the point I’m making, or trying to, I just can't bring myself to think in such a negative way. No matter how bad my situation may seem, I always try to cling on to something positive. Every Storm Cloud Has A Silver Lining.


Put On a Happy Face (Bye Bye Birdie: The New Soundtrack) - YouTube
 

montejocarlo

Well-known member
If you have family that needs you, you still have something I guess.

this is true. to feel needed... that could be the lifeline that saves anyone who's about to give in.

in my opinion, "hope" is a matter of perspective. whatever the actual circumstance is, your mind will carry you. it will define the reality of your world. if you are in a state of depression, you see and believe the worst.

there's no such thing as a completely hopeless situation. but there's a hopeless view to it.

& to answer the question "how long will you last?" given that state of mind, i honestly don't know. i fear death more than anything, but i find myself unpredictable. sometimes, the misery is too great that ending it seems the only sane option.

i probably won't get crazy. it'd be over before that happens.
 
The concept of never having any ambition is alien to me now. I get down, sure, but usually bounce back on the ambition side of things. If there aren't any, I make some. Social anxiety, fears and general sets back tend to fuel goal/ambition more then it degenerates them. Albeit not immediately.


But even without ambition, I'd see it through to the end. My stance on opting out doesn't change depending on how bad life gets/would get. Life has been pretty bad in the past before I had any ambition.

I remember I was maybe ten or twelve, and I sat down to look at the pros and cons of suicide. What it would do for me, and what it would do for others. The results of that internal conversation has eliminated it as an option for anything else then to escape actual physical torment. I still agree with what I deduced that day.


My assessment is that I'd last well over 30 years.
 
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