What do people do about feeling powerless?DEaling with powerlessness and rage!

What do people do about feeling powerless?DEaling with powerlessness and rage!

dark empathy

Registrant
I'm having a really major problem at the moment.
Besides my marriage, nothing in my life works. my writing gets rejected which in turn makes me not want to write, my lady and I are still in lockdown, opportunities in performing arts don't exist for blind people in this fucking country, everything I've tried to do in this fucking dead shit hole my parents forced us to move to fails.
And on, and on!

Heck, I only need to walk into a fucking shop to have people ignore my existance, or spend 20 minutes waiting for someone to serve me (yes of course, there are lores against disability discrimination, but nobody gives a crap).
Oh and that aside from all the usual stuff I have to live with, you know like the amount of computer programs that don't work with screen readers, or when windows decides to update and the update screen is inaccesible, or when I worry my speakers have broken and have to literally memorise my way through fixing them, because the fucking lcd display is inaccessible!

then! I go online and read book reviews and am told all about how people are providing opportunities for this minority and that minority and the other fucking minorityy!

Heck, twice today I whacked my head on open doors, because that is just how life is!

Yes, my lady loves me, (god knows why), however since she got the all clear on her last cancer scan, she's been having major anxiety attacks.
Of course I suppose we should go to the cancer support society about this but news flash! they don't like blind people, or at least the first time we attended their so called "friendly drop in" session, we were treated as if we didn't fucking exist for two hours.
Then when we were invited to a so called young people's support group, we were kicked out because my wife is over fourty, even though I'm not, and of course that didn't have anything to do with them not liking disabled people, honest!

I suppose lock down might be making this worse, however other than the odd trip to a cafe we're really not missing much, I mean it's not as if we have friends or anything social to do is it even before hand?

heck, i actually miss when more people were obeying the lockdown, because at least then it was quiet and all of the idiots and their smelly stupid fucking noisy polluting cars stayed at home and the air was nicer to breathe, heck, at that point I could walk my dog at 1 AM and find things quite peaceful.

so, how do people cope with powerlessness?

I'm feeling powerless, because literally nothing I try to change things works, and other people are bastards! feeling powerless makes me angry! obviously from the tone of this post.

I should be able to do something about how I react to things at this stage, but I don't know how.

Oh, and no, therapy isn't an option because even if we weren't still in lockdown, the UK health service only offers therapy to abuse victims who were abused by a family member.

I tried a couple of voluntary organisations, but only one did some good, and they only offer one course per person. I had 20 weeks of my 36 week course back in 2015, which was nice as well as it went, but it means I won't get anymore.

Oh and yes, I'm well aware that there are plenty of other people who are living worse lives than I am and I probably have no right to complain about any of this, but that just proves how utterly crap I am at pretty much everything! these days!

Sorry for the invective, but I admit 'm struggling at the moment, and what is worse, is my lady isn't having a great time either due to the cancer and everything else.

I could put my adverse reactions down to that, but that simply isn't true, feeling like nothing I do ever makes any difference at all and I'm powerless to change anything in my life has pretty much been a constant.

Luke.
 
I'm having a really major problem at the moment.
Besides my marriage, nothing in my life works. my writing gets rejected which in turn makes me not want to write, my lady and I are still in lockdown, opportunities in performing arts don't exist for blind people in this fucking country, everything I've tried to do in this fucking dead shit hole my parents forced us to move to fails.
And on, and on!

Heck, I only need to walk into a fucking shop to have people ignore my existance, or spend 20 minutes waiting for someone to serve me (yes of course, there are lores against disability discrimination, but nobody gives a crap).
Oh and that aside from all the usual stuff I have to live with, you know like the amount of computer programs that don't work with screen readers, or when windows decides to update and the update screen is inaccesible, or when I worry my speakers have broken and have to literally memorise my way through fixing them, because the fucking lcd display is inaccessible!

then! I go online and read book reviews and am told all about how people are providing opportunities for this minority and that minority and the other fucking minorityy!

Heck, twice today I whacked my head on open doors, because that is just how life is!

Yes, my lady loves me, (god knows why), however since she got the all clear on her last cancer scan, she's been having major anxiety attacks.
Of course I suppose we should go to the cancer support society about this but news flash! they don't like blind people, or at least the first time we attended their so called "friendly drop in" session, we were treated as if we didn't fucking exist for two hours.
Then when we were invited to a so called young people's support group, we were kicked out because my wife is over fourty, even though I'm not, and of course that didn't have anything to do with them not liking disabled people, honest!

I suppose lock down might be making this worse, however other than the odd trip to a cafe we're really not missing much, I mean it's not as if we have friends or anything social to do is it even before hand?

heck, i actually miss when more people were obeying the lockdown, because at least then it was quiet and all of the idiots and their smelly stupid fucking noisy polluting cars stayed at home and the air was nicer to breathe, heck, at that point I could walk my dog at 1 AM and find things quite peaceful.

so, how do people cope with powerlessness?

I'm feeling powerless, because literally nothing I try to change things works, and other people are bastards! feeling powerless makes me angry! obviously from the tone of this post.

I should be able to do something about how I react to things at this stage, but I don't know how.

Oh, and no, therapy isn't an option because even if we weren't still in lockdown, the UK health service only offers therapy to abuse victims who were abused by a family member.

I tried a couple of voluntary organisations, but only one did some good, and they only offer one course per person. I had 20 weeks of my 36 week course back in 2015, which was nice as well as it went, but it means I won't get anymore.

Oh and yes, I'm well aware that there are plenty of other people who are living worse lives than I am and I probably have no right to complain about any of this, but that just proves how utterly crap I am at pretty much everything! these days!

Sorry for the invective, but I admit 'm struggling at the moment, and what is worse, is my lady isn't having a great time either due to the cancer and everything else.

I could put my adverse reactions down to that, but that simply isn't true, feeling like nothing I do ever makes any difference at all and I'm powerless to change anything in my life has pretty much been a constant.

Luke.
Damn that is a lot of crap to put up with! I am sorry i can't do much more than listen. But i will always do that.
As for dealing with powerlessness of things that is a tough one. I never had control of my life for more than a month at a time. Some methods i have used are role playing games like D&D. It doesn't seem like much but fighting through a dungeon or laying waste to towns with friends even if it us just on paper or computer helped get the frustration and anger out of my system. Another is hang up a sturdy duffle bag full of rags tied top and bottom to keep it from swinging and use a metal baseball bat on it, wooden breaks. Say what or who each strike is for before you swing then again after it. Sometimes i would just scream because it wasn't one single thing but all of it together. When i started playing D&D in the 70s one of the girlfriends was blind but she enjoyed the game immensely. She is the one who i learned the idea of the pleasure of destroying things if only in my mind. I hope this helps.
Peace unto you and good ripples brother.
 
Shit Luke, I'm really sorry you're going through all of this.

My go-to method for feeling powerless is basically to scream "FUCK YOU" internally and work twice as hard. But I'm honestly not sure if that's possible for you since it's sounds like you're already working about 100 times as hard as I ever have.

Here with you, though.
 
You've doubtless heard the line... "life's a bitch and then you die." Honestly, I think powerlessness is useful because believing we have control over anything is wishful thinking. We are powerless over the fundamentals of life. Yes, we can get pissed off about it but that doesn't generally get us anywhere. Nothing we do can turn back the clock to the time before we were abused and stop what happened. We've been left with the residue of that trauma and spent a lifetime trying to move beyond it. I know I'm not alone in having created a great deal of suffering for myself and for those around me because I didn't remember and then when I did, wasn't able to find a way through it all.

Finding our way through life's disappointments is never easy and no doubt carrying the pain of past abuse doesn't help. The challenge for me has always been not collapsing in on myself, getting lost in despair or resentment. Resentment can eat you alive. That certainly isn't to say I've never gone there. My sexual acting out has been tinged with anger and invariably left me depressed and with shame. It helps when I don't go to those negative head spaces. The line that keeps coming to mind... "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." I've done enough suffering for one lifetime.
 
@Trapped765, thanks for listening.
Unfortunately, tabletop role playing is another thing I had to give up myself.

Where I lived before in Durham, north England, the one sort of group of friends I had were a bunch of tabeltop gamers who were friends of friends I'd met at uni. We played a 7 years long campaign of mutants and masterminds each week, and even though Superheroes are just plane not my thing, I really did like the game.
Unfortunately, the Gm went and had a baby, and so everything pretty much stopped.

it's actually a real shame, since on one occasion when toddler was elsewhere after I got married, my lady tried a special two day weekend the gm ran, and loved it.
We've looked for something similar around here, but of course, there's bugger all.

I do game online and so on, indeed I'm supposedly one of the worlds' experts in accessible computer games and work for a sight about that, I always have but what's scaring me recently is that my ability to continue on and push through harder game situations is falling off and I just am lacking patience, not to mention reflexes and good judgement.

I'm hoping that part at least is going to tale off somewhat and I'll get my mojo back gaming wise, but even I recognise that exploration single player games, or even multiplayer ones can't really fill everything.

@Strangeways, thanks for that. I unfortunately do scream invective at things.
the problem, is that inevitably I will start getting irritated at the haves, the people who get without trying, the misandric scumbags who get listened to because they're flavour of the month.
Needless to say, if wishes were horses a lot of people would be trampled to death.

this my lady gets very upset with, indeed it's about the only thing she does! get upset with me over, and she isn't wrong, some of the things I say and think are pretty ugly.
not of course that she minds me swaring a lot when I whang my head on a gate (as I did yesterday), however when I see yet another columnist on a website I'd love to write for writing yet another diatribe against "the white male ego", or read another story published in a recent collection which is just a poorly worded excuse to come out with the same old hate speak again and again, and yet some fucker actually published it, and I then wish the authors would get corona and die or worse!

Or when I wish microsoft's fucking programmers would go fucking blind and finally! stop fucking up my computer because they can, my lady get's annoyed with me.

And again she isn't wrong. Do I really mean these things? probably not, if you faced me with one of these people, or even gave me a magic lamp and the power to enact some of these misfortunes I know I wouldn't use it; ---- probably.

But I need to find a better way of coping than this, since the last thing my lady needs is to deal with me.

Not that I'm ever actually angry at her, she's not wrong in this case.

that is one reason I'm on this site trying to find a better way to cope with powerlessness.
@iaccus, sorry to hear this.
In my case, I know what the issue is. powerless equals vulnerable, vulnerable equals something bad will happen.
it's ironic, I never actually got physically angry during the abuse, I just froze. Maybe that's why I'm experiencing the anger now, I don't know, but I would like to find a better way to cope.


@Visitor, I'm glad you've found a zen answer that works for you.
However,I'm afraid when it's brought home to me literally on a daily basis that most of the world considers me not to exist, that is an answer it's very hard for me to give.

Just to take one simple example, you say "sexual acting out", IE, you had a choice. You found people to sleep with and slept with them.
{People do not even see me as the same species!

I walk into a bar, people ignore me, I walk into a social group, people ignore me.
I still do not understand how I happened to get married, indeed it still feels like divine grace to me, and I know if anything happened to my lady, there would literally be nobody else.

If I go to some social group or function where people are forced to interact with me, like the actor's workshop I tried, I have to spend all my conversational skills just getting people to recognise I exist. some people will be curious or kind, but it takes literally weeks until I'm not treated as simply an odd curiosity, by which time people have left.

Even with basic things, the last time pre lockdown I went to a cafe, I had a weightress turn up, to take my order, refuse to read me the menu, and then go and complain loudly to her manager when I asked her to.

Oh yes, I have a phd, and I am in the Guinnes book of records, and i'm listed as one of the worlds' leading experts on audio computer games.
But that doesn't stop me from feeling like I don't exist most of the time.

sorry, if you've found an answer that helps, that's fine for you, but simply "dealing with it", is something I just can't do.
maybe this is my failure, I don't know, indeed the feeling that I'm just plane crap at everything is another one I'm fighting at the moment.
heck, maybe I should just cope better and am just being a wuss, I'm not sure, this is why I came here to ask.

Luke.
 
I had anonymous sex with men in a video arcade Luke, not delightful afternoons with a beautiful woman. My demons drove me to take terrible risks with my health and my life. It didn't matter that I was a good looking, well educated, friendly guy because I couldn't live that life. I was trapped by trauma.

I'm much older than you are and have grappled with these feelings for a long time. I've been married and divorced four times. There is a great deal of wreckage in my life. I'm grateful that I was able to dig my way out of that hell realm. And that is what I'm speaking of above. You have the opportunity to unpack all of this for yourself and find your own truth in life. Hopefully, you'll find some peace along the way. I hear that is not where you are at the moment. This is what trauma looks like, whether we have a PhD or are blind. Neither of those things inoculate you from suffering or guarantee a happy outcome. They don't doom you either.

This is your journey Luke... a bit like the Mission Impossible introduction. You get to decide whether you want to accept the offer. There are men here who would be happy to support your efforts.
 
Luke,

It is most unfortunate about the situation that you find yourself in, that is a great deal of weight to carry on one's shoulders, that is a fact. You remind me a great deal of myself because the anger you have boils to the surface. Who in the world could blame you, because it sure sounds a if you have more than enough to be angry about? It is true that there are a great many who discriminate against those that have what you have happening with you. I would say it is so bad that one could argue that it is almost socially acceptable to do so. People can be real fuckheads and that is a fact. We are not given the ability to control how others act, most especially when it comes to how they do so towards us. The fact that they do this is outrageous and it is unfair. I face the same things for different reasons, but this is for answering you not me.

Your question is regarding powerlessness, I believe it to be quite insidious but for different reasons than most people do. If a state of being powerless finds its way to you for any amount of time, as I think it has many here, I believe it assails hope. That is what it destroyed in me and I might say it did so darned efficiently. If a person loses that, then add some other adversities to the mix you pass the point of losing hope, then you find yourself in misery. That is not a condition anyone ever wants because it is so invasive into everything we are, was or wish to be. So, to me it would only be natural even expected that you feel the way that you do. How in the world cold you not when you are facing all that you are?

You mentioned a couple of times about your wife has cancer and I do not the details behind that. I don't know its locality, bio-disposition, if it is metastatic, you know all the fancy words that the Oncologists like to throw at us? For what it is worth, and it may not be worth anything for your situation, the person typing at you now has one lung. Diagnosed with lung cancer when I was just past my mid-forties and never smoked single cigarette a day in my life. The point being here is, I don't know what type of cancer your wife has, and all of those particulars but what I do know is that it does not always automatically equate to a death sentence. If she is responding to treatment then there is hope, you can do a lot with a small ember of that.

Now I have to be one of those people that just has to be me because I just usually say what I think. I am not a medical doctor, I hold a PhD the same as you. If your medical services will not give you access to the type of therapist that could help there is one thing you might consider. Any medical doctor can prescribe antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. In the chemical world these are the hallmarks of pushing back the effects of PTSD and returning you some manageability. I have learned a great deal of this over the years because my disability is mental in nature. You can trust me when I say people love to use that as a punching bag as well.

The answer to your question how do you fight powerlessness? if you sit and think about it, the answer is quite self-evident ,you are already doing it. That is after all one of the reasons that brought you to this little construct of cyber space to begin with. Your being here and making this post actually is fighting it. It has allowed you to vent some of your frustration and many of these guys here are quite wise, I don't make that cut yet because I am just trying to find my way also.The only other thing I would say is I hope your hope that all Microsoft programmers go blind doesn't happen because I have had a fair portion of bad things already.

With Deep Respect,
jrperky010101
 
@jperky010101, Hi.

Thanks for the answer. The cancer business is unfortunately problematic, I don't want to go into too many intimate details, but at the moment the problem is more that whilst she has had surgery and radio therapy and all the indications are that both worked (heck she had a massive dose of radio therapy all through the start of this year), she is still getting some symptoms, pain in the area etc.
These maybe lingering effects of the radio therapy, , they may be indications of something else.
She's scared, literally on a daily basis doing everyday things.

Again, as I said above, this would be the perfect thing to talk to the cancer support people about, accept that their principle officer decided to have a hate about blind people for no reason.

We're doing everything possible in terms of medical consultation on the issue, and we're being extra careful with the corona virus lockdown, we've literally been inside since March, but no it's not easy.

On other things, the problem I've tended to find when I try anti depressants is that they work too well, they make absolutely everything dull, even under a tiny dose. I don't know if I have a particularly sensative brain chemistry or not.

I'm doing my best with other things, I do fifteen minutes weight lifting and run for 20-25 minutes a day (albeit over the last few days I've had to stop due to a soup tin falling on my dam foot and causing me an injury). I also use ridiculously hi coco dark chocolate as well (the sort that is actively bitter).

All of this can work temporarily, but is pretty much stop gap measures as I realise, indeed I know myself I just need some dam thing to go right! Heck when I've been on stage, or had research to work on, or even been roleplaying I've generally been okay, albeit even with my PHd it took waaaaay longer than usual because my stupid marker did not like disabled people.

In particular, I hate the feeling that I tend to feel like I'm crap at absolutely everything! I get another rjection letter, or see another hyper misandric article and I find myself set off again!

I'm getting so fucking sick of being a fucking begger! begging people for opportunities or recognition or heck when I go into a shop (at least before corona virus).

My parents equally don't help either, since they have this irritating habbit of trying to minimise me and my wife and in the guise of "helping" treating both of us like children.

Okay enough fucking wallowing because this isn't helping either.

suffice it to say, thanks for listening people, but no, this isn't easy.

Luke.
 
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