Burnt out trying to be good?

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It seems to me the more I go on, the less my efforts to do what’s right matter. I become a worse person and commit sins in trying to do right, and do what I should when I think I’m doing wrong. Doing right just keeps hurting until I can’t do that same right thing again because I panic and start throwing up and can’t help but do wrong because my body won’t let me function otherwise. I’m completely burnt out on caring for other people when none of them care for anything but taking advantage of others, and when whatever goodness I may still have is just an opportunity to promote evil in others.

I’ve been through a multitude of therapists and drugs and whatnot for no benefit. Church just seems hollow - if nothing I do or say makes me a better person, how can I ever expect to go to heaven? It seems just a matter of chance and the circumstances around me whether I become good or evil.

I’ve fought with mental illness that resists all treatment. It seems that I’m just a slave to my own body and mind - panic attacks and flashbacks interrupt any attempt at being a decent person. I can’t do any better than lazy and irresponsible, because I get too tired and sick if I try to work. I could go in to therapy again and listen to more meaningless affirmations, or I could go on more drugs and go back to sleeping all day.

What’s the point in trying to be a decent person, if nothing that you try to do matters to it?
 
It just seems at this point that the first requirement for being godly is to be someone I’m not. That I have to be some perfect saint who can take abuse quietly and not be hurt by it, to even start on the path. That every time I’m hurt I’m less and less able to do what I know I should, to the point where I find myself utterly unable to act in any way that’s not purely selfish, because the physical and psychological reactions are too strong.

I’ve had drugs and therapy pushed down my throat for years to no effect except more pain. I really want to be a good person, I just don’t think I’m ever going to be capable of it.
 
Being exhausted and listless due to illness and/or due to too much effort and disappointment is not laziness or failure.
We think we have to succeed, but what we have to do is to try.

You have no control over what others do.
What you are required to do is the best you can manage [note “manage”] with God’s grace.

Jesus Himself gave all, and He didn’t always have success, because others have their imperfections and misguided ideas and their selfishness. He wept over Jerusalem because of the hardness of hearts of those whom He wished to serve

*Luke 19:41-44

Jesus Weeps over Jerusalem

As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.’
*

“A Christian should always remember that the value of his good works is not based on their number and excellence but on the love of God which prompts him to do these things.” (Saint John of the Cross)

If you appear to strive in vain, St Therese might help to comfort you.

She wrote “Offer to God the sacrifice of never gathering any fruit. If He wills that throughout your whole life, you should feel a repugnance to suffering and humiliation—if He permits that all the flowers of your desires and of your good will should fall to the ground without any fruit appearing, do not worry. At the hour of death He will cause fruits to ripen on the tree of your soul.” (Saint Therese quoted by Celine in ‘Counsels and Reminiscences’)

I knew a priest who became very ill and thin from trying too hard. He even got to the point of deciding to leave the priesthood. Over a period of many months I strove to help him. He said that even his fellow religious were beginning to tell him to leave because he was becoming so ill. “You are the only one who is supporting that I remain a priest”, he finally said. I prayed so much but all seemed in vain, until he read a six-page letter I finally wrote to him. "I read your letter two or three times, he said, and I realised I was trying to do too much for God. I now realize that I need to do what I can and leave the rest to God. " He seemed like a different person, and I hardly recognized him last time I saw him, he looked so well and had his cheerful spirit returned.

I have summed up my own spiritual life, from my end of things, with two words, “I try”. That doesn’t mean I succeed.
You try, but don’t judge yourself on results regarding others.
You have a lot of personal struggle, and your efforts are more pleasing to God for the fact that you try, whether or not others respond.

But please don’t be too hard on yourself. What if Jesus had criticised and blamed Himself for others’ failures, when His companions and disciples of over two years showed no sign of response to His love and teaching (except John) as he suffered and died for them.

Love and prayers,

Trishie
 
You don’t have to be someone you’re not.
God loves you simply as yourself
I wrote the following at one time, and it appears that it may apply to you, so I’ll pray it for you:

.Appreciating others

Jesus, I honour You for others goodness. Yet, help me to share Your compassion, respect and delight in those who seem (to themselves or others)to reflect Your face poorly. Grant me the gift of conveying to each person, the beautiful, glimpsed vision of self, as You love him or her, a fallible human with entwined faults and virtues.

One sometimes glimpses another’s discouraged self-judgement, for he fears that Your plan of salvation builds upon some unlikely ‘ideal self’. He perhaps hopes that to others, only the good is evident. He fears that were others to sense the extent of his unworthiness, they may reject him—as indeed he fears You may.

Jesus, please extend Your hand to him through those who see his efforts and who have faith in the secret, unique miracle of him. Let him know that You love him as he is, and that You plan his holiness around his actual self. You fulfil Your dream of him and serve others through his flawed personality with its abilities, gifts and virtues, along with its faults and scars.

Assure him that his efforts to live the Gospel are more precious because of his temptations and flaws, so that he is encouraged to faith and self-acceptance.
God let me see and share Your beautiful, unique, creative vision of each brother and sister, regardless of ‘apparent’ flaws.

In my warm acceptance of him grant to each person that restoring, blossoming fruitfulness of love—which the image of him cherished and accepted as he really is—produces in the most barren and bleak heart.

My brother, “Do not be afraid, you will not be put to shame.” [Isaiah 54:4]
 
Try and find a good spiritual director if you can. I also highly recommend Interior Freedom by Fr Jaques Philippe- He talks about some of these issues in his book. Its a very small and simple book, but a great read about the spiritual life. He uses a lot of the teachings of St Therese of Lisieux, whom you may also find helpful to read.

God loves you as you are. Remember: Christ saved us while we were still in our sins. So no, you don’t need to be a great saint right now. That is your life project (and that everyone). And you need to love yourself and accept yourself as you are. Its takes humility and patience to do this, but ask God for that grace. This doesn’t mean we don’t try and avoid sin, or become come complacent. However, we should not fall into despair, but entrust all confidently to God. Fight sin all you can, but never rest your confidence on the results; rest them in God’s mercy. He will bring us to holiness in his own time. We just have to do our best to say yes to him over and over, picking ourselves up when we fall. Its easy to fall into discouragement and despair, but we must continually say: Jesus, I trust in you!

Holiness is not about “following the rules”. Its about loving God. And we all fail to do that, but we try to grow in that love. However we need to experience his love first, before we can love him back. So make sure you spend time praying, just meditating on God’s love and care for you personally.

Hope this is helpful, God bless
 
If you feel burned out doing good and being godly, there is perhaps something wrong or at fault in your current spiritual state. Due to the fact that being good enhances the joy and happiness in your soul and lifts the weight of the evil world off from upon your shoulders, this is perhaps a sign that you’re either not filled with the Holy Ghost which comforts and brings you unto all righteousness and truth and closer to God, or you’re under some sort of curse or under a spiritual work of darkness from the enemies.
Love heals you, it increases your zeal for life, it opens up new doorways of action and caring for one another does not become a chore but a blessing. I would pray to Lord God almighty to deliver you from the spiritual works of darkness. You don’t have to change completely, but realize that God works through your Holy Ghost, changing and upgrading who you once where. The old man has been crucified and is done away with, the new man is now here. Put on the new man. If you’re still the old man doing evils freely then you were I think, never truly saved and adopted into sonship of the Almighty Lord of Lords and God of kings in the first place. Hallelujah. Praise be to God.
Just keep trying. Jesus said try fasting, eating less food free’s up your soul, because you become less bound down to earthly things and live more in the Spirit.
 
It’s not even about doing right and not seeing results. It’s about doing the very best you could, giving yourself up to significant pain and hurt, and then finding out at the end that through no fault of your own what you were doing was actually wrong and not right. When the only reason you did it was that you in all innocence believed that it was God’s will, though you did not want to do so.

What do you do? It seems wrong to confess when your fault was submission to an abuser. Yet…I find that I cannot just let what happened go. The mental scars are likely permanent. How can I ever again give my all in obedience to God, when the result was merely to have it all thrown away because I was wrong?

What else could I have done? I was barely over 18, doing what I had been told all my life was my duty to God, keeping away from my doubts because I had been taught they were lies of the devil, and to even entertain them for a moment was sin. I scoured my life for every sin and begged forgiveness, begged for help, and nothing was forthcoming.

I lived with abuse for two years, solely out of my desire to please God and earnest belief that it was my duty to do so and not ask questions. How could I have known differently? I lived with it until I was too weak from the effects, from being unable to eat or sleep, that I had to leave for my own life’s sake - and still there was nothing I could see that absolved me from the guilt that I felt for leaving.

It was years of fasting and praying until my body gave out before any help came - and it came solely from non-Christians when it did. Years of giving my best to God in the best way I knew how, only to have it thrown away for an error that I see no way I could have avoided. How can I trust or obey again after that, if God is so willing to abandon us to the errors of other people? That church too said they had the full truth given by God.
 
I think I will never again have the ability that I had then, to give myself so fully over to duty, to set my own wants and desires aside for what I ought. Not unless I can set aside all human doubt and know perfectly and fully what I ought to do - and that I know cannot be had. But how can I risk myself again when my efforts for good could just as easily be for nothing as for godliness, simply because of an error that I had no power to avoid?
 
DarkLight said:
What’s the point in trying to be a decent person, if nothing that you try to do matters to it?
Click to expand...
Keep it simple: Just do the right thing. Don’t concern yourself with others bad reactions or non-appreciation of what you do. Push such people out of you life, and find those with similar sets of morals to associate with.
 
TheWarriorMonk said:
Keep it simple: Just do the right thing. Don’t concern yourself with others bad reactions or non-appreciation of what you do. Push such people out of you life, and find those with similar sets of morals to associate with.
Click to expand...
It’s not about bad reactions or non-appreciation, though. It’s about trying your hardest and sacrificing to try to do the right thing, only to find out that through no fault of your own that wasn’t actually what you were supposed to be doing. I was deceived on a very fundamental level concerning what was good and right, so that I in all innocence believed that the wrong I was doing was my duty. That’s what I fear - that it seems I no longer know right from wrong, that what I thought before were the answers to my prayers led me into further evil, that I may try again to do good and do evil again out of lack of knowledge I have (like I had then) no way to acquire.
 
DarkLight said:
I lived with abuse for two years, solely out of my desire to please God and earnest belief that it was my duty to do so and not ask questions. How could I have known differently? I lived with it until I was too weak from the effects, from being unable to eat or sleep, that I had to leave for my own life’s sake - and still there was nothing I could see that absolved me from the guilt that I felt for leaving.
Click to expand...
If you really left your abusive situation, I am damn proud of you. It takes incredible strength for someone that has been abused for a long time to gather up the courage to leave such a situation.

Change is difficult, even when that change involves leaving situations that are unhealthy physically, mentally, and spiritually. The emotions involved are very wearing on a person. It is best to focus on the future; not the past, other than to learn from those mistakes and not make them again.
 
DarkLight said:
It’s not about bad reactions or non-appreciation, though. It’s about trying your hardest and sacrificing to try to do the right thing, only to find out that through no fault of your own that wasn’t actually what you were supposed to be doing. I was deceived on a very fundamental level concerning what was good and right, so that I in all innocence believed that the wrong I was doing was my duty. That’s what I fear - that it seems I no longer know right from wrong, that what I thought before were the answers to my prayers led me into further evil, that I may try again to do good and do evil again out of lack of knowledge I have (like I had then) no way to acquire.
Click to expand...
We are not perfect. We all make mistakes. My mantra is that is perfectly fine to make mistakes, provided we only make those mistakes only once. The path toward self betterment is a long path learned over a long time. Don’t let others, including your past self, interfere with that journey.
 
TheWarriorMonk said:
If you really left your abusive situation, I am damn proud of you. It takes incredible strength for someone that has been abused for a long time to gather up the courage to leave such a situation.

Change is difficult, even when that change involves leaving situations that are unhealthy physically, mentally, and spiritually. The emotions involved are very wearing on a person. It is best to focus on the future; not the past, other than to learn from those mistakes and not make them again.
Click to expand...
My fear right now is that I could not see my error until far too late. I remember praying, begging God for deliverance, and getting nothing. It is that silence that frightens me - that I was allowed to continue sacrificing myself, offering a gift up that was meant for God, with no guidance that might have allowed otherwise.

I do not know how to trust God again. I trusted him and he allowed my desire for godliness to be used so cruelly, for my faith to be changed into something worthless because of the errors of others. How can I give again, having seen my offering thrown away? How can I trust again that I do right, and am not merely again following an error, when no prayer or study on my part revealed the mistake?
 
hey i have a mental illness as well, and its scary because i can moments or perios where im not “good” …

but i find that every time i have a mental relapse, the first thing i want to do, while im in the hospital or come back, is to live with god… because its when im in the poverty of being sick that i realize i need something more… and i came to the conclusion it was the Chuch that i wanted…

faith alone is not good enough because we must do good, just brea it down… we do an action it can be “good” or “bad”… we have to discern otherwise every action will be relative and the point of the gospel wouldnt make sense…

my biggest source of hope and recommendation for you is to just rememer god is present in the eucharist… thats all you should know…

know that when you take the eucharist, you are eating christs flesh, if you die you will go to heaven… i always feel nourished as promised by church docrine from the euchaist…

maybe take it easy on the philosophy of everything, settle down, breathe , and keep it simple
 
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