How do I cope with losing pets - long read, I need hep :(
Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2014 12:41 am
I apologize for the long read, but I genuinely need help as I'm in a very bad spot in life right now and I think you guys would know a thing or two on how to deal with heavy stuff like this, but before offering advice I would greatly appreciate it if you got to know me a little bit first, so please read this...im a tad weird
All my life I've loved animals dearly, I love them all from cats and dogs to spiders, bugs, insects, fish, reptiles and rodents. No animal disgusts me or freaks me out. I find all living beings, human or non human equally amazing and wonderful. I have a thing where it is very difficult for me to distinguish between the worth of a human or a dog and a cat's life, to me losing a pet is equally as traumatic as losing a human family member and try as I might I'm just not able to change that.
The older I get, the more pain I feel when I see a human being or animal suffering or dying.
A few years ago for a short while I used to visit a therapist, I had some self esteem issues with my old college where I wasn't doing well, so that got to me quite a bit, wasn't depressed or anything, I'm too positive a guy to get depressed, but I was feeling down and was scared about the future. Me being...well me I quickly warmed up to the therapist lady, and she did something with me she had never done before, we would analyze the results of the tests and questionnaires together as I was a psychology student and showed great interest in the whole process. She found practically nothing wrong with me over the course of several months but one thing stuck out...extreme and I mean EXTREME empathy.
This leads to me being in absolute psychological and even physical pain when I see a living being suffer, I can easily tell when people are sad, scared, upset, happy and often share those feelings with them, it can be both a blessing and a curse.
Witnessing extreme pain, as crazy as it may sound completely and utterly clouds my rational judgement, prolonged exposure to something like this can cause self harm or worse. I love life, I absolutely adore my life and it's a fantastic life, I'm at the start of a new and wonderful career as an illustrator for children's books, people love my work, I absolutely adore my work and am not the type of artist who is never satisfied with their own work or strives for perfection, far from it. I've been drawing since I was one year old, I'm 30 now and have always enjoyed every second of it.
I'm happy where I am and genuinely enjoy what I do
I'm never really going to be like an artist who draws properly and stuff, but I do illustration work which seems to be very well accepted even though it's not all super anatomically correct and such.
My goal in life isn't to be a good artist
it's to be a guy who illustrates and enjoys his work and warms up people's hearts with his creations if possible.
I have already achieved that, when kids and adults look at my work it brings a smile to their face, it evokes emotion.
My art is driven from pure emotion and unless I feel good, unless I am happy I'm unable to draw.
You guys can check out some of my stuff here
http://shinigamikiba.deviantart.com/gallery/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Now back on topic.
As some of you are aware my poor cat Anastasia, a beautiful 7 year old persian I'd rather not post pictures of because it's not something I can take atm or ever was diagonzed with CRF in 2012...well it appears her time has finally come.
I am completely unable to cope with this, when she was diagnosed with the illness in 2012 I almost got a heart attack and since then I've been under almost constant stress and pressure yet still loving every second of being with her. I am unable to cope with the pain of seeing her or any other animal for that matter go through this, the incompetent animal healthcare workers in my country only add to this insane feeling of helplessness and sheer pain.
Even if a vet is nice, helpful or understanding they do not have the knowledge or competence I read about on the internet, I could get into it but there's no point. TWO vets would refuse to give her IV fluids when she clearly needed them a couple weeks back, both within 5-10 walking distance of where I live.
Today we finally tired a different, 3rd vet, getting there is expensive, their services are far more expensive but at least they seem to have a better grasp on her situation than these other two vets did. Unfortunatley even that place with supposed 24/7 services today ended up making us wait ALL DAY and we brought her in at 8PM which the vet admitted might be too late now but yeah.
Anyway the pain inside me is so powerful, so strong that i'm afraid I might react...poorly, harm myself or worse as I've done in the past in situations like this. God knows I love life and if I could I'd live forever, but there are things I simply can not cope with and people who know me in real life understand this.
This isn't my first pet, but with the loss of each pet the pain only grows, I don't get used to these things as people say I should, every new loss I take much much harder than the previous one. The period when you see an animal being ill and dying is simply too much for me.
I want to keep owning pets, I've given up on dogs because for them i get stressed out even more, but at least another cat would be nice but I'm not strong enough to go through this again.
How do people do it
All my life I've loved animals dearly, I love them all from cats and dogs to spiders, bugs, insects, fish, reptiles and rodents. No animal disgusts me or freaks me out. I find all living beings, human or non human equally amazing and wonderful. I have a thing where it is very difficult for me to distinguish between the worth of a human or a dog and a cat's life, to me losing a pet is equally as traumatic as losing a human family member and try as I might I'm just not able to change that.
The older I get, the more pain I feel when I see a human being or animal suffering or dying.
A few years ago for a short while I used to visit a therapist, I had some self esteem issues with my old college where I wasn't doing well, so that got to me quite a bit, wasn't depressed or anything, I'm too positive a guy to get depressed, but I was feeling down and was scared about the future. Me being...well me I quickly warmed up to the therapist lady, and she did something with me she had never done before, we would analyze the results of the tests and questionnaires together as I was a psychology student and showed great interest in the whole process. She found practically nothing wrong with me over the course of several months but one thing stuck out...extreme and I mean EXTREME empathy.
This leads to me being in absolute psychological and even physical pain when I see a living being suffer, I can easily tell when people are sad, scared, upset, happy and often share those feelings with them, it can be both a blessing and a curse.
Witnessing extreme pain, as crazy as it may sound completely and utterly clouds my rational judgement, prolonged exposure to something like this can cause self harm or worse. I love life, I absolutely adore my life and it's a fantastic life, I'm at the start of a new and wonderful career as an illustrator for children's books, people love my work, I absolutely adore my work and am not the type of artist who is never satisfied with their own work or strives for perfection, far from it. I've been drawing since I was one year old, I'm 30 now and have always enjoyed every second of it.
I'm happy where I am and genuinely enjoy what I do
I'm never really going to be like an artist who draws properly and stuff, but I do illustration work which seems to be very well accepted even though it's not all super anatomically correct and such.
My goal in life isn't to be a good artist
it's to be a guy who illustrates and enjoys his work and warms up people's hearts with his creations if possible.
I have already achieved that, when kids and adults look at my work it brings a smile to their face, it evokes emotion.
My art is driven from pure emotion and unless I feel good, unless I am happy I'm unable to draw.
You guys can check out some of my stuff here
http://shinigamikiba.deviantart.com/gallery/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Now back on topic.
As some of you are aware my poor cat Anastasia, a beautiful 7 year old persian I'd rather not post pictures of because it's not something I can take atm or ever was diagonzed with CRF in 2012...well it appears her time has finally come.
I am completely unable to cope with this, when she was diagnosed with the illness in 2012 I almost got a heart attack and since then I've been under almost constant stress and pressure yet still loving every second of being with her. I am unable to cope with the pain of seeing her or any other animal for that matter go through this, the incompetent animal healthcare workers in my country only add to this insane feeling of helplessness and sheer pain.
Even if a vet is nice, helpful or understanding they do not have the knowledge or competence I read about on the internet, I could get into it but there's no point. TWO vets would refuse to give her IV fluids when she clearly needed them a couple weeks back, both within 5-10 walking distance of where I live.
Today we finally tired a different, 3rd vet, getting there is expensive, their services are far more expensive but at least they seem to have a better grasp on her situation than these other two vets did. Unfortunatley even that place with supposed 24/7 services today ended up making us wait ALL DAY and we brought her in at 8PM which the vet admitted might be too late now but yeah.
Anyway the pain inside me is so powerful, so strong that i'm afraid I might react...poorly, harm myself or worse as I've done in the past in situations like this. God knows I love life and if I could I'd live forever, but there are things I simply can not cope with and people who know me in real life understand this.
This isn't my first pet, but with the loss of each pet the pain only grows, I don't get used to these things as people say I should, every new loss I take much much harder than the previous one. The period when you see an animal being ill and dying is simply too much for me.
I want to keep owning pets, I've given up on dogs because for them i get stressed out even more, but at least another cat would be nice but I'm not strong enough to go through this again.
How do people do it