So...

[Juubi]

I'm feeling very angry, depressed, and confused. I've lived most of my life with violent and unnatural thoughts and, because I live in the Bible Belt, I'm told to pray for forgiveness and I will be redeemed. Only I've prayed and prayed and prayed and no burden is lifted.

No Lord, no God to help me. No way to help myself. Others like me falling prey to their impulses every day. Their weakness offends my every sense, and still I want and crave that satisfaction. Somehow the filth that permeates my mind has stayed there. I've been strong.

Tonight, I've become aware of the dissatisfaction that everything gives me. Life holds no meaning to me beyond the act of breathing and I'm ironically disgusted by the thought of suicide. I see others who do enjoy their lives and resent their happiness. Children who laugh and smile and resent their innocence.

The only time I can find peace from myself is when I sleep. And I wake up and the notions I held in my head the night before are gone, not to return until later in the day. I play games to escape for a while, I've sworn off alcohol and would sooner eat a fucking gun than do drugs.

I have nothing but my thoughts on my mistake of an existence right now. So I thought I'd share them with you. Get a little insight from some old friends. See what you make of it. Have fun.

 

[pidl]

Get professional help, it has the biggest chance of helping you work out your problems.

 

[zerohour]

Get professional help, it has the biggest chance of helping you work out your problems.

What he said. This sounds like a deep issue, and there's not much I can really offer in advice besides talk to someone who has a much better idea on how to deal with it than me.

Other than that, maybe join a gym or something? Some of them have boxing, wrestling, Ultimate Fighting, or something similar. It might help to express those violent urges in an appropriate and productive(?) way, rather than let it all stew inside of yourself. Find a positive way to channel those emotions, until you can see someone to help deal with them on a more permanent/long term basis.

 

[GaelicDragon]

As pidl wrote, seek professional help. Look up your health insurances website to see who they have for mental health professionals. You might be suprised at how much just taking the right pill helps.

 

[akun50]

@Juubi: I hate to say this, but you may have depression. A lot of people have misconceptions about what depression is like, especially since it can vary radically and anger/rage and resentment can be a part of it. I'd hate to misdiagnose, though. Definitely ask for help, as there are a few other things that it could be, and it would be infinitely easier on you to know what you're dealing with and knowing if you can do something about it.

 

[FinalMax]

Being a man who has long lived with clinical depression in said Bible Belt, I may have the perspective you are looking for. Taking pills for it is only a stopgap measure. In my case, the medication actually worked both ways. Not only did it treat depression, but it suppressed joy. Pretty much was in a general state of near-apathy until my twenties. What I found to help more for me is to talk with people, interact with them. But then the root of my depression has always been a sense of isolation due to a number of factors.

Getting a professional to analyze what's at the core of your depression is going to be far more help that most of what we can do. Cause once you find the root, you can start to find ways to treat yourself.

 

[daniel_gudman]

I've lived most of my life with violent and unnatural thoughts and, because I live in the Bible Belt, I'm told to pray for forgiveness and I will be redeemed.

Sounds like you've got (Non-clinical) Unwanted Intrustive Thoughts. That's a bucket-category for socially transgressive thoughts (violent, sexual, or blasphemous) that occur in your mind more frequently than the baseline human population. It's associated with the anxiety-spectrum disorders such as OCD and GAD; well, since I come at it from the evo/devo perspective instead of the psych perspective because I'm trained as a biologist, not as a psychologist, basically what it means is that your fight/flight instinct is dialed up too high so you're getting a lot of "false positives" when your hominid-ancestor-instincts whisper "hey what if there's a lion behind you" or something.

Supposedly Martin Luther was somewhere on the anxiety spectrum and had problems with religious/blasphemous Intrusive Thoughts that he interpreted as Satanic tempation.

There are several strategies that other people have successfully deployed,, although which one would be best for you is something you'll have to discover on your own (or rather, as a random internet person, I can't guess what would be best for you). Anyway feeling like the thoughts are out of your control and feeling like you could totally act on them are the two emotions most strongly associated with them grinding you down, so most reduction strageties are aimed at that.

I dunno how "prayer" would help, but generally I advise against anything that moves the agency of "dealing with them" from you and making it the responsability of somebody else (eg, God).

Here are some hotline numbers that I scraped off the Internet:
Help Finding a Therapist
1-800-THERAPIST (1-800-843-7274)

National Institute of Mental Health
1-888-ANXIETY (1-888-269-4389)

National Mental Health Association
1-800-969-6642

Suicide & Crisis Hotline
1-800-999-9999

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-8255

I didn't, like, dial them as a test call, so I can't offer any guarentees.

Anyway, you're not alone; there are people that have gone through and are going through what you're dealing with, and they can help you, and the people that are supporting them can help you.

 

[nuclear death frog]

As someone who has lived for years in the Bible Belt (not now, thankfully), I offer my sympathies.

Depression and I are old acquaintances. Dealing with that is a struggle that for some people never really goes away; it's best to face that honestly.

I don't find violent thoughts to be unnatural, though. Frankly, much of the world deserves violence. Giving them what they deserve without suffering legal consequences is the problem.

You might need more outlets. Joining a gym sounds like a good idea to me. I know from my own experience that it's an excellent way to work through some hostility, and there are all those other benefits too.

Good luck.