Is it normal that I sometimes want bad things to happen to me

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  • Well I've survived sexual abuse, six murder attempts, a fire and a friend's suicide and I can STILL relate to how you feel.

    I had the same thoughts about my parents in my teens and I figured it was a symbolic urge for independence thing. I have wished to be punched at quite a few times in my life, usually when life is going well but there's something petty like a work deadline quietly stressing me out. It's like I want to take all that everyday low level stress and focus it into one punch that'll hurt but be over in a second. Either that or I just want something more obviously valid to complain about than a 2000 word assignment.

    Sometimes I want to get hurt for more pathological reasons - a sense that I deserve it, a need to be more like my dead friend, or a need to end the anxiety of 'waiting for the other foot to fall' - but I don't get the impression reasons like these are relevant to your case.

    A sense of guilt about ones blessings can in itself lead to a desire to suffer, of course. I remember sitting in a room with a group of tall, young, white, straight, able-bodied, middle-class men as they complained on and on about short men, black people, gay people, women, the disabled, old people and the poor, while I sat trying to work out why they were all such jerks. Then I picked up on the amount of self-loathing in the room and realised they all just felt extremely guilty about their good luck at holding the perfect hand for material success. I suspect any one of those guys would have found a serious misfortune something of a relief on at least some level. I suspect NOT finding such a relief in unaccustomed misfortune can indeed point to and exascerbate some of the more problematic 'personality disorders'.

    As for wanting your life to be like a book, the heroic struggle is something celebrated in every culture I've ever heard of. The hero needs his obstacles and who deep down doesn't want to be a hero? On that level, of course you want your life to be like a book.

    Finally, DES has offered to trade his/her rollercoaster for your dull stability. If you could, I'd say don't trade: I've ridden the rollercoaster and it really is hell. Dull stability is better, but still not great. What both of you need is some middle ground: general stability but with some interesting punctuation.

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