First we have to understand what is normal. My definition for normal is things that happened by themselves without coercion or violence.
So if you've been suffering for a long period of time you are probably the victim of violent acts. In order to stop your prolonged emotional pain you have to start defending yourself. Not only you have to stop the violence, but because the violence always leads to self-sabotage.
If you are attacked by a man in a dark alley it is because that person is attempting to make you do something that you wouldn't do either wise, like give him money and other valuables you have on you without getting nothing in return.
When this happens frequent enough you build bad habits and you end up sabotaging yourself constantly which leads to chronic pain. And from this chronic pain a chain reaction can start and reek havoc through your life, because you are sad others will like you less and you are going to have strange behaviors that make you dysfunctional etc.
It was observe a long time ago by the famous psychologist Abraham Maslow that the people who suffers from mental illness have various unmet needs. Because of this appears the illusion that one day when you are going to have enough you are finally going to feel contempt and happy. The problem with this is that because you are in such bad emotional frequency you are to dysfunctional to accomplish anything or form any relationship. Or even after you accomplish certain goals the initial high out of accomplishing that goes away and you relapse back in to your chronic unhappiness.
So how do you stop this cycle?
Modern psychology is partially correct when they say that mental illness is a chemical imbalance but where they go wrong is whit the fact that this imbalance is caused by genetic. Which it wasn't scientifically proven so far and i have no reason to believe that this is true.
We already discuses that everything you ever enjoyed and will enjoy in life is caused by a class of substances released by your body called endorphin's. Click on the link to read more: (https://steemit.com/mental-health/@hellpas/what-does-masochism-and-happiness-have-in-common).
So basically felling normal means having an adequate amount of endorphin's in your body. We obviously get this from pleasurable things like: food, water, sex etc. But this is not enough there is another reason our bodies secret endorphin's, that is to cover pain.
I think this is the way you end this cycle by learning to convert your pain in to pleasure, like this you become relaxed around other people which gives you a much better foundation to build healthy relationships and, and become functional so you can grow and develop the necessary skills you need.
This is still a process i am experimenting with so i am not sure what is the best way to explain it to you or if it is going to work. It is based on the ancient wisdom that you have to face yourself like all your fears and negativity, the way this was explained to me by various teacher was either as a form of emotional purging or as a way to be present to connect with something that already is inside of you. I had very little success with this, until i realized that the pain is actually the think that is stimulating the endorphin system, it is important to stay with your pain because this is how yore body compensate for the pain by releasing endorphin's. No to different the way it dose when you have a physical wound.
I found it important to control the pain in various ways, because if the pain it is to intensive you will completely avoid it and if the pain is not intensive enough it won't stimulate your endocrine system. It also takes persistence you need to do this repeatedly, and you will eventually build enough endorphin inside your body that you will feel like you are high or drunk without putting any foreign substances in to your body.
