Yes...it's a confusing feeling that make you feel like you've lost a certain purpose in life. It happens quite too often.

Well I feel like that now. but I know why, my common-law bf just confessed to cheating on me. I have never felt like this before. I would not wish this feelign on anyone especially if your not sure what it is your missing. Good luck.

No. Can't say that I have. Fortunately, I've always been able to pinpoint what was missing.

yeah, my trust has gone out the window

Yes, like a mental car crash...the direct future ahead of you is just fog since you can't imagine how you're going to go on, you just want to crawl up and stop everything..

Currently? No, I've figured out all that I've lost, how I lost it and why... Yet it took me a long, long time to get to this postion. I had to do a great deal of personal reflection and look back at my history, see everything for what it was, what it is... I could put that into better words probably, but oh well.

Yes, it's usually related to specific events, like when a long-time friend abandons you and you don't know why -- or your boss writes you up when you thought you were doing a good job.

I am not sure it has been so profound or eloquent for me without me having any awareness of any of the causes - but I have had friends who have described this feeling to me. I have also felt some of what you describe - certainly a loss of identity - sometimes without being able to pin it down. It usually happens in a major life transition or in association with some other loss for me. The times when I felt most like this were at some new stage of life, after moving, after changing jobs, after losing a loved one, after a major failure, at the end of a friendship, when I found myself acting in a way I had though was totally out of character, when I struggled with serious doubts, and when I have just been depressed or depleted. You may not be able to comprehend it, but somewhere inside, you really do know. Some strategies for becoming aware are obvious like counseling and support groups. In addition: Writing a journal of thoughts, dreams, prayers, and reflections. Art if you are so inclined. Writing poems or songs if that helps you. It is helpful to make a connection, but it is also normal or have some free-floating anxiety and to pass through what are called existential crises a number of times in life. The important thing is not to live there. The positive thing about something inside dying is that it eventually makes room for something that is waiting to be born and emerge. When that happens, you will realize that it was not a wholesale change in your essential nature as much as a metamorphosis. Much has been written about the caterpillar before going into the cocoon and emerging as a butterfly - but what of the time in the cocoon? What must that have been like? Maybe you are briefly in your cocoon. I am looking forward to the butterfly you are becoming.

Yes, most everything that everyone has written here describes how I feel since last year. I can't pin it down, but ya, just feel like something died in me. I don't have answers for how to change it, how to resurrect what was lost, or how to find what it is that will revive the life in me that was somehow lost. I did go through a traumatic life experience (church split) after which I have found myself wondering what my purpose is, since I had been very involved there. A series of real or imagined broken relationships related or unrelated and not feeling like I fit at my work place have also been wearing on me. ..I have many passions, but I'm not sure how live them into reality. Certain social anxieties do not help in moving on either since I have become more reluctant to trust.

Yes, and I'd rather not talk about it, sorry.

Yes. I once fired a gun at a paper target while saying the name of one of my bosses. I remember distinctly the voice in my head that said "No! No!" just before I pulled the trigger. After that, I literally felt something in me fade away. Did I mean what I did? No. I did it to impress the crowd I was with. It was stupid. I've never even joked about something like that again. I'm currently trying to find the man whose name I said and ask his forgiveness. It's been 24 years, so I may have a difficult time, as we've both moved, and I don't even remember his name.