Reddit mentions: The best friendship books

I'm still learning myself. So I don't have all the answers. But I highly recommend Feeling Good by Dr Burns (http://amzn.to/2xdUvqJ). It's the No.1 best selling CBT book on depression.

It talks about dependence (love addiction) and approval addiction. Loneliness is something I've looked into a bit as well.

Love addiction

When you rely on love to be happy, you are not taking responsibility for your emotional life. The healthy mindset to have is that it would be nice to have someone love you, but it's not a need. You don't need a partner to achieve what you want and enjoy pleasurable activities.

You can love yourself through positive thinking (admiring your positive qualities everyday and how your a bit better today, accepting your flaws like a loved one would, taking good care of yourself, imagining people who have loved you in the past giving you warm feelings or even an imaginary compassionate being). Self soothing our inner child is an important skill for everyone to develop.

Changing dysfunctional attitudes like "I need love" involves a written exercise where you list the advantages and disadvantages of believing this and then re-write a healthier assumption. It's not wise to put your emotional health in something fickle. It's also unattractive to women if you're needy. It's like a downward spiral of loneliness.

I meet someone who was independent and happy, despite having no relationship experience in her late 20's and believing she would never marry. It gave me a role model to aspire to.

Also your self worth isn't based on being successful in love. Everyone has a self worth of 1 unit. It doesn't change no matter what. Even if you're unloved, you're just as worthy as someone else. Self worth is self worth. Relationship status is a different word to self worth. They're not the same thing. Your self worth is independent of looks, employment status, relationships status etc.

Aim to believe that you're a lovable, good, caring and competent person. Look for evidence that proves it, rather than character assassinating yourself and focusing on the negatives. Nobody is objectively good or bad. It's all opinion. Some people thought Charles Manson was good and worshiped him. So hold a good opinion of yourself because it's the helpful thing to do.

Close friendships

You don't need close friends to validate you as person. You decide how worthy you are. It's independent of how many close friends you have.

You're not entitled to close friendships. It's important to accept the universe owes you nothing and accept real life. In the modern world, most adults don't have that many close friends. And I think a lot of people rely on their partner.

I use my work colleagues as a source of friendship and sometimes organize once yearly socials with school mates through a whatapp group. I also never so no to a social invite. I use to be really closed off at work, because I thought people would reject me. But then I opened up and revealed my authentic weird self. Now I feel like I've built genuine friendships at work that I rely on for social support. Authenticity builds closeness. Focus on the other person in conversations. People love talking and it builds closeness when people feel you know them well and can support them.

Also spend time with family - take them out for dinner, phone calls etc. I appreciate the social support they've given me at times. Make the most out of what little social life you have and accept what people can give you. Rather than demand a level of closeness they can't deliver.

Solitary is nice too. It gives you space to recharge your batteries from work, grow and engage in hobbies.

Loneliness

Loneliness is natural. It's your body telling you that it wants social support and love. When it comes, be mindful of it and self soothe with kindness. Everyone experiences loneliness at some point in their life. It's a regular occurrence for me. You can't avoid suffering. It's a part of life. Make sure you take good of yourself when it comes. The only true solution to loneliness is friendship and love. As long as you are trying your best to get those things, there's nothing more you can do. Healthy distractions are a good thing during the day.

Life will get better. People will gravitate towards you, you may find love and you will become better at coping. You've just got to take every day as it comes and keep working on it.

I've dealt with very similar issues all my life. I was raised by the most negative people I've ever met. I've had MDD off and on (or more accurately, in and out of remission) since before I was 10. I've got huge self esteem problems, and issues socializing, especially with women. I isolate myself, and have big problems attending school and/or work.

But I'm 40, and I've been in treatment off and on for 18 years. I've learned a lot through therapy, and from my own research and trail and error, and just by living through it. So I'll try to tell you what I know.

First, you have several issues going on. It's easiest to first figure out what your primary issues are, and work on them. Many of the smaller issues are just fallout from the more basic troubles, so if you can fix them, the little things just clear up on their own. That's the good news. The bad news is that there is, of course, no magic pill.

From what I can tell, your issues are mainly low self-esteem, lack of social skills, and low motivation (or optimism, hope, etc.). Those issues cause you to underperform in school and career (to the point that you don't have one), cause you to have a lot of social anxiety and avoid trying to date or have friends, and become depressed as a result of the lack of anything going on in your life. You live in a void, and so there is nothing to stimulate positive emotions in you. If you work on those things, you'll start developing things like a healthy range of emotions, a strong libido, drive and ambition, etc.

First of all, motivation follows action - not vice versa. You will basically never just feel like taking on all these life issues and then do it. What you have to do is have a little bit of faith in what other people tell you, and just start doing some small things. As you do the small things, you will start to feel better and more positive, and it will be much easier to take on the next thing.

An example is if your room is a huge mess. You will most likely not ever just feel like cleaning it up, it's too big a job and it seems pointless to even start because you think you'll never get it all done because you feel so drained already. So you have to just use the logical part of your brain, and tell yourself that if you clean a little then you'll feel better and will likely clean some more and feel a good bit better (a clean environment helps you have a positive mood, a dirty, chaotic environment is depressing). So you set a very simple goal of cleaning off the top of one dresser. That's it. Your goal is to clean this one 2x3' space - that's so easy you can't fail. It will take a few minutes at most. Don't make it overly difficult - you don't have to organize the CD's into alphabetical order or scrub the dust out of the cracks in the wood. Just throw away the garbage sitting on it, put the loose junk into a drawer, and put whatever picture frames or candles or whatever lives there back in order. Maybe wipe off the dust if it's covered in it.

After you have done that, you will feel a sense of accomplishment. That can cause you to get motivated to do the next thing, if you let it. Everything is about baby steps. You just keep taking baby steps, and when you fall down, you just get up whenever you can and start taking baby steps again. Don't even bother looking at the big picture, it's too overwhelming.

The way you cleaned the top of the dresser in the hypothetical example is how you'll approach everything. You just aim to do one small goal. One goal that is so small that you really can't fail. When you reach that goal, you feel positive, and you set another tiny goal. In this way, you set yourself up for success after success, and they build on one another. But your goal still is just the one thing - if you clean the top of the dresser, you win. Don't think of it as cleaning the dresser in order to get yourself to clean the closet and then the whole room. Your goal is only to clean the top of the dresser. That's all you have to do. It's simple. It will take 5 minutes if you do it slow. But by completing that goal, it's very likely that you'll choose to do more just because you've become motivated.

Another thing that is very effective is to keep written records. If you are anything like me, you hate writing notes and staying organized. I never write stuff down. I learned to rely on my memory and have never been able to keep an organizer or even use post-it notes well. But when my therapist had me start tracking my habits and moods, it did wonders. I'm on the computer all the time, so I just make a little 4x2 table or something in google docs, and use it to keep track of what I'm doing and how I feel. You can do it however you want, just don't make it complicated or really ambitious. Just a space where you can write down real quick what you did today and how you felt.

Writing has a kind of magic that just thinking doesn't. It takes ideas and turns them into something physical, tangible. So when you write down "I cleaned off the top of the dresser this afternoon and that made me feel a little better for a while," it somehow makes it more real, more memorable. You can't go back and edit the memory to say that it didn't do anything, because it's there in black and white. But if you don't write it down, it's easy to go back and think "well, it didn't make me feel that much better, it wasn't really worth it." You don't even need to go back and read it, just the fact that you wrote it somewhere is enough to make it real, and to give it the power to start changing the way you think, and what you believe about reality.

So just start with simple goals like cleaning up a little around yourself, and taking showers, etc. - and keeping a very simple daily log of what you did and how you felt each day.

After doing that for a few days or so, you will feel a bit better about yourself. Then, you can start venturing outwards. Don't start making bigger goals! Keep the goals really small, too easy to fail. But just move in an outward direction with them. You may want to start exercising by walking to the end of the driveway and back. Or to the end of the block and back. Whatever is so easy that it's really more work to make an excuse not to.

You can start reaching out socially in the same way. You've got the internet, so you could leave a one line note on an old friend's facebook page. Just say "hey bud. Haven't talked in a while. Hope you are doing well." Or go to /r/r4r, or /r/ForeverAloneDating or any kind of social subreddit, and talk to somebody - just find a comment from somebody who has a similar problem, or whose opinion you like, and send them an IM saying that you like what they said, etc. Not with the goal of making a new friend that you'll keep up with forever. Just with the intention of specifically talking to another human.

Or you can make a goal to leave the house and say "hi" to at least one stranger today. If that's too hard, you can make a goal to just make eye contact with one stranger today. If you keep making these ridiculously simple goals each day, and writing them down, things get easier and easier. After a while, saying "hi" to strangers may become a habit. And suddenly having an actual conversation with a stranger may be an easy goal for you. But don't get ahead of yourself, just go do something you can't fail at. Your goal may be to just make eye contact with a pretty girl in your class. Or to just say hi. Or if that's too easy, then to have a conversation with her. Whatever is easy to do, but you aren't already doing. As you keep doing these things, you become more and more socially comfortable.

Don't aim to "go on dates". Going on an official date is so stressful. It's setting yourself up to fail. Just aim to hang out with, or be around, people you like and girls you are attracted to. When you're in college, you can spend time around girls and get used to talking to them a bit before going on a proper date with them. It's far easier if you are already comfortable talking to them between classes or whatever to move on to social things outside of class.

Don't forget to do fun things. The meaning of your life is up to you, no one else. There's no reason that you "should" be anything except whatever you want to be. So do the things that you genuinely enjoy. If you like playing video games, play video games. Just let them be a treat, and don't let yourself feel bad, like telling yourself that you "shouldn't" play vidya games so much. Allow yourself times to just indulge and not worry about anything.

If you want to get better with girls, aim lower. Don't ask out the prettiest and most popular girl you know because she's the one you like the most. Go hang out with girls you don't find all that attractive, but do like or feel comfortable with. Just go hang out with females (and guys too for that matter). Get used to being around women. It doesn't need to be a date. You can just go shopping with a girl. Tell her you have some event coming up and you need a new outfit, and want a girl's opinion, and go to the store and have her help you pick something out. Being around any women makes you more attractive to women, because you get more comfortable, and they give you tips about how to not be gross or weird. If you have a female best friend who is strictly platonic, she can be the best wingman you'll ever have.


Look into seeing a talk therapist if you feel like you are really in bad shape. Someone who does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is perfect for you. If you want to learn how to do CBT but can't get into therapy right now, buy the book Feeling Good: the new mood therapy by David Burns. Read it and do the exercises.

TL;DR: Make goals that are so small you can't fail. Do them, and each day write down what you've done and how you felt.

part 2/3

So let's take a look at everything on your list:

Health: I need to feel better (great goal!)

1. Body
   
2. Mind
   
3. Fitness
   
   Body:
   
   Urologist appointment:
   
   

• Outcome desired: Visit urologist
  
• Next action: Call urologist to make appointment. If you don't have a urologist, find one by calling your GP's office. Do you need a referral? Call your GP's office to ask
  
  Hydrate:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Stay hydrated throughout the day
  
• Next action: Purchase a double-walled, vacuum-insulated tumbler & thermos. Here's a link to an awesome one. Also setup a recurring calendar entry: Refill this every morning when you first wake up & keep it within arm's reach all day so that you stay hydrated
  
  Low-carb & healthy snacks:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Create a meal-prep system to provide you with low-carb meals & healthy snacks on a daily basis
  
• Next action: Well, tbh, this is a bigger project than I can quickly write out in a single post. So instead I'll suggest checking out "complete foods", for starters. Complete foods is basically what they feed coma patients - it has all the nutrition required, in a liquid shake. You blend it up & drink it. Soylent is the most popular, but if you want low-carb, Sated is pretty good. I use it from time to time when I want to get 100% nutrition, but I don't feel like doing meal-prep. I'd suggest trying the vanilla sucralose version ($72 on subscription, which you can pause at any time, which works out to just $2.40 per meal, and all you have to do is blend it up...I use a portable motorized blender bottle, super easy!).
  
  PF appointment: (PF = Planet Fitness? just taking a guess here)
  
  
• Outcome desired: Probably way off base here (since it's under body, not fitness), but for the sake of discussion, we'll call this "sign up for a monthly subscription to Planet Fitness"
  
• Next action: Drive down to Planet Fitness & sign up. Note that every Planet Fitness membership gets FREE personal training. The most powerful motivator for exercise is "having a buddy", which means that if you sign up at PF & get yourself a personal trainer & show up, your chances of actually getting fit & staying fit go through the roof, based on motivational studies, due to that accountability aspect.
  
  Mind:
  
  Meditate 3 minutes:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Mediate for 3 minutes a day
  
• Next action: Schedule your meditation at a specific time as a recurring calendar item. Also, get an app like Headspace or Calm to guide you through the process.
  
  Drink less:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Drink less (guessing alcohol?)
  
• Next action: Select a replacement drink to enjoy, such as soda, Mio, or perhaps something more fun like one of the modern protein-enhanced drinks like Fairlife Ultra-Filtered Chocolate Milk or Nesquik Protein Plus strawberry milk, which would line up more with your fitness goals, and buy a case of it to have on-hand to replace drinking with.
  
  Track mood:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Track your mood throughout the day on a daily basis
  
• Next action: Pick up the "10 days to self-esteem" workbook to track your mood & identify what to do about it to change things. Also try out an app like Daylio.
  
  Gratitude:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Overcome negative thinking by tracking gratitude daily
  
• Next action: Setup a recurring calendar reminder at 8pm every night to write down things you are grateful for every day. Download the Grateful phone app to give you a place to write those things down.
  
  Take meds:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Consistently take your medication
  
• Next action: Identify all of your medications, decide when to take them, and create a recurring calendar alarm at 7am to remind you to take them.
  
  Therapy weekly:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Go to therapy weekly
  
• Next actions: Find a therapist, if you haven't already done so; call your GP if you need suggestions.
  
  Read:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Read every day.
  
• Next action: Select a book to read & create a recurring calendar reminder at 7:30pm with a timer to read for 10 minutes every day. Also, select several books that you want to read in the future & put them on a list.
  
  Fitness:
  
  15-30 minutes exercise daily:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Exercise for 15 to 30 minutes daily
  
• Next action: If we're going with Planet Fitness, then schedule a time after work, say 5:30pm, for a 30-minute appointment at Planet Fitness every day.
  
  Walks with dog:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Take a walk with the dog
  
• Next action: Decide on the route you will take, and then create a recurring calendar entry at 6:30am to wake the dog for a walk every day for 15 minutes.
  
  Plan workouts:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Have a workout plan to follow
  
• Next action: Work with personal trainer at Planet Fitness to create a workout program.
  
  Lay out clothing at night:
  
  
• Outcome desired: Be efficient at getting ready in the morning by having all of your clothes ready to go
  
• Next action: Set a recurring calendar alarm for 9pm every night to get your underwear, shirt, pants, socks, shoes, and towel, and put them on your computer chair
  
  part 2/3

I wouldn't suggest you rush to your doctor with the question, "am I seriously depressed?" If you live in the west, there's a 99% chance that an M.D. will shove a multiple choice test at you, which may or may not come back showing you are depressed. If it shows you are depressed, your doctor will prescribe an antidepressant... which may or may not make you feel better, but it will definitely not have any real effect on the root of your problems.

I think the answer to the question, "am I seriously depressed?" lies in another question: does your mood have a chronically negative impact on your life? everyone gets sad from time to time, but does your mood interfere with your your relationships, or your work, or impede your ability to achieve your goals and take enjoyment out of day to day life?

If the answer is yes, then you should do something to change your mood. In my experience, the best way to change your mood is by working with a good shrink. You want a registered psychologist, or a professional counsellor with an MSW degree (Masters of Social Work). There are any number of people in the phone book calling themselves "therapists" or "counsellors" but those names might not necessarily mean anything more than a 1 or 2 year diploma, and maybe much less than that. Not to disparage those people, nor all the people they help... but personally I only want to trust my mind to the very best.

Anyways... any good shrink will be helpful, but I strongly recommend you find someone who specializes in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. CBT is not at all like traditional talk therapy... you're not going to be talking about childhood traumas, or whether your father gave you enough attention. Instead, CBT is about making very concrete changes to the way think and react to your world. For example, imagine being stuck in traffic... if you're like me, most of the time I'm okay with it, but sometimes I flip out and fly into a murderous rage... CBT is about identifying what's going on in your mind in the moments between 'calmly driving' and 'wanting to eviscerate the driver in front of you', and then changing it. In the case of depression, you'll be working on the thought patterns that are bringing your mood down.

Where I am in B.C., shrinks are charging around $140 an hour, some will work on a sliding scale. That might seem like a lot, but the beauty of CBT is it works astoundingly fast... once you find a good shrink, you'll see pretty dramatic results within 1 or 2 hours, and you might feel like you're done after 4 or 5... maybe less. I have pretty severe depression, and I keep it in check with between 4 and 8 sessions, a couple times a year. So I spend $1000 - $1500 a year on head shrinking, and it's the best money I spend... I would spend double that without a second thought. The payback in terms of quality of life is remarkable, and most people spend that much or more on car maintenance. And for your relatively mild depression, you may only need a few sessions and never go back.

Finding the right shrink is key... most will give a free initial session. If you're not feeling it after the freebie, don't go back. Make sure you like them and trust them and feel like they're earning your money.

Whether or not you seek therapy with a shrink, I highly recommend the book, "Feeling Good" by David Burns [amazon link[(http://www.amazon.ca/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278729282&sr=8-2). It's a CBT self help book for depression. Like all self help books, it's a little cheesy, but if you have some faith and go with it, it's pretty damn effective. It's bound to help you in some way even if you're not seriously depressed... might be the best $8.99 you ever spend.

I can’t say I’m 100% cured, but can I say that it does get better. If you keep working at it you will grow and get better at it.

I’ve written a post describing my advice that I’ve learned in my 10 years since my suicide attempt. Here’s a link to it.

As for self love, that’s a little different of road. I had a really bad “hate tape” playing in my mind for the majority of my life. A great place to start is the book Feeling Good by David Burns. The sparknotes version of this book is that we have thoughts that are designed to hurt our outlook (called cognitive distortions) and gives you good tools to identify and address these. I’m not a huge fan of self help books, but this is scientifically researched and written by one of the originators of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This combined with meditation is really potent stuff.

I believe in faking it until you make it. What I’ve realized is that what most people say about self-love is true and unhelpful. It feels inauthentic to say that we love ourselves if we truly don’t feel it. And it is precisely this thought process that kept me from truly loving myself. I force myself to say nice things to myself even when I feel like a crappy human being. Instead of self-deprecating, I over exaggerate my own ability and awesomeness. They end up being the same jokes just reversed (a cheeky “Oh I totally meant to do that” instead of a depressing “see how worthless I am”).

And I’ve found this to work. My brain is in the habit of self-love rather than self-loathing. If you do something enough it becomes your automatic response. Have you ever said ironically loved something so much (like a meme or a song) that you grow to genuinely love it? That’s how I developed a healthy relationship with myself.

What I’ve found is that loving yourself is simple and incredibly difficult at the same time. All those cliches about “just be your own best friend” and “go easy on yourself” are technically right, but ignore the amount of time, effort and failures that come on the way to that point. It’s kind of a 3 steps forward two steps back kind of thing.

Lastly there will be days when you just don’t feel it. This is when I reach out to people I love and care about for external validation. Again my brain wants to say “they are only saying that because you specifically asked for it”. And I say so what? Just because I asked my best friend to say nice things about me doesn’t mean he doesn’t mean it. We have a relationship built on trust; he would say tell me if something was wrong with me just as easy as what is right. The fact that he would do that for me speaks to how much he cares for me. I would do the same for him.

I can’t say that this is full proof or that it will even be relevant to your life (hell it doesn’t work for me all the time), but I hope there is some nugget of information that you can steal from this that might help you on your journey to self acceptance. Even if these aren’t the right answers for you, I can tell you that your answers are out there somewhere. Maybe they’re in you just waiting to be uncovered.

God bless:)

Hey man,

You mentioned that you went through some pretty extreme depression. What kind of treatment did you get?

There are some things this subreddit might be able to recommend, but if you're still battling with depression (remember, there's no shame in that) it's probably over our heads.

If you haven't gone through therapy, it sounds like that could be a good option for you. Remember that there is nothing wrong with getting help. Probably you know that (since you're asking here) but it's worth repeating – getting help is a sign of strength, not weakness.

If you can't or won't go to therapy for whatever reason, I highly recommend you pick up "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David Burns. You can get the paperback for $6 on Amazon. I think learning about cognitive distortions will really help you, as I can see a few in your post. Even if you do go to therapy, the book is worth a read.

Again, remember that this doesn't say anything about your self-worth. It's just something you're going through right now, but you can work to fix it.

As an example of some things in your post:

>a few hours after I wake up I realize that I can't fix myself

Remember that you aren't broken. You can change if you want to, but that doesn't mean you're broken. I believe in you, and you believe in yourself at least a little bit, or you wouldn't have made this post. You can do this.

>I used to eat healthier, now I'm nothing

You are not nothing. You are a human person, and nothing in the world can take that away from you. There is nothing that can take away your worth as a human being.

>I have time, I'm just not using it properly.

It's awesome that you've realized this on your own. I'm sure you've been thinking through all of this a lot, and the fact that you've reached this conclusion shows some real insight. Lots of people will never admit to themselves that they really do have the time – you're off to a good start with this.

How can you start? I don't know where you're located, but Psychology Today has a simple tool that can help you find a therapist. I'd check it out and, if the option is there, look for someone that does cognitive therapy.

Outside of steps like that, take small actions. Even micro actions. Heck, the smaller the better. These actions should be easy to start and easy to finish, but finishing them accomplishes something, anything, towards making your life better. You can check out the subreddit /r/NonZeroDay if you need ideas (and also read the post that inspired the subreddit).

Baby steps will help you build confidence. They will help you prove to yourself that you can do things that make a difference. Plus, the results of those actions will help you level up your life all on their own.

That's what I've got for you. I hope it helps, and please, please don't hesitate to ask questions or PM me.

Remember, I believe in you.

This is going to be a pretty long-winded post because most of the sentiments you are feeling right now are phases I went through are college (I am currently a senior, and though my situation has improved since the beginning of college, I am still facing some of the lingering effects of depression).

In my belief, recovering from depression has to be practical, personal, and environmental. Practical in the sense that you need to take care of yourself and the environment around you (i.e. cleaning your room (btw, I'm no Jordan Peterson fan; cleaning my room is just an easy way for me to get the day started and feel good about myself), working out, eating healthy, practicing hygiene, meditation, etc). Though it may seem like it might not have a direct effect on you, organizing yourself and your environment does give a sense of self-control and does create a better image of yourself.

As for personal, depression does not simply come from genetics (yes, I know there are cases where this is true, but in my personal belief, depression can also be defined by your past experiences and the environment you are currently in). For me, depression really came from the conflicts I had with my parents and my unpreparedness of going to college. My mom was so desperate for me to get into a good college that she ended up doing my entire art portfolio and I had to write fake comments about what those art pieces meant. Thus, when I got to a college that is well-ranked, I felt like a total sham; I felt like the education that I was receiving was not of my own, but my mother's. I was only able to really figure this out by attending four years of therapy, and even now, I'm still going through some personal struggles. The personal aspects of your life takes time to figure out, but at the same time, is also a great source of clarity.

Finally, the final aspect of recovering from depression is environmental. Without having friends and families nearby, it can worsen the effects of depression because it makes you feel isolated and feel as if you're the only crazy individual out of seemingly-normal people. For me, it's hard to interact with my family because we just did not talk to each other that often in the first place. As for friends, I did have one friend in the beginning of college, but I have felt ambivalent about it because I felt like the activities we were doing together wasn't really improving my well-being (going to bars, playing games, etc). I do appreciate the fact that I had a friend, but looking back, I wish I also had another friend who had my academic well-being in mind as well. Also, I realized that I cannot have a single friend in which I can depend on for all my needs (academic, partying, hobbies, personal introspection, etc). I realized that I need to have some friends (not a lot) that meets my different needs, and that perspective change did open up my field of view as to which friends I can make. I have some friends in which I smoke weed with, make games with, study with, and they're all not necessarily in the same group.

But that leads to the question, what if I don't have friends and family members to lean on in the first place? And that's the catch-22 aspect depression. Without friends and families to connect to, we further isolate ourselves into our rooms, breaking down the practical and personal improvements we have built for ourself. This, in turn, makes it harder to reach out to others in the first place because we're not at our best selves and we don't want to perpetuate this negative image of being depressed and not-in-control to others. Personally, I think depression is cyclical in nature, but there is a way to stop it as well. Otherwise, we would never hear stories about how people were able to recover from depression.

So then, here are some of the steps that I found useful when recovering from depression:

1. If you're experiencing depression during the middle of the semester and see things going downhill, the best I can offer is to try your best and take as least losses as you can. The reason why is that attending to your academic needs takes a lot of energy and concentration, and trying to change for the better half-way through is immensely difficult to do (practicing habits for the first few days is hard because it forces us to be out of our comfort zone). And failing those self-improvement goals makes us feel even more shitty.
   
2. But, when the semester ends, take the time to reflect about what went wrong and what went right. You're not going to have all the answers, and you're going to realize some way through the semester that the "corrections" you made may not be enough. However, small and incremental improvements is much better than none.
   
3. As for maintaining healthy habits in school, I would start off by practicing those habits during winter/summer break. This is the time where you can whole-heartedly focus on creating healthy habits, and by the time you go to school again, it will feel like second nature and you don't even have to put a single thought into questions like: When should I exercise? What should I eat? What time should I go to sleep? (As a warning though, don't try to change your schedule and habits midway through the semester. I ended up doing this and it just really ruined the flow. Stick with the habits throughout the semester, and make adjustments once you are done).
   
4. Start the day right and easy. The way I think of it, going throughout your day is like building momentum. You don't want to tackle the most difficult task at first, as it will wear you out easily. Rather, you want to start with the itty-bitty stuff (brush your teeth, shower, get a healthy breakfast, plan your schedule, etc). And as you finish these small tasks, it does grow into your confidence of doing bigger things. Furthermore, by tackling these small tasks/rituals in the morning, you don't have to worry about the small things, and can reserve your energy for doing more important work (i.e. academics). Motivation doesn't come before our tasks, but rather, occurs while we are in the thick of it.
   
5. Know what kind of therapist you want. For me, I wanted a therapist in which I can talk about my past troubles with and gives me a lot of room to explore those past experiences. And it takes a while to find the right therapist, so don't stress about that too much as well.
   
6. Keep your goals short and simple. For me, I would often stress about what I wanted to do after graduating college, and this stress of not being able to stick to one path in life made me feel completely unmotivated. What ended up working out better for me was to say: "Look, I honestly don't know where life is going to take me, and that's fine. I just know for now, I need to do well this semester, and I can worry about the next step after I'm done."
   
7. Weed and alcohol. First of all don't use this as a crutch to get through depression as it will further your feelings of self-worthlessness the next day. However, if you are currently consuming them and do appreciate some aspects of it, I would only recommend doing so when you're at your best and you're in the company of others. I enjoy my weed and alcohol because it lets me be a bit loose and enjoy my time with friends. However, it does make me feel shitty the next day, and that shittiness can feed int your feelings of self-defeat. I'm not endorsing weed and alcohol as the solution to make friends; I'm just saying is that if that is one of your ways to make friends, then be very careful.
   
8. Leave the room. I often joke about my therapist about my "depression chair" because it's so comfortable and in front of my desktop, I end up not leaving the room and I do nothing all day. Leave the room and go to an environment where it does encourage you to engage with your academics or other activities.
   
9. Try to get a job on campus (I work as a librarian, which is ideal as I can focus on my studies and my interaction with people is at a minimal). Getting a job does enforce a sense of discipline, and hopefully, this discipline can be applied to other areas of your life.
   
10. I also didn't get an internship my sophomore year. What helped me get an internship later on was finding out what internship I wanted in the first place (and it may not be the ideal and ultimate internship, but it was good enough), searching what skillsets they needed, and working on those skillsets during break via personal projects (I am a computer science major).
    
    Here are some resources that I found helpful:
    
    
11. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy: This book gives you a good set of guidelines in which you can improve yourself. However, this book is practical in nature, so don't expect a lot of personal guidance from it.
    
12. Daughters - You Won't Get What You Want: If the previous resource was practical, I consider this my personal resource. Normally, I don't ever listen to this kind of music because it's really not my taste. However, this album in itself feels very visceral and raw, and is the closest thing to death I can come across. As cliche as it may sound, this music does understand some of the feelings I go through. Other artists/albums that are lighter in tone I would recommend is Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial, The Mountain Goats, and Courtney Barnett. When there is no one to rely on, it feels nice to listen to others who are able to understand an ounce of what you are going through.

Hi, 31M, fighting depression, acute social anxiety disorder and suicidal tendencies. I am doing good now. Had a scare a few months ago when a close family member fell really ill, and I really started to put in the effort to turn my life around. It is a work in progress, but I am doing well. My advice:

1. Realize, first and foremost, that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, everything is okay. If you are an Introvert, that is perfectly fine, in fact that is a cause for celebration. You see the world runs on profit, on selling you shit you don't need and is actually harmful to you, and you being introvert is bad for business. Being calm, self-aware, introspective means no more impulse purchases, no more stress-eating, no more constant sugar rush, and most importantly no more addictions. Good for you, horrible for selling you supersaturated soda, processed junk food and drugs.
   
   
2. Realize that being shy and socially awkward is not the same as introversion. These often rise from our deep rooted emotions and conflicts, sometimes we are not aware of them. I'll give a simple example, I have lower back pain since childhood. I recently started exercising and found a fantastic fitness channel on YT. I realized that the cause of my pain was that my Glutes are terribly weak, and my Abs are weak too. My back hurts not because there's something wrong with it, but because it is overworked. My back has to put in 3 times the effort just to stabilize my core and help move my spine. Similarly, The real cause of all your emotional distress can be found, and healed, only when you start to exercise. Which means:
   
   
3. Meditate. Common sense, buddy, just as nobody but yourself can gift you with a healthy and athletic body, only you can find joy and happiness in yourself once you clean out all that fear and anxiety in your mind. Of course, a good teacher or a good book helps, just as with exercise. Simple breathing meditation. Sit comfortably. Take a deep breath. Exhale. Focus on the flow of breath. The mind will wander. Gently bring it back. Try it, start with what I did: try to perform just 3 perfect cycles. If you want to understand the scientific basis for why Meditation works, read: The Mind Illuminated | John Yates, Matthew Immergut, Jeremy Graves
   
   Some more reading: If you want to know how meditation helps the mind, read the best book on cognitive therapy:Feeling Good | David Burns.
   
   For instructions on breathing and mindfulness meditation, there are many great resources online. Also check out /r/Meditation.
   
   
4. The one thing, the one attribute that defines us and helps us most in time of need is Willpower. There is this reservoir of strength inside you, an untapped fountain of energy that will sweep away all the uncertainty, fear and pain once you tap into it. Read this: The Will power Instinct | Kelly McGonigal.
   
   
5. Develop some good habits. Wake up early. Keep tidy. Meditate. Exercise. Eat healthy. Read. Habits play a crucial role in forming us, and many of these habits are critical to our success or failure. Read this: The Power of Habit | Charles Duhigg.
   
   
6. Finally, find a goal in your life. A goal that fulfills you, gives you purpose, and makes you whole. We have a word in Sanskrit: 'Samriddhi'. It means physical, mental and spiritual fulfillment. An observation: your financial well-being is a key factor in your happiness, because it directly affects you and your ability to care for and help others. Understanding how money works and how to enjoy a steady and growing flow of income is a key skill that is often neglected. Yes it is a skill that can be learned and trained just like exercise, with just a bit of help from our old friend willpower.
   
   
7. Lastly remember you are not weak, fragile, pushover or any of these silly things. You are good. You are beautiful, strong and confident, and don't you dare think otherwise.
   
   I leave you with this song: Get up! Be good. PM me if you need anything.

>Now that I’m in my thirties and realize I don’t have much time left to have young energetic sex

First off, this has not been my experience. If you've got a high libido like your post suggests, there's no reason to believe you won't be capable of fucking your partners senseless years from now.

>I’ve read countless posts on here that women assume something must be wrong with a guy for going so long without a consistent sex life or a relationship and that he must not enjoy sex

All of us are walking around with one or more potential deal breakers. That can make dating more challenging, but it doesn't make it impossible.

• This sub has regulars who don't want to date late bloomers. And there are plenty of late bloomers who are dating successfully.
  
• This sub has regulars who don't want to date single parents. And there are plenty of single parents who are dating successfully.
  
• This sub has regulars who don't want to date anyone looking for a casual relationship. And there are plenty of people who are dating casually.
  
• This sub has regulars who don't want to date separated people. And there are plenty of separated people who are dating successfully.
  
  You're also not someone I'd categorize as inexperienced. From the sounds of it, you've had a relationship when you were younger and then multiple sexual encounters since. You're high-libido and eager to please, you just haven't had the chance to use that beautiful libido in a recent long term relationship.
  
  I'm with the other commenters here: it sounds like the issue isn't your level of experience, it's your anxiety about your level of experience.
  
  You mention that women are going to flee when they pick up on your lack of experience, but how exactly is that going to happen? Are you writing your profiles putting your anxieties front and center?
  
  My name is NayaBeatz. I enjoy long hikes, Breaking Bad reruns, and the gnawing sense of self loathing that comes from not having slept with anyone recently in the context of a long term relationship and OH GOD WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME?! And no one will ever love me and life is an inescapable cycle of defeat and must love dogs!
  
  Of course not! It might feel like your history is branded on you like the Mark of Cain, but no one fucking knows and plenty of them wouldn't even care. When you discuss your history, you're free to say "Yeah, I had a relationship when I was younger but I haven't found anything long term in recent years. I'm definitely hoping to meet the right person, but it takes time, yanno?"
  
  That shit might feel epic to you, but your dates aren't going to crawl up inside your skull and live through all your self-doubt and emotional turmoil.
  
  People care about your history because of where it puts you now. You've got anxiety, but so do plenty of people. You know how to fuck, you prioritize your partner's pleasure, and you're looking for connection. Plenty of women would find that appealing!
  
  It's important to remember that there's a lot that comes between meeting someone and meating someone. You mention that you're not sure how to flirt and that your relationships tend to end after a few weeks. That sounds less like a fucking issue and more like a flirting/communicating interest/establishing emotional rapport issue. You an work on that by continuing to work on your insecurities, go on dates, and self reflect after. Assuming you can get that down, you'll go a long way to laying the groundwork for mutually satisfying, passionate sex.
  
  I won't speak for the other women here, but when it comes to sex itself, some awkwardness at the beginning is expected. Even if you've been going to Pound Town for years, everyone has different likes and dislikes, and it can take a couple sessions to find your groove. As long as that awkwardness isn't just garden variety selfishness, being totally emotionally closed off, or trying to do physically painful/annoying shit like twisting my nipples like radio dials, there's a fair amount of slack.
  
  I like to think of awkward early-relationship sex like going to the grocery store: it's not something that sounds fun on its own, but if I get to do it with someone I like I am going to have a great time!
  
  You mention at the beginning of your post that you have historically been "shy, insecure, unconfident." It sounds like you withdrew from sex as a self-protective mechanism. Reading your subsequent comments in which you focus exclusively on the messages telling you how doomed you are and how worthless it is to even try therapy, I wonder if your self talk around your sexual history (as opposed to your interpersonal skills) aren't another way to self-sabotage so you can protect yourself.
  
  If you don't have the money for therapy (or you're just reluctant to get into this topic with a therapist) I would highly suggest the written exercises from Feeling Good by Dr. Burns. You can buy used copies for cheap online, and then the investment is just the cost of paper and pens and 20 or so minutes a night. I used those exercises some years back when I was dealing with anxiety issues, and it was surprisingly helpful.
  
  Finally, you mentioned abstaining from masturbation as part of breaking away from porn. Don't underestimate the power of sexual frustration to fuck with your headspace. It sounds like you're making a positive change in your life, but go easy on yourself while you're completing your reset. Things may feel a lot less dire once you're on the other side of this and able to take the edge off again.
  
  Good luck OP. It sounds like you're in the midst making positive changes for your life. I hope you continue to progress and find the kind of relationships you're looking for.

Just a few things that come to mind:

Self-Awareness> There are a lot of ways to work on this and most of them are worth trying. An effective goal might be to find some things that work for awhile, and prepare yourself to seek out other options when those don’t offer the same effectiveness. I’m pretty sure that when we dedicate the time to it, we provide ourselves with information that empowers us to make the decisions that bring about our idea of success.

Expectations> Most of us don’t want to fail. A lot of us feel like if we don’t meet the expectations that we’ve set for ourselves then we’re failures. This often causes some of us to avoid things that we feel we won’t “succeed” at. Hey, I’m not saying we shouldn’t set high goals for ourselves... but when we don't meet our expectations, maybe we could slowly get better at treating ourselves with the kind of love and encouragement that we would extend to our most loved of loved ones when they "fail."

Exercise> God damn it I hate exercise. I wore a button in fifth grade that said: I’m too out of shape to exercise. I’m thirty-nine now and I’ve still never had a consistent workout regimen. For a lot of us, this shit is probably harder than everything else we’ll consider in this thread. But there’s plenty of evidence to show that when the rest of our body is functioning at a more optimal level that we have more tools to work with, and that our tools are more effective. I hate exercise.

Group Discussion> Last year I attended an intensive outpatient group therapy program. This was my first experience with group therapy and I freaking love that shit. I learned that the gems to mine from this experience have very little to do with whoever is leading the group or which organization is providing the facility... as long as you feel like everyone is given the opportunity to share without reproach. Empathy is what it’s all about. The more courageous you are about sharing your struggles, the more empowered your fellow group members will be to do the same. When empathy is flowing freely most people are able to recognize some of their own cognitive distortions, AND help others find their own. Not every group is going to function well, but I think it’s well worth the effort to find on that does. You might start with looking into a DBSA group near you. My advice would be to look for one with 10-15 attendees. If you've got insurance that will cover it, you might check into an Intensive Outpatient Group Therapy program offered by a local hospital.

Books> These are just a few that have offered me some help—and a few that I just acquired but haven’t read yet.

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy



Also, this is me patting you on the back lovingly and then turning it into a hug:



Did you feel it?



Disclaimer: I’m currently doing pretty poorly at all of these things.

Seems like a couple of things going on here: one, how you are feeling, and two, how to make real friends. First, if you are willing to try reading a "self-help" book to feel better then I would recommend the book Feeling Good by David Burns. He basically identifies simple ways to get passed typical thoughts we all have that cause us to feel bad so we can start feeling better. It helped me a lot when I needed it and I've never really gone back to feeling bad the way I used to. I used to talk myself into feeling bad but now that I'm aware of how I was doing that, I know how to avoid it. If you are not into self-help books then just forget it.

Second, making "real" friends is more complicated because there is no checklist to know if someone fits in the real friend category. Each friend is unique and you kinda have to take them as they are. Think about this, everyone in the world is just trying to figure things out like everyone else. No one but God (you said you're religious) really knows what life is all about--even your parents. The saddest and loneliest person, and the person who seems to have it all together, each one is just doing their best to make it in this world. We are all the same in that way. Knowing that everyone struggles helps me realize that everyone needs "real" friends just as bad as I do.

That leads me to some actions that I take that help me make friends (some friends are closer than others). I try to treat people kindly knowing that they are struggling in the world too. Even people who are annoying or I don't really like that much. I know they have troubles too so I try to be nice, smile, hold the door for them, pick up something they dropped, whatever. When you're kind to other people that way, it can actually make you feel better about yourself as a human being--especially if you are NOT expecting to get anything in return. It doesn't mean these people are going to be your friend. But you would be surprised about one thing. Other people will notice that you are a kind person and most people want to be friends with kind people. Don't you? Also, when you are happy with yourself for being kind, it can actually make you feel better about yourself. People will notice that too, that you are happy with the kind person your are. After that, friendship depends on how much time you spend with each other talking, eating meals, playing games, whatever. If you don't spend time doing things together, it is not possible to become real friends. The more time you spend together doing things, the better friends you will be.

I'm glad you wrote this. Obviously you are not suffering alone. We are all just trying to make it in this world. It's nice that we can help each other out a little bit.

I felt that way for the better part of 8 years. I'm 28 and now dating a woman in her 40's (we make for a odd couple, but that's why it works). We met on OkCupid, and it was supposed to be a summer fling...and it's turned into a lot more. I never expected myself to be here. Sooner or later you'll meet someone and it'll just click. It sounds cliche, but after spending most of my 20's seeing friends hooking up long-term, getting hitched and having babies I thought I'd never have a part of that life. I felt that relationships weren't for me. And now, all of the sudden here I am, nearly a year into a relationship.

Right now, you need to focus on you. Honestly, give up on relationships for a while. I did FWB's pretty much all 8 years, which avoids the stickiness (for lack of a better term) of a relationship but still gives you someone to have fun with and have sex with. If you feel that you're heading down a relationship path, be honest about how things are going to both you and your partner in such a situation and break it off if you can't get it back on the track you want. Just don't fade, because that's an asshole move.

In the meantime, do what's important to you and broaden your horizons. Learn an instrument, learn to code, learn to shoot a gun. I spent most of my summer weekends actually outdoors building a cottage and shooting a .22 rifle in a gravel pit. In the winter I was completing a second degree. Also throw yourself into your job. Learn a new skill for it. Learn to be better at it - if you hate your job, well find ways to optimize your time there. If you don't have a job, find something to do, even on a volunteer basis.

Also, don't be afraid to ask for help from friends. If you have a close friend or two, be honest with them about how you're feeling. They'll help you get back on my feet. My best friend organized a camping trip for me and some friends about a month after my break-up for my 21sth birthday and it was amazing how much that helped. When he broke up with his girlfriend two years ago, I had him up to my place and we spent four days golfing and drinking beer.

Right now it feels life sucks in that department. Spend time to get your mind off it and make yourself better. You're the only one who can control those feelings and you have to make the changes necessary so the pain and jadedness don't bother you. But do what works for you and you'll come out the other side in good shape. Just don't allow yourself to mope and feel sorry about it all. And if you find you're making excuses for yourself, get 10 Days to Self Esteem. It will help.

Good luck man, I hope I helped at least in a small way and that my experiences will make life a little easier.

My advice may not be popular, but it's all I've got.

1. Don't get married. Unless you need to get hitched for spousal benefits (which you may be eligible for under Common Law), don't. Over 50% of marriages fail. Would you wager 1/2 your net worth (plus spousal support) on a bet that has less than 50/50 odds?
   
   
2. If you do decide to get married, practice honesty. I can't stress this enough. Hiding things from your partner will never turn out well. You may think you're clever, but your partner will figure things out.
   
   
3. If you or your partner have significantly more net worth than the other, get a pre-nup. Yes, a good lawyer can cut though a pre-nup like a hot knife through butter...but a good lawyer can also draw up an agreement that shows that one of you walked into the marriage with existing wealth that the other may not be entitled to. This is referring to things like a large savings account, family home, or any other asset that hasn't been earned by the other partner.
   
   
4. Talk often. Even if it's a little thing, talk it out. Don't get mad, rationally discuss things before they get out of hand. If you can't do this now, don't marry the person.
   
   
5. Be respectful of differences. We all see things in different ways, we can be looking at the same object and see totally separate things. We can go through the same experience and feel completely different about it. Understand that as a team you're stronger because of your differences. One person can pick up the slack for the other person in certain situations, and vice-versa.
   
   
6. Read the book The Five Love Languages. Have your partner read it. Figure out your way of communicating, and understand theirs. Understand that the way you express love isn't the same as the way they might, and appreciate the manner in which they show their feelings. Try to speak to them in their language, and have them try the same with you.
   
   
7. Above all, treat your partner with the same kindness and respect that you would expect from them.

Hmm. Sounds like a lot of negative bias (...went and got better friends...How do you know?). Unless you suspect/know that as a friend, you haven't had any real practice at making, having and keeping a good friend or two. I've known people who had tons of friends, and were always going off to do something or other in some group or another. That wasn't and isn't me.

First things first, let's get rid of the negativity. This book was recommended to me by my therapist. I link it this way so you can read the reviews and an excerpt. It's been in print for over 20 years, so there's definitely something there. I have given several copies as gifts to friends and family.

I felt better (in a "Hey! I'm OK! And it's going to get better") -kind of way, after the first section (50 pages). If you can be honest with yourself, you can change the way the life looks.

Since it's been in print so long, it's almost definitely at your local library.

Oh, and the "being a better friend" part of everything? It will take some concentration, and maybe even some list-making, but, can you picture the person you admire most, because of the way they treat people?

That's the template for you. Write down everything that impresses/pleases/surprises you about that person.

There's your "personal improvement list". But I'll spot you one. If you want to become closer to someone you've met, ask if there are any "get around to it" projects you could help them with. Shared labor, donating time for a less-than-wonderful task just because you like the person, these are some of the things that cement a friendship. Go out of your way to help the people you really like, ask nothing in return, and come and go from their presence with a smile on your face. You will be thought of as a good person to be around just on those qualities alone. "Cast your bread upon the waters" is the way the Christian Bible puts it


Friendship is either stupid easy, or it requires some maintenance, like perennial plants. But as Vince Lombardi said, "Once you set a goal for yourself, the price you pay is immaterial".

If you believe you can be a better level of friend, you've got nothing to lose but your loneliness by trying to help yourself attain that goal by changing your worldview, vis-a-vis what it is that makes a "real" friend. If you ask 25 people what makes a good friend, I bet you get 18 different answers. Just find the right ones for you.

I went to one AA meeting when I first got clean and never went back. I understand people have found support and success in it but to me, personally, I felt it only increased the stigma of drug addicts as these broken hopeless people barely hanging on by a thread. It's an outdated system that relies on little science or attempting to progress the participants and relies more on holding people in place and focusing on the past. Instead I just worked towards becoming a normal person. Here are some of the resources I used:

r/Fitness - Getting Started: Exercise is probably the #1 thing that will aid you in recovering. It can help your brain learn to produce normal quantities of dopamine again as well as improve your heath, mood, well being and confidence.

Meetup: You can use this site to find people in your area with similar interests. I found a hiking group and a D&D group on here which I still regularly join.

Craigslist: Same as above - look for groups, activities, volunteer work, whatever.

Diet

This will be the other major player in your recovery. Understanding your diet will allow you to improve your health,mood, energy, and help recover whatever damage the drugs may have done to your body.

How Not To Die Cookbook

Life Changing Foods

The Plant Paradox

Power Foods For The Brain

Mental Health

Understand whats going on inside your head and how to deal with it is also an important step to not only recovery but enjoying life as a whole.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

The Emotional Life Of Your Brain

Furiously Happy

The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works

Educational

If you are like me you probably felt like a dumbass when you first got clean. I think retraining your brain on learning, relearning things you may have forgot after long term drug use, and just learning new things in general will all help you in recovery. Knowledge is power and the more you learn the more confident in yourself and future learning tasks you become.

Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse

Why Nations Fails

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

Thinking, Fast and Slow

The Financial Peace Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Restoring Your Family's Financial Health

Continued Education / Skills Development

EdX: Take tons of free college courses.

Udemy: Tons of onine courses ranging from writing to marketing to design, all kinds of stuff.

Cybrary: Teach yourself everything from IT to Network Security skills

Khan Academy: Refresh on pretty much anything from highschool/early college.

There are many more resources available these are just ones I myself have used over the past couple years of fixing my life. Remember you don't have to let your past be a monkey on your back throughout the future. There are plenty of resources available now-a-days to take matters into your own hands.

*Disclaimer: I am not here to argue about anyone's personal feelings on AA**

It seems like there's some pretty deep wounds there. If I had to hazard a guess, he was probably pretty emotionally manipulative, am I right? So here's the thing- People who are good at emotional manipulation will leave you feeling COMPLETELY GODDAMN INSANE. They create almost a feeling of addiction in the people they manipulate- it makes no sense and you can hate the shit out of it but it still works. They do this by using intermittent reinforcement with their approval and affection, and our brains pick this up like it's crack. In the absence of being able to predict what actions will bring reward, we almost panic, and end up behaving in ways that don't make sense to even ourselves. People like that can take totally normal, healthy people and make them feel like they're going insane.

Breathe. It's your brain responding the way brains naturally responds to intermittent reinforcement in intensely stressful situations. Your brain has created this link that he will provide approval and affection if you can only get the pattern right, and you're trying to get that dopamine hit from his affection and approval by any means you can think of. You're not broken, you're not fucked up in the head, your brain is doing one of the annoying little things that brains do sometimes and you will be okay without him. I know that's really hard to fathom, but think of it like this: your dopamine rush when you got affection and attention from him was so strong that your brain is almost literally treating him like an addiction. It's not love, your brain has been conditioned by his manipulation into a state of obsession. Intermittent reinforcement is the strongest reinforcement pattern, and lasts long after it feels like it "should" have ceased.

I think it might hit NT types even a little harder than other types, because our Fi is so intense but very difficult to express and explain, and we pride ourselves so strongly on our rationality. We often lock our feelings up because they can be so vicious and blistering, so when we let anyone in and we get that first hit of approval, our brain kind of loses its shit and knocks us sideways and sucks the air out of our lungs. Our brains are so pattern hungry that intermittent reinforcement is almost irresistible- we want to figure out the pattern, we feel like we've almost got it, if only we could put in the last piece.

So, if you're looking for a hint as to what the pattern is, it's control. It's not random. He will give you a breadcrumb as long as he wants to string you along, dropping one every time you start to distance yourself even a little. Learn about the cycle of abuse, especially narcissistic abuse, and you'll find the answer there. From breadcrumbs to freezing out to love bombing, it's a pattern designed to fuck with your brain and make you lose your emotional balance.

You will heal. It will feel better, but the only way out is through. Face your inner emotional damage, whatever you've got, and learn more about your own emotional processing- enough to understand how you tick and what sets off this kind of reaction in your brain. Keep talking to your therapist. Start reading books on emotional abuse patterns and on psychology, find your pattern there instead of in him.

You'll be okay. You know at some level you will be. Soldier through and work on your internal stuff and you'll get there, and will be better for it. Use your brain to beat your own brain on this.

-----

Edit: OP, look up Complex PTSD and see if it strikes a chord. A good book if you're looking for one for is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, and resources for adult children of alcoholics would probably be pretty helpful. I would definitely recommend trauma therapy- it is probably your best bet for longer term healing, even if you do DBT first. EMDR may help, too, if you can find a therapist who works with it (many trauma therapists do). If you dissociate at all, try grounding techniques like this to get back to your more rational center. If anxiety is a big part of it for you, it's highly treatable with therapy focusing on tools and techniques to calm and ground yourself, and there are TONS of resources on the internet.

Your emotions may not make sense to you, but they aren't illogical, they exist to guide you and to give you information about the world. They may be out of proportion, but that's due to the thought processes you have and the story you're telling yourself. They're perfectly proportional to what your thoughts/self-talk are saying to you, so you have to adjust the internal dialogue to be more objective in order to make your emotions more useful and in proportion. Buddhism as a philosophy is great for helping with this, it's like the softer side of Stoicism with more focus on being kind and present. A good book on finding and correcting cognitive distortions (the self-talk that makes your emotions go nuts) is Feeling Good by David Burns (It's almost DBT lite).

Your friend is not wrong, but he's only half right. He's also framing how one deals with the negative aspects of life poorly. One should do their best to minimize the bad in life, or at least its effects. And, when possible, turn allegedly negative things to one's advantage. One should also do their best to maximize the positive aspects. A lot of it has to do with your perspective and what you focus on.

Everyone has to support themselves somehow. If the only available work is something unpleasant or undesirable, focus on what it affords you and put effort toward getting into a line of work you appreciate more. You can't prevent yourself from ever getting sick, but you can do everything in your power to stay healthy. Healthy eating, an active lifestyle, and getting regular medical checkups all have their benefits. If someone assaults you and you are permanently injured, you're going to have to cope with that, yes. But I'm sure any school worth attending will make accommodations for a student who was assaulted presuming they were made aware of the circumstances.

So, yes, you will have to learn how to cope with the bad things. But you also need to learn how to maximize the positive. Work towards a career you enjoy. Build friendships. Chase your dreams. All that. People tend to write off encouragement and positive thinking, and focus on the negative. But life is what you focus on.

If you struggle with this, I have a few recommended reads for you.

• Victor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning". He was a holocaust survivor, and he writes about how even if you take everything else away from a person, they still have the freedom to choose how they react to their circumstances. If prisoners in a concentration camp can find ways to be generous and kind to one another and bring joy and love to each other, so can you.
  
  
• Dr. David M. Burns' "Feeling Good". One of the first books written on Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), it's written in such a way that the reader can apply these therapeutic techniques to their own life. The premise is that our thoughts direct our feelings, and by learning to recognize cognitive distortions and correct our thinking, we can make large headway in dealing with depression. CBT subreddits and posts
  
  
• Seneca "Letters from a Stoic", Epictetus "The Art of Living", Marcus Aurelius "Meditations". Three books by Stoic philosophers. Stoicism was to these ancient Greek and Roman philosophers what CBT is to modern psychologists. These three books contain some of the very best summaries of this school of philosophy. This isn't esoteric, inaccessible philosophy. This is wisdom directly applicable to the very sort of problem you and your friend are dealing with. /r/Stoicism
  
  I know this was an overly long response to your question, but I hope it helps. Learning how to cope well with life is one of the most important things a person can learn. I wish you, and your friend, well.
  
  

You sound a whole lot like me a few years ago. I could have pretty much written this post, with some family specifics changed a bit. So here's my advice based on my experience.

What you're going through is totally normal and common. It might not seem like it, especially if you don't have friends who are going through similar circumstances, but it is. Even if you have a great relationship with your family, moving back home after college can be rough. After being gone for a few years and having total freedom away from family, moving back home can feel like a step backwards, even though it's not. It just means that you're coming into the 'real world', and that requires a certain amount of time transitioning. It's not easy, but you'll get through it.

When I moved home, I didn't expect to be living there for longer than 1 year, but it ended up being 1.5 years. It's not a big deal, just keep in mind that it may take you more or less time than you expect to get on your feet and where you want to be. Once you do have a solid income, take advantage of cheap or free rent (if you are so luckY) living at home to pay off as much student debt as possible (assuming you have it), or save as much of an emergency fund as possible. If you want to feel independent person while living at home, rather than a guest/child, being financially independent is important.

I also struggled somewhat with anxiety/depression during this stage of my life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustment_disorder is a thing and I ended up being diagnosed with that when seeking help. Basically, big life changes can be rough, surprise! Don't be afraid to seek help is you're really struggling. As time passes you will adjust to your new situation and things will get a bit easier. Regarding your Edit on depression, those are definitely things you could explore with a competant therapist, if you're so inclined. If you want a cheap option for working through depression, I can highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336. It has been extremely helpful for me personally.

As for what you want to do with your life... I know it's hard, but don't worry too much. It's totally OK to not know what you want to do with your life at 22. Most people probably don't. As long as you are making a consistent effort to find out what you want to do, you're fine. And you have plenty of time left to enjoy yourself once you're employed and have money. What you may find as you grow throughout your 20s is that there is more time in life to enjoy yourself than you may currently realize. In terms of your generral post-transition year anxieties, I think things will become clearer once you're closer to the end of this year. There are probably too many unknowns for you to properly plan yet.

For meeting new people, meetup groups are nice. Consider a local reddit group if there is one. Find a social hobby. Yes, it can be uncomfortable or awkward or trigger social anxiety to go to these events, but the fact is that if you can get psat that you'll be healthier and happier if you're meeting new people right now. Having those social experiences will make getting through this phase all the easier.

Maybe not all of this applies to you, but I hope you get something out of it. Regardless, best of luck to you!

It depends on your budget and your personal needs, but the best therapy option is CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). I'm going to throw a ton of info below for you or anyone interested with links throughout. Please DM if you have any more questions!

The very best trained in CBT you can find in Philly is at UPenn, who I have gone to for treatment with great success. They're renowned for their CBT program, you can't go wrong here, though they do not accept insurance, but you may be able to submit for reimbursement.
UPENN CBT: https://www.med.upenn.edu/cct/

However, from my personal experience, I found the greatest relief using Skype therapy. I must emphasize though, NOT through the trendy apps like 'better help' ...but through a private therapist who lives in Australia. It was much cheaper and incredibly effective - I once hit a point in my life where I could not leave the house, gave up driving, and only left bed to eat. I was pretty sure the next step on the list was death...after CBT therapy I've done a complete 180. Other therapists had unfortunately made my condition worse. I can't recommend CBT more if it's coming from the right source - psychologytoday.com will list 'cbt' therapists, but it's not the same or as in depth as a center with CBT as it's main focus.
(Please DM for the personal info of the therapist I used.)

Also, this self help book (clinically proven in double blind studies to help depression), is written by the founder of CBT. It's helped my brother and multiple friends through rough patches and helped to change their thinking before committing to therapy. It's called "Feeling Good, the new mood therapy" by David D Burns.

CBT BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy-ebook/dp/B009UW5X4C

Lastly, there is a site available through Australian gov't healthcare program. They're mental health treatment is much more regulated, focusing on CBT methods. There are so many free worksheets tailored to specific concerns. It's an amazing resource and should be required reading for all humans!

CCI: https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/Resources/Looking-After-Yourself


TL;DR: Click the last two links for inexpensive/free self help resources that are actually legit, and DM me if you have questions. I never had anyone help me or point me where to go and as a result suffered for over 10 yrs. I feel it's my duty to pass on what I've learned!!

Yeah I would just ignore these guys.

The way I would look at this is you have two choices. Option 1 is to learn to live with the situation (maybe just temporarily), option 2 is to work on it.

For Option 1 I would recommend cognitive behavioral therapy (try reading Feeling Good). CBT is a good way to help align how you think with what you logically believe. Like MackNoir said, there really isn't a good reason to give a shit about what other people think, but the techniques in that book can help you actually think that way.

Also I would try meditation (see /r/meditation and Mindfulness in Plain English, a free book). Meditation is a great way to help you stay grounded and focused on the present (which includes not worrying about issues like you're talking about here).

For Option 2 you really just have to make an effort. If you want to feel like you're contributing to people's lives, invite them to things, offer to help people when the opportunity comes up, and volunteer. To make conversation easier, do things like read the news, learn about things that interest you, try a lot of different things and pick up hobbies. Also remember FORDEN for easy topics (Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams, Environment i.e. your surroundings, and News). Those things along with being a good listener, conversation threading (google it), and practice should make conversation easy.

But obviously some of those things require some time. Like Jing-Jack said college will be different and you should have a lot more control over what you do with your time then (assuming you move out).

Well, I'm no doctor, but I've studied and practiced CBT for years. I'll link some guides and books below that are pretty good. But, essentially, CBT is all about paying attention to what you say to yourself and working to change it. What you say and think about is like a habit: you've been doing it for so long that it's become rather 'default' behavior. But, like a habit, it can be changed with enough time and work.

One of the very first steps in doing this is becoming aware of what you are saying. For example, like in the title of the post, when you call yourself a moron. Or the lines of thought, such as your friends leaving you. This is a major step because, for a lot of that self-talk, you probably aren't aware of it or your brain 'filters' it out, but it's hurting you anyways.

The next step is to start challenging what you say about yourself rationally. Try comparing them to this list. For example, when you have a fear about your friends leaving you, the first thing you should do is ask yourself why. Why would they leave you? What did you do? Then look at your answer and compare it to that list. Chances are that what you're afraid of is either unlikely or illogical. It can help a lot to write this stuff out on paper.

Another test that I like is to imagine that you're saying your 'self-talk' to someone else. Imagine you had a friend you really liked and trusted completely, they can be real or imaginary. Now imagine that friend is calling himself a moron or is saying that he's afraid his friends will leave him, or whatever self-talk you're giving yourself. Would you agree and call him a moron or say his friends will leave him (remember, you're supposed to really like this person)? I would guess probably not. It would just make him feel worse, right? What's important with this test is to realize is that that is exactly what you're telling yourself and it's making you feel just as bad.

After that, it's a game of watching what you think and doing the above until it becomes less of a problem. So when you call yourself a moron, you never let yourself get away with it. You ask yourself: why am I a moron? Why does X make me a moron? Aren't I allowed to make mistakes? Etc. Eventually, you'll start to become nicer to yourself and treat yourself like you would that good friend from above.

Feeling good by David Burns is pretty much the go-to, raw CBT book. It has a lot of worksheets and examples to help the reader. I highly recommend it, especially if you're just starting.

Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness by Gillian Butler is also a good book that focuses in more on social aspects.

Most of the online guides I've seen haven't been too fantastic IMO. But they do exist. This seems like a good overview, but definitely not as interactive or comprehensive as the books are. Personally, I'd start with David Burns' book. It's probably the most tried-and-true of them all.

For me, making new friends is a lot like dating - in the sense that I have to go out and meet new people, see if there is a good connection, and decide whether I want to take it further (as in spend more one-on-one time together). I've even made purely platonic friends through dating sites, where the intention was platonic from the start (made one lovely straight female friend this way!).

Obviously the parameters are a bit different... with friendship, things like attractiveness, age, orientation and romantic availability are a non-issue for me (though I generally avoid friendships with single straight men, as they usually just want to date me). You don't need to worry about flirting or defining the relationship with a friend, so it's easier in some ways! However, many of the same things apply, in the sense that I am looking for people who have some interests or passions in common, have a similar sense of humour, and where the conversation flows easily and feels effortless.

Another thing I've found is that it's good to be open to people of a wide range of ages and life stages. My closest friend now is 52, and I'm 26. I also have another wonderful friend who is 19. I find that people between 25-45 tend to be more insular as they often marry, have kids and/or focus on their careers, so it can be helpful to make friends that aren't all in the same age range.

For more info, I highly recommend the following books - they helped me a lot:

https://www.amazon.com/Friendships-Dont-Just-Happen-GirlFriends-ebook/dp/B07776956H/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1518111670&sr=8-2&keywords=girlfriend+circles

https://www.amazon.com/Frientimacy-Deepen-Friendships-Lifelong-Happiness-ebook/dp/B017QL9P5Q/ref=pd_sim_351_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=W4H6VS3M2BAFB6HEMQ1K

Heya. Thanks for the post, it was pretty intense but I completely get where you're coming from. If you're looking for advice, I can offer a couple of things.

First is a book that is pretty popular on this sub and I recommend to a lot of friends that have lost their purpose, it's called "So Good They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport. It's a really good guide to success and happiness in a career.

Second, you definitely need to relax a little bit. I've been through anxiety and depression and the way that you're thinking right now is a recipe for an unhappy life.

>I have to be immortalized in history. Ide rather be dead than average but I don’t know how im gonna be more than average.

Putting this level of pressure on yourself can only lead to perceived failure, even if you're succeeding. You need to focus more on the "means", rather than the "ends", meaning if you want to be a comedian and think you can, then focus on writing jokes and performing. Don't even think about "changing the world" or being mediocre.

If you're getting stuck in these kinds of thought patterns a lot, then I can recommend another book (again often recommended here):

http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454278582&sr=1-1&keywords=feeling+good

Honestly, the title might sound corny, but this book has saved and changed so many lives that it's true worth is incalculable.

>there has to be more to life than just having a good time and discovering what everyone already knows exists

There is indeed. Life is experience. The more you get, the more you'll understand.

Best of luck, friend.

You are clearly speaking from a rough place in your life right now and feeling very low. I want to start by saying I'm glad you reached out to us here. A lot of people just close up within themselves and sink further into depression, but you decided to open up and communicate. That's very important and shows you actually have more strength than you think. Just wanted to acknowledge you for that before addressing your points.

First nothing is permanent. Your academic failure, your previous experience with women--yes, all that has happened and you can't reverse it now. But there is absolutely no reason whatsoever it has to be the same in the future. Your choices led to your past results, but change your choices and you change your future.

Many people who initially failed at things went on to become very successful at it. Michael Jordan was rejected the first time he tried out for high school basketball. You know why? They thought he was "too short". Think about this for a minute. Imagine if Michael Jordan said "You know what, they're right. I'm not like those tall guys. I'll never be a great basketball player, because I just wasn't born with the right traits." Imagine if that's what he thought! But he didn't. He decided he was going to work harder at proving himself up to the task. And MJ isn't unique, there are tons of stories like this if you look.

That's my overall, biggest point. Don't close the book. You have the power of choice, the power to choose differently and thus experience differently.

Now to your specific statements...

>At 23 years of age

Well right here, let's set something straight: 23 is still very young! Only on Reddit, full of kiddies, is 23 somehow "older" or "mature". I'm in my later 30s, and let me tell you something: I didn't know shit at 23! Like maybe a little bit, but the real learning started after college in the "real world". You sound like you're some old man at the end of his days who's realized "what the world is", but from my perspective--no offense--that's hilarious! I guarantee like 50%+ of what you think you "know" right now you will later realize was completely ass backwards.

>Some guys just have the "x-factor". They have been born with the ability to attract girls.

I brought up the MJ not being "tall enough" example before, but further: yes some people are just naturally more physically attractive given their "baseline" looks. It's ridiculous to deny that. However, and the ladies reading this can confirm this for me, that is not at all the only factor behind a woman's attraction to a man. It has as much if not more to do with how the man carries himself, how he communicates, how interesting he is as a person. You mentioned success later so I'll continue this when I go into that below...

>Should I hire an escort to get rid of my virginity?

100% no. That should be a moment with someone who respects you and cares about you. You're assuming no one ever will, but what I'm trying to point out is that control over that future is up to you. (Historical side note: Friedrich Nietzsche lost his virginity to a prostitute, and regretted it his whole life.)

>my lack of success. I have crap grades with no foreseeable future. No Indian girl in her right mind will want a desi man like that.

You have crap grades up until now, OK. But here's where your being 23 shows: you seem to think "grades" = "life". Only someone who's lived totally in the world of school thinks that. Yes you do have to get back on track, start fresh, and finish your degree. But your resume isn't going to show your GPA, so don't worry so much about that. Your college transcript isn't your "life" transcript!

>What is the best way for me to stop being attracted to Indian girls (I think a lot of them are really pretty?

Well first, you can't stop being attracted to who you're attracted to. If you could, then gays could be "converted" to straight. They obviously report (if they're allowed to be honest) that this 100% fails. So this is kind of silly to attempt anyway.

>, Im just not good enough) I have accepted this fact

Fact? Fact did you say? :) No, this is just your current interpretation of your situation. The facts are what happened, but not what that means about you as a person. Your choices now about what to do in this situation will be what really defines you.

Final note: One book that's very easy to read and that I really, really think would help you a lot right now is this one. It's based on CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and the key insight for them is to separate your interpretations of situations from the facts--sort of the core message here.

Edit: grammerz

> My life has no point.

You're only 16, so the only point in your life right now is to get an education so that you can better understand the world, find a place and means to carve out a decent living, and discover your purpose in life by trying lots of different things.

> Gyms are full of mirrors, I need to look at my ugly face all the time, I can't get it out of my head.

Have you considered running outside? There are no mirrors out there, and if you run in the right places you might also get to enjoy the beauty of nature while you're at it. Trust me when I say that running is a great way to get all of these negative thoughts out of your mind, at least for a little while.

> All I do in a day is go to the gym, eat & sleep.

If you don't like your routine, change it. As I said, give outdoor running a try. Explore your music tastes and find that motivating song / album / artist to listen to while you run.

> Because I was born with an ugly face & shit bone structure, I have to suffer my whole life, I have no chance to be happy, to have a family or anything. I can only watch other people loving each other, while I'm dying inside.

I know people have said this already, but chances are strong that you're not actually ugly. Depression can make you think that you are, but you probably are not. However, let's assume for a moment that you are horrendously butt-ugly. That shouldn't stop you from being able to be happy and to have a family. Look around you - there are TONS of hideous people out there who somehow still manage to find someone to spend the rest of their lives with and be happy together. There is more to being attractive than just looks. Someone who is confident and happy with himself is more attractive than someone who is depressed and frowning all the time, even if the happy person is slightly less physically good-looking.

> I don't know what the hell am I going to do with my life, I can't talk to anyone, I can't hold eye contact, I'm frowning all the time, I feel like I have no soul.

Believe it or not, these are things that virtually EVERYONE goes through at some point in their lives. These are all things that you can change, because unlike your physical appearance, they are all inside your head. I've been down in the dumps before, and I know that it feels impossible to ever get out of the self-made pit you find yourself in. Still, IT CAN BE DONE. You should consider reading the book Feeling Good by David Burns - it offers concrete strategies for lifting yourself out of depression through the use of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

> Everywhere I look, people are enjoying themselves, whether it's the TV or outside, everyone is happy, talking to friends/partners, kissing themselves, while me, I'm just here, but it's like I don't even exist.

I've had these thoughts before about my friends and acquaintances at college, but the reality is that nobody is ever as happy as they appear in their Facebook pictures. I've spoken with enough people at school to realize that many people are actually miserable but happen to be really good at putting up a happy front for everyone else to see. The world is a competitive place, and so everyone is constantly trying to one-up one another by pursuing wealth, better looks, etc.

I'm currently single, and the thought that I will die alone frequently crosses my mind, even though this time last year I was happy as a clam because I had an awesome girlfriend. I felt forever alone just days before she walked into my life, and just days after she walked out of it. Life is unpredictable, so just keep in mind that those "happy" people you see around you WILL experience tragedy, misery, and maybe even depression at some point in their lives. You can't truly experience happiness without also experiencing sadness - that's why the bad moments in our lives exist, to make the good ones better.

> Before, I was fat, playing video games all day. I changed a lot in past 2 years, I lost weight, got muscle, haircut, better clothes, did everything I could.

This is something to be proud of. Not many people can say that they went from being fat to being muscular and physically fit. Look at the world around you - America is full of grossly obese people who just don't give a shit. Would you rather be "happy" and slowly drowning in your own fat and filth?

> Why are all the bad things happening to me? Why do I always have to be the worst, why is everyone always at a better position than me?

Do you have a roof over your head? Food and water? A computer from which you're posting this? Do you live in a wealthy first-world country? These are things that a large percentage of the world's population does not have access to, so consider yourself lucky. Happiness is not about material comforts - there are probably plenty of happy people living in third-world countries and fighting for survival each day. In fact, people in the Western world tend to be unhappier for some reason. It's not that they're ungrateful, but they're constantly comparing themselves to the people who are better than them and feeling worthless when they fall short of such impossibly high standards.

> I need to change my life, I want to change my life, but I don't know what to do.

Do something. Do ANYTHING. At such a young age, you have a lot of potential for personal change and self-discovery, so take advantage of it.

Grab life by the balls and make it your bitch.

I'm introverted and used to be very awkward and shy. At around 17 I noticed it was an area I needed to improve so I started to look around. These are some of the stuff that has helped me change from Shy to energetic (being introverted never changes though but, I love it). Wanting to change is the most important part of it all, you can have all the resources in the world and just not make it because you don't really want it. now, off to the books:

• "How to Win friends and Influence People" - Dale Carnegie
  
• "Think and Grow Rich" - Napoleon Hill (not really a book about being more social, but i always recommend it)
  
• "The War of Art" - Steven Pressfield (Book about overcoming comfort/laziness)
  
• stuff by leil lowndes (Look around at the stuff she's written and pick what interests you)
  
  ***
  Some subs:
  
  
• I cannot recommend much for depression as its pretty foreign to me (no family/friends or myself have suffered from it) but there is /r/depression, so check it out if you want to.
  
  
• I'd recommend inner game stuff from /r/seduction. They do lots of strange things that turn people off but they're inner game is solid. To skip their front-page just check this. They recommend this book for depression.
  
  
• /r/socialskills
  
  
• I also recommend exercising (/r/Fitness, /r/loseit or /r/gainit).
  
  
• /r/malefashionadvice /r/malelifestyle /r/everymanshouldknow
  
  Avoid what is hurting your growth. Basically, anything you abuse (keyword there) from video games to alcohol to masturbation (you'll know what it is). A good way to get rid of bad habits is to start filling your time with positive ones until the good overcomes the bad. Find a hobby that will get you socializing (almost all will). Some examples: sports (martial arts as stated before, any sport really), art (music, drama, painting lessons), if you're in school or college there's definitely clubs out there. Donating your time and effort to a good cause. Voluntary work always gives a great sense of worth and happiness.
  
  Just remember, you've described things that you currently are (shy, insecure, awkward) all of these will change only if YOU want to. Most of them are overcomed by comming out of your comfort zone (its simple, not easy). Your comfort zone is probably very small, all you gotta do is widen it. You gotta have to want to change and improve more than you want to stay the way you are. Nobody is the same person as they were yesterday so make sure that the person you'll be tomorrow is better than who you are today. Good Luck.

Not sure about MBCT but a good book on CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy: an older version: https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/cbt-mbct-difference.htm) is https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336
That’s a great read! Not only it explains what you are going through but reading or listening to the audiobook has been studied and proven to help AS therapy!

I highly recommend it.

Good job being aware of your challenges!

Good job noticing your patterns!

Good job admitting your thoughts!

I feel like you are already quite powerfully advancing toward a strongly useful wisdom.

Practice is simple yet difficult as you already pointed out.

Yet that’s the way: keep moving forward with it.

Finally keep in mind that sometimes this could be attributed to a high personality trait of neuroticism. There is s positive and negative about it.

https://www.psychologistworld.com/personality/neuroticism-personality-trait

One positive part of it is that you are more inclined to be able to care for children or relate to people in need.

Good luck!

For sure.

I'm happy you found a therapist who helped you navigate through your difficulties. If you could analyze what your therapist did to help you recover, that will help too.

Firstly, my toolkit involves using a combination of meditation and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). To successfully execute CBT, you need to be self-aware and mindful. Practice both together. This is important because when you're able to catch yourself thinking negatively, or start having unwanted thoughts, you're able to identify it and be aware of it's presence. Once you "catch" these thoughts, debate with yourself logically why those thoughts are irrational. The book I read was Feeling Good by David Burns.

Initially, this will be very hard, and it takes a lot of work, but it gets easier and easier once you master it, and trust me when I say this, the ROI for working on this is literally priceless. Took me a consistent 3 years of practicing everyday to pull me out of darkness.

Gradual therapy, slowly exposing yourself to things that scare you. For me the big one was social anxiety and fear of rejection. I made it a mission to go outside everyday just to be in the presence of others. Doing things I like outside with other people. I go to the gym, play pickup soccer and basketball.

Putting yourself first. INFJs love to put others first. Don't do that until you satisfy your needs. Be assertive with what you want and communicate it to others. It seems counter-intuitive, and feels like you're being selfish, but people respect people who hold their ground and provide for themselves first. Your confidence will soar from this. Which has a multiplier effect onto everything you do.

Stoic philosophy. The basis of this philosophy is to only put your energy towards things you can control. Things that you can realistically do right now to change the situation. Things out of your control, for example, other people's thoughts and feelings, the weather, the stock market, be quick to realize a situation you can't control and push it out of your peripheral. Life is too short so don't waste your time on it.

Exercise consistently & keep your diet in check. a must if you're serious about improving yourself. ROI is also priceless and kills many birds with one stone. (self-esteem, confidence, health, mood, sleep, relationships)

Good luck and be very patient. Sometimes you will feel like it's not working, but keep at it and only evaluate yourself after 6 months on your progress, because progress is slooooooow. I guarantee you using the combination factors above will move the needle more positively. If you have any more questions feel free to ask.

I conquered emotional eating and some other comfort habits through meditation. We eat to avoid feeling uncomfortable emotions. So I went out of my way to experience them, lean into them, to meditate on those emotions, to understand and accept them. A few weeks of dedicated meditation on feeling and accepting uncomfortable things, combined with a focus on my values (health is a top priority) and learning other emotional regulation skills (through DBT), allowed me to stop eating emotionally in the vast majority of circumstances. It takes hard work to replace such a strong comfort behavior, but it's possible. I'm sure I'll have to do some version of all that again someday, but it's been months now and I'm still good.

As for hobbies, I think you're describing mood-dependent behavior. Our moods change more often than the tide. If you let your moods dictate your behavior, you'll start and quit things all the time. There is no trick here, just an understanding that no matter what I choose, my moods will eventually make it uninteresting. So if I want something in my life, I need to accept that I'll be uninterested at some point, and I'll need to do it anyway. What's the point then? The point is that I value consistency, I value having skills and hobbies, I want to improve in the areas of my life that fit my talents and ambitions, and I absolutely do not value being flaky with the direction of my life. So when I feel like quitting, I remind myself I'd feel like quitting anything, and I chose this thing knowing I want it in my life long-term no matter what I feel in that moment. ( speaking of which, just about time for my 3 mile walk ;) )

A lot of your struggles sound like mine from last year. Getting serious about a DBT program and a starting a strong meditation practice would probably help you a lot. Practice challenging your self-defeating thoughts would also help. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown and Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns can teach you a lot. The stories we tell ourselves have extreme power over our internal states (things like "I don't deserve oxygen"), and you can absolutely change the stories you tell yourself. It's worth the effort.

It depends where you're from and how your health care is oriented but generally for stuff like this I would recommend a psychotherapist.

In my experience I find a psychiatrist prescribes western pharmaceuticals which assist you and alleviate symptoms, but they don't handle the root of the issues. Likewise a psychologist will, in this day and age, probably heavily lean on cognitive behavioural therapy (for good reason since it shows consistent empirical proof of its efficacy for a lot of stuff) and this will aid you from refraining from negative thought loops, doomed thinking and a general, more rational self-image and perception of the world.

However, with both practices I felt we weren't adressing a main issue. It felt we were busy with the outer layer, a manifestation of something much deeper which was amiss. I found a great psychotherapist with her own practise (simply with Google XD ) who has her own practise for exactly that reason: to deliver qualitatively psychological care adjusted to the specific person in need. Though of course it's great a society has mass institutions to provide mental health care, due to insurance policies, government cutbacks and just the bureaucracy, these institutions can only give a boiled down, basic mental care which isn't always effective, especially for these nuanced cases. Especially since a lot of troubled people become psychologists!!! Sometimes there also work a lot of young people for they are cheaper. I figured older people with a lot of life experience are of more use to me than someone my own age!

Mental health care is just starting to phantom the consequences of invisible mental abuse parents are inflicting unknowingly on their children, for so much of it is uncunscious and already starts with interaction when children are babies. Also because it takes a sensitive human to even perceive all the subtleties and nuances of human communication so it is of no surprise the more striking physical abuse got the most attention.

I'm getting quite lengthy in this post so to answer your question: I would primarily visit a psychotherapist. However it's very important to note that just as you have good and bad dentists, gentle and rough dentists, fast and slow dentists etc. the same goes for psychotherapists. Find one which suits you. Just follow your own intuition. Your own mind and body will heal you. I thought this was some mumbo jumbo, but they really do. They will always point you in the right direction and always give you feedback. But a thorough mental health track will hasten your recovery.

Again, in short my advice which is working for me: eat really healthy, sport 3 times a week, try to 'move' (walk 20 minutes or something) every day, meditate daily for at least 20 minutes, read the cognitive behavioural therapy bible 'Feeling Good' http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336 (especially if you have some discipline, saves a lot of time visiting a psychologist who specialises in cognitive behavioral therapy, perhaps start a micro dosing 0,2 grams of magic mushrooms every third day, trip on lsd or mushrooms when you feel you need it (in my case few times a yesr) (from what I'm reading is that mushrooms are more effective than lsd for self therapy but I have to experience lsd first before I can give my own take on it), if you trip on mushrooms; not too much because they're are quite taxing on the brain and mind and you want to incorporate insights into your life as much as possible to get the most out of the next trip. Also look into ayahuasca. I hear and read it does wonders. And read up on this shit!!! XD Upbringing, projection, emotional neglect... it influenced your life in unphantamoble ways. The more you learn how and why, the better.

But! Everything will get better slowly, from now on :)
Good luck!

Most allied health students have some issue or another around IV therapy. It's normal to feel some fear since it's an important thing to get right for the health of your patients and there's some amount of difficulty involved. At this point, probably all nursing and medical schools use simulators as part of their training. Here's one way to create and use your own:

Get some latex tubing (the natural, soft, manila colored kind). Pre-mix some water and red food coloring. Fill the tube with the mixure and clamp off the ends with a clothes pin or something similar. Lay this lengthwise over a strong cardboard tube and then cover the latex tubing with a length of flesh colored athletic tape. Don't crush the tube underneath the tape as you do this.

Talk with a nursing instructor that teaches IV therapy or a current student at the school that you want to go to and ask for some handouts, websites or for the name of the publication that they use to teach IV therapy. You might explain what you're working on if necessary. Learn the methodology the way that it's taught at that school. Here is one example methodology. That way, not only will you be working on a phobia, but you'll also learn some "hard" stuff ahead of time.

Then get some common IV size hypodermic needles, catheters and microtainers. Practice IV injections/collection on the simulator that you created above. You might have a good friend hang out with you while you do this. You could even take your kit with you to a counselor and have them pay attention to you while you simulate IV injections. Work up to the point that you begin to feel light headed or nauseous, etc... and talk about what's going on for you. If you feel shaky, sweaty, nervous, a bit light-headed then stay with those feeling for a bit and let yourself shake, sweat, feel light-headed or nauseous, etc.... Repeat this (not necessarily on the same day but over whatever period of time that you're comfortable with) until you're able to (repeatedly) successfully accomplish the task.

You can also use techniques such as those in the book Feeling Good (cognitive therapy) while you work on this. There are also other things you might try like meditation (including soothing music or background noise) or calming or "remaining in the present" type techniques.

As a student, just the preparation that you have to do might keep you focused (distracted from your phobia). Try getting all the technique correct. Did you correctly identify the patient? Did you double-check the medication, dosage and route of administration? Did you ask about drug or other allergies? Did you prepare your materials correctly? Did you wash your hands correctly? Did you swab the injection site correctly? Did you prepare the hypodermic correctly for injection? Did you inject bevel down at the proper angle? Did you aspirate for blood? Did you remember to untie the torniquet? Did you collect enough of a sample in the microtainer? Did you dispose of your needle correctly? Did you deglove correctly? Did you document correctly, etc... etc...?

You could even get a massage before or after working on it. I know that when I was working on publicly performing music, it helped a lot to use some of these techniques and getting an hour long massage just before going on was really helpful, relaxing and confidence building -- a lot like how I've heard people describe an experience with MDMA, although I've never tried it myself.

More than likely, you'll get past this fear, phobia or whatever it is. Break it down into baby steps and work your way through it. Reward/congratulate yourself for each successful step.

Wow, I wish I would have had your insight to ask this question 9 years ago. Spend your first week reading three books (four if you come from an upper-middle-class or wealthier family).

• How to Win Friends and Influence People
  
• How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less. (Not gonna lie, this has a lot of bull shit in it, but the good parts are really practical.)
  
• Never Eat Alone
  
• The Millionaire Next Door (optional. Read it when I was your age, and it got my ass in gear.)
  
  Once you finish Never Eat Alone, start reaching out to people. Start spending your money on having conversations over coffee. Yes, some call this "networking," but don't think of it that way. You're making friends. For the next 5 months, you don't have any needs, so now is the perfect time to put others first. My life is currently full of awesome friends, and it's all because I took the time to give a shit about them. Be sure to take notes and have some sort of contact list (highrise is free). It's not romantic, but if you genuinely want to make friends, it's the way to do it. The more people you meet, the easier time you'll have of helping them by making introductions.
  
  I've been doing this for a couple years now, and it has literally changed my life. I'm friends with people I never even dreamed of knowing. I'm a freelancer, and I literally have more work than I know what to do with. I'm throwing a big party in a couple weeks for all my friends, and I'm shocked at who all has said "yes."
  
  tl;dr Meet all the people you can, think of others first, and someday they'll likely return the favor.

Hey! I'm also working on recovery. Some books that I've really found helpful are Feeling Good, and Complex PTSD. Moodgym is also pretty awesome. The first book and the website show you how to use CBT in your own life, and this has really helped me out in terms of everyday anxiety and depression. The Mentalpod is a cool little podcast, and while it doesn't only cover childhood abuse, it helps me feel less alone with all of this stuff, and makes me more aware of my feelings and struggles. Hearing your story come out of another person's mouth is such a healing experience. Episodes 131 and 126 especially are useful.

I think the rest of the work though really has to do with trauma and grief. The second book is invaluable for that. I need to grieve my lack of a childhood. I need to grieve my lack of an available mother. I think this is what "the hole in my heart" is really related to. Sometimes I'll cry about it but do my best to be compassionate with myself. Though these realizations are fucking awful, they are also freeing. I didn't deserve any of it, and I'm not bad for standing up for myself. While my upbringing taught me otherwise, most people are generous, kind and forgiving, and more open to love than I believed possible. I'm able to see myself breaking more and more out of my old survival mindset, and I'm able to see that the world is a beautiful place. It's all a process and we'll both do better and better as time goes on.

Best of luck in your journey! :)

I don't have any local recommendations for you, but I do have a few world-class recommendations that will cost you much less in time and money.

For CBT, check out Dr. David Burn's book - Feeling Good: You can pick it up online for like $5. It is a light and interesting read, lots of stories. Here is a study about "Feeling Good": "This study provided empirical evidence that a behavioral prescription for Feeling Good may be as effective as standard care, which commonly involves an antidepressant prescription."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20803165

For mindfulness, the fountainhead is Eastern/Bhuddist thought here is a good source for that:
The Power of Mindfulness by Nyanaponika Thera (fo free online)

http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/powermindfulness.pdf

If you want both CBT and Mindfulness - then you should read or listen to Jeffery Schwartz. He has a few books, the most recent "You are not your brain" is approachable and an integration of Mindfulness and Cognitive Therapy.
Here is a 5 minute video, gives you a feel for the author: "4 steps to changing your brain for good"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuABDAAns7w

If you like that - here is a half-hour more (summary of the book above):
'You are not your brain' at Mind & Its Potential 2011
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcrGlUHlu4M

Finally, if you are into workbooks - pick up "Mind over Mood"

http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Over-Mood-Change-Changing/dp/0898621283

Regardless of the book or therapist, you will have to do a lot mental work. So ultimately, most of the therapy, is self-therapy.
Best of luck to you. And remember: this too, shall pass.

Here's the deal.

I've seen your posts around the Wichita and depression subreddits. I remember because whenever I see you post you sound pretty similar to me. I've been depressed for several years, gotten down to just a couple friends, socially anxious, etc. Recently I've been taking really good care of these problems, though. I've started seeing a therapist, reading a few EXCELLENT books (take a look at this one and this one. They're life changers) and putting all this help to work in my life.

I didn't think I would, but I have noticed subtle changes happening in my life. It's taken a few months, but it feels like I'm finally on my way to being more or less "normal", or at least not having to worry about my depression or freaking out when I am in a social situation. In my classes and at work (I'm a sophomore at WSU) I have been starting to talk to more people and have been able to hold pleasant conversations for at least a few minutes. I've even gotten a couple people's numbers, which for me is a fucking milestone.

Ditch the negative attitude. How you live is fleshed out by how you're thinking about life in general. Seriously, give those two books a chance and read them cover to cover. They will help you out, I promise. Consider even seeing a therapist. PM me if you'd like the number of my guy, he's very nice and easy to talk to, has a great way of putting things into perspective and is introverted like me, which I'm guessing you are as well. It's not going to be easy, and is going to take some serious self-reflection, but the earlier you start the sooner you will be able to be happy with your life. Good luck.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, seeing a therapist should be first on your list of priorities. If you have the money, do it. Having someone there to help you (and a professional at what they do, at that) will help you much more than reading a book on your own could.

You can reformat your hard drive! It sounds like you have some real positive motivators in your life, too.

I think you're looking for some form of re-imprint/cognitive behavioral therapy to help set your mind on the right track, much like the brainwashing the army likely put you through, but to your own advantage. Many recovering alcoholics find this refuge in religion. A church might actually be a good bet for you, but as an avid redditor, you may be more geared towards finding your own solution. Counseling is helpful, but it sounds as if you want to set your own direction.

In the meantime, you want to avoid stress and lower your cortisol levels. A few ways to do this besides prescription drugs would be:

• restful nights' sleep (8 hours is just a guess)
  
  
• maintain a nutritious diet
  
  
• Omega 3s (eat fish)
  
  
• daily exercise (to a certain level)
  
  
• massage
  
  
• pranayama yoga (this is, in my opinion, the best technique you can learn to reduce stress)
  
  the mind is a powerful tool, but for many of us, (especially those predisposed to addiction and depression) it can be a challenge to control.
  
  Maybe try some self help books for some good mind control techniques. I don't particularly agree with the philosophies of all of these, but there are good things to be gleaned from each; (Tony Robbins, Deepak Choprah, Richard Warren, Christopher Hyatt, Viktor Frankl, Feeling Good, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Art of War, Tao of Pooh, 48 Laws of Power, The Secret, Prometheus Rising).
  
  However you DECIDE TO PROGRESS, have fun!

Everyone has offered great suggestions on here. I definitely recommend Meetup.com as well. I've tried quite a few different groups: rock climbing, a gal's book club, social activities groups that aren't related to dating, language exchanges. You'll find they are hit or miss, but you'll hopefully come out of it with a couple groups you like, and even some new friends. I've made a group of really good friends from my book club (going to one of the gal's BBQ's today actually!).

I really liked Rachel Bertsche's book MWF Seeking BFF. It chronicles her search for making new friends in Chicago, and all the various tactics she tried, as well as inserts research into it about friendships as an adult. It gave me some good ideas and ways to approach the new friend search.

I'd also advise you to keep up with your current girlfriends group, even if they're in a different situation currently. They may not want to go out to the bar/dancing, but you could try getting them together and doing brunch monthly or coffee dates or something like that.

Got a book for you. It was recommended to me by my therapist, who has met the author a couple of times. It's been in print >20 years. You can read reviews here and then link back to the book.

Full disclosure: I believe talking therapy with someone you trust completely is best thing for each and every one who of us who ever wishes we had that we had that confidentiality and trust in someone.

I also despise self-help books in general. I find them almost invariably to be the long form of two variants: One, "First get really lucky, or find a partner or live in the perfect location or have an extensive familial and social network...or Two, "First, pull yourself up by the hair...".

This book is different. I have congenital GAD. At the time I first read Dr. Burns' book I was depressed as well. Life was good and I wasn't enjoying it the way I should. I read the first chapter, which is a series of self-evaluation questions that you answer on a 1-5 scale.
As you complete subsections, there are evaluations of your answers, explaining that if you got a low score, x is the reason, and doing A differently will affect that positively. If you got a high number, doing E differently will help eliminate that.

And you stop for a second and think of how that result relates to your brain, your thought processes, your "inner voice" and you realize how effing easy some of this "changing for the better" is going to be. Once you have the tools to understand and change your negative thoughts (which can turn into negative actions)...for good, it changes you. After fifty pages, I physically felt lighter, just like the cliche. There's a reason it's a cliche. It really does feel like a "weight was lifted off my shoulders". And it was all what I was doing to myself, in my descriptions in my own mind of my actions and decisions.

Learning how, in a couple/few hours how to eliminate the negative from your thoughts so the positive can take hold and move you forward feels kinda like getting a new vehicle. No, not kidding. I think it feels that way because you know the feeling is going to last. Trust. One of my best reddit moments was when a young woman I had recommended Dr. Burns' book to came back, dug out her old throwaway just to thank me for the referral. She said after she read the book, she changed jobs, got a new man and her life had completely turned around, and she wanted to thank me. Pretty awesome, and props to the happy young lady for reaching out.

But yeah, it's that good.

PLEASE read this before doing what you're planning. I know it's quite long, but I really want to help you make the best decision here.

Have you considered dressing like a monk, and carrying around cards you've printed out that explain you've taken a vow of silence? You could become a real monk and actually take such a vow, or you could just fake it. Either way would be preferable to cutting out your tongue. And if your family doesn't believe you, so what? You can explain that you actually have a phobia of speaking to them (through written text if necessary), or not. Either way, they'll still think better of you than if you follow through with cutting your tongue out.

(It would be even easier to carry cards that say "I am mute" or "I have a phobia of speaking," but you seem to have convinced yourself that you need some sort of excuse, which is why I'm suggesting the vow. If you can find the courage to be honest, then do so, but I'm guessing that might be a bit much for a first step, given that you're planning to chop your tongue off to avoid such honesty.)

In the long term, you should go to a therapist, and work out your fear of speaking. I highly recommend Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. Check out the book "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" to get started by yourself. I know, the title sounds like some bullshit self-help book, but trust me, it's legit.

However, in the short term, it sounds like you're obviously desperate for an immediate solution, so I'd highly suggest you try mine.

Think about your favorite food in the world. Do you really want to take your ability to taste it, and anything else, and flush it down the toilet forever? Do you really want to lose the ability to speak, or French kiss, or anything else we do with our tongues, if it turns out there's a cure for your phobia of speaking? (And there is; I just linked it to you.)

If you're afraid of speaking, the problem that you truly want to fix isn't that you have a tongue—it's that you're afraid of speaking. I know that it's tempting to take the "easy" solution, and that the mere thought of going to therapy and practicing talking is probably absolutely terrifying to you. But here's the thing: there's nothing wrong with being terrified. Phobias are scary by their very definition. And that's not even a bad thing. A novel would be boring without some obstacle for the main character to try and overcome. We all have our obstacles. Your obstacle is not your own tongue. Your obstacle is whatever warped thoughts you are having that make your tongue seem like it is the obstacle, and that make cutting out your tongue seem preferable to having to speak to people. You can fix those warped thoughts.

> "Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them." -Epictetus

You are not disturbed by your tongue. You are not disturbed by other people expecting you to speak to them. You are disturbed by the views which you have taken of these things.

I know it's hard, man. I'm not exactly the epitome of perfect mental health myself. But the future you that seduces and kisses the partner of your dreams is just as much of a real possibility as the future you that has no tongue, even if it seems like that's impossible. And while it won't be easy to develop your social skills, trust me when I say that it'll be a hell of a lot easier than living without a tongue.

But if I can't convince you to do the hard part right away, then don't. Take that vow of silence, or fake one. That vow will be as permanent or as temporary as you want it to be. A month, a year, or fifty years from now, you might want to give it up, and you can. Or you might want to keep it, and continue to never talk to anyone, and you'll have that option as well. Take or fake that vow, and every future You will always have that freedom of choice. Cut your tongue out and flush it down the toilet, and none of them will. Maybe the You that starts the guillotine is okay with not having a tongue, but that You will stop existing when that present become the past. The only You that actually exists is the one reading the sentence right now. And now, that You has permanently vanished from existence, and a slightly different You is reading this sentence. You can decide to take a vow of silence for current You, but please allow me to speak on the behalf of every single future You when I ask you to not force each and every one of them to live without a tongue, from the You that's in intense pain and bleeding profusely from their mouth; to the You that misses being able to taste that dish Mom used to make when she wanted to cheer you up, but now she never bothers because she knows it will just make you feel worse; to the You that's lived an entire life without a tongue and is now about to die. You deserve the right to be able to choose to not speak to people—every You deserves that right. Please, let them make that choice for themselves. I know you will find this very hard to believe at the moment, but trust me: they will thank you.

If you've gotten this far and you're still insistent on cutting it out, at least eat the feast of your dreams first, while you can still enjoy it. Carefully observe the flavors, textures, and sensations as best you can—because if you do go through with your plan, your memories of what it's like to taste food will be the best you've got. Reflect upon whether or not that's a fair and reasonable price to pay for an excuse to not talk to people, after your last spoonful of your ice cream sundae.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics. (probably most interesting from a Freudian perspective, deals with many of our unconscious instincts)

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces The Shape Our Decisions - Unconscious decision-making, behavioral economics, consumer psychology. Fun read.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Most popular book on the psychology of persuasion, covers all the main principles. Very popular among business crowds.

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships - Social neuroscience, mirror neurons, empathy, practical stuff mixed with easy to understand brain science.

Authentic Happiness - Positive Psychology, happiness, increasing life satisfaction.

Feeling Good - A good primer on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Also widely considered one of the best self-help books by mental health practitioners.

The Brain That Changes Itself - Neuroplasticity, how experience shapes our brains. Some really remarkable case studies that get you wondering how powerful our brains really are.

The Buddhist Brain - The practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom from a Buddhist perspective.

That should give you more than enough to chew on.

I don't want to scare you but this could take a lot longer than you'd like to think. Especially if you used to try to cover up the depression & anxiety to begin with.

I'm on day 39 right now and it really peaked after 3-4 weeks. Week 6 right now is being easier on me. This is a journey and you have to go back to remembering why you're doing this. This process could take you up to 2-3 years.
A helpful study I went back to (this is my 3rd time) was one out of Sweden found here:http://droginfo.com/pdf/guideuk.pdf
A guide to quitting
Marijuana and Hashish
Drug Addiction Treatment Centre
Lund University Hospital
Lund, Sweden

Understand that you can't rush this. You have a lot of work to do but you're worth it in the end. Another helpful item for me was to work through at least a few pages a night was Feeling Good (https://www.amazon.ca/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336). It's been the best 10$ I spent throughout this whole experience. Also eat only clean foods. Rice (a ton of it everyday) was good for me. It could take a week or two until your eating gets a bit better....it's all just a bunch of small steps.

The reason it could take a while is because you should accept that you could go through PAWS after the first month. One day at a time. Write a journal. After a while go back a week or two and reread what you wrote. You'll see that progress!

Best of luck man!

Edit: just touching on the book... do the activities. Keep a weekly log of your BDC score! It shows progress even if you are going through a shit day. Mine went 29,23,20,16,14,12,11. The activities are helpful. Never give up!

> I am not sure how I can move past this.

Life doesn't give us a choice, neither does your SO. You're in a difficult situation as I was a year ago. After her infidelity and 2 marriage different marriage counselor, along with SO's month long depression, SO decided that marriage is not for her and started dating other men even before separation. What helped me was support from my family during this trying times. Talking helps. Exercise helps. Hanging out with friends helps too.

You simply move on in life with or without your SO. Seriously, bottled feelings doesn't matter much over time, whether you try to forgive or forget them. It feels like an itch you may scratch once a while but eventually it goes away with time. Not saying that you should keep your feelings bottled up, your SO should know how these affected you, your self-esteem, putting you through grief. End of day, some songs may never be sung again and these are the scars you have to live with.

Check out the "Feeling Good" by Dr David M Burns. It contains a number of techniques you can try. I read the entire book with hopes that it could help SO.

There is also "Mind over mood", has good reviews. Haven't read it yet, if you find this book useful, do share it here.

Currently reading Mark Manson's book. Quote: "In life, our f&cks must be spent on something. There really is no such thing as not giving a f&ck. The question is simply how we each choose to allot our f&cks. You only get a limited number of f&cks to give over your lifetime, so you must spend them with care." Top seller in Amazon, #1 in a few categories too. Worth a try!

tldr; Care for yourself first. Look for support in books, friends & family. You're not alone here

Sidenote: The ironic beautiful thing about relationship is to be in love means to be vunerable also. Vulnerability is a necessary part of loving relationships. If you stop yourself from being vunerable, you'll also stop yourself from feeling love. The same doorway that makes you vulnerable is the same door loves walks through.

Edit: typo and grammar

I like to think of emotions as information about how the outside world is affecting my inside world. Information is a lot easier to process, for me.

As far as navigating the social world, three things helped me. Two were books, this one and this one. The first uses MBTI terminology to talk about socializing. If MBTI is the nomenclature you're familiar with, it's very helpful. The second has a really stupid title so forget the title and open it up and read it: it's a handbook for those of us who don't intuit social rules. That book spells things out for people like us. it's simple and easy to read. Some of it sounds a little dumb to us (like "lining up your heart" with the other person's when you're talking to them) but the results are undeniably worth it.

The third thing that helped me were mentors. Two people were crucial turning points in my life. One was a friend in college, a woman from an upper class family who had better social graces than anyone else I've ever met. She took me under her wing and taught me a lot about social interactions, decorum, how to dress, all that stuff. Totally transformed my life in college and after it. She was just a kind person who took a liking to me, but you can seek out someone like that, too. Don't be afraid to tell someone that you admire what they do and want to learn from them, most people love being acknowledged for things they're good at (don't you)?

The other mentor I had was more formal and someone I sought out when I was beginning in business and tripping up horribly. Again this was someone who took me under their wing and showed me the ins and outs of what I was attempting. I found them through business connections. It was someone who was already retired, so I wouldn't be competition for them, and they were delighted to spend some of their retirement teaching what they knew to someone just starting out.

The important thing to take away from this is there are resources out there. Use them and don't give up! One of the things we are very good at is learning. You can do this.

Hi OP. In response to your edit... I knew it had to be something more than just 'socialization.'


> the adults constant in her life either neglect her growth or are afraid of their own shadows and quite un-encouraging


Here is where you're nailing the gist of the problem. This is likely the root cause of the fear you see manifesting in your child's behaviour. It seems your own influence is currently quite limited, unfortunately. Which means, that the time you do get to spend with her, should be as valuable and enriching as possible.


> I enrolled her in swimming lessons a few months ago (Ultra one), but the instructors nor I could convince her to dip her head below the water. The gist of my question is, how can I do differently, or do more so that she grows up a strong independent.


TONS of kids have a fear of dunking their heads below the water. Yes, even at her age, as I did. This is totally normal, and this specific example I don't think is something to dwell on.


OP, while I don't think anything is wrong with encouraging her physical play time activities, I think you need to target her security and comfort levels on a mental level first. Whenever she exhibits a fear, stop what you all are doing, look her in the eyes and calmly ask what is bothering her. Knowing she has a confident and capable adult around who can address her fears in an objective manner, will do leaps and bounds in helping her understand that the world does not have to be a scary place, even if the home she resides in deems it to be. A very important resource I think for all parents is the book Hold On To Your Kids written by 2 prominent family psychologists.


Bottom line: yes, encourage play time. But please do not feel the need to push her beyond her comfort level (not saying you do). I would also advise against using the words "Be Brave" too much -- bravery is an important virtue, but it is not the prerequisite for an independent person. You could try things like, "I know you can do this if you really wanted to"; "If you aren't ready today, that's fine, maybe we can try next time?", etc. Too often society pressures us to feel if our kids don't do something, they won't turn out to be independent, and I'm here to tell you that's a crock of b.s. As long as you provide a steady, solid support system for her, she will develop into herself in her own due time. (Sorry for the long post!!)

The winter months are especially hard. People say this ad nauseum, but start exercising. That could be hitting the gym or just going for a morning jog. Depending where you live, try and go for daily walks too. I started consistently exercising about two years ago and it helps me a lot.

For overall mental health, if you feel life is getting to be a bit much, maybe look into seeing a therapist. They can help give you tools to overcome certain emotions you are feeling and help identify things that arise. Other routes are meditation,. I used to pay for Headspace and highly recommend it, but plenty of free stuff out there too. Lastly, consider looking into self-help books. This genre gets eye rolls from time to time, but I've found a few books that have helped me understand my mental and emotional health. I recommend Feeling Good as a good place to start.

Regarding the loss of a girlfriend, everyone tackles that differently. Dating in DC is brutal, but when I was actively in the online dating scene, it was a lot of fun. I went in with no expectations, a positive attitude, and I met a lot of interesting women. Sometimes we'd date for awhile, other times it would fizzle out, and a few times I've made genuine friends. In the end, online dating was more about self discovery of what I really look for in a partner.

As for friends, check out the weekly Reddit happy hour. It would be a low pressure option to meet new people.

Overall, whatever you choose to do, there is no magic bullet and it's better to take an overall holistic approach to improving your situation.

No it's fine. I didn't get diagnosed with depression till I was around 18 or 19 but I definitely struggled with the symptoms for a long time. I was a "gifted" child too, went to the Academically Talented class, honor classes in middle school/high school.

I'm going to tell you thinking your depression is linked to your intelligence or is caused by your intelligence will not help you and it is not true. I mean, tough love, but if you were truly that smart, you'd be attending your classes and not setting yourself up to fail right? The two, while commonly seen as connected here on reddit, is really just a rationalization that only serves to make you ok with being and staying depressed imo.

Depression is a mind disease that affects people of all intelligence levels. It's caused by your automatic thoughts you don't realize you have that take you down painful emotional paths that are familiar and habitual. That was the key to overcoming my depression - catching myself when I started saying something mean to myself "I'm such an idiot", self-defeating "I'll never finish all this work", fortune telling "I'm going to fail", mind reading "That person doesn't like me I know it", or any of the other cognitive biases.

It's hard and takes practice at first to really catch these because odds are you've been telling these things to yourself for years so its habitual and you don't even question the validity of these thoughts, they're just taken at face value as true. That's where the problem lays and where therapy can really help.

I know you didn't ask for advice but I feel obligated to help other people with depression given I experienced for a long time without knowing how to treat it and how much taht can suck.

I'd really recommend reading Feeling Good, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy workbook for overcoming depression. It's about finding pinpointing the specific depressive thoughts you have, catching them as they happen, and disputing them. It's very effective for some people.

The other book I'd recommend is The Mindful Way Through Depression, it's a Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy. It's about catching the thoughts, but then learning how to view them non-judgementally and accepting them without letting them hurt your life in the manner they currently do.

I'd recommend Feeling Good first as it's more straight forward, less abstract, and if you've never meditated or tried mindfulness before its easier to get your head around. But after that there are many things in the second book that will help aid you as well.

I hope this helps. PM if you want someone to talk to. Most Uni's also offer free therapy sessions, I'd definitely look into that as well.

I pretty much only read non-fiction, so I'm all about books that are educational but also interesting :) I'm not sure what your educational background is, so depending on how interested you are in particular subjects, I have many recommendations.

Naked Statistics and Nate Silver's Book are both good!

Feeling Good is THE book on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.

The Omnivore's Dilemma is good, as is Eating Animals (granted, Eating Animals is aimed at a particular type of eating)

Guns, Germs and Steel is very good.

I also very much enjoyed The Immortal Live of Henrietta Lacks, as well as Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman :)

edit to add: Chris Hadfield's Book which I haven't received yet but it's going to be amazing.

That's called imposer syndrome. Look it up. Literally every graduate student has it. It's very normal.

Creatine is a substance found in high end red meat and fish that most people are deficient in. It's usually taken by bodybuilders as a workout supplement but many people take it for their brain. It's pretty much like taking a vitamin. You can find it at mist pharmacy's or on Amazon. People who are deficient in creatine, which is most of the population, can see about a 5iq point boost. It's one of the most well studied substances that exists, there's 0 downside to it as far as I can tell. (Omega 3 is good as well, but it's less dramatic and more well known)

Depression can also lower your iq by a good few points. Although if you already exercise you're probably doing most of what you can to manage it. A dietary change can help a lot with your overall brain power too. Look into a keto diet, or read an experiment to find a good diet, and you'll have a lot more energy to get things done. You said you have a healthy diet so you're probably good on this, but if you're still feeling bad the diet might not be healthy enough even if you think it is. Many people react differently to different things and there's a ton of misinformation as to what constitutes healthy.

Being a graduate student is a miserable job. You're working absurd hours for bad pay and expected to do amazing things with low odds of success. It's normal to feel the way you feel. Maybe get a therapist. Even if you're not depressed, just talking this stuff through will help you feel better and thus be more productive. Happy people tend to be significantly better at their jobs than unhappy ones so if you can learn to be happy it'll help quite a lot.

I'd recommend the book feeling good, as well. It's basically a guide to doing cognitive behavioral therapy on yourself. I disagree with the philosophy of the book, it maintains that its irrational to be unhappy regardless of circumstance. It's something Jordan Peterson is completely opposed to. However the methods of the book are scientifically sound and Peterson has vouched for the utility of cbt and uses it himself depending on the patient. It'll help you notice a lot of bad and irrational thought patterns and counter then with thoughts more congruent with reality.

Good job on identifying an issue and taking steps to counteract and fix them, it's way easier said than done.

It's a more concrete help so I'd recommend Ten Days to Self-Esteem. It's a book my therapist recommended me and it's pretty good in helping change the way to approach certain things about yourself. It's not gonna magic it all away but I find that just changing the way you think about things or better defining them helps.

On a similar note, don't ever vocalize your self=loathing. It's fine to think about it still, you can't entirely stop your thoughts, just don't say them outloud. Don't say them to yourself, don't say them around friends and family, just bite your tongue when saying it. I've noticed that just not vocalizing it has weirdly helped me with myself. My other big thing is to treat yourself, like you did with the ice cream. Not all the time of course, but if you ever do something that's hard just for you to do, like going a week without bringing yourself down or just being reasonably responsible, get yourself something. Be it a trinket, a little vacation or just a sweet dessert, it's good reinforcement and you deserve to feel good about yourself.

It takes a bit of concerted effort to consistently do it but mindfulnesses meditation is probably what you are looking for. Its not like a magic pill that will make your thoughts go away but it will help you to relate to your thoughts in a more skillful way so that they are not so consuming. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to be very helpful for those that have mood disorders (anxiety and depression) and ADHD. Some people are a bit adverse to it because they have ideas of bald monks chanting but the type of mindfulness meditation you will find taught it a more clinical/medical context are far from that. Its more simple little exercises that will help you to see your thoughts for what they are (just thoughts) and learn to let them fizzle out on their own (rather than obsessing over them or trying to push them away). 10-20 minutes a day every day has worked wonders for me. You really do improve the more you practice. The effects last through out the day not just when you sit. My wife can tell when I have not been keeping up with my practice. I recommend Head Space its very clinical. I have also heard Buddhify is good. There are loads of other resources out there. Stick to the ones that are more clinical and medical. Mindfulnesses meditation does not mean you need to adopt a new set of beliefs or religion. The stuff that you will find in stress reduction clinics and self help books is just a therapeutic mental exercise. See for example MBSR.

I also recommend Feeling Good. It is a complete introduction to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). It is complementary to mindfulness because it helps one to engage with your thoughts in a healthy productive manner. Its main premise (if I can do it justice) is that we often have very skewed thinking and do not realize it, so when we are able to identify thoughts that are extreme or illogical we can make more realistic assessments which lead to a more stable calm mind. It is definitely stood the test of time.

The last thing I would say is be aware of how much info/stimulus you consume. Surfing the web, radio, tv, noisy chaotic situations tend to dull the senses and leave you with a lot of stimulus to sort through. So cut out needless noise and stimuli from your life.

I don't have any quick fixes for you but those 3 things have really helped me to 'turn off my mind'. Taking control of my mental health was one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. I wish you the best on your own journey.

That sounds really challenging! Are there any free activities in your area that you could join? I used to go to free meditation groups and found them helpful. Even if I don't always interact with people much, just getting out of the house and being around a positive and friendly bunch of people was encouraging.

I've even made purely platonic female friends on dating sites - I found a straight woman on OkC with heaps of common interests, so we met up and we're still really good friends several months later. I know Bumble has a special "BFF" setting if that's something that would interest you.

I also found Shasta Nelson's book ['Friendships Don't Just Happen!'] (https://www.amazon.com/Friendships-Dont-Just-Happen-GirlFriends-ebook/dp/B07776956H/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522918901&sr=8-1&keywords=friendships+don%27t+just+happen) had some useful tips. [She has a blog too] (https://www.girlfriendcircles.com/blog) that you can check out.

Guy here. You might want to read Way of the Superior Man. Yes, it's for guys, but I know some women who've read it and liked it. In a nutshell, he talks about feminine energy and masculine presence. They attract and need each other. So if a woman is wondering what she contributes besides sex appeal, energy might be the answer.

I think of it like dancing. The man leads and sets the frame, but the woman provides the energy and flash that makes good dancers look like lovers in ecstasy.

Also, David Deida has another book called It's A Guy Thing: A Owner's Manual for Women. I haven't read it but have heard good things.

HI wanted to get a cute little book like this for Valentine's day so I can fill it in with things about Wifey, but anything I find that's remotely cute is out of stock and ships within a couple months. There's the why you are awesome but it's not that romantic... My fault for being so late.. There are cute illustration ones like this one but being we are in a girl only relationship, I dunno how I feel about it. I mean I'm not anti man or anything, just don't wanna give wifey a book about how much I love her, and have a man drawing on it xD Also we already have this one and I also already made her one from lovebook.com a couple years ago.. soo yeah. If you guys have any ideas, even if it's not from amazon, (but amazon.ca I have prime so I know I can get it quick) I mean if I don't find I'll probably do something homemade, so, any ideas for the crafty ones out there? I have a printer with a lot of ink, so printables are a thing. And I am crafty but not good so... hahaha help a girl in need ! <3 /u/watsoned no I hadnt seen it! It looks pretty cute, ever ordered it?

The first thing you should do is tell someone and try to get help. It’s actually great that your parents suspect that you’re depressed and have talked to you about it because the hardest thing about depression is just being able to talk about it with someone. Your parents can help you get set up with a therapist or a counselor to talk through things. Since you’re 18 you can also try to do those things yourself, but the most important thing you can do is definitely seeing someone about it.

If you don’t feel comfortable pursuing outside help I have a couple ideas. One thing you can do is PM me at any time and I’ll be happy to talk to you. I’m 10 years older and have been in your place. Another is to find a good book about all this. I think one of the best is called Feeling Good. It’s the only book that has been acknowledged as an effective treatment for depression. I would be happy to buy a copy and send it to you if you don’t want to pay for it.

I notice you didn’t actually say that you are depressed, but based on my own personal experience of struggling with some of these things over the last 10 years, and on some of the things you’re saying, I know you have some degree of depression. The thing is, that’s absolutely fine and nothing to be ashamed of. Once you ID it and know that it’s there, you can try to understand it and begin to deal with it. Don’t worry too much about labeling yourself though—you risk having your depression become your identity, when really you are so much more complicated than that, in the best possible way.

I don’t think your parents are trying to judge, or label you. Parents feel so helpless to provide for their children when they reach your age. They see you doing things and they have no control over it, and they worry, because they can’t just make it all better by being your mom and dad anymore.

Also, don’t panic about this idea of “straying from society” or becoming a recluse. You’re 18 at the moment, and life is long and abundant. If TagPro is what makes you happy right now you can keep on doing that and enjoy it in the moment. You also have to keep in mind that TagPro won’t always be here and that this could end at any time. It’s good to try and find as many things that you like to do as possible. 18 is an age where everyone is telling you who you are and what you should be, when you don’t even know yourself. How could you possibly know? How could anyone? All you can do is do things you like and live your life and hope you find it along the way. I only know a couple of people who are doing the thing that they thought they’d be doing at 18.

Just hang tough, stay positive, and find someone to talk to.

Such great points here. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of getting some mental health support but also addressing any underlying medical issues. So many of us are deficient in important vitamins and minerals due to lack of healthy nutrition and soil depletion, other environmental factors. I echo all the comments that encourage you to work on becoming healthy in body and mind. Exercise, nutrition, counseling or even some kick ass books that help you to shift your outlook. This book is supposed to be awesome, even life changing : https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336.

And have you ever read Perks of Being a Wallflower? Or a book that explains and normalizes introversion? This one is great: https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/dp/0307352153

Depression is no joke. And we can’t answer why you feel this way. But please know that it is common, you are not alone, and it can and will get better. You are not getting dumb or disappearing. That is just the depression and once it lifts — through medication, therapy or other changes in lifestyle — you will feel better and back to yourself. You will know joy and you will have an easier time connecting with others. Promise. I speak from my personal experience. Hang in there.

I honestly think you should look back into therapy again, but please don't go to a therapist you hate! Finding the right therapist can be a bit like dating, it might take you a few tries to find someone who you feel understands you and can actually help you. I also highly recommend this book, it has helped my entire family deal with low self-esteem/self worth.

As for your partner, some serious conversations need to be had. Is he actively turning you down for sex/intimacy in favour of porn or is this an occasional thing? If he is no longer being affectionate with you, you need to sit down and have a serious talk. Couples counselling could also help you, as having a neutral third party guiding you through your conversations can save you a lot of anger and resentment.

My advice is to not book anything yet, wait until you are feeling better about yourself and your relationship, the wedding can wait. You don't want to end up in a marriage where you resent your partner, it's better to work these things out before you even consider walking down the aisle. I'm sending you so much love and many hugs, you deserve to be loved and cherished ((hugs))

Meditation and cognitive behavioral therapy may be able to help you.

>The experts we spoke to agree that, when looking at the science on the benefits of mindfulness meditation, there are three conditions with a strong and convincing body of evidence to support its effects: depression, anxiety, and chronic pain.

>Although the research still is not definitive, the positive effects of mindfulness meditation on these conditions “is holding up to the strongest, strictest standards of research” in well-designed, well-powered trials, Vago

https://www.self.com/story/mindfulness-meditation-health-benefits

>Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be effective for a wide variety of mental health disorders,1 including anxiety disorders.2-6 CBT has also been associated with improvements in quality of life in anxiety patients.7 CBT is typically conceptualized as a short-term, skills-focused treatment aimed at altering maladaptive emotional responses by changing the patient's thoughts,behaviors, or both.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4610618/

A really good place to learn CBT on your own is the books of Dr. David Burns. This one is a good start: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0380810336/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_lBtNBbBVT5CM4

Here's a good webpage on CBT too: https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/cbt-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-techniques-worksheets/

> I'm always focused on me me me (like this post) and as a result I feel I've become detached from the feelings of others around me. Or otherwise I'm busy judging other people to make me feel more secure in myself. It's a terrible loop. Anything I do for others is usually framed by my mind as "oh this will make them like me" resulting in me feeling very fake. I'm always looking at how I can use people to my advantage/how they can be of use to me.

>I'm always living in fear and as a result I think I've lost what ever love I had for the outside world.

This strikes me as something particularly able to change with meditation (well, and cbt too). One of the effects of continued meditation is loss of the strength of your ego, of your self conception, and stronger authentic interest in others.

A type of meditation that you can also engage in is "loving-kindness meditation", which is exactly directed at meditating upon developing a sense of love and kindness towards other people, without any self ego in the picture. It'd be best done alongside regular mindfulness meditation.

Finally, you may consider this one odd, but I wouls recommend possibly experimenting with psychedelic therapy in a safe environment, if you can find such a thing. Please don't just go out and take a drug right away, but perhaps read up a bit on that subject, what you find might interest you.

But anyway, I'd really strongly recommend the first two things, meditation and CBT.

First, with depression: I found this book very helpful:

https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482076128&sr=8-1&keywords=feeling+good+the+new+mood+therapy

About the path: It will show itself, you should just enjoy your life and be open to opportunities.

At 23 I was about to be promoted to a position above my competence level, which I was fired from at 25, which ended my military service career. I had no education, alone. I tried college for two years and failed. I started a process of moving to another country, which took me over 5 years. In that period I went into sales, which became my real career. At 43 I am still learning, improving myself, but I am healthy, have a great family, and I enjoy making 6 figures in sales.

Your job doesn't have to be what you will do for the rest of your life. It is OK to work to support yourself, as long as you have something you enjoy between work shifts. You like music? Make music. Not full time for money, it's enough if you enjoy it, and you find someone else that will enjoy it.

couple thoughts...

One, like others said, getting counseling is a good idea. Also, this book seems decent. I personally do much better depression-wise when I have plenty of sunlight. You can substitute sunlight with certain artificial bulbs online. I also find taking supplements helps, including Vitamin B and L-Tyrosine, but especially L-Tyrosine. I have also recently started raw juicing (note that most juice is pasteurized), and have read many people do very well on it, and they get a lot of energy from it. See this film to see the benefits of raw juice. It's expensive to buy raw juice from juice bars, (I'm paying $5 to $7 for 16 ounces...) but it's much cheaper if you buy a high wattage machine and start juicing on your own, and then bring the juice in a glass bottle with you to work. Alternatively, you can buy "lightly" pasteurized juices from the grocery store (Naked juice), but some of the nutrients may have been destroyed. Better to drink raw juice if you can.

Two, you can start planning for financial independence now. See /r/financialindependence for more info. That will help the future look brighter. How long would it take you to purchase property outright and pay for groceries / property taxes for the rest of your life? Once you reach that point, your time belongs to you, and you can focus even more on whatever interests you.

Three, regarding learning to code: have you considered just starting by watching video tutorials? You can watch them pretty mindlessly. Set a goal to watch one a day, for ten minutes, just before bed or during dinner. One of my recent favorites is React/React Native with Stephen Grider on Udemy, and the courses are very cheap there ($20 for like 8 hours or more of material). You can search nearly any subject you're interested in. If I may offer a piece of advice: start learning Javascript and React. They are likely going to be around for a long time, and there are signs it will take over native development soon, too.

Dude, don't worry about it, i already told you once this but you do have to take care of yourself too.

Have you seen Schindler's List? If not, this analogy won't work, but if you have, remember at the end how he was agonizing over all the ones he couldn't save, despite the fact that he made a difference for many people that had no hope, and how much you wanted to tell him that it was OK, that he had done not just enough but far, far more? You're in his same position in a smaller scale

You have helped, you have made a difference out of the goodness in your heart, you need to rest and recover because there's one more people you have to take care of, and it's you, and you can't help anybody if you haven't helped this particular person. If/when you recover you can go back to helping people, but this one goes first. Just like in airplanes where they say that in case of decompression, if you have kids with you your priority is to put on your oxygen mask first before your kids, because if you pass out you won't be able to help anybody. Same principle.

Look for this book in your school library (you can also get it on Kindle, used on Amazon for less than 3 bucks and it's also in those rascally torrent sites). Read it, and use it. It will be of your interest that one of the chapters relates how the author uses these same techniques to stay sane in the hard mode version of what you're going through.

Take it easy, dude. And be well

So what's your plan? Ok, that's kinda cruel. I'll help.

On a sheet of lined paper, grab a pen and draw a line down the middle. On one side (your choice. see, things are looking up already!) write "things I like to do". On the other side, write "things I'm good at".

Take your time, it's not a contest. Omit nothing. The smallest item may hold the key to your future happiness. Where the two lists overlap (hopefully) or approach each other is the area in which you will find the most personal satisfaction in work.

Start the rough outline of a one-year plan. You have NO plan now. So even the roughest set of goals is an improvement. Plans can be changed, altered, revamped, reversed, lots of things. But ya gotta have a fecking plan on where you want to be in a year. Now, a famous American Football coach once said "Once you set a goal for yourself, the price you pay is immaterial." Another way of saying this is "If you really want it, you can get it. I am proof it's true, but that's a story for a different time and mood.

Secondly, a five-year plan. Same story. Rough better than none. But have some goals. Challenge yourself. Do you want to work on becoming a "better, smoother version of you?" Of course. Now read carefully: What is it that makes a virtuoso violinist? Or makes Louis Armstrong sound so good on that trumpet? Yes. Practice. Are you ready for your challenge? OK

Do something every day that scares you. Nothing major. But you have a problem approaching women, yes? OK, here's the plan. In front of the mirror, work on your most genuine "Hi, There" face/smile. Get it? Practice looking friendly. You don't know what you look like to other people. So practice. And once a day, ask a woman if she knows what the time is. With your "Hi There" face. Usually she will tell you. You thank her and go on your way, no sideways glances, no staring. After a couple of dozen times doing this, you will no longer be afraid of approaching women!

Now start practcing some smiles, and just in case check out this book. It's probably available at the library.

Chin up.

A therapist is going to be able to help you with this way more than anyone here (especially since apparently half the people here are suicidal). They're specifically trained for this kind of thing and can give you techniques, behaviors, medications etc. that are tailored just for your situation.

That said it sounds like your problem is concentrating on negative things. There are a lot of options to help with that. Mindfulness helps a lot and can be worked on with meditation. Keeping your life in general good order is another important step (exercise, sleep, nutrition, being social, keeping an active mind). After that I think the important thing is to identify what you really care about (your values) and stay busy working towards them. It's hard to be so negative when you're in the moment and things are going well in your life.

There are tons of books that can help too. Here's a fairly simple one that I enjoyed. Otherwise I'd recommend books on ACT therapy (e.g. "The Happiness Trap"), Stoicism (this one is good), Meditation ("Mindfulness in Plain English" is good and free), and CBT therapy (I like this one, though it's kinda long). "The Happiness Hypothesis" is another good overview type book.

you sound a lot like me at 22. gay culture and its superficiality and focus on looks turns a LOT of people into catty bitches and makes a LOT of people feel undesirable. i didn't meet anyone at my college either, even though it had a thriving gay community, because i was too insecure to deal with other people.

fast forward four years: i saw a good therapist for a year and a half, focus on being the best person i can be, stay in shape for myself, not for anyone else's approval (this usually means running as opposed to lifting -- running is better for me anyway). and you know what? i had been reading since, oh, age 16 that confidence is what really matters and that's what gets you guys, but it's seriously only been in the past two years that i've started to build that. i now talk to people on grindr and in person who, two years ago, i would have just assumed were way out of my league. and you know what? i get more attention from guys than ever. finding an SO, sadly, can often just take years of looking for someone compatible. but unlike my unhealthy attitudes earlier in life, i realize now that i haven't dated anyone seriously in a few years because those were my decisions and other peoples' decisions, and it actually has nothing to do with my inherent desirability (which is a totally stupid concept anyway.)

don't let the fact that you're not dating anyone define your self-worth, which is what you're doing. by an extension of your logic, i'm worthless because i've been single for a few years. but you know what? that ain't so.

forget other people and what they think. work on self-improvement, being a person you're proud of is WAY more important than having a boyfriend. your own words say it all:

"I obviously have no diploma or proper career, I have no real adventures to share with people that would make me seem amazing and worldly (I’ve read a lot, if that counts). But most of all, I am single and celibate..."

"most of all" --> you think being single and celibate is more significant / important than career, travels, what you've read, and by extension of these things, your interests/personality/etc.? no way. not a chance.

just re-prioritize, my friend. you're clearly a highly intelligent person, and brave for coming out at such a young age. therapy is expensive but a really really really really good idea. if you can't afford it, read this: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336 and do all of the exercises -- it's sort of like a therapist in a book. but you gotta make it happen for yourself. someone else can't make you feel better about yourself.

i'll conclude with two rupaul quotes:

1. if you can't love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else
   
2. what other people think of me is none of my business
   
   welcome to your 20s, and good luck.

A dog is a great way to help out with the companionship aspect, but to stay at home might be a hair far. I can assure you that it may seem like a great idea so far, but ultimately, removing human contact might leave a hole you can't exactly fill with just a dog. You allude to having friends so

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Easy route?: Remove social media from your phone, but leave it open for human communication from family and such (those who care about your wellbeing, family or not). Also, find a hobby.

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Difficult route?: Realize that what is going on likely stems from deep inside. The old saying can't be truer, "Happiness comes from within." To be happy with others, is to first be happy with yourself. Work on yourself, find things that make you happy (hobbies, etc) and build up your best self. The rest will fall into place.

​

Additionals: This book has helped me in many cases. If you forgo the overall remarks on depression, it gives you strong coping tools for when things have you in an overall negative approach.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336

and here is the ebook if you don't want to spring for 8 bucks:

https://archive.org/details/FeelingGood-TheNewMoodTherapy

/u/tuckermalc and /u/pizzzahero both have great comments. I'll add a bit. Go to /r/stoicism, read [William Irvine's book] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195374614?keywords=william%20irvine&qid=1456992251&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1), then read [Epictetus's Enchiridion] (http://www.amazon.com/Enchiridion-Dover-Thrift-Editions-Epictetus/dp/0486433595/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456992275&sr=8-1&keywords=enchiridion). follow their guidelines. Also check out /r/theXeffect. The most important thing is controlling your habits. If you're in the habit of eating healthy, getting enough sleep, going to the gym, etc. then you're set.

Now for stuff that's harder to do. Go see a therapist. Or a psychiatrist. Try to find a [therapist who can do EMDR] (http://www.emdr.com/find-a-clinician/) with you, it's a very effective technique (I saw a clinician who uses EMDR for two years, and it changed my life-- and, importantly, it's supported by strong scientific evidence, it's not quackery stuff like homeopathy or acupuncture). If you decide to go to a psychiatrist, tell them you don't want SSRIs. Look at other drugs: Wellbutrin, tricyclics, SNRIs, etc (check out selegiline in patch form, called EMSAM, as well). Seriously, go see a professional and talk to them. I have no doubt that you're wrestling with mental illness. I have been there. For me, it just felt normal. I didn't understand that other people didn't feel like I did...so it took me a long time to go get help. But it's so important to just start working through these things and getting support. That's really the most important thing you can do. It will make your life so much better. If you aren't able to get to a therapist, do Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) on yourself! [This is a brilliant program] (https://moodgym.anu.edu.au) that's widely respected. Do it over and over. Also read [Feeling Good by David Burns] (http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456992639&sr=8-1&keywords=feeling+good+david+burns). It's a book on CBT, and can help you get started. There are lots of other resources out there, but you have to begin by realizing that something is wrong.

Finally, I'll talk about college. Don't try to go to fricking Harvard or MIT. You won't get in, and those aren't even the right schools for you. There are many excellent schools out there that aren't the super super famous Ivies. Look at reputable state schools, like UMich, UMinnesota, the UC system, etc. get ["Colleges that Change Lives"] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143122304?keywords=colleges%20that%20change%20lives&qid=1456992746&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1), the [Fiske Guide to Colleges] (http://www.amazon.com/Fiske-Guide-Colleges-2016-Edward/dp/1402260660/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456992768&sr=8-1&keywords=fiske+guide), and [Debt-Free U] (http://www.amazon.com/Debt-Free-Outstanding-Education-Scholarships-Mooching/dp/1591842980/ref=pd_sim_14_15?ie=UTF8&dpID=515MwKBIpzL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR104%2C160_&refRID=1VC3C23RJP6ZMXGG5QBA). One thing I realized after college was that I would've been happy at any of the school I looked at. People are fed such a line of BS about school, like you have to go to the top Ivies or something. No way. Find a good place at which you can function, learn as much as possible, and have a good social life. Like another person said, also look at going to a community college for a year and then transferring-- my relative did this and ended up at Harvard for grad school in the end.

Awesome. I'm so glad you did! And honestly, that wasn't that long of a wait!

I'm so glad that you saw the doctor and are getting help. I'm so glad I did too.

I started my first class yesterday, at the recommendation of the therapist that I saw last week. It's a self-esteem class that is based on this book. A lot of it is kind of self-evident and general "find the silver lining" kind of stuff, but it's actually helpful to go over examples with the group and to be able to categorize the types of thoughts that I've been having and to be able to recognize them so that I know how to turn them around. The meeting was really awkward because there were so many people there from all walks of life and many with much worse problems than I have, honestly. But once I got over that, I relaxed and just went along with everything. Looking forward to next week.

My wife looked at the list of "Distorted Thoughts" with me last night and she was like, "Yup, you do that. Yup, you do that (and here's an example). Yup, you do that! Yup, you totally do that!" and we talked about each one, with examples that she's seen in me. It really helped. And we laughed with each other like we haven't laughed in months. It was so nice.

Even just talking to the doctor and the therapist and knowing that I'm doing something about this has helped me a whole lot. I still don't fully believe that I can "cure" myself - I think it will continue to be a life-long struggle. But at least I'm trying to get the tools to fight it and get along, rather than thinking it's hopeless and not worth it. It's totally worth it. My wife's attitude has completely changed, which has also helped.

And exercising every night before bed for the past two weeks has really helped me get my energy back. I do feel like I have more energy and I'm a bit more awake/alert. I still struggle a bit with the exercise. It's really hard to push myself. But I'm getting better at it. I figure that if I workout hard enough to get that "runner's high" when I come home, it was worth it. I ride my bike for about an hour every night. I go about 10 miles each ride. I'm keeping track of it using the Strava app. The data that Strava gives you makes it more interesting and almost into a game to see how far I can go in that time, or to try to up my average speed, and I can see my route and change that up or keep doing the same course and see how much faster I can do it each time, etc.

(Seriously, that "runner's high" feels like how I felt when I had an edible marijuana cupcake in amsterdam... just tingles all over my body and it feels so good. The difference would be that when I ate the "space cake" it messed with my mind and everything I saw had so much more significance than it did before. That doesn't happen with the "runner's high" but the physical sensations are still very similar. The tingles and relaxation of the muscles. Anyway, it's interesting. And a really nice feeling.)

Hi there!

I'm so sorry to hear about your anxiety. I can definitely relate as I also struggle with panic attacks and anxiety and the infertility treatment process has been challenging in that regard.

This reply will be long, but hopefully helpful. I'm also on mobile so bear with me re: formatting/autocorrects...

If you need to take mental health breaks I recommend doing so. I've taken a few- a month here or there over the last three years and it can help. But, if you take a break you should also be doing what you can to address the anxiety itself, otherwise a break won't help.

If you don't address the anxiety on its own terms, returning to treatment will bring the anxiety back with it.

If you haven't already, find a therapist or counsellor who deals with anxiety and (if possible) who understands and works with infertility. Most fertility clinics will have a list of therapists they recommend.

If you don't have the financial resources for a therapist there are cognitive behavioural things you can do on your own to help. I recommend doing these even if you do have a therapist as they can provide coping tools in the moment you are having anxiety.

There are a number of apps that can be helpful. Anxiety BC (a government sponsored mental health resource in Canada) had a great mobile app with a number of tools for anxiety and panic attacks. You can find it here. It is geared toward teens and young adults but is usable and applicable to people in all stages of life. You just might see examples that mention school stress etc.

Pacifica is also a good free app with anxiety tools. As is Stop, Breath, Think (which focuses on mindfulness). All of these apps are free. They have in app purchases but the free resources are more than enough.

There is a desktop and mobile compatible site I use sometimes when I know I need to work on breathing. http://xhalr.com you can use the settings to time the length of inhale, paused and exhales to your comfort level. I recommend 4-2-6 or 6-2-6 seconds. The interface is minimalistic and soothing. I use it at my desk when I feel panic coming. Many people find this kind of breathing can alleviate panic attacks like you are experiencing.

If, like me, focusing on your breath when you are already in a panic attack makes things worse not better, try a grounding exercise. I use one I call "5 things". You can say it out loud if you have privacy or you can do it in your mind while you are in public.

To do this, simply focus on 5 things for each sense. So, you say to yourself. "What are 5 things I feel?", and list them. "I feel the fabric of my pants on my thighs, I feel my feet in on the ground, wind on my skin, i feel tingles in my hands, etc" just any 5 sensations you feel in your body. Then 5 things you see, hear etc. Repeat as necessary.

There are also some workbooks you can get and work with on your own if therapy isn't an option.
My therapist recommends reading Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy to get a sense of the basics of cognitive behavioural therapy. This is an older book (1980's ish) but is a good foundation. Not everything in the book will apply to everyone, and no book should be considered a replacement for working with a qualified professional, but I find them helpful for adding to my mental toolkit.

A doctor once gave me Mind Over Mood which is a helpful workbook with concrete exercises to get you practicing CBT. This can be very helpful.

**edited from desktop to add links

OP please go get some professional help. I've been in that position and you want to attack that shit as quickly as possible.

I really really really recommend reading the book "feeling good, the new mood therapy", which can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336

8 dollars and a few hours later, I promise you'll be feeling MUCH better. But obviously I think you should still seek out professional help as well. Sometimes talking to someone makes all the difference in the world.

Ultimately you have to make the choice to feel better. I know that sounds weird, especially in your situation, but trust me. I've been there. And unless you make that choice, you'll never get out of the rut you're in.

I had everything I could want as a youngster. Great family, a great college, and yet I was miserable. It wasn't until my Dad died that I started to really look at my life and make changes. I was lazy, careless, and unproductive. Everything I needed was handed to me. After my Dad died I stepped the fuck up and now I'm working my ass off for everything. I'm improving myself every day, and you know what? That mental rut has gone away. It's never going to be perfect, I don't think, but I'm 100000x happier and trust me that life is worth living for.

I hope this helps you. And please, please, please, go get professional help as well. I don't care if it's a university counselor, or a psychiatrist or whatever, just go get help.

This is suuuper common, even among neurotypical people. In Feeling Good by Dr. Burns he refers to this as 'donothingism' and has a whole chapter full of ways to deal with it depending on your specific case. At the core of it is that you need to plan things, even if your plan is to watch a certain show or catch a nap then that is better than having a huuuge chunk of wide open time.

One potential cause for this is faulty assumptions about how much fun something will be. You try to think of things and decide they won't be worth it or that you won't enjoy yourself. Burns recommends an exercise where you note how you're feeling, then come up with an idea for something small to do. Write down the activity and then rate how much pleasure you think it will bring you on a scale of 1-100 (or 1-10 it's not a big deal either way). Go do the thing and then note how much pleasure you actually derived from it. This will help you objectively test the subjective thoughts that guide your behavior. This also works well if you think only certain things will be fun: going out with friends, doing something productive, etc. You can experiment and compare if you really do have more fun when you are with people or if it's simply having 'nothing to do' that is the not fun part.

Personally I like to have a book or other activity that I'm working on, which I can pick up whenever I have unstructured time and start to feel overwhelmed trying to pick something to do.

I'm so sorry to hear that. I hope you can begin to rebuild your relationship with her.

A book that has really helped me is "The Five Love Languages: Singles Edition" by Gary Chapman. There are several versions of the book for different situations that you could look into, but even if you are not a single, this version focuses more on learning your own love language (how you give and receive love) as well as the love language of your family members, parents especially: whether it's words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service, or affectionate touch.

It's not going to be a walk in the park to learn how to connect with your mom, but it is possible. I hope the best for you. <3

Absolutely, I'm glad found that helpful!

And since you mentioned suicide, I am morally obligated to point you toward suicide watch. I hope you never go through with it, but just incase I urge you to reach out for help there. Depression is very very hard to deal with but it's something you don't have to go through alone. There are plenty of people out there who will be happy to help you.

Also, if you want some reading material on treating depression, I strongly recommend (Feeling Good by David Burns)[http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Therapy-Revised-Updated/dp/0380810336/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299185786&sr=8-1] This is the only "self help" book that I'd ever recommend.

Anyways, best wishes buddy! Hope all goes well for you ;)

Hi there,

I haven't been exactly where you are, but I have had some similar experiences and I got a lot better.

Therapy was ultimately the biggest factor, but there was something else that really helped tremendously -- a book called Feeling Good: A New Mood Therapy. It basically teaches you how to do cognitive-behavioral therapy on yourself.

You clearly feel a lot of shame and feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, being overwhelmed, etc. The key insight of the book (which has been proven to help in empirical studies) is that (1) those feelings are caused by recurring thoughts that you have, and (2) those thoughts are not rational. The book teaches you how to recognize those thoughts and convince yourself that they are not true and the feeling of relief is in my experience very fast and surprisingly strong.

These thoughts are most likely the cause of basically ALL of your problems. Fix the thoughts and you will feel a million times better AND all of the issues you're dealing with will get easier. It will be easier to get a job because you won't be fighting through self-doubt and demotivating thoughts. It will be easier to socialize because you won't believe that people are thinking all kinds of negative things about you AND it wouldn't matter as much to you if they were because your sense of worth won't be dependent on what they think of you but what YOU think of you (and what you think of you would be a lot better.)

Please PM me with info/questions or you just want to talk.

First of all, don't feel bad about yourself, you are not alone. Lack of motivation and lazyness affect most people to different degrees. This obviously cannot be helped just with a few responses from the community (specially a sarcastic one...), but I'll give you three advices:

1. Contrary to what would be expected, action comes before motivation, it's once you start doing something that you get really motivated to do it. Waiting for motivation to strike is counter productive.
   
   
   
2. Lack of motivation is often linked to depression. You should speak to a doctor about it. Make sure you get them to treat you with theraphy first before accepting any drugs. Drugs are the easy way out, but they mask the symptoms without fixing the problems.
   
   
   
3. Whether you decide to talk to a doctor or not, I REALLY RECOMMEND that you buy the following book from Amazon, it will turn your life around.
   
   
   Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated (Mass Market Paperback)
   http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Therapy-Revised-Updated/dp/0380810336/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211147713&sr=1-1
   
   Remember not to feel bad, and don't hesitate to send me a message if you need someone to talk to or need any clarification on the things above.
   
   
   Kind regards!

INTP/ENTP "spiritual person" here. Your routine and motivation is not the root issue. The self-hate is the root issue. The way you view yourself and how you relate to yourself (and by extension, the world) is very very dysfunctional, and I guarantee it's fucking up your life in more ways than one.

The negative self-talk is not reality, not objective, and not who you really are. The voice in your head is not only wrong and destructive, it's not even you.

You have a disconnect between different parts of yourself. You hate being "grounded" because when you're in that state, your ego isn't in charge, and you're forced to look at everything inside you you've been fighting. Learn to sit with that pain and not fight it... just let it happen, and watch it swell and then recede. This is, in essence, mindfulness meditation.

Try reading some of these, based on what stands out to you. They are all helpful.

• The Power of Now --A book about the true nature of self and reality. Heavy Eastern influence. This book has influenced me the most out of the list, and maybe even altered the course of my life.
  
  
• Radical Acceptance --A Buddhist book about loving yourself fully and completely. You are worth it!
  
  
• 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos --A book by a brilliant man about how to live in a world defined by pain and suffering. Heavy Jungian influence. Quotes and references the Bible a lot, but from a Jungian/Campbellian perspective. Occasionally questionable politics.
  
  
• Iron John --A sort of esoteric book filled with poetry and fairy tales about how to be a man. Heavy Jung/Campbell influence.
  
  
• The Enchiridion by Epictetus --This is one of the best introductions to Stoicism, and it's free. Written circa 125 CE.
  
  
• Feeling Good --CBT book clinically shown to be as effective as antidepressants. Your post is filled with things this book addresses directly. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
  
  
• The Happiness Trap --A book about ACT, which is similar to CBT with more mindfulness. Basically CBT tries to get rid of/replace the distorted images of yourself and the world, and ACT tries instead to see them for what they really are, which are meaningless ramblings of an organ using evolved mechanisms to protect its host, and as such are safely ignored.
  
  Tl;dr: Learn to be kind to yourself, love yourself, and accept yourself just as you are right now, flaws and all.

Seeking help is obviously a good thing for you to do...or simply having a good friend who'll listen to you vent is also really helpful.

Certain vitamins and minerals can help lessen the effects of depression like Vitamin E. Also exercise!

Finally, a book I read that helped me out this past year after I got out of college and was very disillusioned with my post grad life/depressed about personal issues was Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Written by a doctor, it has some really great tips on written exercises to help you get out of the cycle of negative/depressed thinking. Give it a try, and if you don't want to buy it just go chill in a Barnes and Noble for a while and read it! It was in the bestselling paperbacks section when I found it. Hope this helps!

I used to be painfully shy and awful at conversation.


I suggest you (and everyone really) read up on body language, mirroring others, etc. This book is a good starting point.


From there, the key is to know about a lot of subjects. If you can hold an intelligent 20 minute conversation about almost anything, you'll be a conversation god.


Try to develop a thirst for knowledge and read up on a diversity of things. Set goals to learn about at least one new subject every week (I would say 'read a book a week' but in the internet age you can get get the info you need online sometimes, though a good book is usually far more helpful). See something cool on Reddit/Cracked/etc.? Read more about it.


Story time: I was dating a girl who took me to her dad's big charity fundraising banquet, like one of those $500/plate deals. I'm grinning sheepishly through conversations about rich guy stuff, trying to think of something to drop in. It finally shifts to golf (which I didn't even play) and I light up- I had just read this book about the best true golf stories of all time. They were riveted.

I'd say you first need to understand that there's no quick fix. It's something you'll need to work at consistently but just start with small things everyday to begin with. Whether that's eating a little healthier, taking a 5-10 minute walk when you have some free time, maybe looking into meditation. Journaling your thoughts would also be a good start. There are many ways to tackle it so you'll have to find what works best for you.

I'd tell your counselor just what you've said in this post. Explain your situation, what your feelings are, and they'll walk you through it from there. Good counselors know how to ask productive questions, allowing them to give useful advice, provide compassion, so on.

Also, all-or-nothing thinking is something you'll want to avoid. Saying your life would be ruined if you didn't do well in school is a false cognition, that's putting a lot of pressure on yourself. If you're open to self help books I'd strongly recommend this one.

Just know that you can get through this. Again it takes consistent effort but it's completely doable. Do what you can to not put pressure on yourself regarding school, talk to someone, and look into building healthy daily habits. You can do this.

I don't know whether you are willing to try a self help book, but I have used Feeling Good by David Burns. It's been around for a long time (first published in the early 80s) and the guy is a respected professor at Stanford, so he's not some fly-by-night quack.

Anyway, the book is basically a set of cognitive-behavioral therapy tools in book format. The idea is that your thoughts are what affect your feelings and that depressed people have truly distorted thoughts. Basically, it starts by helping you recognize your moods and then giving you ways of recasting and challenging your thinking. I've personally found it very helpful and instructive, even though I was skeptical; I've learned a lot about myself.

If I had more money or a better health care plan, I'd consider in-person therapy, but this book apparently works for a lot of people--especially for those of us who want to get at the root of our depressive feelings and not just medicate the symptoms (the moods).

So, yeah. The only thing I'd warn with this book is that the first chapter is spent more or less defending the use of cognitive therapy and citing how it can be as effective or better than drugs. The real substance of the book starts with Chapter 2. :D

read up on cognitive behavioral therapy

i started reading this book ( https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336 ) a while back but haven't gotten very far. that said, it is very helpful in explaining why you think the way you do, with examples. it's also in the first person from the author, so it helps that it sounds like someone is saying these things to you

you don't need to actually action on anything now. that can be daunting. but understanding why you have the internal monologue and why it's hard to get away from is a really good start

any remotely useful advice below will be better learned from reading the book

best of luck!

Direct quotes from their beginners guide:

"Work on your depression. Many sedditors have recommended Feeling Good by David D. Burns. There's also a reddit for that."

"Get fit. You don't have to be hot to meet and attract great women, but it definitely helps."

I was going to link things from their second guide - but there were really too many resources in there that provide self growth.

Search relationship in that subreddit and even in threads like this: "How do you act post sex when you don't want a relationship?" The comments suggest that the person be upfront with the woman BEFORE sex and to not mislead.

__

Even with the above there is still a lot of information that can be interpreted one way or another. The fact of the matter is that it really depends on how the person applies these principles. I believe the /r/seduction community does a good job in keeping people civil. I personally haven't seen someone suggesting the "douchebag" route as the best option, not to say there aren't or people don't joke about it. Just that this is reddit and the mentality is not to be a douchebag but to change yourself for the better.

I don't know that I'd have enough to say on the topic to justify an AMA but I can tell you some books that I've found beneficial to my personal growth. Most aren't specific to self-hypnosis, learning that mostly came as a byproduct of my training, but they all contributed to my philosophies and daily practice (which I should mention is VERY informal for the most part).

I'd say the most important thing is to first learn what hypnosis really is because all hypnosis is really self-hypnosis. A hypnotist merely guides a person into the state. For that I'd recommend, The Professional Hypnotism Manual by John Kappas.

As I said in my earlier post, a lot of what I personally do is very informally based on CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). CBT, in a nutshell, functions on the premise that changing your thoughts changes your behaviors. The best book I can think of for a lay person on that topic is Feeling Good By David M. Burns MD

Finally, I'd highly recommend learning the "Mental Bank" concept. There is a 2hr video on the subject and I'd suggest grabbing the book as well. (Interesting side note: They filmed that video the day I took the class on the Mental Bank. So, I'm somewhere in that crowd, though I'm not saying where. ;))

I'm currently reading Feeling Good by David Burns. The author is a clinical psychiatrist and uses cognitive behavioral therapy in a practical self help format. I've only read the first few chapters but I do think it has helped a bit. It has made me realize that my depression makes me see things in a distorted way and the book presents some tools to recognize when you're seeing something in an unrealistic way. Also the last chapter I've read was about intrusive/dysfunctional thoughts and how to respond to them in a rational way to make them lose their grip over you.

It's not the only book I've read because I feel like reading about depression/dysthymia - in and of itself - helps too. Recovery is a process and my best home remedy has been to make sure I do something useful every day (I make a daily to do list). If I can't do much, that's fine and I'll reevaluate but it does allow me to create some structure to my life and work up from there. It just has to be something that I feel like can cultivate happiness, even if it doesn't feel like it at that moment (e.g. cleaning up -> makes me feel like I've accomplished something and I get to live in a tidier house; spending time with a friend -> improving social life; helping my sister with chores -> helped someone else; etc).

Talking about it isn't always easy, especially if I'm feeling in a lousy mood. So even though I sometimes just need to vent my frustrations, I mostly try to talk about my depression from the perspective of recovery (what I've been trying to do, what has worked, what didn't work) and if I need to talk about how difficult today was, then I'll try to balance it out by comparing it to better days. So I don't try to minimize my situation but I do try to frame it in a way that I feel like the people around me can handle. Not always doable, but I try.

Cognitive behavioral therapy can help with stuff like this. You can do it on your own, or your school probably has services that can help - mine had kind of two tiers, the drop-in peer counseling that was pretty useless but OK if you just needed to vent, and then actual therapy with a grad student getting their clinical hours, and I found that very helpful. If you want to try it on your own, there are work books like:

http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Days-Self-Esteem-David-Burns/dp/0688094554

(don't let the gimicky title put you off, it's actually pretty good)

The bullet points sound like a lot of distorted, negative thoughts that are bringing you down and CBT can help a lot with that. There was a story in that workbook iirc about a guy who felt like a total failure, he was bad at his job, had no friends, and so on. And he started doing CBT with the author, and even though there wasn't any material change to his life, he started feeling better about things, he stopped feeling hopeless, and that made it possible for him to start making concrete improvements. It seems counterintuitive, like "why should I stop thinking I have no social skills? I really don't have any" but you have some, you interact with people and they don't run screaming; but the pessimism and all-or-nothing thinking like that make it so much harder to improve your situation.

You might want to post this on /r/depression too, a lot of people struggle with similar things. It's great that you're getting back on the horse and going to college again, that's huge and you should give yourself credit for that.

The other posters in the thread have some very good advice. In general, by noticing the thoughts and actually seeing them for what they are (impermanent) you will come to a different relationship to them. This could take a little bit of time but if you practice every day you should see some relief.

With that said, I'd like to recommend you look into doing some self-directed ACT/CBT work to help you work with and out some tricky emotions around specific thoughts. It's amazing what just a little time doing this can do. Here's two books you should try:

Feeling Good by David Burns

Change Your Thinking by Sarah Edelman

When you get the books, don't worry if it looks like many or most of the situations don't apply to you because there will be one or two chapters that are indispensable!

Here is a video that was helpful to me when I first discovered the unhelpful thinking styles that you are talking about (they are called "cognitive distortions" and are a foundation upon which CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) is built upon). There is an exercise in it the video I did (with pen and paper) that helped me start to deal with my own poor thinking habits and get better at rectifying them.

I own the book Feeling Good which also has some Do-it-yourself CBT exercises in it that I've done.

I'm not an expert and to be honest I should probably do some more of this stuff myself, I've gotten a bit lazy about it but I do remember it being incredibly eye-opening! Even now I can catch myself getting into to those thought patterns and recognize the cognitive distortion in play and help prevent myself from going further down that train of thought and try re-orient my thinking back to reality.

I'm happy to share this with you, hope it's helpful :)

My ex-fiance, who seems pretty determined to put labels on me on top of my bipolar, was really convinced that I had borderline personality disorder. I've talked to a few counselors and they really don't think that's the case, but out of wanting to do anything to feel better, I'd read some self-help books on borderline and I think the coping mechanisms might be useful. Namely, focusing less on "others-esteem" versus self-esteem.

In a different but related direction, I've got a friend that suffers more from unipolar depression, and he's very determined not to be in a relationship until he loves himself more, loves his own company, before he can consider himself "ready" to be in a relationship. I think he feels that he leans too much on his significant others for approval and feelings of self-worth, and I do that too. He swears by the book Feeling Good. It's a little corny, and the edition I have is from the 70s, but it seems to have stood the test of time, relative to other self-help books.

But this could be totally different from your case. But me, I personally can't stand myself and have a hard time finding fulfillment alone. I've been "dating" since I was 12 and am now 22, single for three months for the first time since pretty much puberty.

Here's a recent post about not loving our N parents that might help show you that you are not the only one who feels this way. I HATED my mother growing up. She was and still is a very unloving, brutal person. Why would I love her? The guilt is probably just societal programming, where not loving and honoring your parents is blasphemous. But if you look at it logically, it makes total sense why we feel this way. How would a dog react to being hit every time it came close to you? Would it love you and try to be affectionate with you? NO. It would probably cower in fear around you or any person, and would snap and attack. Why should we hold ourselves to a different standard than we would any other animal? You get what you give, and what have they given us?

If I were you, I would emancipate myself entirely and ASAP. This is close to what I did. Right at 18, I moved hours away and mostly paid almost all my own bills. My parents really didn't support me too much. I think my mother took out one small school loan and my dad sent me $100 a month, but I could have easily survived without that. I removed ALL ties with them as quickly as I could, because they used anything for manipulation. This really isn't too hard to do.

If you can't do that right now, it sounds like you're detaching emotionally which is good. Maybe you can just keep to yourself and try to survive until you get some physical distance from them. Don't engage them in any way. Only interact with them when you HAVE to. If they hassle you, maybe you can just agree (in principle or even just to placate them) and exit the situation ("yep you're probably right about that, OK gotta go!"). But DO try to get out ASAP. Don't jump into another shitty situation though. See if you can find a female roommate you can stand living with. I wouldn't move in with your boyfriend or another male just out of desperation because I find this usually ends BADLY. But obviously this is up to you. Try to find a place that's SAFE for you and don't just jump from one shitty situation to another.

Then as far as rebuilding your self-esteem, for me I had to get into therapy. If you can do this it could save your life. If that isn't possible, here are a list of cheap books that have helped me immensely (which I recommend reading and working through with or without therapy):

• Feeling Good and Ten Days To Self-Esteem by David Burns
  
• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
  
• Toxic Parents by Susan Forward (I don't agree with her recommendation on confronting your parents but the rest is good.)
  
  I believe there are a list of resources including a full list of books on the right sidebar too. If you don't like any of these resources, you can ALWAYS find something that will appeal to you if you keep working at it. There is SO much out there for us if we keep at it. Be sure to take breaks too. This work can be exhausting.
  
  If you can get into Al-Anon that might help too. I personally don't care for 12-step programs, but many people seemed to have been helped by them and Al-Anon is specifically recommended by many books. They say it's for people who have dealt with alcoholics and drug addicts, but I tell you I went to six meetings like they recommend, and it's NO DIFFERENT for those of us who have dealt with narcissism. I've read that all alcoholics are narcissists, so maybe that's why it was so relevant to me. One slogan I picked up that helped a lot is "You Didn't Cause It. You Can't Control It. You Can't Cure It." We didn't cause our parents to be the way that they are, we can't control it (no amount of letter writing, talking, setting boundaries, etc.) and there is nothing we can do to change them. The literature is pretty dismal when it comes to curing narcissism anyway (NPD). Either way, they'd have to want to get help and help themselves, which rarely ever happens. So we have to focus on ourselves and forget about helping them - this is not selfish! We were often groomed to take care of them and our feelings, wants and needs were completely inconsequential. We were just extensions of them. This is probably why it feels so selfish at first to start taking care of ourselves.
  
  >I'm currently depressed and see no good in life.
  
  I've been working at this for a LONG time and still feel this way sometimes. I think it's partly due to growing up where "you lose" is the name of the game. Getting your needs met is completely hopeless with N parents, so perhaps that feeling of hopelessness extends to all of life. Plus, hopelessness is a classic symptom of depression. If you feel hopeless, just know that it doesn't mean it's true. Feelings are NOT facts.
  
  Aside from my other recommendations, I would continue to come here and post and read all that you can read. Claw your way out of this bullshit if you have to. Journaling helps. Get a secure journal NO ONE ELSE will read and just free flow write your thoughts down. If you're feeling terrible, give your feelings a voice. It's like draining the poison from you. Plus if you're doing the work out of Feeling Good, you'll need a good journal to write in daily. My first therapist recommended this for YEARS and I never did it, but I tell it just free flow writing out shit does seem to help tremendously. If you have a Mac, you can use MacJournal, or for Windows there is "The Journal", both of which you can encrypt and password protect. If you want to just write on paper or if you already do just make sure you hide it well.
  
  The other night I had a bout of terrible depression and you would not BELIEVE the shit that I wrote down about myself ("you're a piece of shit!!!" and stuff like that). I wrote until I just felt "deflated", like I had drained myself. It helped a LOT. I then realized that I hadn't been doing several things for myself that I know have helped in the past, and I have rededicated myself to doing these things daily. Many of these actions I have recommended to you here.
  
  Hope this helps even in the slightest and good luck to you.

Okay. Something that worked well for me was doing cognitive behavioral therapy. It's similar to meditation in some ways, and works well with it. The best way would be able to find a therapist who works with CBT, but if that's not an option for you there are do-it-yourself books. With CBT you're working to identify and modify certain common thought patterns that reinforce depression. Depending on your situation that might be helpful.

Something else that comes to mind reading your post is a book that helped someone close to me, The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction. It's geared towards substance addiction, but I think there's some general carry-over to what you're talking about.

Moving more in the direction towards mindfulness practices, there's a two CD set with instruction and guided meditations called Break Through Difficult Emotions that could help. The guy who made that, Shinzen Young, also has a more broad array of mindfulness practices that do a good job of presenting techniques across the range of mindfulness stuff. That said, he's mostly about techniques and not much about teachings, and the talks he does give are mostly secular.

He has resources online like a manual [PDF], or relevant videos, and phone retreats. A positive here is that you'll at least be able to call or email a teacher of some kind to get some feedback or help in a crisis, even if the practice isn't explicitly Buddhist.

As for mindfulness practices that are centered around the breath specifically, Mindfulness in Plain English is available online or as a physical book. It presents a more narrow or focused system. There's also a follow up book with more advanced material called Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English.

I think the best thing of all would be to have contact with a teacher of some kind, even if it meant driving an hour or two only once a month, if there's anyone available further off.

You're not alone. Millions of people feel just like you do, it just that the people around you don't understand. The things that has helped me in the past is therapy, meditation, creating a support network, taking better care of myself (making sure I ate well, sleep enough hours, etc.), exercise. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) exercise and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) exercises have also helped me a lot.

Here a link about what is CBT: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Cognitive-behavioural-therapy/Pages/Introduction.aspx

And here is a link for CBT worksheets. If you don't have access to a therapist or a therapist trained in CBT you can still get the benefits of CBT by doing a CBT worksheet: http://psychology.tools/anxiety.html

My old therapist also had me read "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy-ebook/dp/B009UW5X4C?ie=UTF8&keywords=david%20burns&qid=1465227795&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1

Here is a pdf about more information about ACT: http://www.people.ku.edu/~tkrieshok/epsy888/act_cliff_notes.pdf

Russ Harris's book "The Happiness Trap" goes into more detail about ACT: http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Trap-Struggling-Start-Living/dp/1590305841

Just finished reading "Truth About Addiction and Recovery" (amazon link), and it was fantastic.

I'm 27, and (with the exception of a 2 year sober period) have abused alcohol pretty consistently since I was a teen. Not in the outlandish braggadocios way, I was just drunk a lot, and used it to escape -- social situations, romantic situations, painful situations, boredom, lack of substantial goals, and just as a time filler.

The book basically called out the whole 'Addiction is a Disease(tm)' mentality perpetuated by a lot of doctors, counselors and especially AA. They argue very effectively against the whole concept that 'ZOMG you have a disease, and are powerless against it, and will ALWAYS be an alcoholic!!'.

I can't summarize the book very effectively in a short post, but it has really changed my approach. Instead of constantly struggling in my head against the urge to drink, and having ample opportunities to overdrink, I fill the gaps in my life up with positive things that don't really tolerate overindulgence. A healthy life & support structure simply doesn't have room for substance abuse.

I still go out on weekends and have a few (sometimes more than a few), but I know I have to wake up in the morning to go hiking with friends, or work out at the gym. I'm slowly replacing 'normal fun = drunk' with 'normal fun = clearheaded'.

I'd also recommend 'Feeling Good' (amazon link), because it kind of sounds like you allow yourself to drift into depressive thoughts.

Anyway, good luck.

Thanks! Sure, you can meditate with other people. It can get very interesting, because you feel them at a deeper level. If they're someone who's a good person, they'll give you a good vibe. If not you might get a neutral or ick vibe from them. But definitely do it some alone too, so you have a good core practice. Don't get freaked out if you hear voices or random noises out of nowhere; some people get that when they meditate sometimes. Also, for depression, you might want to check out Feeling Good, it's a book that helped me a lot with my chronic depression. Also, if you can talk to a therapist that might be a big help and there are good medications out there that can temporarily lift your mood so you can see things more in perspective. Depression can distort your thinking so that you aren't seeing things as clearly as you seem to be. As far as the simple meditation goes, I would recommend getting quiet and sit comfortably and focus on your breathing. Count one for the in-breath and two for the out-breath, three for the next in-breath and so on. Do that until a count of one hundred. If you lose count, go back to the last number your remember for sure counting and continue, but keep the odd numbers on the in-breaths. If you do that over a long period of time you'll start to notice your breathing getting slower and slower, which indicates that your meditative trance is deepening. You'll experience blissful feelings sometimes. Good luck with the meditation and feel free to ask me anything!

Nah, I've just been down this road before, Neo. I know how this feels. It hurts. It's totally normal to be hurt when someone says something unprovoked like that.

However, I want to be really clear about something. Even if absolutely everything in your life is fantastic - and even if you looked like Jennifer Aniston and were utterly perfect from head to toe - simply because everything in your life is great, that DOES NOT mean you automatically have to be happy. I have a great life! Sometimes I feel like shit.

Why? Because I have a valid form of depression that doesn't go away and doesn't respond to medication or CBT. It doesn't matter if every aspect of my life winds up being perfect at some point - that doesn't change mental illness. PLEASE do not beat yourself up if you're depressed or have any sort of mental health issue. If that's what you're dealing with, I'd recommend chatting with a counselor to see what a qualified mental health professional thinks. But mental health issues don't mean you're ungrateful, or a shitty person, or that you've done anything wrong. So don't feel like you "should" be happy just because your life appears to rock from an outside view. =)

I would recommend checking out the following books. I posted links to these yesterday on a completely different topic, but they apply, man. And they've helped me a lot, especially with learning to react better. Maybe they won't be helpful to you, but hey, the might make all the difference in the world. If you can, I'd try giving them a read.

From Panic To Power by Lucinda Basset - seriously helpful in learning how to NOT flip out when things go wrong, how NOT to let stress overpower you, etc. Seriously helpful.
http://www.amazon.com/From-Panic-Power-Techniques-Anxieties/dp/0060927585/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367869290&sr=8-1&keywords=from+panic+to+power

Secondly, I'd recommend Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns. This is a really helpful guide to changing the way you react/think. I know it sounds like a bunch of bullshit, but I swear it helps - especially when you have trouble accepting things that don't turn out the way you expected/wanted/needed them to.

http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336/ref=la_B00455GNDO_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367869401&sr=1-1

Your thesis seems to be that the voice is chemical, and therefore a feeling and not a thought, and therefore it controls your behavior directly.

However, thoughts, in turn, control feelings, and this can be demonstrated easily. Ever read something that made you happy or angry or sad? I'm pretty sure you can't transmit psychotropic medicines through the Internet. It's because your brain decoded the words into thoughts, and those thoughts triggered an emotional response, possibly by inspiring another train of thought.

And you can change your thinking habits over time. The best way is to write down what the "voices" are saying, so they can't hide from scrutiny. Then pick out the distortions in each of them, and write down a rational rebuttal that you can actually believe. This is pretty much the entire basis of cognitive-behavioral therapy, which Drs. David Burns and Albert Ellis have written about. According to them, you just have to do it once a day, and after enough time, your thinking habits change. Paperbacks tl;dr? Then read about it on about.com.

Good luck; I hope these tools are useful.

Some of the stuff you mention in your post resonates quite a bit with me -- the anxiety stuff.

Early in 2015, three years before I got sober, I started seeing a therapist weekly and focused on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in my sessions. Almost immediately I was able to work with CBT to help deal with my anxiety. Six months in, we agreed that I was wrestling with some mild obsessions/compulsions as well and so I started Sertraline (Zoloft). The combo of CBT and Zoloft was amazing for me. The Zoloft quieted my ruminations (repetitive, intrusive thoughts, like beating myself up for an awkward social interaction, etc) that were bombarding me and gave me the breathing room I needed to really exercise my CBT skills and deal with my anxiety. It took me three years of sticking with therapy, CBT, and medication, but I slowly built up the strength I needed to finally get sober.

Some of the phrasing you used in your post makes me wonder if you might also have a bit of the ol' ruminations. I'm not saying you need therapy or medications, but you might want to put that on your radar if you haven't given them a go.

An old-timer around here, /u/seeker135, has mentioned he read Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy and was eventually able to manage his anxiety without medication. I just bought the sucker yesterday and haven't even cracked it open, but /u/seeker135 definitely seems to have his stuff together, so you might want to look into that too.

Best of luck! I'm learning that just because I got sober doesn't mean I'm suddenly all better. It just means I have a clear enough head to get to work on my real problems now, and I'm frankly excited to get to work!

IWNDWYT

I'm reading Elon Musk's biography right now and think it might be helpful if you're talking about career success. The dude seems like a jerk but has an incredible work ethic and drive to succeed.

You can say pretty much the same exact thing about Augustus' biography.

Outliers really helped me a lot, because it made me realize talent wasn't nearly important as skill/effort. You put in the time and effort and you will develop your skills.

If you're an introvert like me these books helped me "fake it till I make it" or just want to be more socially capable: Charisma Myth, anything by Leil Lowndes, Make People Like You in 90 Seconds. Not a book but the Ted Talk about body language by Amy Cuddy

A book on leadership I always hear good things about but haven't read yet is Start With Why.

I agree with other commentators, this may be (in my non-medical opinion) mild to moderate depression. (Again, this is just an idea, diagnosing people over the internet with little information is not entirely ethical). I would like to suggest to other posters that depressive disorders are somewhat diverse.

Depending on your personal and financial situation, I cannot recommend seeing a psychologist enough, as I have been in this same situation. Whether you come from a background of hard science or spirituality, I would urge folks to see therapists/psychologists as a teacher that can help you understand what what is real, and how to have a good relationship with your thoughts/feelings.

I would like to suggest a few books that I have found to be personally helpful in this regard:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), very good read which outlines how your mind, Buddhists might call it the ego, creates a fake reality in a depressed state, and methods to counteract it:

Burns, David Feeling Good

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a different but similar approach to dealing with challenging thoughts/feelings, borrows a lot from Buddhism. Main idea is to be aware of thoughts and feelings as occurring, and not good or bad (and not "you"). To accept thoughts and feelings, not as reality but just as thoughts or feelings, and to take action towards something you value:

Harris, Russ The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living

If you're on a little, or big, Buddhist kick, I'd recommend the writings of Zen Master Seung Sahn. This particular book takes his bright and connectable style, and examines a variety of Buddhist traditions to see how they alleviate dukkha/suffering/stress/etc. in different ways:

Seung Sahn The Compass of Zen

Please do check out these books and post questions if you have them. If you are interested in finding a psychologist, and it is something that takes personal buy-in, I would suggest taking a look at Psychology Today or on your insurance company's website, if you're American.

Have a great night! =D

Congrats on getting some of your student loans paid off and getting two jobs within a week of each other, that's impressive! Best of luck with school.

I will recommend a book that you might find helpful: Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

Take care :)

I'm sorry you've got SAD - it's horrid. I've had it for 10 years, so I have a few suggestions that work for me.

• Light therapy is probably the most effective thing you can do. 30-60 minutes first thing in the morning. 10,000 lux at 12-18" from your face (yes, it's incredibly bright and really close). If you get a prescription for it, your insurance should cover part or all of the cost of the lamp. If you can't get a prescription, they're available online, and $100-200 is a low price to pay to combat worsening and reccurent depression. Just make sure the one you buy gives off 10,000 lux at 12-18".
  
  
• Cognitive behavioral therapy could be helpful, even if your SAD doesn't reach clinical degrees of depression. Feeling Good by David Burns is popular and has been really helpful for me. You can also go see a therapist.
  
  
• Regular aerobic exercise has been repeatedly shown to be highly effective at reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety. While it's best to get your heart rate up, at the very least take a brisk 20 minute walk every day. Get outside, every day.
  
  
• Fish oil and folic acid were recommended to me by multiple psychiatrists because they support the production of neurotransmitters. 1000mg/day fish oil (I take Spectrum Brand fish oils because they're made from fish very low on the food chain, which minimizes the levels of mercury and PCBs in the oil). 1000mcg/day folic acid, but be sure to get enough B12.
  
  
• Deplin is a prescription form of folic acid for those people whose bodies are highly inefficient at metabolizing folic acid. People who suffer from depression are more likely to have the mutation that reduces metabolism efficiency. Probably not something to try right away, but something to keep in mind.
  
  
• Dawn Simulators like this one can help you wake up in the morning.
  
  
• Meditation can help reduce your symptoms, especially if you can get into a regular practice of it. NYTimes article about it here.
  
  
• Sleep hygiene is especially critical. Go to bed at the same time every day, and get up early enough to maximize the hours you're awake during daylight.
  
  
• Socializing can be tough if you go through social withdrawal in the winter, but you'll probably feel better after hanging out with friends.
  
  
• Anti-depressants are an option, but if you're hesitant about them, there is a lot you can do to treat your SAD aside from anti-depressants.
  
  
• Winter Blues is a pretty comprehensive book about SAD.
  
  It's only November, so there's a long stretch of winter ahead. Feel free to PM if you ever start feeling down. Seriously, any time.
  
  Good luck, and I hope that you have a good winter!
  
  edit: formatting

Sorry you're not feeling well, samtheshamandpharohs.

Seasonal Affective Disorder most often strikes in the winter, but symptoms are known to manifest in summer, too. The Mayo Clinic has some basic info on it here, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness has some info here.

I have SAD, but I get two depressive episodes a year - one in winter and then a second episode in summer. Bonus depression! Just what everyone wishes for! After about a decade of yearly rollercoasters, I finally got treatment. Talk therapy helps, but taking Wellbutrin has made a massive difference.

Since you write that you're paying off a bachelor's degree and are struggling financially, I'm going to guess that you don't have access to a university counselling center. You can try contacting your local chapter of NAMI to see if they have any information on local providers who offer sliding scale fees.

Winter Blues by Norman Rosenthal is a pretty well-respected book. That one, and the classic Feeling Good by David Burns were and continue to be super helpful for me.

Good luck, and I hope you feel better soon.

btw, love Hyperbole and a Half

Can you talk to a free career counselor with your county government or a local community college that can help give you options?

You gotta relax and think long term. Your main job is to be a good Father and it sounds like your succeeding at that. That's huge!

For stress relief, instead of smoking weed, try meditation with the free "Insight Timer" meditation app.

For depression, go to your library and get the classic book "Feeling Good" by Dr. David Burns. It's a classic.

https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336

Good luck and keep me updated.

It sounds you like you have a lot of issues that simply dressing better won't fix. I'd first of suggest cognitive therapy. It sounds you like you have a lot of negative self talk, and working on changing that will go a long way to feeling better about yourself. I highly recommend the book Feeling Good which deals with this, as well as the website MoodGym. It's really good that you're asking for advice, because it shows a willingness to work on yourself. It's hard work to change your thought patterns, but it can be done.

That being said, dressing better is one piece of the puzzle that will help. Since I started paying attention to how I dress, it's one less thing that's on my mind. I know I dress well, and that gives me more confidence. It is just one piece of it though, and won't solve everything. Have you read the side bars and all the guides? There's a wealth of info here and it's kind of hard to just tell you what you need to do since it's so general.

Good luck man.

I've been going to counseling for several years and been through several therapists. It's hard to find a good fit. It should be a good balance of you talking about your everyday and long term problems and your therapist offering ideas and solutions to them.

I also see a psychiatrist as therapists can't prescribe medication. I take Xanax for panic attacks and have GAD. I'm currently on my 4th doctor as well. They should be trying different medications if you're having undesirable side effects. A lot of them should be stopped gradually.

And while I understand about not wanting to be on medication some people need it. When functioning on a day to day basis becomes too difficult it becomes harder to treat your problems at the source. Especially if you are just struggling to get through your day one hour at a time.

Please don't give up on your behavior professionals. Keep searching until you find a good one and they can recommend others.

I don't know how much you like reading but even before my first counseling appointment they suggested a book which helped me quite a lot. Relaxation and Stress reduction workbook and since then I found Feeling Good Just do yourself a favor if you do decide to buy them and not get workbooks on your Kindle. Much easier to copy pages than print screenshots.

Hope it helps and best of luck to you :)

Honestly, the only lasting method is therapy and not medication. Medication can be helpful but is expensive, doesn't even work faster than therapy and doesn't last if you get off them. If you don't have the money to seek a professional, go get a CBT book like this (it's the best by far IMO). I didn't improve at all for years because I thought I had to go to a therapist to get help, but honestly, he probably wouldn't have done better than the book. I started working with the book in 2012 and within 4 weeks I was a lot better. The improvements have lasted until now. The only thing that's important is that you take pen and paper and do the exercises regularly.

I have often found running to be very meditative, where I can just run and let my feelings and thoughts wash away. For me, it works better than yoga and meditation. I just feel amazing after a run. Are you running outside? Sometimes listening to music helps, I find I can listen to trance or a podcast (Above and Beyond has a great podcast that works wonders for running). I know what you mean by those thoughts and how they can bring you down. Just like in meditation, if you start to get them just focus on your breath until they go away. Also, this book may help you as well. r/EOOD may help as well. But I know how you feel, and running has helped me immensely.

There is a book called Feeling Good by David D Burns. It's an older book, but one of the best out there for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Not all chapters will be relevant to the issue, but there are a lot of good exercises in the book for when you're stressing over it. I do a modified version of one of the techniques where I write down my "hot thoughts" or automatic thoughts, and then my "cool thoughts" which are the more rational truths to the situation.


So if you're thinking "Our relationship is spoiled because he was with another woman" you can sit down and write out things like, "That's not true, many relationships go through all kinds of rough patches and it doesn't mean they're spoiled." "We're both doing a lot of work to make sure we're honest and open with each other." etc etc

Honestly anything that is an SSRI could be both considered a nootropic and might help with those conditions but i would highly recommend trying other things first and seeing a doctor.

You might also want to look into bibliotherapy. The book "Feeling Good" has been used for depression and anxiety and research has shown it to be rather effective and much cheaper than many other options.

http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336

I also found this book to have some useful information for general lifestyle changes that are good for people who have these issues

http://www.amazon.com/Depression-Cure-6-Step-Program-without/dp/0738213888

Also there are now free online programs to help with these conditions

https://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome

Hey,

Congratulations on your decision to get help! You can do it. In you post history, I can see that you struggle with depression.

First, where are you located? Are you in Europe, in the US, somewhere else? In most places, you can find therapists. Are you still in school or studying? Many schools and universities offer free mental health councelling. Check those out! Depending on your situation, you might be able to qualify for government assistance. I am not in the US, but I believe you can check HealthCare.gov to find out if you qualify and take your next steps from there. If you don't qualify, there is a very cool blog post by a psychologist on how to get mental health care on a budget: http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/25/mental-health-on-a-budget/

Let me quote from that article:

"This section is on ways to do therapy if you cannot afford a traditional therapist. There may also be other options specific to your area, like training clinics attached to colleges that charge “sliding scale” fees (ie they will charge you less if you can’t afford full price).

1. Bibliotherapy: If you’re doing a specific therapy for a specific problem (as opposed to just trying to vent or organize your thoughts), studies generally find that doing therapy out of a textbook works just as well as doing it with a real therapist. I usually recommend David Burns’ therapy books: Feeling Good for depression and When Panic Attacks for anxiety. If you have anger, emotional breakdowns, or other borderline-adjacent symptoms, consider a DBT skills workbook. For OCD, Brain Lock.

2. Free support groups: Alcoholics Anonymous is neither as great as the proponents say nor as terrible as the detractors say; for a balanced look, see here. There are countless different spinoffs for non-religious people or people with various demographic characteristics or different drugs. But there are also groups for gambling addiction, sex addiction, and food addiction (including eating disorders). There’s a list of anxiety and depression support groups here. Groups for conditions like social anxiety can be especially helpful since going to the group is itself a form of exposure therapy.

3. Therapy startups: These are companies like BetterHelp and TalkSpace which offer remote therapy for something like $50/week. I was previously more bullish on these; more recently, it looks like they have stopped offering free videochat with a subscription. That means you may be limited to texting your therapist about very specific things you are doing that day, which isn’t really therapy. And some awful thinkpiece sites that always hate everything are also skeptical. I am interested in hearing experiences from anyone who has used these sites. Until then, consider them use-at-your-own-risk." (end quote)

There are also sections on prescription medicine and on supplements in that article. Check it out!

If you are in a particularly bad spot or just need somebody to talk, there are lots of phone lines and services where you can call in for free. One example: https://www.crisistextline.org/depression/ (US-based).

There are also subreddits like /r/depression where you can get help from people who actually know what they are talking about.

​

Good luck and hang in there!

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Family counselor here, and step dad of 2. I am sorry to hear your family seems engaged onto a negative spiral right now. As you probably know already from your background in child development, the core of everything is about attachment. When the family members are securely attached, parenting becomes easier. From what I read though, it seems that your SS isn't in a secure attachment with your husband. This become even more difficult when you are a custodial parent because no matter what you do, you can only influence your half of the family dynamics.

So as a step-parent you are unfortunately in a situation where your influence is even less meaningful. But it's not meaningless nonetheless, quite the contrary. From what you wrote it seems you had a great positive influence at first, but things eventually moved into a negative dynamics.

If you still love your husband and want that relationship to work (and especially in the context of being pregnant also!) I am not sure disengaging is a viable option on the long term. It will only deepen the rift and make the attachment even less secure, which means that kid's behaviour isn't going to get easier. So IMHO I think you need to work on re-attaching: from you to your SS, from your SS to you, from SS to his father and from you to your husband.

This is especially important also because your SS is 12 which means he gets into puberty, a very difficult time for both the family and him. He needs you even more so! To help you with this, should you decide you want to give it another shot, here are some resources: Hold on to your kids from Dr. Neufeld, and perhaps investigate vulnerability as a way to reconnect to your step son. If you need more specific advice let me know. Good luck!

Leadership is a learned skill. Sure. Some are "born leaders". The rest of us schmucks just have to figure it out. The biggest influence I've had, that I can share online, is How to Win Friends & Influence People. It truly is a great read. $4.99 eBook or $5.92 for the paperback. I can also guarantee your county library has a copy or ten too. I read it in '89 I think, while in college. It actually changed the entire way I interact with people for the better.

~Good luck!

If you are really anti-medication, then look into cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Both are counseling techniques that are clinically proven to be effective against depression. Regular exercise (ideally at least 30 minutes most days of the week) is also clinically proven to be effective for depression. You might find that to be enough and you may decide that you don't want medication. If not, you'll still have medications as an option.

There are various physical problems that can manifest as depression. You may want to talk to your doctor about those just to rule those out.

Here are a couple good books that explain the counseling techniques listed above.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0380810336?pc_redir=1411719113&robot_redir=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1609618955/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1411750842&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40

If one of those techniques appeals to you more than the other, be sure to ask the therapist you choose if that's part of their practice.

Keep in mind what you want when looking for a practitioner. Psychiatrists are medical doctors who have taken some counseling classes. They are going to strongly prefer medication. Psychologists are completely different. They have a doctorate in psychology and are very good at talk therapy. They can't write prescriptions but can refer you for that if needed. Some work in a practice with a psychiatrist so this referral may be pretty simple. Social workers may not have as much formal education as a psychologist when it comes to talk therapy, but they tend to be cheaper and they also tend to have a lot of good practical experience. They're the best choice if you want practical advice from someone who has probably seen just about everything.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

You need to work your way up. You're trying too much, too fast. Someone with "severe social anxiety" isn't going to suddenly be able to cold approach effectively. It's just not realistic. It's like a guy with a 110lbs guy going to the gym and wondering why he can't bench 315. Doesn't make sense.

Start smaller. Instead of trying to walk up and cold open some super hottie, start by joining a club on campus. Try going there, and learn to be more expressive. It doesn't have to have women. Also try meetup.com, go to a meetup that seems safe (like a board game club). Something that gives you an excuse to socialize. Try to make friends and work on opening up and being more expressive.

The goal here is to acclimate yourself to socializing rather than trying cold opens, which is the hardest of all socializing.

I'd also look into professional help, either with a social skills coach or more realistically a psychologist that does Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. See if your campus has any free or cheap options, or if you're under your parents insurance or something. CBT is a system based around 1) managing your thoughts/beliefs 2) changing behaviour (action). Combine those two and you change your life, one step at a time.

Also, buy this book and read and study it. Despite the name, it's an incredible book, full of very clear, actionable advice to improve your social skills. It's fantastic. Don't be ashamed to read it.

Agree with the rest of the peeps who suggested seeing a doctor/therapy. Also, this is the second time I recommend this book today, but it's really that good: Feeling Good by David D. Burns. It has a great section on very spesific anger/conflict management strategies, in addition to being an all-around godsend when it comes to emotional health and cognitive skills for handling life in general.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns had a pretty major impact on my life in a good way. I recommend it to people all the time and I've been meaning to reread it myself. It's intended for folks dealing with depression but I think everyone should read it.

I want to stress that this is not a new-age BS self-help book. None of that "JuSt Be YoUrSeLf!" crap. This is a book about a proven method of improving your mood called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) written by an actual psychiatrist. Studies have shown CBT can be as effective or even more effective than antidepressants for treating depression. The best way I can describe it is training your brain to examine and challenge your cognitions (or thoughts) which are causing your emotions. We play a lot of tricks on ourselves which cause us to feel down at times when it's not helpful or necessary.

Be sure to see if your local library has a copy ;)

EDIT: I also wanted to mention exercising. Regular exercise is one of the best things you can do for yourself.

Thanks for tracking the post down. My seddit issues are as per what I wrote. I have a real love/hate relationship with it. On the one hand, the reasoning behind each and every tactic and move is solid and makes absolute sense. On the other hand, it's 'pickup'. The aim is to F-close, ideally with as many HBs as your genitalia can penetrate. And then there's the fact that it's called F-close in the first place, or K-close, or number closing HBs. It's inane, not to mention it shows nothing for the target - and yes, as you know women are "targets".
On top of all that, I've met guys - the enemy - who never needed these tactics as they're sleazy fuckhounds who've intuitively lived that shit from day one. I'm aware that makes me bitter, jealous and more than a little angry (Nice guy's Douche envy). There is something I can do about that, but I hate the thought of 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.' It's as if a core part of being me will die if I start "entering sets" and "isolating targets".
BUT I'm reading material. Thanks for those links. I'm going through them now, and on Saturday I bought Feeling Good, the book recommended in those beginner tutorials. Already I can tell it's going to be a huge boost to my self-esteem and well being, and it's an interesting side to the Seduction sub that you're encouraged to be the most positive and confident you you can be. I like that. It's important.
Out of interest, what is the FA post that shocked you? I've been following the posts here and tbh my heart bleeds for them. I'm genuinely concerned as everyone seems deep in the throes of depression and loneliness. I was the same in my late teens and all of my twenties and while this is a fantastic community on one level, it seems, as you say, a circlejerk. The potential to get mired in lonely quicksand here is enormous.
But what's with you and all your questions? You seem to have similar concerns - or are you playing devil's advocate?

Okay, so first let’s take a moment to appreciate that you’ve accomplished the beginning steps needed to get where you want to be. As a person who has struggled with depression, anxiety, and poverty myself, I applaud the fact that you that you’ve already done the really hard thing by starting therapy and sticking with it.
 

Second, as far the question of a career, I’d say just find a job you can do for the next couple of years. As you get older and understand yourself better, you can decide on a career path. Just don’t hold off on getting a job while you’re trying to decide on a career.
 

Third, you may want to consider taking the TASC test without waiting to do the study classes. Your state’s education department site says the test is free and you can make three attempts per year, so you could look at the first attempt as an information-gathering mission. I’m assuming the depression/anxiety played a fairly large part in your decision to drop out, so as long as you had somewhat okay grades while you were in school, you probably wouldn’t have trouble passing without the study classes anyway. And if you pass it the first time, that’s great! But if you don’t pass on the first attempt, you’ll have better knowledge of the specific areas you need to focus on before you take the next one (instead of unnecessarily studying ALL of the subjects!).
 

Fourth, look into free job assistance programs that can help you learn an actual vocation (even without a diploma/TASC certificate). I don’t know about New York, but in my state these programs will even pay for the equipment and clothing you need to do the job. I just did a quick Google search for “New York Job Training Programs” and these are the kind of interesting results that popped up: http://www.vocationaltraininghq.com/free-vocational-training-programs-in-nyc-new-york-city/ (the Office of Adult and Continuing Education, which offers FREE computer classes) and http://www.allny.com/job-articles/free-job-training.html (All NY, which explains how to find free job programs in New York). The beauty of some of these programs, is that you don’t have to cold-call on businesses to convince them to hire you. The program matches you up with employers who are looking for employees they can train up into entry-level positions. Quite a few of them are permanent too. But even if you decide you don’t want to stay in whatever job they help you get, you’ll walk away with more marketable skills and knowledge than you have now. (And you’d be surprised how often the skills you learn in one industry are useful in another).
 

To help you with the negative self-talk that comes with depression and anxiety, you may want to read “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy” by David Burns, MD (or something similar). His book is an easy to read cognitive therapy book that was written in 1980 but is still relevant today. It will help you learn to short circuit those negative thoughts before they can make you feel bad. It really helped me when I was trying to get my first serious job but kept telling myself I was too stupid/shy to work in that kind of role (it was a courier role in a mortgage company). https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380810336/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 

And lastly, here’s a link to something that helped me get through a lot of bad things over the years.. It’s called “The Quitter” by Robert W. Service: https://allpoetry.com/The-Quitter.

You are fucking awesome! Great plan and do it now. Don't wait. I'm so happy that I sent an e-mail at 11 p.m. to my current therapist to ask for my first appointment. It really changed my life. Here's also what I did (which may be a bit much for the beginning, but you can slowly integrate some elements if you want):

• Therapy
  
  
• Reading and applying Feeling Good – terrible title, great book. It's about behavioral cognitive therapy and helps you to catch and "repair" your irrational thoughts (e.g. I'm worthless). It really helped me getting from fucking depressed to manageable depressed.
  
  
• I started working out. Really simple. Every second day I did 3 sets of squats, sits and dips at first. Maybe takes you 20 minutes but you will feel good afterwards. I can recommend to start small. If you just do 6 squats every second day – that's better than sitting around.
  
  
• Pay attention about what I eat. And I ate absolutely crap while I was deeply depressed. It really helped me to feel better.
  
  These things I started when I was done with my depression (similar to you) and still do them today and they feel pretty good. There are a lot of things I tried and you can get a great overview by reading Ikarr0s post: The best stuff I have gathered to help me significantly improve every aspect my life and combat depression!
  
  

It is something you can do at home but it REALLY REALLY helps to have someone who can counsel you through it for a while and act as an anchor (maintenance appointments) to keep you in balance.

Book i'd suggest: https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336 This is basically my Bible, that my therapist assigned me when I first started. I check it every other week or so to remind myself where I was and to keep in check.

Edit: There will never be a time where you're just magically mindful and it keeps going on it's own. It's just like exercise, you have to keep at it consistently and persevere when you're not really up to it. That's what separates winners from losers, after all; grit.

If you can master your mind you can pretty much do anything. Corny as it is, we have more than enough historical proof what someone at the right place and time can do with an indomitable will. Just don't kill any minorities, ok? :)

I've been dealing with it for about 35 years now- since I was in my early teens. I still definitely have 'bad times', but they're a lot more spread out than they were before about my mid-2os, and they're a bit easier to deal with now that I know what to do. I have noticed that for a lot of people with chronic recurrent depression the earlier years are the worst- it often seems to level off when you're older.

I'd really recommend finding a cognitive behaviour therapist, because that seems to be the most helpful in teaching you ways to cope, as well as to change ingrained patterns of thinking that help you get stuck back in depression. This is a very helpful book, and there's also a very good online program called MoodGym. It doesn't replace a good therapist, but it is useful.

Try to figure out what your triggers might be, and how you can avoid them. For some of us it just seems to be somewhat biological- we just wake up one morning back in the black hole again. But for others it can happen because of fairly identifiable things- hooking up with the wrong people, making some bad decisions, etc. If you can figure out how to avoid some of the triggers, then you're at least a bit further ahead.

And try out some of the things that are fairly well accepted to be useful to at least some people, and make them a regular part of your life if you do find them helpful. Exercise, proper diet, yoga, sunlight, volunteering, meditation, learning to breathe properly, mindfulness, journalling/writing, gardening, building up a good support network etc. Not everything works for everyone, but it's worth taking a good shot at all of them to see what might work for you.

It really can improve- I never would have thought that I'd reach a point in my life where I could go years in a 'good' cycle, but it has happened. Life's a bit more stressful than usual right now, but I've been doing this long enough to know that it will more than likely get better again.

My therapist recommended me this book: Feeling Good

It's not going to cure you or anything but I found it very enlightening. Firstly, it'll help you realize what you're feeling isn't completely foreign and can be understood. Secondly, it'll give you some quick and easy techniques to help change some of your thinking. I've always considered myself a very logical person but sometimes you don't realize how far astray you can get in certain areas.

I'd check it out, most local libraries will have it. It's a bit on the larger side but you can easily skip around to the relevant sections.

I feel you! I was on meds for depression/anxiety for about 10 years. Last year I went off those meds (the ones I was on weren't working and I thought I'd give it a shot). I recently went through a breakup after a 2 year relationship and am realizing that, although I couldn't remember being better on meds, I was in a state similar to the one you describe. The breakup would be an obvious trigger for depression, but I got into therapy soon after it happened and my therapist recommended 'Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy' ( http://amzn.com/0380810336 ) and it has enlightened me to many things that have allowed me to be in control of my moods and prevent the sadness from turning into depression.

That being said, I'm still dealing with a lack of motivation/focus at the moment. I should also note that I have ADD as well and your guess is as good as mine as to whether that's the cause or not. I still take meds for ADD and have an appointment soon to reevaluate their effectiveness.

My advice is to get the book (it's like $5 right now!), get into therapy if possible, and use your judgement from there.

Hope that helps and good luck!

Maybe look into purchasing tickets to a cooking class! Depending on where you go, prices will vary, but it could be a neat idea :)

The Gift of Nothing is such a memorable, sentimental book, and I'm sure she'd be delighted to receive it.

I'm in a similar boat as you, but at the moment I don't have any friends at all and so far was never able to really build a deep connection with anybody (I'm 28/m btw). But one thing I've learned is that there's always hope, you're only doomed if you tell yourself so.

One thing that really helps with finding balance is meditation, read a good book about it and/or look at some online tutorials (looks like /r/meditation has some good resources as well) and just give it a try for a few weeks, and don't be discouraged if you don't get immediate results.

If you have a dislike for spiritual stuff you could instead read up on cognitive behavioral therapy, which is used to treat all sorts of things such as depression and social anxiety. This book gives a good introduction and has very simple exercises to get you started. Of course you could also visit an actual therapist, if you don't mind talking to a stranger about your intimate problems ;-)

Also, please don't look at your life as "empty", if you're anyting like most other introverts you probably have a very rich inner life, but just because you can't easily share this with others doesn't mean it's worthless. Just keep doing the things you enjoy and ignore people who think you can't possibly be happy unless you're socializing all the time.

I hope

Enter your postal code to find comm centres and times near you for free drop-in programs geared towards babies.
https://www.ontario.ca/page/find-earlyon-child-and-family-centre


(I'd like to include my 2cents here also: go and expose your baby to social environments as time out of the house, but just don't feel pressured to do so. There is this notion in our culture that we must 'prime' our babies to socialization when nothing could be further from the truth. What they actually need is a long term relationship with a fully attached, fully loving caregiver(s). I think this should be required reading for all new parents: https://www.amazon.ca/Hold-Your-Kids-Parents-Matter/dp/0307361969/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536941112&sr=8-1&keywords=hold+on+to+your+kids)


OK back to our regularly scheduled program. Have fun out there!

This can be a pretty grim time in one's life, it wasn't fun for me, but without doing anything else but getting yourself to the beginning of your college program (which I gather is what's in progress), it ought to get better.

One thing I'll suggest which did wonders for me a little later in that time in my life was learning and self-applying cognitive therapy. A simple description of it is that if you think bad thoughts about yourself, you can make yourself feel bad. And these "bad thoughts" can be relatively subtle, especially the filters through which one views the world, and a lot of the method hinges on seeing the world more accurately (it is seldom as bad as you think), and interpreting that in better ways. The best beginning resource is Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. I see the author also has a website.

As for your family, it sounds like you've got some hard decisions WRT to them if you want to be happy, ones that may well be incompatible with their continued support for your formal education (which is fairly optional if you're planning on computer programming and/or system administration, I'll note). You're welcome to PM me on that or anything else....

Since you can't afford a therapist, the next best thing might be the sort of therapeutic approach you'd likely take if you were able to see a therapist. One of the major schools of modern therapy is called cognitive behavioral therapy, and one of its pioneers has written a book called Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Personally, I found it incredibly helpful in fixing some extremely negative thought patterns I held for a long time.

Studying ethics also helped me a lot, as it inspired a sense of greater purpose and a duty to others. There's plenty on the subject to read, and I especially recommend Ancient Greek philosophy, as it is a bit less abstract and more focused on the individual and how to live a good and fulfilling life. You could start by reading about Aristotle's virtue ethics, which focuses on good character.

I have an adorable Christmas tortoise decoration on my Etsy wishlist that I would love to adorn my tree or the new Liz Climo book from Amazon, her drawings always make me smile.

However if you'd like to pick something as a surprise I'd be more than grateful.

Thanks for the contest ❤️

Hey! Congrats on taking action for yourself! Even making a post is doing that!

Try using [this] (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists) tool to browse for therapists near you. put in your zip code, a mile distance, and other issues to start.

While i'm more on the anxiety disorder side of things and less the mood disorder side like yourself, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is generally useful for many basic issues if you use it correctly, just try to stay away from Psychoanalysis if you can.

A book I would definitely reccomend is [Feeling Good] (https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336) by David Burns. It does sound self helpy and gimmicky, but it's not. It introduces you to the basics of CBT, cognitive distortions and evidence collecting excercises that you can do on your own or with help from a therapist.

Just know that MANY more people than you think deal with mental health issues. It's something like [1 in 5 in the U.S] (https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-by-the-numbers). It's my dream that within my lifetime we can see mental health hygiene policies be implemented by institutions and organizations throughout the country with the same depth and totality that toilets and handwashing were in the early 20th century.

Good luck! You aren't alone!

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns is a great choice. It doesn't focus on SA but rather on anxiety and depression more generally but you can use the methods to approach social anxiety just as well.

There are a couple others which could help you muster up the strength ideologically, like Rejection Proof or The Charisma Myth

It all comes down to being consistent and getting a bit stronger, a bit less anxious day by day. I wish you the very best!

It's something that I wanted for a long time and decided to finally do it. It was a faster healing process for me than the nipple, the actual piercing hurt less, but I don't recommend hiking right afterward. (I wore jeans and went scrambling through a forest and over boulders, and it was fine but I definitely felt it.) If you haven't come across it yet, http://piercingbible.com/ is an amazing resource. Lots of photos and stories to help you figure things out, too.

The VCH is a functional piercing. If you find you only orgasm from clit stimulation then it should make it more easily stimulated from positions where you'd normally have to really work at it. It's not an instant cure, though.

If your rut might be depression, I recommend giving this book a quick read. It was really the only thing that got me out of my rut and keeps me from falling back in. Piercings are fun, but I haven't found that they've really solved any larger problems for me.

Cognitive behavioral therapy. Take the thought that makes you unhappy -- the idea that eternity makes your tiny mortal life meaningless -- and confront it rationally. This is REALLY hard to do with religion (ask me how I know), but consider that physical scale is not an indication of importance. Consider the humble mitochondrion. Also consider Matt. 10:29 "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care." God is perfectly capable of extending intimate attention to any area of his creation.

Anyway, I'm not doing it justice. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy is a really good book on the topic. Or talk to your therapist/psychiatrist about it.

Anyway, hang in there.

Hi friend. I am sorry to hear what you are going through. As someone who has experienced a period of depression and anxiety, I can imagine your pain in an all-too-familiar way.

Others have posted prayer as a means by which to overcome your mental health issues. I wholeheartedly agree. Faith and prayer is what kept me anchored in my struggles as well.

In addition, if you find your therapist is not helping, try to find another. There are many, many great psychologists and counsellors out there. You deserve the best possible care you can get.

Finally, look into workbooks for Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy. The ones that come to mind, as there were particularly helpful for me, are David Burns' "Ten Days to Self Esteem" and "The Feeling Good Handbook"

God bless. I will keep you in my prayers, anonymous reddit friend!:)

This really depends. It has the potential to change things, but I think you'd have to put in some effort of your own as well. There are people that move simply hoping to improve their mental health. But moving is such a huge deal. Most importantly, you lose friends/community you have (if any). I think reading a book like Feeling Good, or going to a counselor (if you can afford) and working through some of the issues, could be bring more lasting, long-term relief.

I suffered with it for a long time and I saw a cognitive behavioural therapist.
It worked great, best thing I ever went through with all my life. On my final session with him he suggested I buy this book.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319468027&sr=8-1

Reading this book is the nearest thing he could suggest to me to actually seeing a therapist in person, you have to make sure you do the exercises in the book also to learn how to change and improve your thinking patterns.

I bought the book twice. One to read every day and one on standby in case I lose the 1st book! Awesome book, and I sincerely hope my suggestion helps some of the people in here to move forward.

Melanie Joy has a great talk on avoiding compassion fatigue as an activist. If you're struggling with mental health issues the best thing you can do to keep helping animals in the long run is to take care of yourself by seeing a therapist, getting a self help book that is proven to work, and by finding a supportive community of like minded people.

The people who love you would not be happier if you were gone. They love you! They would miss you and be sad, feel guilty, get upset.

It's good that you recognize that suicide isn't the answer and are taking steps to get help. You go, girl! Definitely get a therapist, and have you tried Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? It's specifically helpful for interrupting repetitive thoughts like this. The main book is Feeling Good, I've friends who found it very helpful.

Good luck! Hang in there! Lots of people have this problem, there is help available. You're not alone.

> ... give the process a chance to work rather than trying to solve it your way

This is certainly a valid point. I've been giving it a chance to work for nearly 4 years now, and my wife has done relatively little towards dealing with her problems. The first two years of her depression were spent with her in absolute denial of it. I understand that things take time, but the waiting will eat up the remaining years I have of this one life if there isn't any progress. This is why I'm trying to take an active role rather than continuing to wait; The waiting accomplished nothing because she did not seek to walk, let alone run. It was not until I convinced her to read Feeling Good and practice some self-care early this year that there has been any significant progress. The regular arguments are an improvement over her denial and withdrawal of years prior; At least now she is willing to engage. My hope is that she can learn to engage effectively before the ineffective engagements destroy the relationship entirely.

I'm a little puzzled by your declaration that I am:

> determined to steamroll over your wife's emotions in favor of "rationality."

I thought that I had made it clear that her emotions are of importance when I stated that

> Ideally, when my wife feels wronged, we would have a rational discussion about what we each perceived, how that made us feel, come to a mutual understanding of the situation and each others' feelings, and seek a win/win/win resolution.

(emphasis added above). Rereading it, perhaps I was not as clear as I had hoped. Her emotions are absolutely NOT invalid. Ultimately, they're kind of all that really matters.

> you're not going to get anywhere by failing to acknowledge she's upset and working within that reality, instead of demanding that she handle everything by parliamentary debate standards.

This is very true. I do acknowledge that she is upset and I am trying to work within that reality, which is why I'm trying to find a way for her to learn to express her emotions effectively. I am by no means "demanding that she handle everything by parliamentary debate standards", but I do expect a minimum level of effective back-and-forth that abides by some of the rules of logic. I'm talking simple things, like avoiding self-contradiction and giving the benefit of the doubt to a degree. My "Did you feed the cats today?" example illustrates the lack of the benefit of the doubt that is frequently encountered. I have no idea how to ask that question, and many others, without it immediately becoming an argument wherein I am expected to prove that I was not attacking her. In these cases, I attempt to acknowledge that she was upset, but I don't know what to do other than express "I'm not attacking you" and ask her how else I can ask her such a question; This almost invariably results in her responding with something like "Just leave me alone I can feed my own damned cats", which doesn't really address either the original issue or the new one. This got a little off topic, what I'm trying to say is that the standards that I'm holding her to are not absurdly high, and they do take into account her emotional state. They are just the minimum required for simple interactions to not quickly turn into hostility. She is not meeting this minimum, which makes even simple interactions nearly impossible.

I'm reading a really interesting book on how our culture has shifted from parent orientation to peer orientation since WWII and how it is playing out poorly for youth, even when we were the youth. I've paralleled what they've said to the struggles I had as a teen and it does appear to be spot on.

This is the book: Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers

And here is from Amazon:

International authority on child development Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D., joins forces with bestselling author Gabor Maté, M.D., to tackle one of the most disturbing trends of our time: Children today looking to their peers for direction—their values, identity, and codes of behavior. This “peer orientation” undermines family cohesion, interferes with healthy development, and fosters a hostile and sexualized youth culture. Children end up becoming overly conformist, desensitized, and alienated, and being “cool” matters more to them than anything else. 
  

Hold On to Your Kids explains the causes of this crucial breakdown of parental influence—and demonstrates ways to “reattach” to sons and daughters, establish the proper hierarchy in the home, make kids feel safe and understood, and earn back your children’s loyalty and love. This updated edition also specifically addresses the unprecedented parenting challenges posed by the rise of digital devices and social media. By helping to reawaken instincts innate to us all, Neufeld and Maté will empower parents to be what nature intended: a true source of contact, security, and warmth for their children.

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This book may sound cheesy and gimmicky, but it really helped me more than anything else. I got very involved in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as a means of getting better without medication and, I am not exaggerating even a little when I say this, actively practicing CBT is the only reason I'm a functioning human instead of a basket of bat-shit crazy. I highly recommend it - if you implement the techniques, it really does help IMMENSELY! And if you ever want to PM me for help or advice, I'm happy to provide!

Hey man. From reading your post it seems to me that you’re depressed and have developed false beliefs about yourself that are now so deeply engraved that you accept them and don’t even bother to challenge them. Now, I don’t know you at all, but I’m pretty sure you’ve not failed at everything, you’re just not seeing the positives right now.

What I can tell you is that quitting will probably not give you happiness by itself. You’ve got to work on your beliefs about yourself and your outlook on the future.

I just quit, and started reading a book called Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. I’ve not finished the book yet, but I started feeling better almost immediately upon reading it and realizing some of my irrational thoughts about myself and my future. It will basically teach you cognitive behavioral therapy, which is a therapy method many therapists use today. It will give you many tools to use for identifying negative thought patterns and getting yourself out of them. Some of them directly described as being effective against the EXCACT things you’re saying about yourself here.

I know reading a book is not the most tempting thing to do when you’ve given up hope, but please give it a try. It even has a section about quitting smoking, which can be applied to quitting cannabis.

Feel better bro ❤️

Yeah, I mean, I'd be mortified if my boyfriend ever posted about me on the internet like this, but it shows you care. Is there any way you can get her to consider going to a therapist just for her other issues? More than likely it all has to do with her emotional problems. Maybe even getting her a self help book would be useful if she's totally against therapy. I like this one. Honestly, it sounds like she has a lot of problems that she's not even trying to deal with on her own... that's a lot for someone else to have to take on.

Well, sounds like you're rewarding yourself for positive thinking - which is part of cognitive behavioral therapy (read "Feeling Good" by Dr. David Burns) which is a FANTASTIC step towards getting out of the funk!

I suggest /r/RedditLaqueristas too. . .I'm mildly obsessed with my nails and it's a natural offshoot.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the gold standard for depression and anxiety (and many other things as well). It works wonders for me. If your therapist does it, that is wonderful, but there are excellent books which you can use on your own. One of the core principles of CBT is that you need to work on your own to acquire skills to deal with your problems, reading and doing "homework" and mental exercises.

This is an excellent book, with a strong emphasis on anxiety. I recommend the paperback, so you can write in it (it has lots of worksheets).

This is another excellent book that I have.