Best products from r/MentalHealthBuddies

EDIT: Sorry, this is really really long and I can't really give it a TL;DR, but there's a few points in bold to help you out!

1. Happiness isn't something you find, it's something you create.
   
   This is a concept that took me a while to understand. I could see all the people around me looking happy, people on social media posting about their amazing lives, and poor little me, comparing my sad shitty life to these amazing things.
   
   There's a few problems in there, though. One is comparison to others, another one is understanding what others' lives are really like, and a third one is ignoring the good thing. Let's start with the third point, because it ties back nicely to my first sentence.
   
   I firmly believe that you can change your mindset from negative to positive. I also firmly believe that it can be incredibly difficult to do, and it has taken me 3 months of therapy to work out how to do it. Sure, I could explain the theory, but having someone to report to every week is what really made a difference here.
   
   I believe that happiness is never too far away, but that you need to adjust your "happiness lens" to find it. If you've got a massive telephoto happiness lens, you'll spot others' happiness much more easily than the factors that could bring happiness to your life. Take a step back, get a smaller lens that won't do a great job of focusing on things too far from you and your life.
   
   I find gratitude immensely helpful in understand where I can find happiness. There's a few things in life that always make me happy: going to bed, eating a tasty dish, listening to a song I used to love. These are tiny, but if you look closer, your days can be made of those happy little moments. All it takes is becoming aware of them.
   
   Today, for example, I didn't wake up too early. Then I had a lovely warm shower, go to play the piano a little and enjoyed the sun on my way to the train station. I got a seat on the train, my book reached a really exciting point, I ate a very tasty croissant for breakfast. This was all before 10am. These are all pretty insignificant, in the grand scheme of things, right? But their magic is that they're happening all the time.
   
   Action point: start practicing gratitude by listing 3 things you're thankful for each day (it can be having drank less, having found a useful Reddit post, having watched a cool film).
   
   Now as I mentioned earlier, being aware of what can go on in people's lives is pretty important. In our era of social media, perfect people flooding Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. it can be difficult to put up with the awesomeness of these lives, their travels, dishes, outfits, fitness, etc. What's key to remember here, is that 1) we only see a tiny sliver of someone's life, 2) they usually only show you the really good stuff, because they care about being cool, 3) we have no idea what might actually be going on in their lives.
   
   Keeping up appearances is a behaviour that's incited by our self-policing society, where you must look a certain way, be at a certain stage in your life doing certain things, etc. People will go very far to pretend everything is fine when they're hiding a lot of misery behind a thin veneer of happiness. An example that comes to mind is disgruntled Instagrammers who spend most of their day trying to find the perfect angle for the perfect shot - they have 100 versions of the same picture, but you only see one. They'll be thinking of the time they wasted, how another Instagrammer is gonna look better anyway, the numbers of followers they lost, etc. That smile in that picture might be incredibly disingenuous for all we know.
   
   Action point: Try to think of the big picture. That perfect couple you see all the time on Facebook might be in a terrible relationship. Your favourite Instagrammer could be hiding a drug addiction, someone who's being quiet around you may actually be having big problems that they just haven't told you about.
   
   As for comparison with others, it's very easy to look at what people seem to have, compared to what you do/don't have. There's an image that stuck to my mind, though, which was that if you spent your time looking at your neighbour's green grass, it was no surprise yours was patchy and yellow. So find your watering can, and focus on you, and you only. It could be that you feel like you need a life overhaul, and that's fine. Pick one thing and focus on it. You want to do 10,000 things and you feel overwhelmed? Start with one thing. Add another one when you're ok with the first thing, then add a third one, etc. Nothing comes to mind? Think of something you'd like to have achieved in your life, and work back from that. It might take a while, and the path might not be so easy, but work will help.
   
   Learn to build discipline and habit so you have a safety net when things go awry. I really like /r/theXeffect for that, where you have a simple goal, a card with days on, and you cross out each da you've carried out the action on your card. One of mine was to brush my teeth after lunch, and now I do it automatically and don't even think about it anymore. Another one was meditating every day - this is still in progress, but I'm on a 30+-days streak.
   
   Action point: Find something that interests you and will help you be fulfilled - a habit, a hobby, a more general life goal, and develop a system to progress towards it. This will keep you occupied and you will develop a skill that you can later focus on honing.
   
   
2. Practice compassion and self-compassion
   
   It sounds like you have a lot of contempt for yourself and others. This ties back to having such a negative mindset that's probably very deeply entrenched in your own psyche, but being able to relate to the human condition as a whole makes it easier to appreciate others and yourself. Yes, a lot of people are dicks. What really matters here is that 1) they don't do it because they hate you, they do it because their lives have guided them to act that way ("People aren't against you, they're for themselves"), 2) we're only humans, we all make mistakes and this is something to be more accepting of.
   
   If someone finds pleasure in criticising or judging someone else on say, their clothes, or appearance, or anything, while there might be subjective truth to it (they don't look great in that jumper), the simple act of criticising/judging shows that that person is likely unhappy with some aspect of their life and are trying to make themselves feel better by putting someone else down. It's a sucky attitude, and it reflects more on the person's character than on the victim.
   
   A good solution for that is self-compassion. Self-compassion isn't about lovey-dovey statements about how you're perfect. Self-compassion is simply being kinder to yourself - understanding where you come from, what you've been through and accepting that even if this isn't the situation you wanted to be in, it's ok to be where you are. Failure is part and parcel of human life, and learning to see it as a way to growth will make life easier for you.
   
   Action point: Pick up something by Kristin Neff - her audiobook is a list of meditations to help you make peace with yourself and be more compassionate towards others as a result. Her book is good if you want the science behind it.
   
   Ultimately, what I mostly see is a lot of insecurity and lack of self-confidence that you take out on people. As a result of this negative mindset, you're finding it difficult to see the good in people, situations and life, and it's no wonder you feel so stuck. But that's ok. Sure, it's a crappy situation you're in at the moment, but you were smart enough to identify there was an issue, and brave enough to go to a doctor. Maybe your challenge could be to call that number your doctor give you and give it a chance? It might not be exactly what you feel you need, but it could also be a step in the right direction. If you're in a place where you feel you could help yourself, I recommend Mind Over Mood, which has exercises on re-training your brain to shift your mindset. I also recommend Carol Dweck's Mindset a lot, simply because it's a bit of a game changer on understanding how our brain works and how we're wired and can rewire ourselves. I've mentioned Kristin Neff above, and the last thing I would suggest you look at is Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, which has the explanation as to why we suffer from it, and some exercises to improve it.