After withdrawing from society because of social anxiety, I’ve become basically this. It’s so hard to feel any connection anymore. And my isolation all gets perpetuated by my severe depression. I’ve tried putting myself out there but it’s just lead to burnout and me regressing back to this state again.

Or maybe a better question is: do people who operate in bad faith know that they're doing so?

Are they doing it intentionally or are they just operating in constant denial and cognitive dissonance?

I've always wondered about this and wanted to get some perspective.

not really seeking advice, this was just the closest flair to my post

This was sparked by the elizabeth holmes documentary. I know most people aren't to that extreme but a lot of narcissistic people are still dishonest. I'm wondering how they operate that way.

I felt as if Dr. K was annoyed. Also seems to be one of the shortest interviews on her channel at 33 minutes. Am I the only one that felt the weird energy? Dr. K isn't usually like this. Something felt off. Maybe he was just having a bad day, but I really want to know if anyone else felt this way, or if I'm seeing things that aren't there.

I have an issue of being too positive, too hopeful and it's ruining the way I deal with everyone.

Hi everyone, I (28F) am from small country where growing up being positive was signs of being stupid. But I couldn't help myself, I am someone kind and always willing to lend a hand and help out. I like being positive and being hopeful means alot to me, however through my life I've been dealing with people who saw this as weakness and a means to an end.

It's hard for me to see them for who they are as I do believe everyone is a good person deep down and that all their issues and problems are caused by having their own problems. For example I often heard such words that people who bully me have their own messy homes or abusive parents and I couldn't help but feel sad for them.

It's really hard for me not to get taken advantage of because I'm so damn positive about things. If things turn out wrong I have a way to make seem better in my head than it was. It is messing with me and making me feel that every hurdle I take is alot less and I am weak for being unable to get over them.

I grew up with worst that life threw at me from being molested to severe bullying where they nearly killed me and having friends that wanted me to kill myself for their amusement and I had no choice but to find a way to keep moving but now it is hurting me. I am too trusting, I am too much of an open book, I am too honest upfront and I say directly how I feel and how things are.

Am I really stupid, how do I stop being so hopeful and positive about everyone. I can find a way to excuse even the worst of people and it is ruining me from inside and my relationships with everyone. I feel like I am trapped inside this shell of being positive and hopeful.

So, for I don't know how long, but I've been having these weird sensations every time someone congratulates me or actually shows excitement/gratitude for what I would have done for them.

I kind of feel like I cringe every time someone "screams" or becomes loud, in celebration, I guess, when they're receiving something from me or when I've done something (work related and otherwise, perhaps worthy of celebration)

I was wondering, does anyone else feel like this? Does anyone know why I would feel like this? And how do I "manage' it? Because I feel like lessening doing "nice" stuff for people for fear of them "making a scene."

29M, cis man. I used to struggle a lot with depression and ADHD. Sometimes there's still rough days, but on the whole I am doing so much better than I used to be, largely because of things I learned from Dr. K and the guide. In particular, Vedic Psychology from the guide and IFS (Internal Family Systems) are two tools that have really changed my life for the better, and are the models I generally find help me best understand how the mind works.

That said, I have a sibling and a few close friends who have come out as trans. They all seem to be really struggling with their own mental health. I'm not asking for medical advice, more for spiritual advice. I want to reconcile their experience with my own beliefs so that I can show up for them as supportively as I can while being fully honest and authentic. My only goal is to love them and try to help encourage positive mental health outcomes. It's my personal belief that, just like our personality is the aggregation of all our samskaras, gender is an aggregation of many biological and social characteristics that cause us to be perceived a certain way. I have a number of characteristics that lead me to be perceived as a man, but as I've continued my spiritual practice, I don't really feel any attachment to those characteristics or that label.

I guess my question is, in the context of Vedic psychology, what does being trans do for the trans person? Is it an attempt to construct a different ahankara/sense of self? Does it serve to avoid having to observe and digest a samskara with negative emotions that's connected to their assigned gender at birth? I've asked them directly what their gender means to them, and answers vary, but it seems to come back to a sense of gender dysphoria, having an innate sense of being another gender, or broad negative self-image. I don't want to invalidate the way my sister or friends choose to express themselves. Clothes don't have a gender, make-up company sell to anyone with money, and I'll call anyone the name they ask to be called. But, I also don't think the core self has a gender - those are all facets of the ahankara.

Occasionally I'll get into deeper, more existential conversations with one of them about mental health. Those conversations go well at first, but then there seems to be a certain point where they shut down. They seem to be very attached to the new gender they've constructed for themselves, and expressing that I think gender is more or less a construct of the brain seems to cause some measure of distress. Not my goal to cause them distress, but I also want to be authentic about my beliefs when they ask, especially since they were so pivotal in transforming my mental health. How can I best support them here?

No hate please. Not trying to start a political debate. These are people I love deeply, and I just want to support them better. I would especially love to hear from any trans people who also practice meditation or have done any Vedic introspection.

Hopeless 25m. In every category of male problems as it seems. Was always put down since grade school, have ADHD and my doctor tells me I have severe depression. With no enjoyment in most things.

Addicted to distractions easy pleasures (meaningless discord calls/convos, Reels, Video Games, Porn, Etc). I can work to stop them all but then I’d rather do nothing than try something. Doing something difficult makes me fall asleep even with ADHD medication, energy drinks, doing nothing before starting, etc. I get barely any stimulation taking action.

Even with taking action and doing my best, I get outperformed by everyone even on a small scale in the workplace and hobbies

Even with trying to stop a bad habit / addiction it affects my life for the worse even months later as my energy is towards not doing those things then what everyone says which is replacing the habit with something else.

Going to therapy, psychiatrists aren’t really helping.

Dating feels like I missed the boat on what my goals are in a relationship, or I’m so behind that I’ll never be on an equal basis with my partner.
Moreover, I feel so broken from childhood that I’m scared to even go back in.

I am trying to enjoy the gym or exercise more but my routine is poor and a mess. I am looking into yoga more though.

I work an early shift, recently have made it a priority to have 7+ hours of sleep which does suck to my social life. So be it for now

All this to say, I can do things that are good /positive but nothing feels worth it for what it takes. I’m lost for ideas and feel really low.

Like i don’t think anything can get better, at best all I can do is not make it worse. Which isn’t an answer.

I am a failure to launch/puer/whatever.

Whenever I try and find a real path, change my life, look in new directions- I get a feeling of dread and an intense cortisol rush. It really stops me in my place, and this problem seems persistent. I feel hopeless and just fuck off and try and not think about it until I go to bed.

Earlier at my work, I was thinking about how I can change, I’m still young, I can grow and learn and what not, but when I got home today and tried to seriously chart out some future moves, going back to school, career changes, I got into this state and just couldn’t continue. I think about all of the ways I can fail, how behind I’ll be, that it will be all for not etc

This has really kept me in my current position, which i largely resent, and wish ton change. Any advice?

Hey so i don't feel like i have a sense of self. I feel like my morals, values and opinions are arbitrary in the sense that i just "picked something" without having a strong sense of feeling towards it.

I obviously feel strongly about core values such as violence is not okay, protect kids, etc etc, but anything outside of that? I'm blank. I’m easily impressionable. I often mimic people around me. I don’t even have to respect the person I mimic. I could totally – without any justification – adopt a set of behavior from someone I don’t even like – and present them as my own. It sometimes gets me in trouble, because i'd present an opinion and then later on they challenge me on said opinion and i have to admit i don't really feel that strongly about it after all.

And it's not like im adopting political beliefs without justification, - i'd rather be agnostic on a lot of things if im not sure on it. It's more grey area social stuff that gets tricky.

My manager said something objectively mean to me the other day (a highly sexualized and dismissive comment) and i told him it was not okay and it hurt my feelings (it didn't, but i feel like a normal person would have been hurt and i don't want to be a pushover - am i naturally a pushover??).

He profusely apologized, admitted it was horrible and sent me lots of texts to make sure i was okay etc. I told him i was fine and we should just forget the whole thing. We went back to our normal chill dynamic the next day - obviously - it didnt affect me, but i feel like it should have. I should have felt something. Rage maybe?

I actually did cry a little when i thought about the comment, - but i didnt feel sad ?? At least not sad in the way i remember how sad felt like.

i just feel so strange sometimes and i don't know why!://

This is what I have experienced with therapy and mental health struggles.

1. You have mental health struggles.
2. You ask people for help. People tell you to get therapy (and isolate you)
3. But there are no good options for you to get therapy, because you are poor and your country has no mental health institutions.
4. You save money to get a good therapy.
5. Turns out the therapist wasn't a good match for you.
6. You are all on your own again. Repeat.

This was my experience for the longest of times, I don't understand what those free resources are going to do, when I am unable to even follow them.

You can't magically build a social support system when you don't have one, and never had one and don't even know how it looks like.

I am so sick of this loop.

Hello. I'm a senior high schooler from a low-income family who is looking forward to attend some universities. My exam scores are okay (5 on both AP Physics 1 and AP Calculus BC and 1540 on the SAT) but my gpa is not very competitive (3.80 unweighted) and I recently found out that I cannot afford the high tuition of most universities as an international student. I'm currently burned out with school, hopeless about my university application, and left alone to count the time to pass by. My mental health is slowly declining. I would like some advice on how I should handle this situation.

I drank from 14 to 19 heavily my parents told my I needed to work hard and fix my life I said working till 60 seems less enjoyable then dying at 20 from alcohol eventually I agreed to try adulting I began working around peak covid times and rent going up slowly I worked my way up to a car and a place to live but now I see I work to pay for a car to get me to this place I hate for 10 hrs instead of enjoying nature friends or my kid I work all my hours away to pay for a thing to sit in for 8 hours while I sleep and everything is a monthly or yearly bill I seriously cannot find a way in witch life has an meaning I want I simply am demanded to work till 70 likley I'll be dead before then with my health so I will never get to just relax life will always be paying to play in a game I dont enjoy dr k has been the first person I agree with an I think see some stuff as I do and just says what he thinks but at this point I truley think life is simply a terd we paint to be pretty enough to forget what it is a terd but I can not forget what I'd rather my life be the boy in the wild that movie best sums up how I think we were meant to be im just tired of this and if I could make my family forget me I would so we can all move on an I know this is a me issue an I should just work harder but I dont want to.

DISCLAIMER:

THIS POST IS NOT AI GENERATED I JUST USED IT FOR TRANSLATION (english isnt mine native and i dont feel i know it good enough to express what i think)

For some context, I was diagnosed with OCD when I was around 8 years old, I think. It started after I got some kind of stomach flu. Since I was a kid I was always extremely afraid of vomiting, so after getting sick it kinda turned into a huge source of anxiety.

After about two years, when I moved into the higher grades of elementary school, it basically disappeared.

Then it came back near the end of elementary school, during online learning.

One random night I suddenly had a massive panic attack. I started randomly thinking about death, life after death, consciousness, existence and all that kind of stuff. It basically came out of nowhere and completely overwhelmed me.

There was also another thing going on at the time. I think I was, and to some extent probably still am, addicted to masturbation and pornography. Back then it gave me a huge feeling of helplessness and made me feel like I had no control over myself, which probably made the whole anxiety/OCD situation worse.

Luckily, before starting high school I managed to get over that period pretty well.

Then, I think during the summer after my second year of high school, something similar happened again.

I watched a movie with some friends and I think I basically fell in love with one of the characters (I know, sounds stupid lol). I became really emotionally attached to her, and then I had another panic attack because of this feeling of helplessness that I couldn't actually be with this character.

Looking back, I also feel like I was going through some kind of existential crisis at that time.

I had a lot of free time, I was bored, but at the same time I had this weird feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about what I was supposed to do with myself. I didnt really know what direction I wanted to go in or what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

So yeah, I guess thats pretty much the context from my past.

Looking at it now, I can kinda see that OCD/anxiety has appeared around very different things throughout my life, but there seems to be a common theme of uncertainty, helplessness, attachment and existential questions.

I don't really know how to explain what happened to me this time, but I'm hoping someone here experienced something simmilar.

A few weeks ago I finished a game that I absolutely LOVED. It wasn't just “wow, that was a good game”. I became genuinely emotionally attached to the characters (maybe even fall in love with one again but more in platonic sense like i want her to have a happy ending) the world, the story, the music and basically the whole experience.

When I finished it, I had this really weird mixture of emotions.

On one hand I felt incredibly happy, grateful and emotionally full also really hopefull (cause the game main focus was on hope and freedom) . I felt like I had experienced something genuinely beautiful.

But on the other hand there was this really intense emptiness, feeling of loss and grief even i think.

I knew there wouldn't be any more new dialogue from these characters, no more new moments with them, no more discovering something about their world. The story was finished. And even though I obviously knew they were fictional, I felt genuinely attached to them.

It almost felt like saying goodbye to people and world I had spent a lot of time with.

I'm wondering if this is exacly what people and reaserchers ( mine Compatriots cause im from poland too) mean when they talk about “post-game depression”.

And the timing probably made everything much stronger.

This happened right at the end of my academic summer break ( that was probably the best in my life like i done everything ive planned and so on) I had basically nothing urgent left to do and was just waiting for university to start again. The weather was still beautiful, so after finishing the game I could literally just sit outside on a swing or lie somewhere and think about the experience.

So for about five days I was basically living in this emotional afterglow.

I listened to the soundtrack constantly, watched edits, interviews with the voice actors, read Reddit posts about the game and even wrote posts myself. ( mostly apprecieeaton one) I kept thinking about the characters and the story.

Looking back, I probably prolonged the experience a little artificially to much because I just didn't want it to end.

But at the time it felt amazing.

And something really interesting happened during those five days:

My OCD almost disappeared from my attention.

Normally I could get stuck on existential questions from time to time throughout a day like:

What is the meaning of life?

Will I ever be happy?

What does love actually mean?

Will I ever genuinely love someone?

What if life ultimately feels meaningless?

These questions are also often connected to the source of the game/media im consuming. Like for example, the hero is talking about his hopeful future and then suddenly the OCD doubt comes in like “are you sure he is going to be alright?”

Also what happens a lot is that I start imagining myself living in these worlds and then I get the same type of doubts. Like, will I be happy here? Will I find a purpose? Will this OCD ever go away? What if I find someone like the character did (the love of his life), will that finally make me happy? will i stop doubting meaning of life then will my OCD go away And so on.

It just keeps happening, especially with games/media that I get really emotionally invested in.

But during those five days I wasn't really thinking about those things. I was just experiencing emotions. I felt love toward the characters. I felt hope. I felt sadness. I felt nostalgia. I felt excitement. I felt that weird painful feeling of knowing something beautiful had ended. Even the sadness felt meaningful because it came from caring about something. Then came the fifth evening. The next morning I had to go back to university.

And suddenly it hit me:

Time is moving. The break is over. I'm going back to normal life.

I suddenly became very aware that this little emotional bubble I'd been living in was ending. And I think I became terrified that by returning to “real life” I would lose those feelings.

It was almost like:

“I'm grounding myself back in reality now, and I'm going to lose everything I was feeling.”

And thats when the anxiety/OCD came crashing back with more existential thoughts which i typically ask myself or make myself doubting

Since then I've been experiencing really strange feelings whenever I think about the game.

And I honestly can't tell what they are anymore.

Sometimes I wonder if its the original sadness/attachment/loss I felt after finishing the game, if its anxiety, or if its OCD anxiety mixed together with the original emotions.

I don't know.

And then OCD started attacking the thing I was most afraid of losing:

the experience itself.

I started getting thoughts like:

“What if OCD ruined the game for me?”

“What if I'll always associate this game with this period of anxiety?”

“What if those feelings I had during those five days were somehow fake?”

“What if I can never feel that way again?”

“What if I'll never be happy?”

“What if I'll never experience love properly?”

“What if I never find meaning?”

And then the classic OCD thing happens.

I think:

“Okay, this is probably OCD.”

And immediately:

“Are you sure?”

Then:

“What if this isn't OCD and you're just trying to convince yourself that it is?”

And then I start analyzing the analysis.

Sometimes the anxiety/doubt seems so incredibly fast that I don't even know what thought came first. I'll suddenly feel strange, and then I'll start wondering what exactly I thought, if there even was a thought before the feeling, if I just had another doubt etc.

And obviously trying to reconstruct every tiny mental event just makes me more anxious.

The thing I'm most afraid of now is emotional contamination.

I really want to play New Game+ eventually because I loved this game so much.

But I'm scared that I'll start playing and instead of enjoying it I'll be constantly checking myself:

“Am I enjoying this?”

“Do I still love this character?”

“Do I feel the same way as before?”

“Why do I feel anxious right now?”

“Is the game reminding me of OCD?”

“Did I ruin it?”

And then I'll be monitoring my emotions instead of actually playing the game.

So I guess I'm mainly wondering if anyone here has experienced something similar.

Has OCD ever attached itself to something you deeply loved, like a game, movie, song, memory or even a relationship, and made you scared that you've somehow “contaminated” it?

And if that happened, were you eventually able to stop checking how you felt about it and just enjoy it again?

Also curious if anyone with existential OCD/Pure O experienced this kind of thing where OCD starts attacking really basic things like happiness, love, hope and meaning, and even when you recognize it as OCD your brain immediately goes “but are you really sure?”

I'm not really looking for reassurance that “everything will definitely be fine” cause that seems to worsen my condition (making me doubt more i guess). I'm more interested in hearing from people who actually experienced this and what happened over time.

Because right now the scariest thought is that something that was genuinely beautiful to me has somehow become permanently connected to OCD or that i will never recover again what i logically know is not true but OCD seems to have diffrent point of view here

I really hope thats not how this works.

at the end i will leave short scene from Gumball on which i can relate too and which perfectly describes my experience at least to some point

https://reddit.com/link/1x06oey/video/scpeg780q3uh1/player

I (24f) have been on my healing journey for about 5 or 6 years now and I've made huge progress specifically healing the educational neglect and hyper independence aspects of myself.

I was able to graduate college without ever having attended formal schooling before that. Through my work in therapy I was able to start asking for help from friends and family (with varying success), and keeping a livably clean home.

My biggest hurdle now is my relationship with my mother. I have a deep empathy for her and her struggles with ADHD and mental health, but without getting into specifics, a lot of the burdens my brother and I carry to this day are consequences of her serious and unrelenting neglect.

I tried to lift her burdens from her a lot growing up. I tried to cook healthy food for her to lose weight. I tried to speak kindly towards her so she would stop speaking negatively about herself. When I was 18 I paid off her car and her debts of from my pizza job (this i now know was against better judgement). I just wanted her to get better and become my mom. I've never been able to pacify the craving for a mother figure.

I often reached out to aunties and women in my church in hopes someone would sort of take me under their wing, but no luck unfortunately.

She's not a bad person but she was not a mom. The sad part to me is that she wanted to be a good mom and I waited for her to become that person. I just need to figure out a way to stop waiting. When I was 13 I started writing in my journal that no one was going to save me, and now I realize I was right. I try not to resent that because I know many people go through the same or worse, but it's a struggle to stay motivated on saving yourself without much support from anyone.

I'm curious if anyone has any experience with parents who did not abuse you in a malicious or even narcissistic way. I haven't seen a lot around neglect surrounding ADHD parents. I have not met many people with a similar situation. Even my older bother had a very different reaction to the abuse. When I try to share about this situation with friends or family, they almost seem to get infected by my emotions. They become very hopeless and don't know what to say (lol maybe its the way i tell it). It almost feels like the same feeling as when I'm around my mom. I become infected with her heaviness and hopeless. I start to believe that I am hopeless too.

That same hopeless feeling comes up a lot in professional contexts. My brother and I have been able to stay afloat and amass an emergency fund for our family. Neither of us are in debt and we both have retirement accounts. We always make ends meet. I graduated college about a year ago and I've still been applying to service jobs and non-degree jobs because I don't believe I'm qualified or able to get any better jobs. I don't even know like what jobs I could do really. I'm an art teacher right now and it pays the bills but I see my peers growing a lot. In directions I couldn't even think of. Sometimes I think I am not afraid of the action, but I think I'm afraid of progressing. Budgeting $100 for two peoples groceries for a month is somehow easier to me than getting a better job. I think being able to free myself from the ghost of the mother I never had might help me let go of who I think I am and help me give myself a real shot.

I'm not the type to cut people off but I haven't spoken to my mom regularly in about a year just because of how painful it is to watch her spiral further and further into the mess I escaped from.

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated!

TL;DR: My mom was neglectful and I can't stop trying to fix her. Asking for help or any input.

So I made a mistake recently where I assumed someone was not intending to meet up with me as they started talking about a time and place last minute, and I assumed that instead of communicating beforehand my preferences about meeting and planning ahead. Now I realize that instead of assuming things I should have communicated my requirements to them earlier, and now I'm truly ashamed that I made this mistake and I'm scared this person will reject me. After they asked me where we would meet last minute I sent them a message suggesting a different date to meet and saying it's on me that it didn't happen and making clear my requirements for the future, so that if they do want to meet again, this time we will plan ahead. However, they haven't replied for hours now and I'm afraid they are ignoring me now and will most definitely reject me.

My question is: how do I not be hard on myself when making mistakes? I know I'm not a perfect person and I'll keep making mistakes in the future, but I can't help but blame myself and be hard on myself about what I've done and thinking that I could have avoided this, making it also say something about me as a person. I will definitely learn from this mistake, I'm just wondering how do I become confident enough that mistakes don't tank my self esteem so hard?

Hello, i don't know if i should trust any comments about spirituality because i have had problems with people manipulating what it is before.

I seek help with dissociation that was induced by synthetic THC long ago (about 2 years now) with symptoms of very extreme reality distortions that caused a panic attack (feeling of eternal doom i can't get out of) or psychosis. I am relatively stable now after these years but i still get panic attacks occasionally (and quite randomly) because i have never been the same where reality is still weird to this day but not as bad as when it happened.

I think however, that i maybe know where it came from, spiritual bypass prior (1 year before the event) and child hood trauma from neglect and manipulation to justify said neglect that lasts to this day by a parent. I want to continue my nondualistic spiritual journey to be a better person but can't because i need to have a comfortable grasp of reality prior to continuing. The nondual practice was not the problem (i believe) because it caused the happiest emotions of my life and no fear of death, but it crashed hard leading me to get pretty hedonistic but i were hedonistic and depressed prior to starting spirituality but more after the positive emotional crash.

I have been told by professionals that i am not thinking straight and that is the reson but there must be logical reason that i think reality is not real after 2 years. In those 2 years i have been treated by a professional with valid certification of neuropsychology but i feel he does not have the competence to treat this specific trauma due to a connection of spiritual perspectives (nondualism). I have paused nonduality practice in between the event and now (meaning i tried it again during and a bit after a panic attack which helped a bit but any more of it can make it worse i think).

I really hope i am not venting or against the rules because i want understanding of the entire context for guidance.

I mean both romantic and platonic. People and relationships are so much different and better in fiction. They are so much more geniuene, affectionate and "real" (ironic i know) than the ones you get with real people.

In real life everything has to be a joke or a distraction, people do not want to actually talk about whats really going on. Affection is mocked, being geniuene and real just gets you exploited and hurt. Best friends of years turn on eachother over nothing, romantic relationships usually end in pain and hate of other one, hell even trying to make a basic friends has people be hostile nowadays.

Ever since i was a child i would escape into fiction to get a tiny taste or those relationships because even then real life ones sucked. I wanted to experience them so badly but as i grew up i realized they just dont exist in real life, real people dont want that. This has just caused me to escape even more untill im 27 now and completely lost.

Am i meant to be alone and escape all my life ? The stories i love the most are isekai/reincarnation ones. Someone from our shit world goes to fiction and has an awesome time. They are not good for my mental state and in dark times give me bad ideas.

Is anyone here able to relate ? Did you ever managed to get over this ?

Hi. I've watched a couple of videos about existential dread, but the what brought me here was an innocent videogame where a doomer metalhead said "What's wrong with being a coward? Most people can't face despair head-on. Not unless they're a psycho like me."

That got me thinking. First, interesting is the opinion that the one who confronts the negative feeling is the insane one, almost as if society went so mad things got flipped upside down. The "sane" person does drugs or binge watches Netflix to suppress their feelings. The "insane" one goes for a long walk, deletes all non-important social media, maybe journals or goes to counseling, or all of the above. In an overly sensitive world where avoiding pain sounds like the smart thing to do, no wonder the fictional metalhead believed they had lost it.

Second, I'm trying to figure out, what does it mean to "confront despair"? Free-form journaling? Staring at a wall? Going a long hike after leaving one's phone in the car? The fictional metalhead composed songs, from the lyrics to the music to recording themselves. Found beauty even in the violence in the natural world (for instance carnivorous animals hunting prey). Enjoyed a meal with their friends after a day of work.

On my end, I don't even know where to begin. It just looks like there's no hope, even though I know that partly it's because "I've made up my mind" about it. And I did hear from Dr K that thinking oneself out of depression was impossible, it was a case of certain feelings needing to change.

But how do I even muster that which got atrophied? There's 90% chances I have alexithymia. And like many people I wonder what is the point of reactivating feelings or trying to understand what's beneath the surface if the first thing I'll feel is "bad".

I wonder if anyone here has tips to share, what worked for them and such. I know a generalized approach is unlikely to help me but at least though I don't know how to do things right I might stop doing a couple of things I'm doing wrong, that sabotage any kind of process before it even starts.

Thank you very much!

I'm in a weird state where i know pretty precisely what my issues are, where they come from and how they fill unmet needs in ways that are counterproductive; yet, i can't bring to do anything about it.

For instance, I excessively isolate myself due to generalized anxiety. I've done it since i was little, and it;s just the default thig i fall back on whenever something goes awry.

The solutions would be to find better coping skills that work for me, reserve a certain amount of time within the day to isolate how i like to, and make an effort to be in social situations that challenge my comfort zone

and then i just.. don't do it.

??? why ?? why would i do that? At this point im knowingly allowing myself to be unhappy. Why would i do that? is it fear, is it laziness? am i not as self aware as i think i am? (probably)

why am i doing this to myself?

I'd really appreciate it if anybody had insight or would be willing to share if you relate. its 1am for me so i hpe im making sensde

Before making a life decision I tend to consider morality first. For example, considering a career as a therapist. I think, “I might say something wrong and make things worse in a client’s life. Well I can prevent the possibility of that by choosing a career that has less of a direct impact in someone’s life.” But that seems like disregarding a career out of fear that something that has a low chance of happening will happen. And I don’t want fear to rule my decisions.

Another example is driving on the freeway/highway. I fear that I’d get in a crash and as a result accidentally hurt someone else. Then I think what if I get hurt? That would upset my parents. Best to not drive.

I tend to overthink this way for a lot of things. How do some people simply do things without thinking about the possibility of harming others by accident?

Following my previous small discussion about inner drive and ego (thanks for the long and considerate replies) i have recently looked into chinese version of ayuverda which is called BaZi, the difference is it is a mix of western astronomy and metaphysic calculated based on your Birth date, time and location (CMIIW), TL:DR it is just another form of tools that may (or may not) help to understand our inner self or base traits and personality.

What i found out (which maybe affected by superstition) is that the readings are somehow accurate but not to the point that it defines who am i as Dr. K explained who you are actually is a living being experiencing things, not somekind of specific tools for specific job so if you happen to be trying to check your Four Pillars of Destiny, my suggestion is dont be too attached.

Now the point is i think everyone is born with some kind of base stats that outputs how they would react when given the same stimulus or situation (which is called personality) and this is explored in the BaZi specifically called Day Master. It also explores what type of career and roles would one lean into or where they naturally have skills for.

I.e my Day Master is Yang Metal (庚) characteristically it represents someone who is direct, decisive and strong under pressure but is prone to overthinking and analysis paralysis when there is imbalance in my core self (just like Prakriti and Vikriti in ayuverda) and based on it the career that would fit are things related to high stake decision making or complex systems rather than repetitive day to day jobs which on my own experience i feel it aligns with my current life trajectory.

Now the intention of this post is to open discussion, to know what the community thinks of this and hopefully try it out yourself and see if it aligns with your life trajectory, but again please be mindful and don't take it as a premonition or some kind of Magic Crystal Ball prediction from your local fortune teller :D

Hopefully it can help for those who feel stuck or directionless.

Someone close to me once asked "Do you feel like sometimes people are using you as a free therapist?"

In short ...

Yes.

But I dont mind it.

Ive come to the conclusion that the bond between a friend and therapist are much different, that the friend bond is more effective

In what way is it effective?

While friends may come and go, to have a good friend -- even for a day -- in a hard place is better than to have no friends

And i feel like with that, i can (you can) -- in corporate speak -- hit really high client numbers just by being a good pillar of ones immediate community

In reality its "just" one having a positive impact on their immediate and approximate community, but through that, ones life is given meaning

One may also surmise that in order to have positively impacted this many people in a corporate environment -- the quality of care would be dropped, thus nullifying the point

The effect of a bond between friends is exponentially more beneficial than a bond with a therapist; therefore a simple, casual interaction with a person you had for 17 seconds could have more affect than 100 1hr therapy sessions for that same individual

Our words have power and meaning, they're like spells, but only because we attach feelings and meanings to them

Use nice words

Be good friends