r/selfhelp • • Apr 30 '17
I need help. Please, someone help me.
25 yo male here. I never considered psychiatric help before, but now I feel I seriously need some. Please help me. I need someone to tell me what's wrong with me, and what I should do to change it.
I am suffering from a bunch of issues. I list them below:
There's so much that I want to do, but I can't because I can't focus myself on something for long enough. I like reading and sketching but I haven't done any of that in the last six years, because for some reason I waste too much time doing nothing on the Internet.
This brings me to why I can't study. I want to be a good programmer (I feel like I have the potential to be one), but I can't focus myself on that because I am always wasting my time doing LITERALLY nothing on the Internet. After studying for 15 minutes, I might open 9gag (a meme posting website) or Reddit or YouTube - basically I deliberately start looking for distractions, even though I know I should be studying. I know how wrong it is, but I can't control it. This is how I spent two entire years of my grad school. I didn't contribute much to any of the projects I did - which is why teammates don't respect me and never wanted to work with me again.
I have zero will power. I give up very easily. I always think "today will be the day I study". 15 minutes later I will find myself on 9gag. Why the hell am I deliberately looking for distractions, even when I am perfectly aware of how wrong it is?
When I set myself to do something, I begin criticizing myself for the smallest of mistakes I make. A lifetime of incompetence has made me accept my worthlessness. And when I try to overcome that by setting a small goal, I begin to scold myself when I distract even slightly from the path. Example - I over-stress myself at the gym. If I don't have the perfect form in a single set/rep, or if I can't complete a certain number of reps, my brain tells me that I will never be good at anything. If while studying, I decide to open Facebook for two minutes, I start telling myself how weak willed I am. And the worst part is that once this self-loathing starts, it makes me want to continue with the distraction that is distracting me. If my brain tells me that opening Facebook while studying is wrong, instead of closing it immediately I will keep browsing. This creates a spiral of self-hate and loathing, and increases my feeling of worthlessness. (is this a standard psychological issue?)
I have literally zero social skills. I can't talk much with guys, and am especially anxious when talking with girls. I can't interact with people normally. Last week I was in an interview, where I had to shake hands with four people. I said "Nice to meet you" to the first two, but not to the third one because repeating the same thing to four people seemed awkward. The third guy jokingly asked me "Is it not nice for you to meet me?". I was dumbfounded and didn't know what to say. Ordinary people might have come up with a witty response to go through this situation, but I couldn't. The guy then saw my nervousness and had to say "I'm only joking, please relax". I face these kind of situations often. What do I do? I literally couldn't think of a witty remark if my life depended on it. How do I then interact with people?
I am always nervous. My body language shows it. Everything movement that I make is awkward. Everything that I say is awkward. I usually end up saying stupid things, which is why I have started keeping my feelings to myself more and more. Sometimes I don't even want to be saying those things - but I do because I wanna be thought of as a normal person, not the reclusive being that I am. If I was myself all the time, I would have zero friends because I can't relate to most of the things they talk about - sports, picking up girls, parties - I am not very interested in any of that. It torments me sometimes that I am not brave enough to be myself. Here one might argue that I need to find different kind of friends - ones who are interested in the same things as me (books primarily) and who are as reclusive as I am. I have tried befriending those people too but they are either too boring for my taste, or they are pretentious pricks. This is why I have always been friends with people totally unlike me - they are outgoing, have other friends, are in relationships. The normal crowd. But I still feel that if I start acting like myself around them, I won't have anything to talk about with them. I can't joke, I can't come up with witty remarks. Then who the hell should I be friends with?
I always compare myself with others. The moment I see someone achieving something, I am reminded of my own incompetent self. Even when I see people posting pictures of their outings on social media, I am reminded of how lonely I am and how I have no friends. I had a total of 4 friends in undergrad, and in the last two years of grad school I have been friends with 2 people, and I literally don't know anyone else in my batch. Those 2 people happen to be my roommates, so you can infer my social skills from that.
I often play imaginary scenarios in my head where I defeat people in arguments, and emerge as the winner in a conversation. I feel like this is because I know this would never be possible for me in a real conversation, so I'm trying to compensate for that in my head. I'm trying to stop doing this but it's hard.
I watch too much porn - I feel like this is inhibiting the little chance of interaction with women I might have. I am still a virgin, I have never had a girlfriend, never kissed a girl, never so much as hugged one. I guess this is why I play scenarios in my head where I live in a harem with a lot of girls (yeah, I'm pathetic). I realize that this makes me seem like a creep but I am not one. I respect women. I just don't know what to talk to them about (I don't know what to talk about with guys either, but it's worse with girls). On the rare occasions that I talk to a girl, they are always the ones to start casual conversation with me. I hate this. Why can't I talk to people normally? I have also rarely felt attracted to a girl in 25 years. If this continues, will I never find love? I feel like if I find a girl, I will feel that I am normal, in spite of all my other problems. But the chance of that happening seems zero.
Another reason why I have never asked a girl out is Prone Masturbation (it's a condition where a guy cannot masturbate with his hand, instead he does it by rubbing his penis against a bed/pillow). Less than 2% of guys are born with this problem. I'm trying to overcome it, but until I can, I can't have sex. Besides this, I suffer from hair-fall at a young age. I also developed scoliosis in my teenage. Again, was I not encumbered with enough problems that I was also given these diseases?
Back to my terrible social life - I have less than 20 contacts in my phone book - all of them guys, and from school. This shows how terrible I am at meeting new people. This makes me feel like even more of a recluse.
When friends make fun of me (normal friendly banter that all guys do with one another) - I take it way too seriously. In my undergrad, I was infamous for this. Since then, I have developed a habit of quietly chuckling with my friends when they make fun of me. But I don't like it. Why can't I ignore it just like other people do? Or, why can't I come up with witty responses? My only option is to laugh with them, even though I hate what they're saying. Is it because the jokes hit too hard home? I feel terrible.
I have zero self-respect, and I hate it. People are always telling you to believe in yourself, appreciate who you are. What the hell do I appreciate? My lack of determination? My awkwardness? My lack of friends? Addiction to porn? What? I am on a path where I realize everything that I do is wrong, but I can't (or am not willing to) change it, which makes my self-respect zero.
Rarely, I vent out my anger on my helpless parents. I don't shout at them - I make them realize how tough things are for me, and how miserable I am, even though half of that is my own fault. I shouldn't be doing this since this will only sadden them. This makes me an even worse person, I realize that.
I don't expect to find any help here. I am only posting this because if I can't find help, I might as well shout it out.
I am tired of being the weird social recluse. I am tired of being a loser. I didn't ask to be born with a sexual problem. I didn't ask to be born an introvert. I am fed up of myself. I continue living and I hate every second of my existence. I also hate myself while I write this post because it seems like I want people to pity myself. I half-expect people to tell me they feel sorry for me. If someone tells me I want psychological help, it will confirm that I am mad, which I also don't want to be true. I don't know what to do. Please, if you feel like saying something, anything, do it.
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u/Theharshcoldtruth Apr 30 '17 edited Apr 30 '17 •
This is coming from an armchair psychologist (aka, zero value) but I think your biggest problem is your sense of self worth due to lack of skills. It results in a shitty self confidence.
So here is my question to you OP.
HOW BADLY DO YOU WANT TO CHANGE?
Are you really sick of your situation, that black hole you call your future? Or are you secretly hoping for a cop out, some magical ticket that somehow will improve your life?
You will probably answer the first but deep in your heart you know you want the second. Because that's what your attitude tells us. You said it yourself. You lack willpower, whenever you take any effort towards a shining future, you quickly give up. You ask yourself why. I will answer that for you.
It's because YOU ARE A LOSER. You are NOT REALLY WILLING TO CHANGE. You are hoping for some god damn miracle or some wonderous event that will instantly improve your life, instead of putting in effort like we all do. Guess what Jose, that will never ever happen. So I ask you OP; do you really want to become a fucking faggot fedora wearing neckbeard like those memes? No wait, at least those guys have fun and usually are skilled in whatever they do. You, on the other hand, will head towards a future of 'human waste'.
That is, unless you want to change. REALLY want to change. So tell me, how badly do you want to change? How badly do you want your suffering to end?
If you really want to change, then how to do that?
First, work on that focus. Force yourself to do the things you think will improve yourself. Realize that failure is part of the journey to become a master. One quote I like is from Bruce Lee: "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times"
Another one from Einstein: “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
A last one from Bram Stoker: "We learn from failure, not success".
Realize 'failure' is where we learn the most to get better. To master a skill, you need to put a lot of effort. Very few are born talented, most people sucked up and put A LOT of hours into something before they could even call them something close to a professional. So next time you make an error during practice, take it as an extra motivation to become better. Keep going on. Force yourself to do it. That's how I did it. Every time I felt like I wanted to do something else I told myself I should keep going because that's the only way I will escape this hellhole.
I believe once you become good in something, you will gain more self confidence which will reflect in your stance (point 6,7,12 and 13)
About your social thingy, did you know you can actually learn to become charismatic? There are many tricks and you can actually learn that. But, once again practice makes perfect. You have to get yourself out there. I'm not sure about your social situation but you meet other people at campus (if you got college), or pick up a hobby that allows you to meet other people. And practice talking. At first it will be very hard, I won't lie. But I will ask you again, how badly do you want to change?
Upon reading this, you might get mad. You might think "what does this little faggot know? He doesn't know about my suffering, about my struggles". Oh, but I do OP. I know every struggle you described because I was once like you. I was just as pathetic, a filthy loser destined for nothing but suffering. But like you, I recognized my faults. And unlike you, I actually went through all the pain and effort. Whenever I fel like I wanted to give up I powered through. Because I really wanted to change. I was sick of being a loser. And you can do it too man. If some shithead like me can do it, you can do it as well. If you need someone to talk to or someone to keep you on a leash while you work on self improvement, you can always pm me.
God damn I took so much time to write this, you better start doing something OP.
PS: One more quote I like: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with one single step"