Humans have always been social animals. Our lives have always depended on the cooperation and reciprocity of fellow humans. This has been true throughout the entire existence of humankind.

Modern society is built strongly on conscious, intelligent, hard work. When a person prioritizes their own comfort over their responsibilities, it hits hard on the society.

With the rise of the digital age, Al and ever-changing algorithms of short-form social media, laziness has become a plague on society.

The least someone can do is not put a burden on someone else.

Hi! I (closeted but visibly MtF to outsiders) (20) have been just bumming around for the last 2 and a half years since I graduated because I don’t know what I want to do.. For background I really like plants and animals, but I find plants easier to work with so would very much like to work in horticulture or at a plant nursery- maybe even home depot or lowe’s- something similar to that! The problem is, I really cant get picked up for interviews and even if by some rare chance I did- my terrible social cues and dissociative problems would absolutely kill any chance I had of a successful interview. I was thinking of trying college or trade school, but i’m really dumb for that and the boatload of work would almost be impossible for someone of my intellect. Any help would be appreciated, tho tbh~ I don’t really know how I could be helped haha 🥀

1. Cook tacos and purposely feed them to my dog and not throw any chairs or cry
   
2. Get medication
   
3. Do hobbies such as drawing
   
4. Pretend my friend asked me to hang out and ask my parents if I can go and then tell them my friend cancelled and not cry or panic
   
5. Clean my room every day
   
6. Try hard in school
   
7. Build a puzzle and purposely throw one of the pieces out of my window and don’t cry or shutdown
   
8. Throw away the house I worked really hard on in shop class 😭😭
   
9. Go somewhere by myself and not feel sad or lonely
   
10. More therapy
    
11. Accept that it would be okay if I grew up and just lived with a bunch of cats
    
12. Be grateful that someone cared enough to try for me and don’t be upset that I was too much because I was and I am an adult so it’s nobody else’s responsibility to help me except myself
    
13. Become more responsible by doing chores, continuing to work, and doing my homework
    
14. Watch movies and shows with violent and mature themes to make myself less sensitive and more mature
    
15. Research and study metaphors and social skills so I can understand others more easily with minimal explaining and clarification
    
16. Try to find a concert to go to and stay for the whole time without becoming visibly overwhelmed to work on my tolerance for sensory overload
    
17. Stop texting others every time I am lonely and instead do something kind for myself or others
    
18. Go in public and remember that strangers are most likely not judging me and even if they are, don’t care
    
19. Order food by myself from now on I will always do it myself and if I accidentally fail I will just try harder next time and not be very upset at myself because I know how hard I am trying
    
20. Acknowledge that I have been an abusive, mean, and toxic person in the past but that doesn’t mean I do not also have kindness in my heart and don’t let that make me feel like I am not worthy of being alive. Instead, think about how exaughsting it must have felt dealing with me and how hurt I made people feel. Take the kindness and love in my heart and make sure it takes the steering wheel to guide my future actions
    
21. Do 666 acts of kindness for every day I was dating my best friend and wasn’t my best kind self

If I think of more things I will also add them to my list, I think once I complete most of this I will be able to be loved again and I will also feel better about myself and the world around me. I know I can be a loving person, I promise myself that I won’t get carried away with relying on others. I will be very conscious of my actions in the future. It also helps that I will be studying social work because I will learn how to be even more caring that way. I am telling myself it is okay to love someone and take a break because I really care about this person and I recognize how I was making that person feel so it is best if we have distance for however long it takes to heal. I will start my journey to normalcy by walking to the store and cashing in my lottery tickets, I will take my stuffed animal with me and not feel embarrassed that I am by myself as an adult with a stuffy. I will do this right now after eating a nutritious meal.

Unpopular opinion: deciding to change doesn't matter that much. What matters is what you do the next time you don't want to do it.

I used to love the feeling of deciding to change. New notebook. Big plan. I felt great for a few days, then I stopped.

What really helped was different. I noticed the exact moment I wanted to quit, and I made a small rule for that moment. My rule is fifteen minutes. I have to do fifteen minutes, no excuses. After that I can stop if I want. I almost never stop.

Deciding to change is easy. Everyone does that all the time. The hard part is showing up on day nine, when it's boring and nothing feels different yet.

What's your rule for the moment you want to quit?

i don’t know why i feel like this but it’s always been and issue with me that i’ve become aware of recently.

i always feel so upset with myself and wanna disappear when i end up being in the wrong in a situation, no matter how small the situation actually is. like if i’m “arguing” with someone over a small thing or debating somebody and i end up being incorrect on whatever thing we’re talking about, i get so mad at myself for ever even speaking in the first place. i don’t get why this happens and it’s made me fearful of expressing myself or even just having opinions in general.

i usually need people to tell me what they think first and then base my opinion on what other people say. this comes down to things like my opinions on movies, my own interests, morals, and things of the like.

idk, i think this might be bad…? so i’d appreciate any feedback on this. ty!

I’d like to know what was the final straw that pushed you to go low or no contact with your mother. Was it a gradual build up over the years or was it one specific incident?

My mother has always been cold and shown little interest in me unless I am making her look good or giving her something to brag about.. yet equally nothing I ever do will be good enough for her. We have never had much of a relationship and have never really been close, but it was something I was pretty used to and it didn’t bother me much. However that all changed for me recently after her behaviour around a specific milestone event for me this year.

After this, and out of seemingly nowhere, it finally hit me. I felt this overwhelming sense of loneliness, depression, emptiness. I just want my mother, but she is not here. I screamed and cried for days. It feels so unfair. Why doesn’t my mother love me? It hurts so much.

When I confronted her she ignored me. We have not spoke since and I don’t have it in me anymore to ever speak to her again. I am still so unbelievably hurt and angry, but mostly I feel horribly depressed. Not necessarily because of this one specific incident but because of the realisation that it has always been this way with her.

I am also currently starting DBT therapy.

This realization was brought upon by me because I ended my marriage because I thought I resented my husband, only to eventually realize that I have a lot of problematic behaviors and thoughts, and that a lot of our issues were actually because I was very cruel and mean to him. I've noticed that I behave this way with others in my life too.

My exhusband and my mom have been really kind to me through this process, and it made me realize I don't have to hate myself anymore, that I can change.

I am also welcoming to stories from people who have been through something similar. Thank you.

I just turned 23, I have 1 year left for my uni to end. It's gonna be my 5th year because I still have classes that I didnt passed

I dont wanna get into too much detail because even talking about it makes me anxious. everything about the future of my life, future of my relationship with my boyfriend and family, finding a job, where I will be living ect stresses me so bad rn that I cant function normally.

I have 20 days for my uni to start and I cant even enjoy my holiday.

Im so stressed with overthinking that it reflects on my body, I had severe eyebrow twitching few days ago and I cant sleep sadly

How can I fix it? I want to stop overthinking 🥲

Hello,

I'm trying to understand a pattern that has been bothering me for a long time, and I'd really appreciate some outside perspectives. I obviously only have my own perspective, and I'm specifically looking for criticism of my own behaviour as well.

When something hurts me, I often don't actually want the other person to take responsibility for it or admit that they did something wrong. I mostly want my hurt to be acknowledged.

Something as simple as "I can understand why that hurt you" or "i can see that hurt you" would be enough.

What is particularly difficult for me is when I try to explain why something hurt me and the response immediately becomes something like "Maybe they didn't mean it that way", "Maybe you're interpreting it too negatively", or "It's probably not as bad as you think." Or my therapist started to laugh a little an said: "You're really playing the victim, though." (It wasn't an attack but to show me how far away my reaction was, but it still hurt me)

Even if that interpretation is completely reasonable, I experience it as "it's not really that bad, so your reaction doesn't make sense."

And that's where I can become defensive, not always but right now my skin is very thin.

I have a tendency to explain my self when I feel invalidated. But when I finally speak up, I can become intense and overly focused on making the other person understand my perspective. I sometimes push too hard and don't give the other person enough room for their own interpretation. Which is not okay.

Afterwards, I often immediately turn everything against myself:

Was I too sensitive?
Did I communicate badly?
Did I hurt the other person?
Was I actually the problem?
Should I have just stayed quiet?
Am I always like that?

This creates something that feels like a double bind to me:

If I stay quiet, I feel like my own hurt is being ignored. If I speak up, my reaction can become the focus and my original hurt disappears. I try to improve my communication by explaining how I feel and how I perceive the situation right now.

I recently experienced exactly this with a close friend.

I was telling him about my experiences with my therapist. I explained that I often felt that the therapist focused more on evaluating my reactions than on actually engaging with what I was trying to tell him. I've already discussed this with my therapist: that was the situation where he said, "You're really playing the victim."

I gave my friend this example. He responded by offering a more positive interpretation of the therapist's behaviour: essentially that perhaps the therapist was trying to challenge me or show me that things weren't as bad as I perceived them.

I reacted too quickly and too strongly. I told him that I was experiencing the same dynamic with him at that moment and that I could feel my nervous system reacting to it.: I was trying to explain why something had hurt me, and instead of acknowledging that, my friend was visibly hurt by that and withdrew. He fell silent, wouldn't look me in the eye, and his body language said, "Leave me alone."

Looking back, I can see that I handled that badly. I became too forceful, didn't give him enough room, and effectively compared his way of responding to the behaviour of my therapist.

I noticed that, and I then tried to address the problem, but he barely responded. A few days later I sent him a long voice message apologizing. I acknowledged that I had been too intense and that I had pushed over his perspective. I also explained that this subject is extremely emotionally loaded for me and that I can react very strongly because some of these experiences feel almost existentially threatening to me.

I explicitly told him that this explains my reaction but doesn't excuse it.

So I do recognize that I did something wrong here. I'm not trying to avoid responsibility for my behaviour.

My friend had also just gone through a breakup with a lot of conflict, so looking back, it was pretty stupid of me to start such an emotionally loaded conversation at that point. I should have been more considerate of what he was already dealing with. I deeply regret that.

But what I'm struggling with is that I also feel like the original issue gets completely lost once I explain myself.

I can simultaneously have communicated badly and have been genuinely hurt by what happened.

Those two things don't cancel each other out.

I don't need the other person to admit that they were wrong. I don't need them to take responsibility for my feelings. I just want there to be room for the fact that I was actually hurt.

Instead, I often end up feeling that I have to prove why my hurt was justified.

And then the other person's reaction triggers the exact fear I already have: "See? You spoke up, you handled it badly, and now you're the problem. You better leave."

I'm trying to figure out how to break this cycle.

How can I take genuine responsibility for my own behaviour without completely abandoning the original hurt that caused the reaction in the first place?

How do I learn to say "I understand that I handled this badly" while also being able to say "but what happened still hurt me"?

Thank you very much for reading. I really appreciate your time and your thoughts.

I don’t know where to begin. For some clarity: I am autistic, I figured out this year at 24. School was okay for me besides math. I always passed classes growing up, never got held back. Until high school I failed algebra twice and my mom even got me a tutor (wish I had more memory of this). I remember my Dad was really hard on me about math but once again, really poor memory so I don’t want to talk more on that if I’m not 100% on the details. I also remember starting around middle school for some reason the people I was around even my friends would make me out to be dumb, I wish I could remember the jokes better but I remember being the butt them a lot when it came to intelligence, I remember at least the feelings I had and always wondering where they got that from or how they “knew”, how I’d plan on how to tell them to stop. When I think of my experience in math classes I immediately think of that feeling where it feels like your brain is about to explode and I usually get really angry and don’t know what to do with myself. I used to hit myself with my books when I’d get overwhelmed by the work. Math isn’t necessarily the exception, I actually really admire it and WANT to be good at it and be able to practice for fun. I mean I HAVE to be good as I want someday to get a chemical biology degree, or just chemistry we’ll see but yeah, I love this stuff, I feel like my brain is stopping me from being able to really get into the spaces I want to be. Even if that’s just researching on my own, I can’t do these things without math.

Anywayyy it’s not all math. I was actually prompted to make this post because I’m playing sudoku for the first time and just after 4 losses I am repeating to myself in my head that I’m too stupid to live. It’s insane. I know that’s insane and that it’s not serious and that it’s just a logic game that I’m trying for the first time. Of course I keep trying but I can’t win and it’s late at night and I am getting really worked up. My instinct always is “just keep going until you win/solve” but it’s like a physical feeling that stops me, I never make a conscious decision it feels to try again later, it’s like my brain is so tight (?) that if I continue it will short circuit. That’s what really sucks the most out of all of this, that I feel I do have the willpower and the WANT yet it seriously feels like a real mental block. Sure you could say “then you don’t want it enough” or “you’re not exercising your will enough” and I tell myself that too but I know that’s not the problem. I don’t know if this is just my autism, I don’t know if I need to accept that everything will take me a lot longer to learn or what.

I’m trying to figure out the type of intelligence I really struggle with, because I know it’s not a complete deficit. I can understand complex ideas, I can do basic things like cook and drive, I am good at my current job as an optician and I have always picked up on things fast, I am good with technology and understanding how things work/where things go, I’m kind of typing this all out just to try to understand exactly the part of my brain that’s struggling and I guess all I can dumb (lol) it down to is problem solving. It might be bc of my autism and how we’re more likely to use bottom up processing? I really do think that’s a major issue, I always think of the details first and get hung up on things. Even if I’m told a certain step in math works just because it works I need to understand WHY and I get so hung up that I can’t do the rest.

I’m not sure what else to say really, I just want to know what to do. I try to keep my brain healthy (literally why I started that game), I meditate, I take my mood stabilizer, I do all the stuff I’m supposed to. So what is this? I don’t want to speak this into existence but this really does sometimes make me feel very hopeless in my future. How am I supposed to complete 3 calculus classes, physics classes, if I feel like hitting myself over a fcking game?

I really feel like I could’ve gone more into depth, so please ask me questions if needed. Sometimes what I need is to be asked them too

If there's anything I've learnt the past year and half is that putting off the start of anything only buys time and time waits no human they say.

If it's starting that new career, moving to a different city, going back to school or taking a shot at marriage, you're never too late to start. You'll never going to feel more ready than you do right now.

There's never a a perfect moment so just pick one thing and take the first small step today. I took my shot last year to enroll in a new undegrad program and it's going so well. Can't wait to finish and graduate.

You can do it too.

I feel like this is getting out of hand. I left my old job in January 2019. Now 8.5 years later, I realised I never got over that job and I'm grieving the loss of that job. How do i move on?

I have been working in different jobs since then but no other job ever felt right.

I guess maybe I should put this under seeking advice category as well. I’m writing here because I’m genuinely concerned for my wellbeing and I’m reaching a point where I don’t see a way out anymore. I’ve never been this far in and I’m in a very dark place.
I am writing here because I am a hypochondriac. There’s no way I’m not, and it’s taken me almost a decade to accept it. When I was younger I watched my best friend die from cancer that could’ve been diagnosed about 4 years before. The doctor could’ve been sued and fired but I don’t think they went that route. That with the combination of my family lying to me time and time again has caused the inability to trust almost every person ever and especially “authority” figures. It has also caused me to spiral in terms of health anxiety and anxiety in general. For years there’s always something. Immense anxiety over going blind in my sleep, having a lump in my breast and needing a screening, not being able to catch my breath after vaping, an extreme fear of flying, to name a FEW, and now I’m fully and utterly convinced I have neagleria fowleri from getting water pushed up my nose in a different country.
I’ve noticed how much it’s ruining my relationships around me. My boyfriend was very calmly trying to talk to me about it today and told me he never understood how bad it was, but honestly I didn’t either. I just couldn’t hold a conversation and told him to stop talking basically. I hate that about myself . The best way I could explain it was being in panic mode all of the time and not being able to find a break in the panic to even think about finding a better solution or comfort than constant panic. There’s some comfort in worrying all the time because that means I can catch whatever’s wrong sooner. I told him I didn’t have it in me to try any harder to find a coping mechanism, but truthfully I just don’t want anyone else involved in this but me. No one needs to see me this way. It’s devastating and depressing. I do want to try to be better. I thought I’d reached the height of coping but I think I can try one last time to break out of this. Has anyone gone through something similar, or at least radical acceptance? I will talk to anyone. I just need a friend or some advice or guidance.
If I don’t end up dying from what I believe I’m dying from right now, I’m fully ready to start drinking every day just to live a little better. I’m tired of it all. I genuinely don’t care about my kidney failing at least I’ll go through some of life without worrying.

Tldr: immense control issues, health anxiety related mostly. Can’t let go of control but I think it’s the only way to try and live my life. How do you do that?

So in a few weeks I go in for TMS therapy as I've gone the traditional medication route with little success. In the time leading up to it to get by, my reliance on AI to get things done and to talk things out with has gone up and I can feel it rotting my brain so I'm forcing myself to stop using it entirely.

My working/immediate memory is shot and my motivation and attention span are similarly nonexistent.

I don't expect TMS to be a cure-all or make me a super genius, I'm just hoping it'll remove the barriers to allow me to work towards my former passions once again without cognitive fog or friction and allow my brain to make the connections it so desperately needs to provide a solid foundation for me to see life vividly again and do the things I want to see through.

I'm a computer engineer in name only but have had to deal with mental health issues all my life, again, refractory to medication or therapy. I want to be able to live up to my name.

What advice do y'all have for me?

As the title says I’m making a list of little goals to help me enjoy life more. By little goals I mean things that are easily achievable, such as trying new foods (e.g Turon), doing new activities (a casual sport, karaoke, etc), trying new hobbies, and so on!

I often get scared of trying new things, but if they’re small then hopefully they won’t overwhelm me and I can push myself out of my comfort zone a bit.. So please give me some ideas! :)

(I’ll eventually share the list if anyone wants it)

I’m a very chronically online, person. I got involved in some pretty fucked up shit that got so serious that I end up reporting an person that I used to enable and I lost a lot of online friends and my reputation is ruined and that’s my fault.

But I just want to know is it possible I could do better and how do I stay offline and improve myself. How do I stop being a creep and learn to be better Also, yes I am going to therapy.

So I just graduated secondary school, and im taking a break year, yet I know myself, and I know i cannot get anything done without the pressure of an external deadline (the second D in ADHD stands for disorder for a reason), and im also terrible at creating new habits and starting new things, I however:

•want to finally do a little exercise (I mean, ive been stationary for the past 18 years, I think its best to change that)

•want to finally clean my space

•want to learn new things

•want to finally start some hobbies

•most of all, want to not waste my year just doomscrolling all day every day

I however, have been trying to get myself started on this, but to no avail, so im asking here for any advice

how do you just move on from stupid wrong shit you've done? i can't live by continuously replaying the same thing in my head i'm cutting out as much things as possible to prevent me from doing it again but it's not like im throwing it under the rug i just don't want to let my identity be defined by this. someone asked me my hobbies and i didn't even know what to say how do you find what you enjoy again

Alright, I apologize for all the spelling errors beforehand as Enlgish is not my 1st language.

Lately I've been living by myself for already 5 months and though I've managed to do well I seem to be always making stupid errors , mostly at work. In fact I've done stupid errors that might cost even losing my job and going back to living with my mother again, I'm just tired of always making the futile efforts of doing well on my own and always failing. I've gone as far as to think that I'd be better off dead as I'm always struggling to do well at the most basic stuff , whereas everyone else my age is living a normal and quiet life. I believe this is just the result of having a low IQ because I honestly can't find another explanation for this.