Im 15M and I want to change my past, go back to before anything happened. Ive made so many mistakes and unforgettable choices that I just wish it was even a year ago. All the kids I hangout with just bully me. I want to go back when I still had them, still knew what I wanted. I wish for the chance to talk to my crush again, say the right things to avoid the depression I had and all the stuff I did to my body. I wish I could see her again for the first time, bear witness to her beautiful face.

Sorry if it was too long, I just needed this off my chest

I’m so so so sorry if this isn’t the right place for this post

I’m a 21 year old woman with no irl friends. I am absolutely terrified of other people, I genuinely cannot handle socialisation without my fight or flight kicking in. I wish I could change it, I’d love to have some nice friends. But every attempt has always ended in me being picked on or left out. I have no self esteem or confidence, I become completely mute around new people. I can’t even force myself to talk.

I was a victim of bullying as a kid, I won’t go into detail but it was particularly bad and gave me a fear of talking to people. That fear has gotten to the point where even online socialisation is difficult for me, I have to turn people down when they ask to join me on games because it makes me feel sick. I’ve turned down job opportunities because they require face to face interaction. I feel so alien.

I know this is a very silly fear and my history is no excuse. I just don’t know how to fix it. Therapy isn’t an option right now. I don’t think I necessarily need it, I just feel like a spectator to my own species and it’s hard. It’s like I’m just waiting around while the world spins.

My mother died a couple years ago and it’s just gotten worse since then. I don’t want to lose more of myself in isolation and grief, I want to try being a person.

So if anyone has any advice please let me know. Even if it’s something small, I’m okay with working on little things at a time. I’d love to hear from anyone that has had a similar experience and what they did to manage it.

tldr im afraid of people and want to fix it

Hi all-

I recently went off my depression medication. It's been since mid July that I took my last tapered dose. I did this on purpose, tapered, wanted to do it, knowing there'd be an adjustment.

I'm functioning overall really well. I just....I just don't care about anything and I've noticed (again, I expected) an uptick in anxious thinking which is usually mitigated by me saying "I didn't feel this way on the drug so this seems like anxiety voice" Will I ever snap out of this funk?

I feel "tired" even though I wake up feeling rested and can consciously acknowledge that my body feels rested. I feel like I don't care deeply about anything, good or bad. I wrote in my journal: "I know who I used to be and how I used to feel about the world but I don't know who I am now and I don't seem to feel anything about the world around me." I don't know what to do for myself. I do the active things. I do the healthy things. I still find myself wanting to stare at the wall.

I got rid of all social media, and switched to only reddit, about a year and a half ago.

When I had facebook, I used to use my post history as a means of mental health checks; this honestly was a useful analytic overall.

For instance, I’m bipolar. Once upon a time I could use facebook analytic data to note the patterns of my cycles; the data was constant enough it was actually a useful thing for my shrink and I to use to map out stuff moving forward.

Think like “oh, I’ve had depression crashes every single November- all my posts are Radiohead lyrics”

Or “oh, I can tell I’m manic right now bc of the length of this post I’m making on [r/mentalhealth](r/mentalhealth) health right now”.

.

Anyways, I just hit 100 karma today.

I’ve had this, my first and only account, for a year and a half.

Fuck.

That’s not healthy behaviour.

Anyways, the road to hell is paved with good intentions; I just started using reddit like social fucking media, and just.. darn.

When I saw how much karma I had, I crept my post and comment history, and realized I had just jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire; the mania cycles and reddit usage clearly still ebbed and flowed same as it did before.

And yeah sure; theres still the catch 22 of out of all the words I’ve spewed, some of them are pretty and will be useful for art, but like note to self; don’t romanticize mental illness, ya know?

So a subtle “yay”.

And a boisterous “darn.”

Anyways, this is just a random vent I guess, where yes a silver lining is that I noticed I was “doing the thing”.

Also I’m in my thirties currently; I went back to school in my late twenties, but then Covid hit, and I didn’t finish; so it goes.

But it made me realize something.

Whenever was in school, all these thoughts were just rewarded constantly by profs for the entire ride.

Because in the context of an over disclosing social media post.. dude wtf are you okay?

But that same energy put towards something like school or work is both “healthier”, but more so and is behavioural patterns within the realm of the accepted dominant social norm (think like wording something using those words, for example).

I’m sure a lot of us have felt that weird disjunct between how your ideas are perceived inside and outside of academia or art- a lot of times that environmental difference is the difference between being viewed as crazy or smart.

But I was too crazy to ever finish school.

Anyways, despite my virtual reflection of me looking a little bit unstable atm (and despite how funny it is to look at my post and think about attachment theory lmao), since Covid, which means….

Since I got sucked back to my home town to be the primary caregiver as my grandma slowly died of Alzheimer’s,

Since giving up on life, picking a date, going wtf no, and intentionally getting addicted to blow and having risky sex for a few years as an alternative, to then getting sober,

Since meds and therapy,

Since being sexually assaulted and having police try to cover it up, and then being forced to gather evidence myself, and then using the police over-site board to hold both the police and it’s inappropriate to say their name in this space ugh accountable for what they fucking did (and finding out the police were protecting other victims as well, and then helping given those victims a voice too),

… my real life reflection has been doing pretty good for a while now, and I’m gonna be going to back to school in a week and

Tl:dr yay!

I don't know what it is exactly.

I can't really put my finger on it, but it's there.

Lingering or something i guess.

Whenever I spend time with somebody, when I build a connection.

If I ever show them the side of me that's real.

I get pushed back in and have to joke around again.

Because no one likes reality, they all just like being distracted from the same ending we will all be getting. Yet I feel weird.

I don't know who I am. I can't remember the first 13 years of my life for the life of me, people tell me of memories I make up in order to recall.

I feel so weird.

I was never one to be spiritual, be it religion or astrology or spells or stuff.

But that hate for my true self everybody feels, including me.

It can't be real.

It made me question for the first time ever truly, if I was cursed in a past life.

What have I done to be so truly unlikable?

I wonder.

If I ever show the real me, and someone could end up not despising me.

Tldr; yap yap yap, I hate myself. Thank you for listening:)

I am having weird thought battles.

I will be very productive for a week and then for several weeks or even months fall into a deep depression, I don’t feel anything, and I feel like I am watching my own life, through a control panel inside my brain (like Inside Out, the movie) pressing the buttons. “Say this next. Do this gesture next. To walk, you must put that foot in front of the other. Next you will do this, and then you will do that.” I am so overly anxious about things that will never happen that I try and prevent them happening before they happen. I’ve spent all my money on useless this. No matter how hard I try and distract myself from the anxiety, I have this thing where I can double think. I can be so deeply focused on a task, yet there will always be this background thought. Like static on an old TV. You can still hear the movie, but can also hear the static. But these thoughts are not me thinking things willingly, until I notice it. Then when I become self aware that these thoughts are happening, I feel like I am thinking them myself. This doesn’t make any goddamn sense. When I work up the courage to talk about it to someone, I feel dramatic, like I am just experiencing normal things and everyone experiences this. It’s like mental gymnastics. Are these symptoms of an underlying mental health problem that is going undiagnosed, or am I just normal? Then I convince myself that I am just trying to be unwell, consciously making the effort to do these things to myself for attention or a label.

Edit: I have no money because I spend it all on hobbies that I never end up maintaining.

Has anyone else experienced the same thing?

I just learned that my boyfriend was planning to break up with me in November after my graduation. He’s been awesome and I wonder why he decided that. So he started acting up being too busy and making it seem like asking for his attention is a big deal. I then started questioning why that is and he said that he had lost interest. He said he wasn’t planning to say it now but in November after my graduation. I am beyond hurt. I’ve been having family issues for a while and he made me feel so seen and heard. I am not close with anyone but him and he decided to deliver the last blow💔 my soul is soo heavy and I can’t even sleep. 5years? And someone wakes up one day and decides they lost interest?💔 I asked him if he thinks the feeling is temporary and he said no!🥲

im exhausted. ive got so much work to do in school and i just cant. i barely did last year. this year i fear ill do badly and ill ruin my good grades.

ive got gender dysphoria and cant transition because everyones transphobic. i hate feeling miserable everyday but i cant do anything about it, im 14.

i hate my body and i hate how nobody will ever see me as a girl. ill always be lesser to them or inferior. i wish i was afab.

i wish i could at least have something to look forward to in life but ill probably never even get a gf because pf my identity. at least not where i live.

is there anything i can even do? do i message a lifeline? i would really appreciate any support.

thank you for reading

I don’t know what to do, i don’t wanna keep walking up, my memory is so bad i don’t even remember what I’ve talked about today or eaten yesterday, i can’t concenrate in anything. I just wanna jvmp off the window,maybe for attention so somebody takes me seriously? Or maybe u really wanna go

Ive been seeing black (non transparent non shadowy etc) figures like all black ink colored shapes on the periferals of my vision when my eyes move away from a spot. Its not like its a person or anything weird i also wear glasses and its mostly during the day time or with lights on night time. This is just a short explanation, il say more in comments if anyone has any idea what it could be

I recently watched horiyama (romance anime) and i feel a fuckton of jealousy towards the characters and their relationships. I know its all made up and no one will ever be like that, but those thoughts just make my goal of actually being happy and content harder to attain.

I feel so bad about the fact no one will love me and i wont ever be happy without ruining shit.

I recently quit vaping. I cut down smoking weed.
I’m doing everything I can to feel better but I just feel like it’s not enough. My meds don’t help.
Idk life just seems really fucking hard for no reason.
I had some medical issues a few months ago which led me to quit my vices. But every once in a while, I’ll start feeling pain and I get super anxious thinking the bad pain will start up again.
I just wish I can afford to take a fucking break.

Why can i never feel happy? Whenever im around friends or others, we talk and joke and laugh and its all fun. But when i stop living in the moment and realise how im happy it all comes crashing down and i feel shit. Whenever i realise im happy it ruins my mood and makes me feel so sad that i consider shutting myself off or ending it.

I want to feel happy and actually be able to realise that without feeling so bad about it.

Any help?

I know this is Reddit, not a destination for medical questions, therapy, or emotional consoling. But my hope in writing this is to connect with others who are in similar mental places. I’d also appreciate any advice or knowledge from those who may be more informed than I am about the issues I’m about to discuss.

Here we go. It’s long, so feel free to scroll past.

I’m a 22-year-old first-year graduate student studying English, with hopes of becoming a high school English teacher (and, hopefully, University down the line). For my entire life, I’ve felt that my main gift has been my natural creativity. As a kid, I was always intelligent, but prioritized my social life and creative endeavors over academics. Though I was an avid reader then, I hardly touched a full-length book until my senior year of high school, when I fell in love with classic literature—a stepping stone toward wanting to teach high school literature.

For me, my greatest strengths have always been my analytical skills and deep passion for the arts, particularly music, which has been the primary drive in my life. The idea that entire worlds existed inside of entire worlds, and that it was genuinely impossible to discover it all, made music a bottomless vessel for self-discovery. I always knew I would try making my own.

I’ve always wanted to make my mark on the world. As a kid I wrote comics, developed stories, and came up with ideas for movies, TV shows, you name it. My dad, an author and stay-at-home father, instilled this creative fire in me. In fourth grade, I got roughly 200 pages into a fantasy novel before abandoning it. That was okay at the time, but at 22, I see it as the first major instance of a pattern I’ve been unable to break.
In my sophomore year of college, I began writing an album. My biggest influences were isolated songwriters who masterfully channeled their struggles into their art, particularly Brian Wilson and Daniel Johnston. I had written and arranged 10 songs that I planned to officially record that summer, but I could never bring myself to do it. Perhaps I was intimidated by the finality of the process, but I can’t say for sure. It felt like a personal failure, and I could feel the motivation slipping away.

(CONTINUED IN COMMENTS)

I’m a 29 year old male and I’ve dealt with social anxiety, depression and ADHD ( possibly other things but undiagnosed) and I’ve more or less isolated myself for the last 10 years and didn’t really talk/ hang out with anyone in person and now I feel like I’m socially stunted and overall just bad at socializing. I’m currently on Adderall and Zoloft and I think I feel a bit better but it’s hard to tell sometimes, I want to get out and socialize but when I’m in a social situation I don’t know what to say and start getting hot and sweaty and fumble over words and just try to end it as soon as possible then beat myself up about it constantly, I’m tired of being alone all the time but at the same time I like being alone, so who should I talk to about this?

Basically the title, i feel self conscious all the time like someone is going to judge the things i do or the things i say or how my personality is, yet, i crave being alive and talking to people and doing stuff but every time i do it i get embarrassed of myself because i genuinely do embarrassing things.
So it’s a miserable cycle of wanting to be seen then getting seen then being embarrassed of it.

I’ve been using pregabalin as a add on to drinking for a while as a way to get rid of hangovers and feel more drunk while drinking less. I’ve been doing this for over half a year now but as of recently I’ve done 2 different festivals one 3 days and one 5 days and during these festivals I’ve been using pregabalin as normal but when I have got back from the festivals I have had really bad anxiety and can’t sleep. Originally I thought it was because I had done too much mdma to the fact I had seen things on accident both times. I’m only just realising it’s probably rebound anxiety from the heavy use of pregabalin. is this likely the case? Another note is this anxiety only starts the second day after the festival.

I'm really pissed at my father. This is not a normal son and father relationship

I've been dysfunctional the past 5 years due to mental health problems, agoraphobia and other things. Which means Im always home, and only go out 10 mins / day

I also dont have anyone other than my father. My mother and grandmother are really toxic

And socializing triggers me due to traumas.

But anyway, my father....he was never loving/emotional or anything even when I was a child who had so much pain and sadness in himself never a hug, never a kiss, never telling my little son how are you? I'm here with you , you can tell me anything or something anything like this

No , there was not any intimacy, warmth, love, emotions. I'm 22 now, but he never ever showned or given.

And everday I feel terrible because of my condition, I go through a horrible state, sometimes I feel like Im dying from that pain, and my father knows I'm all alone, and he doesnt ever even bother to ask how am I? Or how am I feeling? He loves me because he helps my living

But a father that never in my life gave me any emotion and love despite he knows how much I suffer, my loneliness is extremely inhuman. It would fcking make a huge difference if he was a normal father. Giving his son a hug, a kiss on the cheek

Hey my son (only child btw) I'm here with you and I support you in everything. No he instead likes to provocate me, disvalidate my problems, tried to talk me off from mental health support. Sometimes he can extremely piss me off.....

His emotional intelligence and actual intelligence isn't any more than a chimp's. I think even gorillas have it higher

We have like 2 hugs / year. If I dont speak to him he barely speaks to me on his own, I suffered my life through he was absent he shouldn't be so cold so toxic masculine, so fearful of emotions ...

All his life to this day all he does after work, watches his phone or watches his tv crosses his legs and thats it. Only if I had a supportive person from childhood or even now, my condition could have been much better already

-So parents, do not dare to wait for your child to open for emotions and love...it has to be you opening for your child ....

I am a virtually lifelong (history of nonstop childhood abuse since infancy, poverty-induced trauma, and trauma relating to the death of a parent) sufferer of PTSD/CPTSD, am AuDHD, very likely also suffer from depression and have not been able to afford treatment for any of the above.

Both my disability and survivor benefits were recently cut, and I am now relying exclusively on money from a college scholarship in order to survive. All that goes to food, bills, toiletries, etc; no insurance and literally not a cent to spare for mental health treatment. I also cannot afford a vehicle, and public transportation is virtually nonexistent in my area. This makes it impossible for me to make any more money or, even if I could afford therapy, have access to any that requires face-to-face visits.

My experience of life has become almost too much to bear; I feel as if I am lost in every conceivable way. I have no way of knowing if my understanding of the world or myself is even true, because my brain is almost always incorrect and yet I am forced to depend on said brain in order to comprehend anything. I am consequently paralyzed. My identity is wholly fractured and bordering on nonexistent, I am incapable of knowing the world for what is, and I struggle immensely to take care of myself due to all of the above. I can feel myself coming apart at the seams.

I have a partner, and I can tell that all this is wearing her down. There is nothing either of us can do about my circumstances, and I fear there could soon come a breaking point where she decides that I am a lost cause and abandons me for her own well-being.

Advice? Free online therapy options or resources? Anything that is applicable to my situation is more than welcome.

Please and thank you.

It’s Abt my bf well tdy ex it’s a CRAZYYY Story

All my childhood, I moved around due to my dad having a transferable job. So never had any stable, permanent friends. But always had friends, no matter where i went. I was an extrovert so i meshed in quickly and made good friends.

Then i came to college. Everyone seems to have such wonderful friends and the ones i made turned wonky somehow and tbh im completely alone, in a different city than my current home, and im just depressed. I’m all alone. I have ADHD and anyway struggle with tasks, and with all this, roaming around campus alone, meals alone, everthing alone, ive just gotten worse. Excessive smoking, fucking messed up room, missing assignments, terrible attendance. and it’s only the third month of college.

I just don’t know where to go. i feel completely trapped and helpless and just don’t wanna live anymore.