I’ve struggled with anxiety for most of my life and it has been a constant buzzing noise in my head most of the days of my adult life. However, I experimented with a form of psychedelics ( along with drinking/cannabis - which I know was not the brightest idea looking back) and since that point the anxiety noise has completely disappeared but it has been replaced with almost constant intrusive thoughts.

I used to be able to feel good about things, but now when something ‘should’ be giving me joy , like celebrating an event, or even doing a good job at something I just feel completely numb, almost like the serotonin/dopamine/oxytocin in my brain got turned all the way down.

This trip was in October of last year and the first few months were hell, I had deep feelings of abandonment, deep self loathing and a super loud intrusive thought that told me I was wrong for my husband, I couldn’t stop crying, could barely make it through one day without being extremely emotionally dysfunctional. Over the last couple of months it has gotten better, but I’m still dealing with the very loud intrusive thoughts, and these don’t just centre on how I feel about myself but also about other people, and about how easy they find things, how joyful they can be, and how I feel like I just don’t belong because I’m not any of those things which is leading to even more tense thoughts.

I’ve been through 5 years of therapy before this experience happened and I don’t want to go back and feel like I’m circling again and trying to over therapize myself. I’m feeling completely lost, as my husband had such a better experience and came out of it feeling more assured and secure in himself and I am a mess on the other end of the spectrum which is adding more layers.

I have been feeling so alone in going through all of this, I have used an integration coach at times in the last few months, but I am still dealing with really loud and emotionally destabilising intrusive thoughts and this part is the hardest for me. I’ve been prescribed ssri’s but I have no intention on taking them as I saw what it has done to the people around me and I don’t want more chemicals in my brain messing up whatever is going on in an attempt to fix something.

I would love to hear how other people manage these kinds of thoughts and what their journey to healing has been.

Does anyone just feel like they have been collapsed by life. And it's like you don't move on from your past. Bitter truth I've realized about life is we have to choose the easy or hard pain because at the end there is no such thing as comfort. If you don't put in the work now then later on in life you'll have to. And I'm sick of my mind is giving up on everything leading to zero ambition, no focus and attention and efforts in life. No wonder why I feel like crap because I haven't achieved nothing. I feel overwhelmed by the process

😞

Has anyone been banned from a sub? I woke up to find I was permanently banned from the depression subreddit bc I wrote a supportive comment on a post about things that worked for an individual’s depression. The mods said my comment was encouraging toxic behavior and permanently banned me.

This is absolutely devastating, and it’s hard to not take it personally. I’ve found so much comfort in that community, and the words “permanent ban” and promoting toxic behavior“ is not only hard to believe, but has me in tears.

I really hate this over sensitivity I deal with. I wish that I wasn’t incredibly hurt by such simple things. Things like this eat at me, for a long time. It is very difficult to be vulnerable and to put myself out there, then be rejected for it.

Does anyone else deal with rejection sensitivity? How do you cope with being shut down, especially when the decision feels unfair?

hey everyone, it feels a bit embarassing on my part to reach the point of being in a subreddit asking for emotional support and community but thats what theyre intended for right? well, here goes.

I think my life could've gone in worse ways than it has, but it hasnt and i really would like to believe im grateful for that and i am in a lot of ways but the pain of what has occured to me lingers and it feels like i dont have the right to acknowledge it as something painful. It sounds a bit strange but growing up i feel like ive never had the safety of feeling or expressing things my parents found distasteful. i feel like its affected my personal and social life to the point where i just let myself be screwed over and be okay with it on the outside knowing im not. and dont get me wrong, I know the point where whats happening to me is wrong, but somehow i just keep letting it happen to me as it slowly builds up into this amalgamation of repressed saddness and anger and lonelyness to people who unknowling or knowingly have been tormenting my state of mind. for this reason it feels safer to me to reach out to strangers than people I know, at the very least any amount of critisim wont mean anything from a stranger. its so strange and it hurts so much, to feel lonely in a group of people who suposedly are supposed to care about you, to be hit with signals you vaugely associate from your childhood as dismissive and feel to have no say in it. maybe im just reading to heavily into things yknow? that is until when you find out everyone lies, and hides things from you with other people. Now it just feels like everyone is against you because of the things they know and dont know about you.

sorry this is a bit of a tangent, i dont really know what im asking for, maybe just for someone to listen to a fragment of my struggles thats harder to bring out to people I know mostly because itll most likely shift the way they see me in the ways i see them....theyre not bad people, but i really wish i could just be honest with them and they be honest with me, its so draining and isolating.

Family is away on a three-week vacation and I’m home alone. It’s only been a few hours and I already miss them a lot.

I have plans to invite/meet with a friend for dinner multiple times a week, but I’ve never been home alone for this long before and I’ve been moderate-severely depressed this entire summer.

Zero motivation to participate in my hobbies and a lot of anxiety/sadness in general. Any practical and actionable tips on coping?

As the title says, i feel like i want to talk to someone... I'm feeling a little lost in my own thoughts and the best word to describe what i am feeling would be sadness/loneliness. I have been having bad dreams/nightmares and i...

I just don't know how to keep myself going. 😞

There's a lot happening in my life and i feel that it's so hard to keep playing catch-up and continue moving forward.

The *only* reason I'm still alive is that I have not succeeded in finally killing myself yet.

Even though I have a family that cares about me, it's not enough. Literally all my friends are online, I've tried and failed to make friends irl.

I did not do well enough in school, and I have no remaining dreams. I'll either be forced to get a job I will hate solely to make money, or I can rely on my country's social safety net for the rest of this wasteful life.

As if that wasn't enough, it's getting worse literally everywhere. We're actively heading towards a future comparable to 1984, and WW3 is a very real possibility. There is even more negative events that at least has a very real possibility to happen, but that doesn't really matter. All of these are things that will almost certainly happen in my natural life span.

So I have pretty much no wish to keep on living, and I do not want any so-called "help" from "professionals"

I just want to experience some kind of peace, but that seems to only be achievable when not being conscious in this life.

i mean being completely honest, i dont know what i bring to other peoples lives. i certainly dont like mine. nobody i care about ever really sticks around. whats the point. i dont wanna work my life away until i die. no one would care if i just died, or if i just packed up and left tonight without saying a word. they’d all forget about me in a month. ive never impacted anyone deep enough for their grief of me to last longer than that. but for some godforsaken reason i cant stop thinking about the people not in my life, and the people leaving. i feel like im cursed to never matter, no one is afraid of losing me.

I'm 21 years old boy, and I wish I had a best friend even if it's online to chat

I'm in the UK for tourism and I get to see many boys hanging around with their friends I see more goth boys and girls around too and I'm lonely and I don't have any friends irl.....I actually love goth people

And sometimes I cry but softly when I see everyone is smiling and happy with their friends.....

I try to make friends in the gym...I try to go to gym when I was 20 but only for 3 months I stopped

I got bullied for being bisexual by 3 muscular boys

I wish I had a friend who is protective and deeply caring and funny and with kindness

Without my mom. I wish I did more to help her but she kept focusing on me wanting to gain my validation…. She didn’t focus on her health. I got mad at her for wanting to be too involved in my love life. I felt like I had no personality but at least my life was going as planned. I had a job, I had a mom, I had a life …. I knew if I didn’t get married I’d have her and we’d still be happy…. Sometimes I blamed her for my loneliness but now it’s even worse because I don’t have that personal once in a lifetime pure unconditional mom love.

I just don’t see anything getting better, I’m getting older. I’m 31F almost 32. I don’t know how to treat myself. I don’t even know if women my age need to be nurtured by their mom still …. Or if I should not be emotional and act responsible and mature. I still feel like I’m 28 … I’m stuck in that time because everything was great…. She died a year and a half and everything is the same. I’m working with much younger people. I can’t see myself as a woman in her 30s I won’t like that version of me.

I can’t see a way out, and I am getting teary. I’m so sick these days and have a fever. Going to doctors only reminds me that I had many options for my mom too…. I was just so blinded by my the new life in the new city and new work…. I wish I tried better, maybe only then I would’ve like my life better with her around .

It wasn’t the gratitude journaling, or the exercise, or the meditation. It was not attaching labels to my thoughts. At first it feels wrong. It drives you crazy. But when you give things that aren’t even tangible objective meaning, you’re living a lie that you’re expecting to be true one day. You’re saying, I don’t want to be a failure so I will shut up and try harder than anyone else. But culture doesn’t reward hard work the way you think. You’re going somewhere with no ending.

You won’t get what you want not being present. And life is still hard even when you’re facing it. So you have the choice to live life, or take a backseat and wake up one day realizing you didn’t care when you wanted to. Life isn’t a one thing fixes all. It’s about really living it. If you don’t get it, you just don’t get it. But life isn’t about doing something because somebody told you to do it one time.

I honestly hate everything about me I can’t stop cutting myself and my stupid anxiety meds don’t do shit to calm me down but they aren’t supposed to really they just stop the symptoms of a panic attack and I need more than that. I hate everything I do I can’t stop thinking that I’m going to kill myself my friends that I used to share everything with don’t want to talk to me when i really needed it and all I wanted to do was chat so I could stop cutting myself up. But that isn’t their fault they didn’t know and they have their own problems they are dealing with and they definitely don’t need a messed up little fuck up like me relying on them. But also she dam well knows I’m doing fucking horribly and she knows I need someone to rely on but she doesn’t want to for some reason all the things I said about myself that I said to them that I didnt even mean have destroyed what I held close. They said that they thought I was too dependent on them and that they can’t help me with my problems which I get and they are entitled to say no but I don’t need them to help me I don’t need them to solve it I just want to know that someone was there but dam fucking straight I was depending on them for shit I could be myself around them and be honest about what I wanted but that is most gone now. My other friend she is the most kind person I’ve met in a long time and without her I would have killed myself by now but I don’t want to make my problems her problems because she has her own really scary shit that she is dealing with but I would do anything to help her I would give her all my organs if she needed them but at the same time I’m scared to die so I would probably not do that but by fuck if there was something I could do to help her I would by any means. All I do at the moment is think about killing myself act like a chud sitting in my room cut myself and hate my god dam fucking body. My body is such a disappointment I don’t think anyone would look at me and feel attracted at this point I think I’m cursed to find someone who I think can be what I need and then I put my heart on the line and fuck it up and lose them it’s all that happens. I’m such a fucking loser I’m only good at one sport that most people don’t even care about or even think is a sport and I can’t talk to people because I’m too dam scared and I can’t even type or spell things right because I’m to dam stupid even though I study English I’m a walking contradiction I am the most unattractive loser and I just can’t get anything right all I can do is be second best and everyone’s second pick. I just hate myself and the situation I’m in but the only person I can blame is myself.

I feel sad and trapped, but I don't understand why. There's a sadness that won't go away, like I'm locked in something I can't escape, something trying to crush me. There's no clear reason or specific explanation, just this constant feeling that leaves me confused. I'm not even sure it's sadness; I think I would describe it as despair, but I don't know why. Has anyone else experienced something similar? Do you know how I can ease this feeling?

Not just someone, anything. I could love someone for the deepest part of my heart and still forget how much it lasted if I’m not around them for maximum a month, even towards my own parents. The only exception there is, is probably my little sister. The same goes for a movie or a game. It’s a never ending cycle.

Why should I even care about life anymore. I’ve failed 3 semester of college and blamed it on “mental health” I have no future and the world seems to be continually getting worse. I have no friends I have no job I have nothing to distract myself. Everyday is just waiting to go to bed for the next one. I’ve had police officers tell me that killing myself would in fact solve my problems so why shouldn’t I? Nothing interests me and best case scenario seems to be being a corporate slave with a shitty job until I die. I have no more dreams or aspirations, everything in me feels dead. I haven’t wanted to live for so long and can’t seem to even see why people want to. I’ve tried multiple meds and all they do is either numb me even more or send me into hypomania. Last psychiatrist basically said fuck you find someone else and gave up on me. Everything my therapist says I already know or he just sits there and goes “damn that must suck” I’m in so much debt anyway so it’s not like I can give up on college or I’ll forever drown in debt with the worlds shittiest minimum wage job and surely kill myself. Nothing gives me a positive outlook on life anymore. I’ve lost all hope in myself and society. No one cares about anything. No one pays attention to what’s going on. Why can’t I just turn my fucking brain off and be happy for once. I don’t know how many “one more day”s I have left in me

Some context, I had a rare stroke 10 months ago and my mental health hasn’t been the same since. I don’t feel a lot of emotions besides anger and sadness. No joy, happiness, excitement etc.
My neurologist just prescribed me citaoplram. I’ve been reading on it and it seems to help people with anxiety but I that’s not want I’m suffering from. Anyone have success stories with depression, apathy etc?

I’ve changed so much and explored my mind and deep questions of reality in the past 10 years, that I struggle to really feel motivated or who I want to be.

I tend to chase goals or outcomes really hard and burn out quickly. First it was my career, then it was performance art, then it was this or the other and I can’t balance between various interests or directions.

Socializing in groups is horrible for me but one on one with people I like is ok.

It feels binary between what I might like doing and who I might become in it.. it feels like a ton of pressure and of disconnect.

So most of my time I spend online. Distracting myself. Also a really bad skin picking addiction I’ve tried a lot to beat but it comes back in stress. It’s super baked into my brain as a terrible addiction, only a wellness retreat cured it until I faced huge stressors again.

Big changes in circumstances have usually been the thing to really put a direction in my life, like going to college for the first time for a career now abandoned and uncomfortable to return to without that inertia of novelty and growth. The wellness retreat also. Visiting a foreign country.

I don’t really have the money anymore to support huge circumstance changes and am afraid to try mushrooms though it might work. I have it, it’s just weed triggered some bad episodes of stuff before and this may be stupid too.

I need fresh and specific ideas maybe. But I come back to the problem that I tend to thrive only when I throw myself into a brand new lifestyle or rite of passage or something. Even thinking about those crazy careers that offer big signing bonuses but leaves me feeling sick to my stomach.

when i was a kid i used to be very confident in myself and my looks, but at around 10yo i began being bullied bc i wasn't developed yet (i didn't have boobs basically), and people started making fun of me for it and calling me ugly and pointing out every single facial feature as if it was disgusting, to the point it completely ruined my confidence. it's been quite some years from that, but i still struggly with my mental health and specially from lack of confidence and deep self-hate.

i genuinely don't know what to do, because sometimes i feel pretty-ish, and so many people tell me that i'm not ugly at all (i also have a boyfriend who treats me incredibly good and calls me beautiful all the time), but then i suddenly feel like the most disgusting creature of all time, like i'm not even a human.

i've tried to glowup so many times, and i do think i have improved a lot (for example i used to have terrible acne and it's completely cleared up thanks to accutane, and my nose has shrinked after the initial years of puberty, and i think i've become a bit more harmonious), but i never feel like it's good enough.

some people might think i'm just trying to seek attention, but it gets to a point in which it affects my relationships, because sometimes i feel so insecure about my looks that i can't even think or speak or act normally in front of others. i'm so awkward in many public settings (although i've greatly improved in that sense), such as concerts or parties, because i don't know what to do and i feel so ugly that i don't deserve to even have fun. and, for example, my boyfriend is gorgeous (to me and objectively) and i always feel like i'm not worthy of him because of my looks).

i would love it if someone could give me some advice for this. thank you so much to everyone who might consider helping me a bit <3