He projects on you that you should leave him because he wants to leave him. If he wants to leave himself he can't see why anyone would want to be with him. Those kinds of expressions speak for him about him and it's hard when he "speaks" for you because inside you're loving him, not leaving him and he doesn't see the love because he doesn't know what love is.

And when he tells you to just be yourself, he's wishing he could just be himself.

The guy is really intelligent. He sees the problem and he sees the ideal but he can't see the bridge between the two in order to leave depression and enjoy life.

He sees that he can't be happy without being himself but he can't see how to get the courage to be himself because of all the fear telling him "NO!!!!".

I was him, but my version, my life situation but I see the old me in your descriptions.

There is NO substitute to not being oneself. The hardest thing to see are the mental conditionings from society, the habitual thoughts that are the cultural and "morality" programmed into us. These conditionings run like software, taking a part of our lives and making us robotic. A good example is any holiday....the society moves like a herd doing the same thing unable to stop.

It's an arduous path out of waking up to the confusion. The mind has its grip on him and to with win the battle with the mind requires facing a ton of fears and rejection from those that are accustomed to relying on him in co-dependency. We all want to love and when we cut these people off, it doesn't feel like love, but to be a crutch means that they never grow to accept and love themselves.

Here's something I wrote about depression. http://www.profound-self-help.com/de...self-help.html

Ron