Hi everyone

I am new here, need some encouragement. I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. I always thought I was pretty positive generally in spite of problems I had. But underneath it all I am really insecure and not feeling great about myself. I have been seeing a therapist for two years (she is a friend of the family) and making progress on some things. My mother made me start seeing her after my best friend became gay and suddenly dropped out of everyone’s life, and at the same time my brother became transsexual, and my mother was worried these would affect my relationships with men. Then last year my father moved back to my town after years living away, and that has been difficult, he is different with me than he is with my half brothers and half sister. I feel like he has written off my older brother and I and abandoned us. He is so unreliable in his behaviour and cannot be counted on. I told me therapist that I feel like I am always keeping score in my head when I am around him, examining his behaviour for evidence that he loves me, then being devastated anew each time I fail to find it. I am worried this behaviour pattern will cross over into other relationships in my life and we are working on it.

The big issue right now is I was just laid off again for the second time in six months. I know it was not personal and they liked my work, but I just feel so hopeless. I am feeling so stressed about money. I can’t move back with my mom because my stepdad is a problem. I just don’t know what to do. I keep telling myself I can always work in McDonalds or telemarketing or something, but then it starts feeling like my life will always suck, that I will always be poor and broke and going nowhere. I have never been on a vacation. I have so many things I have put off taking care of and now I have to put them off again. I desperately need proper shoes for work, no money now. And I was ready to start dating again but now I need to concentrate on finding a job and getting a life and it is just too overwhelming to focus on more than one big change at a time like this. I feel like I keep having to put off having a nice life, and there is no end in sight.

I realized about halfway through school that I was in the wrong career but I thought my mother (who can be very supportive) would be angry if I dropped out or changed programs so I stuck it out. Now, I am trained to do work I hate. I can’t think of any jobs I will like that don’t require more schooling (which I can’t afford). And even in my own field, I have talked to everyone I know and they all say they love my work but they have no jobs. I have run out of people to call. I don’t know what else to do. I know it was not my fault I got laid off, but it feels so unfair to have to be doing this again so soon after the last time. People keep saying oh I will be fine because I am such a smart person. Well, if I am so smart, why am I not getting anywhere? Why do I not seem to be able to find a good job I can stay at?

I am not even sure that if you offered me a job tomorrow it would fix things. I think it has gone deeper now. I just feel so down. I can’t sleep, I am nervous all the time, I don’t want to talk to people. I am avoiding my mother’s phone calls. She keeps saying to stay positive and be proactive but I just don’t know what to do. I made a big mistake in not choosing a different path and now I am stuck in a bad career with no job even in that. I am having skin breakouts. I feel tense. Nothing relaxes me. I do my regular workouts, yoga even, and I just stay tense and upset and feeling like there is no end in sight.

I thought the therapy was helping but it is obvious to me after this new crisis that I have no coping skills at all for stress, or else that this is not just stress but depression. Also, my therapist has health problems and often misses appointments so I am not sure I can rely on her. I just don’t know what else to do. I try to think of options for having a better life and I can’t think of any. Rationally, I know I have tools, that I am educated and reasonably intelligent and better off than a lot of people. But that does not seem to be giving me options. I have no job, no boyfriend, I am a low priority to other people. I don’t know what to do.

Anyway, thanks for listening. I hope some of you can understand and maybe offer me some suggestions.