Notz:

that was a fantastic posting!

I can't match it but I can add my own experience.

I'm sure that many, many of us have had the experience of wishing we were someone else. There are so many people out there who look to have it made, and some of them really do have it made in so far as they have very balanced personalities and are able to lead happy and fulfilled lives.

If we're not like that ourselves it's easy to feel like a failure.

But would you choose to judge anyone else like that? Would you choose to judge someone as a failure just because they didn't fall into that category - because they had some issue or defect be in schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, or a tendency to over-eat on occasions?

Or would you choose to recognise them as a unique individual, quite possibly possessing many beautiful and praiseworthy qualities in spite of the issues they have?

I would hope the latter, and if so.... then you just need to learn to judge yourself in the way that you judge others - recognising yourself as a unique individual with good qualities alongside any issues you might have.

The things is that we want to be perfect, at the VERY LEAST we want to overcome our issues and the misery they cause us and to lead a happy and fulfilled life.

This is a perfectly understandable and legitimate wish, but we will NEVER achieve it by wishing for the impossible - that we could magically transform into someone else. What's more we will NEVER EVER achieve it just by hating ourself more and more in the hope that the intensity of our self-hatred and revulsion will somehow cause our imperfect self to disappear and a perfect self to appear in its place!

If only it were so easy.... but it doesn't work like that.

I speak from experience because there was a period in my life, in 2004, when I felt like you do. What helped me to turn things around was a series of books I read which offered me a different perspective. One of them was the classic self-help book 'Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and It's All Small Stuff' by Richard Carlson, which offered me a different and more helpful perspective on life. The other one that really helped me was the free on-line book Psychological Self-Help by Dr Clayton Tucker-Ladd. Dr Clay has been friends with Dr John for quite a while and there is a link to Dr Clay's book from the Sharing Self-Help Ideas Forum.

I know that self-help may be a bit difficult for some people, and I agree with a Reverend who contacted Dr Clay recently who said that for some people the ideas would be more accessible if they were taught in groups.

However, I would still recommend that people try and see how they get on. There are so many great understandings and insights provided by Dr Clay in his book and I have tried to explain some of these in an article which Dr John has kindly published on PC. A link to the article can be found on the 'Dr Clay's book' thread in the Sharing Self-Help Ideas Forum.

One of the most important things for us to understand, I think, is that it isn't an all-or-nothing affair. We will never achieve a miraculous transformation over-night, but if we work at it we can achieve small positive changes.

I find this understanding both encouraging and liberating.

I don't know if this helps, but this is my experience anyway.

I wish you the best!

Adam