Why can't I help myself?

Why is it that I can see the pain, struggles and situations of others, especially on PC, and feel such deep empathy and sorrow for them? And, wish so much that the person gets help, and know that they deserve help. Why is it that I can see the person is a deserving person and needs love and attention, why all of this, and then I can't, for the life of me, see that I need these things too to make me healthy again? When it comes to me, every chance or suggestion of help I turn down and I just say I'll think about it. I never do, I just forget about it.

I can identify so much with what others are saying who have depression and I can immediately see how much they are hurting. Then, when I try to have compassion for myself, it all just fades and I think I deserve everything that is happening to me. I don't seek help and I don't allow anyone to help me. Why have I turned on myself, the one person who needs me the most?

Does anyone else ever feel this way?

i can give advice to many people and relate to them in varios ways, i can look at my self and say i have felt like this person but, i cannot help myself no matter how hard i try i can never lift my spirits i cannot climb out of my own grave why cant i? why cant i see the good of life the day , myself. I feel lost for the answer .....

same thing here. i can help other people but not myself. i stopped caring for myself a veryyyyy long time ago...

Past bullying, abusive, negative experiences with people can have quite a deep affect on us as we can learn, adopt unhelpful false beliefs and behaviours that we may not be conscious of but that hinder/harm us. At root of depression is a lot of low self worth, lack of self care and trust, anger and hurt.

It's crazy, I read several posts under the depression forum, and I see what people are going through. I can feel for that person, I can say to myself "I really wish that person can get help, nobody deserves that in life" or I hear people say bad things about themselves and I think "No, don't say that about you, I'm sure it's not true."

Me on the other hand, totally different story. I don't feel like I deserve help like they do. I immediately find reasons why I am bad and deserve this pain. I need help, but I tell myself I don't deserve it, because I am X, Y and Z things. The person I am most mean to, neglect the most, and hurt the most in this whole world is myself.

Developing good level of self worth, self care and assertiveness is important to have more success in getting what you want and need, as you can gain more consideration and respect from others and improve relationships. We are all worthy individuals. Its quite natural to want to help others more than yourself, i think a lot of people do that. But there are people who are quite self centered, egoistic as well.

I find all of those aspects extremely hard. Self worth - I feel I don't have any, I can't see why I am important in any way at all. Self care - couldn't care less, I have a urge not to want to be healthy and live long, I want to go early. Assertiveness - the hardest one of all - every time I want to apply this aspect I think it is the same as walking all over someone to get what I want, then I just abandon the idea and convince myself the thing is not in line with others and what they want. I don't feel I deserve anything. I just don't see myself as a worthy individual who deserves any of it. I see others as worthy and deserving though. It's weird.

Can relate..... (((((stbguy))))
Hope you can realize how much you offer here and see that you too deserve the help needed to overcome this demon depression.

Assertiveness is about having good level of self value and regard, expressing your own interests and needs clearly and being considerate and respecting others as well. Finding balance, having boundaries, so people dont take advantage of you, use you. If you dont like or dont want to do something someone wants, you dont have to do it to please, satisfy them. You need to look at what the underlying factors are that make you feel unworthy undeserving and try to tackle them with help of a therapist maybe. Look at unhelpful limiting beliefs. I know that for me assertiveness is important but yes it is challenging.

It is difficult for me. I don't have a sense of what is too far or going overboard. I can go longer and further than anyone else when it comes to certain things. I don't go the extra mile, I go 10 extra miles. That is where many of my problems come from. I just think to myself, it is better if I go overboard with people using me than the other extreme, where I end up walking over other people. I am afraid of myself, I don't know what I can do in a situation with someone. It is hard for me when it comes to people. You see, I can be assertive with inanimate things. But, let's take a relationship for example, you need to be somewhat assertive to get what you want from that person. I find that very hard. How much is enough? How far is enough? How do I stop it when it's still "normal" and not go into "obsessive" or "aggressive" and "demanding". With objects it's easy, you can go as far as you want, with people you can't. I get the feeling I will steamroller people if I had to get what I want, that's why I back off and rather let them abuse me. Everyone probably wants love and acceptance, but if feels wrong to ask for it somehow for me. If someone asks me for love and acceptance, I give it, I want to give it. Once you have to start asking for it for yourself, that's when it's pretty much over for me. It's too weird for people to handle. They only see it as OK if they give it out of their own, if they want. As soon as you ask, people run away. How do I ask without asking? I just don't get it. How do I take without asking? How much do I take? Is it OK to take? It feels wrong to just take. But, people, especially women I find, don't like it when you ask before you take because it is perceived as a lack of confidence.

It all feels so wrong somehow for me. To do something for me. Not that I don't ever do it though, I buy myself things or whatever and spend alone time with myself, but I don't know how to ask that from someone else. I rather just leave it all together.

I'm scared I turn into a narcissist if I do start doing things for myself.

Thanks . People tell me that often, but I really struggle to see what it is I do offer.

You may find an assertiveness course or self esteem one that might help and try mindfulness that could help?

Mindfulness approach is putting yourself first, then others, which isnt seen as selfish. Its important to have self care and respect so people dont abuse you.Its being compassionate towards yourself and others. We all have rights and needs. Being assertive is not aggression or selfish. Its I'm ok, your ok. Aggressive is thinking of just your own self interests and demanding others to do things for you, being bullyish

I'm scared I become that person because I can't seem to read others, especially body language and what they want/don't want. I am clueless in that sense.

Are u afraid of/resisting change?

Change is hard and basically impossible. The problems are biological in me (ASD/Aspergers). I try to manage it and try to be as normal as possible but that's hard when you have no real idea of what you're actually doing. I can treat the problems arising (depression, etc.), but not the root cause. That's with me forever and generates all these problems for me continuously.

For me it's about realizing that I am not the cause of this depression. It's not any action that I have done to make myself feel this way (I know because I've spent years obsessing about which particular action or choice has led me to where I am). I found a lot of power in admitting to myself that the reason I was depressed...today...was because of physical processes that were out of my control at their onset. It just came over me one day, and then it was there to deal with.

That's not to say that you are powerless and can do nothing to move beyond it. It's just to say that it becomes easier to see the solution when you release control of the self-blame and realize that this is how you were built and that, until now, you haven't been able to see it clearly for what it is: a chemical reaction in your brain that brings about the onslaught of these feelings.

There's nothing to fix. You aren't broken (even if you feel that way). I used to compare myself to Humpty Dumpty...fall down and break into a million little pieces and then spend my life putting myself back together like a puzzle. Such a futile effort.

Accept the feelings you feel and turn and face them.

StbGuy I can totally relate with all of it. I don't have the willingness needed to make the changes that I should be. I don't know why and I feel guilty about it. I wrote a post on here actually about it a while ago, and someone once told me (not in these exact words) that we can get so used to feeling and dealing with depression that it just becomes the normal. And then it just becomes scary to change. Hope that made sense.

Change can be hard but important, and its part of life. There are some things we can't change and control but we can focus on the aspects that aren't helping and what is possibel to change if we want to be in better place. There are underlying factors that make people have low self worth and care and that harm us that need to be recognised and tackled.

How can you prove /know its all to do with brain chemical imbalance? I'm aware of undelying factors, issues related to my depression. I understand that stress, trauma, unhelpful beliefs and habits play a part.

It's not just the chemical brain imbalance. When I say biological, my brain is "wired" up completely differently to someone else's. This is what my condition is about. It has led to things like depression because it has to do with 25 years of not fitting in, not being accepted, etc.

I have found too, and it is only by being rejected and being depressed that I could learn this, simple truths that cannot be escaped. I have learnt the hard way that most people only want friends who are thin/fit/look good and have lots of money. Most of us who are depressed know that there is more to life than this and it is because of our convictions that we are isolated.

Depression was an awakening for me. An awakening to stop believing in fairy tales and that everything is going to be OK. People tell themselves this on a daily basis because if they ever felt what we felt, they would crumble much faster than we ever did. Things are only OK when you make them OK. With everything there is sacrifice, and if you want something, someone else has to pay the price. People who are successful don't notice the people they walked over to get to the top. Why? Because they walk over people who never complain, people who accept abuse from others. Then they still turn around and tell them that they deserve being walked over because they are weak. That's what's going on today.

The root cause of everything is that we are people who have a need to serve others. We were placed on earth to fulfil a role of some kind. We are not like everyone else who does everything for themselves. I think most people with depression can say that they have been used and abused some way by other people. I truly believe that if you could ask God Himself how He felt right at this moment, He would be even more depressed than we are. It's not that hard to imagine, I mean, think of even a human father, and almost all of his children have abandoned him and want nothing to do with him, almost all of them turned their backs on him. That father would be pretty hurt and properly depressed I would imagine. They abandoned him to chase after pots of gold and cheap thrills, because he did not allow that in his house, as he was just trying to protect them, because he knows the pots of gold will destroy their hearts and minds.

It's this whole thing today that you're nobody unless you're "made". That's all it ever was. I am overweight, yes I am. And, as a result, I can't recall ever being treated with respect like a normal human being would be by anyone in real life. On top of that, I'm a social misfit and I didn't grow up rich. The only money I ever had was scholarships that I worked my butt off to get. People avoided me because I couldn't afford to wear branded clothing. I'm not joking. And then, to crown it all, people avoided me because I was too intelligent for their liking, I was actually told that. People would ask me to help them solve their problems and I could see them getting annoyed at me being able to do it. How can I possibly win? You hate me because I helped you.

Knowing all this now, the only challenge for me, is how do I continue to serve people still? I have to live for the handful who still appreciate it. I have to live for the people on PC for example, I have to live for my family. I have to fulfil my purpose still.

Then the big one - still serving those who don't appreciate it either. That's the ultimate challenge. Serving those that don't say thank you and those that hate you. We are people put on earth to serve, and when we follow our true purpose once again, we will once again be happy I think. Our life is not working for us because we have all been tricked into following the societal rules for success. We have allowed others to define what success means for us. We were never meant to follow that, that's why everything in our lives is dismantling.

The world out there is not as complex as we would like to believe. It's simple. We think the root our depression is complex and an interwoven web. We like to believe that there's a secret code to how people view us and if we could just tap into that then we would understand. There's nothing to understand. It's all very simple. It's like my fat problem. I've actually got it because of stuff that happened in my childhood. Given my condition, I was never really a "child". I was aware of everything from a very young age. But I was still a child. I was confronted with adult themes very early on, and like an adult, self-medicated and got addicted to things. I also think giving a 1-3 year old child coffee and soda drinks out of a BPA-containing plastic bottle every day is not a good idea either. The point is, I did get fat, from a young age, and that's all people see now. They don't care how you got there or the story behind it, the point is, you're fat and you're not like them. You're also a geek/nerd and not like them. It really is that simple. People don't respect people who are just too different, that's just a fact. You can't blame them either. For 24 hours a day, all you see on TV and in magazines is good looking rich people on top and the others at the bottom. It is a non-verbal image engrained in the minds of everyone. It doesn't matter if it's incorrect. We, of all people, should know that if you are told something long enough, you begin to believe it. I mean look at the non-truths we believe about ourselves as depressed people.

That is why, yes, they don't feel much for me, but it is my life and duty to serve in some way or another the people on this earth, and come hell or high water that's what I'll do. It is very tempting to just quit, but I think we all need to realize, we are here for a reason, and some day what we did for the human race will be noticed or appreciated somewhere along the line.

Let's not give up guys. Fulfil your purpose. If you know not what it is anymore, let's help each other find it again. What we do may seem insignificant now, but it is not. Let's not be defeated, because if we don't serve the human race, who will, and what will become of them?

Right now all that is known is the depression stems from five possible things (or a combination of these things):

So, really, any solution to treating depression should encompass a holistic approach that deals with each of these things. It's not JUST beliefs and how you view yourself, or even traumas, but it could be a combination of many things.

That's why I think that a great first place to start is to deal with the physical factors the onset depression (because those are the things that just make it happen and you feel like nothing happened to cause it).

So, removing certain things from your diet (and adding other things to your diet) plus getting on an exercise plan are two of the most powerful things you can do to start. There's no guarantee that this will cure your depression (or that there even IS a complete cure for depression), but it's the best place to start because you can feel the effects almost immediately (exercise, for example, releases endorphins in your brain that make you feel good).

I've always said that overcoming depression is less about any one technique or tactic and more about learning a new way to live your life.

It's admirable that you feel a desire to live your life in service to others. But, from what I've read of your posts (I don't know you that well, but I've read your posts in this thread), it seems to me like you feel the only way to serve others is if you sacrifice your own happiness so that they can be happy. It looks to me like you're saying that in order for one person to get something, they must take it away from someone else. Am I interpreting what your are saying correctly?

Hi,
I am like you. In my case one of the issues was the way I was raised. I have to live with my lack of automatic self love, starting again and again when I fail at taking care of myself. When depression hits very hard, I am unable to do it

My own happiness is something I honestly don't even know anymore. I don't know what would ever make me happy. I have reached a point where I think it's time I forget about being happy. I am now only interested in at least meaning something to someone still, leaving some kind of legacy or thing that someone in the future will find useful or much-needed.

And yes, it is great when someone thanks you for what you did, but the real challenge is to serve someone who you know will never appreciate it. A person who might even hate your guts. One has to look beyond your own need to feel satisfied about doing something for someone (by them appreciating you in return). This is the nature of the world. Appreciation and satisfaction are hardly existent today. But, just like nearly drowning should never stop you from going back into the sea, so too should a lack of satisfaction not stop you from serving people. You will be hard-pressed to find it nowadays anyway. So, it's better to forget about it. I think as long as you can be satisfied with yourself and appreciate yourself for doing something, then you'll be happy eventually.

We are people who are happy when others are happy with us I have found. It's hard in today's world because people aren't happy with us and what we do anymore. The key is to be faithful to yourself and just believe that some day it will be appreciated. The person who will like what you did is still to be born. That's the way you've got to look at it I think.

Many "visionaries" were depressed people, despite being intelligent and talented. People just didn't get them and what they were about back then. Today they do.