[Crawly]

Hello everyone,

I'm not here to be clear because I'm lost in everything about my life. I don't expect answers but that would be a bonus. So that's going to be thoughts.

I am 27, from a quite wealthy family. My parents are engineers, so is my 29 year old sister and so am I. I am not happy at all and I feel sad. I'm going to enumerate my "issues".

1) I don't know what I want to do with my life and I don't try anthing. I chose to be engineer by default; I'm not even sure I like it. All I know is that I am not happy with my job and all I do is the minimum so I don't get fired.

2) I feel very lonely and I am alone. I have no friends, maybe one or two. The result is no social life, no friends, no girlfriends (last contact with a woman was the secretary at my workplace). Actually, I'm not social and I feel awkward. I can't smile.

3) I'm shy/I have social anxiety/I have no balls/I'm weird. I'm the kind of guy that doesn't say a word at lunch time, at bars. In the end people don't even look at me and I feel like a ghost. Whenever I try to say something, people around don't react to it or they don't even hear it. I'm very anxious in social situations: I don't know what to say, don't know where to look, feel weird. I finish lost in my mind. Another consequence is a continuous poker-angry-sad face. The problem is that I feel like I've been like this since childhood. I always had a hard time being social; I stayed in my mothers' legs, letting my parents decide everything for me. I remember crying all the time during my summer camps, asking for my parents. I've always been (not bullied) but be the victim in groups. I remembered my grandpa telling me I'm weird, remember an adult saying I'm not cool, my teaching telling me to speak more, another one telling me I'm shy.

4) I'm insecure/needy/I have no self confidence. I hate myself. I hate looking at myself. When I feel people looking at me, I get shaky and lose control of everything I do. When I see a girl I find pretty I react like I'm not interested. I finish everytime fantasming about relation and never make a move. I always doubt about my capacity; so much that I never take actions.

5) I'm anxious 24/24 7/7. I'm scared of taking actions, of what people would think. I'm in a open space and making a phone call is the hardest thing ever. I'm so anxious I cannot sleep at night. Can't even take a tennis lesson 'cause my arm shakes everytime it's my turn.

6) A family drama (I was 13) where I almost lost my sister made me become more and more lonely. A complicated situation with my mother not accepting my sister illness and my sister going worse and worse... How the f**k was a 13 year old kid supposed to react to vomit in the sink, extreme hand cleaning, 35 kg sister, to people talking about his weird sister, to seeing his sister going to the hospital because of her thinness (yes she was anorexic and she has OCD). Nobody helped me.
I stopped doing sports (I was very good at sports) and played the computer until my 22, just doing this. I feel like I had no adolescence. Other guys was having girlfriends, they was partying, drinking (my first binge at 23), having fun while i was having my every evening family drama. The diner time was horrible: mother crying, sister crying, me wanting to cry and go to my room and my games. I had no student life : that was class-home-class-home.

There's a lot more to say and detail.

I've tried and I continue working out, running almost everyday. That helps soothing my anxiety but nothing else. I've tried joining a running group but I can't make friends, I stay alone. I've been meditating, seeing a psychologist, taking medications, reading tons of article about depression, shyness, self-improvment, tried to change my thoughts, to open-up to people, to do new things (like salsa : nightmare (I'm tense, sweat....).
I just finished my first marathon. That was the first time I felt proud about myself. But the next day everything was dark again.

I feel the time going by but nothing changes, nothings happens in my life.

To sum up, I feel like crap, I have suicidal thoughts. I don't know where I am, I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what to do, what to change, how to reset my brain, how to like myself, how to feel happy, how to find a purpose of waking up, how to be more sociable, how to have something to say, how not to be weird, how not to care about people's opinion, how to be more expressive, how to say to my parents that I'm so sad and depressed, how to tell my sister that I care so much for her. I wish that someone was there to hug me. I miss hugs so much. I miss love. I miss feeling happy.

Who would want someone like me as a friend, as a boyfriend, as a husband, as a coworker. My life is empty, so is my soul. I have nothing to share, but everything to complain about. I know this could be worse but I'm pissed.

I'm pissed of crying everynight, pissed of feeling tired, tired of being me.

Thanks reading that nonsense

[Fuzzybear]

[bugbear83]

I read all of it, word for word. My heart goes out to you, because I feel like if people paid more attention to people like you (the "shy" ones the "awkward" or "weird" ones) the whole world would be a better place.

Throughout your post you seemed to have a tone of doubting whether you had anything to complain about. Like putting issues in quotations marks and saying other people probably have it worse. One thing I want to share about that is this: everyone's problems are their own, and they are dealt with at the level they know how. Although that's a little hard to understand, maybe this image illustrates it better:

[Rohag]

Hello & Welcome, Crawly.

Originally Posted by Crawly

I feel like I've been like this since childhood.

A family drama...A complicated situation with my mother not accepting my sister illness and my sister going worse and worse...(yes she was anorexic and she has OCD).

The diner time was horrible: mother crying, sister crying, me wanting to cry and go to my room and my games.

[Etc.]

Just a guess, but I suspect the way you feel has deep roots that run throughout your whole family. Have you spoken about the family aspects of this history with a doctor and/or a counsellor?

Please make yourself at home here.

[with or without you]

^ he said towards the end of his post that he's seeing a psychologist.

[with or without you]

Hi Crawly, I'm a 35 year old woman and I have trouble with a lot of the same things you have described. I don't feel like I matter to anyone either, except my mom and she's almost 77 and I dread the day when she passes away. I am frequently forgotten about but I know that's because I am not a memorable personality and I don't initiate contact. One common example - something important will happen (an illness, life event, etc.) and I will not have heard about it until long after it has taken place. "Oh! I thought I told you that, or I thought you knew already." "Nope." "Sorry." And on it goes. I ended a 20 year friendship recently because of something similar but there was more to it than that. And I get tired of people who say that shy people like us need to put ourselves out there more and to stop wallowing in self pity. It doesn't help.

I'm impressed you have been able to run a marathon despite having what sounds like some quite intense social anxiety. That's something I would never do (never mind the physical preparations) but everything that goes into being observed, being in crowds, etc.

Unfortunately, I don't have an "it gets better" piece of reassurance for you because for me, it never did get better. I've not been having a great year and everything around seems to be imploding on multiple fronts but I won't go into that because I don't want to discourage you. So, the only advice I can offer is therapy related (sorry if this is long):

1. I know you said you are seeing a psychologist, but down the road - if you don't feel like your therapist is helping you, or if they are making you feel uncomfortable (you have social anxiety like me, so you know what I mean) - it is perfectly ok to leave and ask for referrals to someone else. Or just leave and find someone else on your own. Look up therapists on places like Psychology Today or your insurance company, and then google them to see if they have websites and have been rated. I will always give preference to a client's review over the recommendation of a therapist's colleague. Therapists & psychiatrists tend to fall into their own clique and have a bit of an ego about what they do, it's natural. They believe their competency at evaluating mental/emotional disorders is good enough and many of them do not take into account how they actually come across to a client. I've been made to feel so many times by several providers that my mental illness is my fault, and I don't even think they meant to come off like that.

2. Younger therapists tend to be more compassionate and aggressive about finding new solutions to help you because they are just that - they are young. and they are not "set in their ways" yet.

3. Having social anxiety, I find psychiatrists a lot more difficult to deal with than therapists. I need medication because I can't function without it. So seeing a psychiatrist is a necessary evil. I find their visits more stressful than psychotherapy because psychiatrists are MDs and they are more "curt" with you - they just cut to the chase and ask a barrage of uncomfortable questions. I fired the last one I had because he raised his voice a lot and he made me feel like everything was my fault. My current psychiatrist, who I have been seeing since 2013, doesn't make me feel that way and he is also quite young. (Refer to #2 above).

Take care.

[Crawly]

Hey,

Thanks for your answers.

Thing is I'm unhappy with myself (body, soul, brain), with my social life, my family, my love life. Everything is painfull or boring.

I'm not living like this for all my life. Whether a miracle happens, or I'm going to end it. That's what I'm feeling.

[Crawly]

I'm taking beginner salsa lesson since September. I thought it would help me why anxiety, shyness, confidence.
But that's just a nightmare.

1 out of 2 girl tells me I'm so nervous. My face is nervous. My dancing is nervous. Each time all I want is leave the place and kill myself. But I don't. All I do is repeating me how ****** I am in every way. That I will never change.