[PeckOfDust]

I’m a 15 year old student. My mind is a mess. It’s constantly thinking about negative things and making me go crazy. Sorry if anything I write below offends anyone. I didn't intend to.

I think it started with me realising that I’m an attention seeker and I love self-pity. I love attention, pity and sympathy from other people(and myself). I love being dramatic. I fantasize about opening up to people about having a mental illness or something. Just imagining how people would look at me with sympathy and concern and listen to me intently, pat me on the back, comforting me and saying “it’s ok” makes me quiver with excitement. I would look up symptoms of mental illnesses and try to convince myself that I have one, that I need pity and attention. I’m able to restrain from over-dramatizing in front of other people, but I think that’s only because I know how doing so will only embarrass myself and others, and I won’t be able to get what I want in the end. So instead, I went for a subtler approach. I would emulate symptoms of mental disorders such as depression. When people asked me how I was doing, I sometimes would pretend to be spacing out and realise they are talking to me after a few seconds, and I would say, “Oh, sorry. I’m okay. Of course I am.” I would secretly hope that someone would notice that “something was off” and would ask me persistently to tell them what was wrong. Then, I would pretend to reluctantly tell them I have depression, and I would be able to get all the things that I mentioned at the start of this paragraph. I mean, that’s how it happens in movies and TV shows, right? I simply followed suit.

But the other side of me hated the attention-seeking, self-pitying side of myself. I hated how selfish, ignorant and immature I was. In fact, I hated it so much that I made a habit of banishing anything that had to do with attention seeking or pitying myself. Whenever I did or thought something that I consider attention seeking or pitying myself, my automatic reaction would be: “Dude did you seriously just think that? I can’t believe it. You’re disgusting. You’re just an attention seeking piece of trash. Just stop it. Stop lying to yourself. You are in perfect condition, so stop trying to convince yourself that you have problems. Don’t try to trick yourself into pitying yourself. You don’t have the right to pity yourself, nor are you worthy of other people’s pity.”

However, saying that to myself only made me start hating myself more and more. Feelings of “I hate myself” was classified as attempts of tricking myself into believing that I am mentally ill (in other words, self-pitying in nature), which led to the “automatic reaction” mentioned above, which led to me hating myself more. It became a vicious cycle.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t escape. Everything I tried to do to fix it just made me feel worse. My mind became full of these thoughts:

“Aren’t you satisfied? Now you finally have a problem that you can complain to others about. Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“You don’t really hate yourself, do you? It’s all just an excuse. An excuse for you to feel sorry for yourself. Do you even have any shame? Are you even human?”

“It’s all in your mind. Stop acting so childish. You’re 15 year old – can’t you think more rationally? I can’t believe you’re so immature for your age. Snap out of it this instant. This "vicious cycle" you think you're going through is just your imagination. Man up and face reality.”

I got to the point where every time I have a thought, it gets bombarded with questions and doubts. Then the doubts themselves get bombarded with doubts. It never ends. I can’t believe any of my thoughts anymore. I can’t trust that I’m honest to myself – I won’t be able to tell even if I’m not. I can’t tell if I really think or feel that way or I’m just being dramatic. This whole thing completely screwed up my mind.

I’m tired of feeling this way. I’m falling behind at school and I stopped caring as much about my physical health. I’m starting to hate social interactions. I’ve been shutting myself in my room more and more often cuz it’s the most comfortable place for me. I feel zero motivation to do school work – I just want to watch tv shows and let them distract me from thinking.

Here’s what comes into my mind when I think about things mentioned above: “You’re responsible for this, aren’t you? Who created these problems? It was you. Who chose to be like this? It was you. So, whose fault is it? It’s yours. Are you sure you don’t like to be like this? Deep down, this is what you wanted. You wanted to be a pitiable, miserable failure, just so people would pity you. You’re really rotten to the core, aren’t you?”

All this probably sounds crazy and I won’t be surprised if it’s incomprehensible.

I feel like I’m offending people just by living, just by having these thoughts. I mean like so many people out there are struggling with problems like depression and anxiety, poverty, autism, death of family members and friends, break-ups, schizophrenia…… and here I’m sitting comfortably in front of a computer, struggling with these stupid “problems”. It just makes me feel like the most stupid, self-absorbed and incompetent weirdo to ever exist, which, of course, only succeeds in taking me back to square one.

I’ve never talked to anyone about this cuz it’s too embarrassing. I don’t think anyone will understand, not even my parents.

I’m certain my mind just came up with 100 arguments how “thinking other people won’t understand” is BS, nonsense and exaggerating what I’m going through.

I don't know man. My brain is a conflicted mess and I can't think straight anymore. Why am I like this? What is wrong with me? Does anyone understand my situation, even just slightly?

[Skeezyks]

Hello PeckOfDust: Welcome to PsychCentral! I hope you find the time you spend here to be of benefit.

I'm sorry you are struggling with all of this mental confusion. You know... we here on PC cannot diagnose you. That's a job for a mental health professional. It may or may not be "in the cards" for you to see a therapist. But, being that you're 15, I presume you're still in school. So I wonder if, perhaps, there is a school counselor you could talk to. I always think it's important to have someone to talk this sort of thing through with. Continuing to let all of these thoughts rattle around in your brain is a prescription for ongoing confusion & distress, in my opinion.

I don't think your desire for sympathy & understanding is stupid or weird or anything like that. A lot of us who are here on PC are here because we have no one in real life we can turn to for support... & yes even sympathy. We all need it from time-to-time. I don't know what happened to you to make you feel so needy & down on yourself. But I do hope that, in some way, you can find someone to talk with. Posting here on PC can certainly help too. And I hope you continue to do so. But there's no substitute for in-real-life help.

By the way, since you're still in your teens... there's a teens forum, here on PC, that may be of interest to you. (No adults allowed.) Here's a link:

https://forums.psychcentral.com/teens-lounge/

My best wishes to you...

[SeekerSeeking]

Hello Peak!!! Welcome to the forum. I’m ‘relatively’ new myself.

When I read your post the first thing I felt was awe. Really—awe.

I am in awe of your ‘awareness’ of yourself and what you are doing. I know so many people so much older than you who are not aware of what they are doing or doing to themselves. And awareness is huge; it’s a good thing. So good for you.

Hey everybody wants attention to different degrees—so you are not alone. The second thing that hit me was how badly you beat yourself up. You say things like you are self-pitying, selfish, ignorant (that you certainly are NOT), immature, disgusting, trash, liar, trickster, not worthy, complainer, feeling sorry for self, and childish.

That’s quite a list of verbal assaults. Would you like seeing someone else call another person all those things? No. Then quit treating yourself like this—beating yourself up will not help. If you’ve ever been yelled at, or seen others yelled at with assaults—you can see them shut down. Quit doing this to you.

You are not crazy, and you have identified the problem. Now what to do…

You’re 15—but maybe you could ask for therapy a therapist. If not, do you have an older (like in their 30s), wiser, person—you trust—who you could talk with? Talking can get these feelings out—coming here might help that also.

Why are you seeking attention? Are you lonely, have low self-esteem, depressed, don’t feel valued at home---what ever it is; it might help to figure that out.

But even without knowing there are things you can do to minimalize it. As a teen, I did the opposite; I tried to be invisible. But I had the same hatred of self. I was one messed up teen, fersure!

If you want to know what I did to help myself out PM me and I’ll tell you. I’m not diagnosing you, just telling you what worked for me in my life.

Mostly, what I want you to take away is you are NOT alone—you are NOT any of the words you beat yourself up with—you are bright and perceptive==and again I am in awe of you.

Now, take care of you.

[PeckOfDust]

Hi again
Thank you so much for replying to my post guys..... it really made feel better
I know beating myself up is unhealthy and I shouldn't be doing it, but I can't help it. I can't stop. It's almost like I don't want to stop, which makes it hard for me to believe I'm trying to get better T.T
Maybe I'm just using it as an excuse to avoid responsibilities(I'm sorry...... that thought just comes into my mind naturally).
I started self harming two weeks ago after I convinced myself that I have these thoughts simply because I'm a messed up person. I also have suicidal thoughts from time to time, but again I tell myself I'm being dramatic.
I just wanna stop altogether. My mindset is my own demise and I have no hopes of changing it.
Seeing a therapist would be unthinkable -- my dad would never approve. The thought of seeing a school counselor scares me, but maybe I'll try it after exams are over. I've heard some bad rumours about them though.
P.S I've taken some online depression tests online and all the tests say I have moderate to severe depression, but my more logical side finds that unlikely. The questions themselves already seem too generic, and I'm not even sure if I answered with complete honesty.
P.S to SeekerSeeking: I've been trying to find out why I'm like this, and I found a possible cause. In my school, people who emote through means other than laughing than are made fun of. Interactions are shallow and meaningless(maybe that's cuz I don't have any real friends but whatever). Could this somehow relate to my current state of mind?

Again, sorry if I offended anyone. Also, sorry for the long rant and wasting your time. Thanks so much just for reading.