[SinisterCynic]

I don't really like the person that I am. I'm going to make this fairly detailed, as to where I got to where I am, why I think I am the way I am.. Hopefully someone with experience in psychology can help me out. Maybe yahoo answers isnt the best place for this, maybe someone can send me in the right direction. Anyway...
I'm a male, 19, currently serving in the Marine Corps infantry. From the time I was young I was always the golden child out of 4 brothers. Not that my parents loved me more, but I was always the best at things. I excelled in multiple sports, always had fantastic grades, my teaCher always loved me. In elementary school I was the popular kid, the one all the girls liked. I was the leader in my group of friends, I think I was very normal and well on my way to a happy and very socially successful life. My dad was the kind of dad that always coached my baseball teams. I played all sports but baseball was my game, I was damn good. My dad had a bad side of him when it came to coaching. A great father, would do, and did, anything for his children. But he had a mean side when it came to coaching. I became disenfranchised with sports, not totally because of this, but in part. My oldest brother could not have been more different than me. He listened to metal music and was involved in the local music scene with his buddies. I saw that and decided that I didn't like being the star, being the one who is best at things. I think I hates the fact that I was always talked about with such high praise by everybody. It seemed like every older figure in my life saw something in me, and felt that I was going to do great things in life. I don't exactly remember, but I almost remember hating that feeling, of everybody thinking I was so great. So I began to change... In 7th grade I quit all sports, I began smoking cigarettes, got into metal music (still love it) and generally just tried to be like my oldest brother. Up through 6th grade I was the coolest guy in school, but this change I made was social suicide. I didn't care at the time, I didn't want to be like everybody else, I wanted to be different. I found new friends (who actually are good people) that maybe didn't have the type of natural drive that I had. After a few years of this change, I was definitely labeled as one of the weird kids. I never had a chance at getting a girl, even though I had natural good looks, I just had a cynical personality and in my mind girls would never like a guy like me. In 9th and 10th grade I smoked a lot of pot, didn't do anything else. I still got good grades in school, and had a few friends ( no close friends) that I hung out with. I still got good grades, but had zero ambition. Although my natural drive still existed, it was just subdued by my messed up view of myself and the people around me. I thought everybody hated me, I thought that nobody would like someone like me, so I avoided social interaction. By the end of my sophomore year I was fed up with the way I lived my life and I decided to make a change. I quit smoking pot and got huge into crossfit (workout regimen if you don't know.) It became my passion, I was obsessed with it. The great thing about it was that I went to the gym, and in the class environment I was able to meet a lot of people, incredibly nice and welcoming people. I still had social akwardness, it took me a while to warm up to people, but my natural athletic abilities once again put me into a position of being really damn good at something. I had coaches that I looked up to at the gym. The place made me feel like I mattered. It lit a spark under my *** and I decided to try out for baseball my junior year. I made varsity after not playing for 4 years, In part due to the shape I was in, and the all hustle attitude that I naturally have. I was shredded ( like I gained loooots of muscle) and I wasn't the weird kid anymore at school. I wasn't the alpha male again, I had dug too deep a hole for that, but I was normal. The rest of high school, even though I played baseball, had damn good looks ( not trying to sound pretentious, it's just the way it was) I still lacked the social skills necessary to even get a girlfriend, I still had social akwardness due to my my previous years as a recluse. It was too late to fix that damage. Eve n though I made all these great improvements to myself, I still felt emotionally disconnected. I'm never really happy, Im never really sad, I don't have very stro ng feelings for anything or anybody. It's hard to get excited for things, sometimes I'm not even sexually interested in anybody at all. I feel like those years as a recluse and being anti social dug such a large hole that I will never be able to get out of it. In my current state of mindividuals I don't ever see myself finding a woman, having children, and living the happy life that I want. All I see is myself living the same life. Mostly because I don't really like myself, and I don't really see how someone could like a person like me enough to get romantically involved. I feel like I'm stuck in the mindset that I'm not good enough. On the outside I look like a normal dude, my military friends like me well enough, but I feel like I just put up a front. On the inside I am an emotional wreck, but I can't even make myself feel sad about the fact that I hate my life because I don't feel anything. I used to love to read, to watch movies, to gaze at the stars, to be in nature. But now i cant wrangle up enough emotion in myself to even enjoy those things anymore. I know what I need to do is change mentally, but I have know idea how I should go about doing that. Maybe I just wanted to share my story, maybe somebody might listen. I would like input from someone... maybe why I am the way I am, how much it had to do with my past. Maybe I can change. At this moment in life, I'm miserable.

[CBDMeditator]

Welcome to the forum. Thanks for sharing your story (in the future, maybe consider breaking your posts up into more digestible paragraphs as opposed to a single wall of text. I don't say this to be a diction nazi, but because you may get more feedback if it's a little more easy to follow).

I'm no professional, but I have the luxury of a lot of life experience, and a decent amount of reading in the area of psychology and self-help, for whatever that's worth.

While you didn't mention anything about your childhood beyond surface allusion to sports and being coached by an ostensibly overbearing father, you did say quite a bit about asserting your identity and image paradigms. You made frequent reference to various roles and categories you imagined yourself pigeonholed by.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my general sense was that you seem hung up on expectations of how you're supposed to behave, or what others may or may not think of you. This seems compounded by a feeling of listless, or unmoored oscillation from various identity to identity. You don't seem to know 'who' to be, and have a tenuous handle on what defines your happiness. You've branded yourself unworthy of girls' attention, and generally struggle with feelings of low self-esteem.

I would be curious where all of these feelings started, or what you imagined prompted them. Tentatively (without much context here) I would say that finding your true calling, your passions, etc. is a different subject than your own self-talk, your feelings of inadequacy/inferiority.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "We become what we think about all day long.” It's a reformulation of an aphorism dating back to the Greek philosophers, and has been coined and reworded innumerable times. How we talk to ourselves, that is, what comprises most of our day to day thinking both conscious and unconscious, can play a huge role in how we feel. Everyone has an inner critic, some more critical than others. These inner-critics tend to exaggerate, and if left unchecked by rational processing, become bullies.

If our inner-critics say things we let fly by our conscious radar, e.g. the familiar, "you're not good enough," "you're a loser," "why bother," "I could never do that," etc. etc, how do you imagine this leaves your self esteem? If these toxic thought patterns run around unimpeded, without first being processed by our rational mind with more reasonable and balanced statements like, "I may not be good enough at that yet, but I'll never learn without trying," or "this may seem difficult at the moment, but it was difficult for everyone when they first tried," it's not exactly a surprise you would feel pretty low.

When we reject ourselves for too long, we tend to become ineffectual bystanders to the bullying of our inner-critics. There's no reason why you have to stay on the sidelines for these thoughts, however. Would you let some little troll come up to you and say these things? Probably not. Try to police your thoughts and look for where you might be letting unsubstantiated criticisms fly by.

With respect to women, that's literally a social skill like any other. If you don't know how to talk to them, or what to say, that's simply because you're untrained and out of practice (just like you would see with a lapse in fitness). There are countless books (and even Youtube videos) on the social dynamics of talking to women, and even meeting friends. I would look into these if it's an area of your interest.

Further, there's also a book titled When Am I Going to be Happy?: How to Break the Emotional Bad Habits that Make You Miserable by Penelope Russianoff PhD. It's one of the first self-help books I read, and it still holds up as one of the most useful in terms of tools I still employ. I highly recommend it.

[bluebutterfly26]

well i can tell i have exactly the same problem, i think a lot about myself and i am good at many things also. i am 24 years old and i have been this way since 17 years old.
But everything you are telling about yourself seems very normal.
My life is very normal as well, but i tend to think that it's not normal and there is something weird with me.
i have been to professionals about this issue and i can tell you , you shall never think why you are the way you are, it's just who you are, embrace it. don't think of yourself anymore, just do anything , find an anchor to your feelings and thoughts like get busy with your family and friends. Once you live the life with them and share details of your life with someone like a close friend or something, you will not think about how you are anymore, you will just live.
i am no expert though and i am in middle of trying to apply what i am telling you but that seems the way i found to get better. And i am telling you, you are great and very normal and probably a very good person who is good at many things.