topic Feeling anxious and depressed about my past and present in Anxiety

Feeling anxious and depressed about my past and present

MoodyGuy87 — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 14:31:54 GMT

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum.

I am a guy who is in his late 30's and has Asperger's syndrome. For almost my entire life I have been feeling very anxious. Most recently, I have been feeling nostalgic about my past. When I was younger, I have struggled to interact with my peers when I was at both primary and high school. Making friends was challenging for me.

There were a few times when the other students (most of them were girls) would offer to be my friends when I first started high school, but due to being too shy and having difficulty with communicating, I rejected them (which I now live to regret that decision). I also used to get bullied a lot and my mum had to pull me out of school, and then I had to be home schooled (which made me feel isolated and depressed). I wanted to return to school so I could be around the other kids and maybe I could even reconsider the friendship offers from those students who I have previously rejected.

But when I did return to school, the bullying got worse, so I had to go back to being home schooled again. I missed out on a lot of opportunities.

But now that I am in my late 30's, I have lost interest in my current life. I am now married and have two children. Right now, I am living in the past because I am not coping in the present day. I always wished that I did things differently in the past, so that my present would have been better. I am very nostalgic, and I wish I could go back in time and be a teenager again and fix up all the mistakes that I made in the past.

To make matters worse, I am also currently unemployed, and I have limited access to being able to get an internship or work placement anywhere despite that I have done some TAFE courses.

Re: Feeling anxious and depressed about my past and present

Scared — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 02:25:38 GMT

We all wish we can go back into the past. But what we do today will become our past. Everyday we build the past and not realising it. So if you made regrets years ago by not doing certain things then your still making the same mistakes now by not doing again. At some point you need to say ok my better past starts today and build it. You have done Tafe courses so thats not a waste so your past has something solid to reflect on.
I think when unemployed we have too much time to think about things that are not helpful to us.

Re: Feeling anxious and depressed about my past and present

MoodyGuy87 — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 11:51:20 GMT

Hi. Thank you for your reply. What you have told me sounds true. I now just hope for a positive future.

You are right, I have mounted to tertiary education. Even though I was never guaranteed any employment from it.