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Help. I don’t know who I am supposed to be and feel lost

Daniel12
Community Member

Hello there I don’t usually do anything like this but I wanted to see if anyone has any advice for me. I am a 25 yr old who on the surface should have everything under control as I have a good job, good family yet I increasingly feel like I don’t know what makes me who I am and often feel down and flat when trying to find answers. I know people have much more reason to be depressed than someone like myself but I just constantly felt flat and lost searching for how I am supposed to be and what makes me who I am.
I have been trying to find a partner which has been the source of countless rejection which is all part of it I know but often I’m left feeling like I’m quite a boring person with nothing really that interesting to tell anyone and I am confused as to how to act

I’m usually a quiet natured person but I feel this incredible pressure that I can’t be like that and I am confused as to where I am at with my life

it is difficult for me to put into words I guess it’s just a lost type of feeling of what my place is and who I am and I thought at 25 I might have an idea of this

I know my post hasn’t given a great deal to go off but if anyone has experienced similar at my age I’d be glad to hear what approach you took

thanks

624 Replies 624

therising
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor

Hi Daniel

I found with my own depression, just when I thought I was at rock bottom, I'd fall further. Then I'd think I was there again only to find myself falling even further into the depression or 'well'. Finally, I reached that point. You do not want to find yourself there alone. It is the darkest point of depression (with not a single bit of light), with the worst of internal dialogue that proves lethal for some. It offers an almost soul destroying level of heartbreak.

I'll throw something out there in the hope that it may give you a different perspective to where you might be right now. Not sure if it will feel relatable. Even relating to some of something can be enough to help change perspective a little. 'The dark night of the soul' is an interesting topic worth researching. While it might be a bit woo woo/out there to some, it offers a different take on depression a particular type. While there are many factors that can contribute to depression (including a serious chemical imbalance that needs to be seriously addressed, as Hanna touched on), this is a more soulful take. You sound like a deeply feeling soulful person, so perhaps it may be relatable to some degree. I hope so. I imagine the 'symptoms' list alone will be relatable.

therising
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor

Hi Daniel

Thinking of you and wanted to check up on you. It worries me, how deeply depressed you're feeling right now. Given your revelation after soccer, do you have an upcoming appointment with your psychologist or are you able to make one asap? I feel it's important you speak to her about this revelation. It'll be a seriously tough one for you to navigate without her guidance. Do you feel talking to your auntie could perhaps help? As Hanna mentioned, another avenue is your GP, in the way of helping shift the kind of chemistry that comes with serious depression. Shifting the chemistry while trying to work through new revelations that come to mind is perhaps something worth seriously considering. The deepest part of depression can't be managed alone. The way it messes with our head can be truly mind altering and not in a good way.

Based on you being someone who holds the ability to feel so much, you'll be feeling the full impact of your thoughts. While considering different thoughts to give to you, so you feel them, I want you to think about how you managed making it through the depressing nature of those you faced at school, the hard work you put in. Consider how much you worked to manage unhelpful advice, such as 'You'll be right' or 'You just need to get on with things', while others didn't manage giving you more constructive advice. Consider how intensely you've worked to try and navigate the way forward while also working hard to understand your thought processing and your feelings at the same time. If you consider past intimate relationships, how much did you work to try and make sense of them, during them and after them? How much careful analysis have you done in order to try and better manage your anxiety in social situations? A lot. I could go on with all the ways you've worked so hard and are still working hard. There are so many.

A new revelation: You have worked harder than anyone else. You've worked much harder than those who have thrown simple unhelpful advice at you. You worked harder to manage yourself, your thoughts and emotions compared to any of those bullies at school you faced. Not one of them worked to manage their thoughts and behavior. You worked harder at relationships. You've worked harder at analysing the hell out of life than many people you know. You are one of the most powerful people in your life.

In thinking about it, have you been managing working with people who have tended to please themself to various degrees?

Hi therising

Thank you for your concern and check in, I really do appreciate it. Your post was very heart warming to read and also Hanna’s.

I saw my psychologist earlier this week and explained the feelings, it was mainly me speaking about what I am struggling with after this “meltdown” if that’s what I can call it. I don’t think I have had one rational thought the entire week and feels like I’m in a bottomless pit. For example I see the girl I had to end things with because she moved post some stuff on social media and immediately my mind goes to “she seems to be living life fully without me I must of been bad” or “she never posted things when she was with me this means she was unhappy with me”. There’s an intellectual part of my brain that sees that’s overthinking but this force of depression doesn’t let me see it that way.

I had another meltdown of sorts today working from home just thinking how pathetic I have become, why have I never in my young adult life in particular been able to live in my own skin comfortably or have self esteem at the level it should be at. Couple all that with intense loneliness I feel everyday and the inability to move on from relationships that end amicably or whatever I don’t even know where to start to get better.

Thinking about what you mentioned, I think I have unknowingly been dealing with levels of this for quite a while and it seems that it was almost a ticking time bomb and it’s been set off and now I have reached a point of absolute depression and anxiety where my life each day is basically 2 hours of panic and anxiousness about what people think of me from past situations or uncomfortability in myself to 2 hrs of deep dark and defeated depression I can’t get out of. This cycle repeats all day everyday.

I actually feel like I’m going through pain every moment. People are saying to me it’s time to work on myself but that terrifies me because whenever I try to do something on my own I’m met with depressed and lonely thoughts that I can’t escape.  I just want to stop this cycle.

I am at a point where I’ve been searching for an answer to these problems and even trying to find the problems themselves I feel like this is just who I am. It has to be just who I am, I am defined by this anxiety, depression and always worrying about what people may have thought of me or think of me. It’s just me and I’m destined to suffer like this

therising
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor

Hi Daniel

I used to believe a 'breakdown' was a sign of a person's inability to cope until a far more accurate revelation came to mind one day, after I had one of my own. The revelation: A breakdown does not happen in a matter of seconds (where we just snap all of a sudden). It involves a process of breaking down everything we've been trying to manage up to a point. It's in the conclusion of having broken everything down that we typically witness the greatest level of upset. Whether we've reached the right conclusion or the wrong one is a whole other factor.

Having completed the process of breaking things down, not unusual to face 'I have absolutely no idea where to go from here (based on my conclusion)'. Sometimes we can get stuck in the conclusion phase, unable to escape its impact.

I'd spent some time trying to break down why few people ever really appeared to really care about me. With the human brain basically being a processor, my brain referenced just about everything that reflected a lack of care. From family to friends to boyfriends to my husband and just people in general. It was a bit of a depressing breakdown of everything. I reached the conclusion I wasn't loved in a lot of ways. It was an incredibly sad conclusion. Where to go from there? What does one do with such a revelation? What came to mind next marked a new start beyond this conclusion, 'It's now time to define what love truly is'. Defining love is what allowed me to make better sense of my past and let it go, while giving me a constructive reference from that point on.

In the conclusion to breaking down a variety of issues in my past, I realise my challenge has always involved me finding a new program to install into my 'hard drive', that thing that processes/computes (aka my brain). 'Updates' are an absolute must. Simplistic way of looking at it but just as I couldn't function constructively without a program that involves a solid definition of love, how do you work without a program or programs that define a solid sense of 'self acceptance'? Is installing one long overdue?

If you imagine, having downloaded a mental program known as 'Self acceptance', all of a sudden things become much clearer, not just in the way of how to work with it in the future but also why a certain level of dysfunction existed in the past. A new reference or mental program can help make sense of so many factors.

With us having so many aspects of self, how do we accept and manage each one differently?

Hanna3
Community Member

Hi Daniel and the Rising

Has the psychologist made any suggestions about whether she feels some appropriate anti depressant medication would be helpful for you Daniel? Or have you gone to your GP and had a discussion about how you are feeling?

A short term treatment with antidepressant medication might give you some relief from these dark thoughts and enable you to think more clearly about your situation. Do you think a chat about this with your psychologist or GP might be useful?

Does your psychologist give you some suggestions and guidance about your thoughts about yourself? Are the visits to her helpful?

This girl you dated has moved on you say. Welcome to love lost! Daniel, this is what men write songs about! So many great songs are about sweet love and the losing of it. What you are feeling is a part of being alive. It hurts terribly, but you do recover. Great love songs are often sad! Go play some and have a cry listening to them if it helps! This is what I did in the past. If you're going to grieve you might as well wallow in it! It does help to know the great songwriters all went through these feelings too.

Things will pick up I promise you. Be patient, but do talk to someone about some medication and do reach out for help if these dark feelings become overwhelming.

You will get through this and come out of it again.

Daniel12
Community Member

Hi Hanna

They have given me a prescription to some anxiety medication I think it is but I have been reluctant to take them as of yet as it feels like I am succumbing to everything when I should have no reason to feel these things. I have been brought up well, good parents, good family overall, I'm employed and all this so why do I feel this way. I feel a bit ashamed to take them, I have them there I guess it's just getting over this first step.

The hard part of this "break-up" if you can call it that is that it really only ended because she had to move away and I think we both sort of realised longer term it would not work but we both said if that weren't the case we'd still see each other. As someone who struggles with loneliness and lack of companionship thats the hard part to move past.

Then add into the mix that I tend to overthink everything, for example we spoke briefly on message recently and she had said she was doing great but she missed Melbourne and then asked me how I was. Now instead of taking that on face value I straight away correlate her doing great to be because she's got rid of me and I am no longer with her, then I see her going out and stuff on social media and think she didn't post a lot when she was with me does that mean that she wasn't happy and relaxed to do so when she was with me or just overthinking to the max because I never did anything bad to her and always encouraged her to follow goals and be relaxed/happy etc. Or I think because she moved on does this mean that I was bad & she didn't think positively about me.

So as you can imagine throw all this on top of an already depleted self-esteem, like I may have said further below this feels like the period or moment when I have finally just broken down mentally from years of emotional torture/stress/worry.

Hi therising

I can relate to what you're saying about a breakdown not happening in a matter of seconds even though it sort of feels that way in the moment. I thinking slowly but surely I have been building myself up to being more susceptible to this happening. All throughout my young adult life from probably 18-26 I have been living with a constant self doubt and borderline self hatred which is accompanied by a lack of belonging and companionship which I have probably yearned for for a long period of time.

There are a larger number of issues I feel I have and I think this last relationship is more so the trigger of it all breaking down than this girl in particularly or the situation being the main problem because logically she told me she had still really liked me but because I wouldn't be able to see her a lot during weekdays and vice versa it might struggle to work which logically I understand but my head goes straight to "she doesn't like me" which speaks to a larger issue than that situation itself.

It's not ever feeling comfortable in myself whether I say something or don't, particularly socially, it's also the fear of not being liked or accepted which holds me back from wanting to invest in things because as is blatantly obvious I clearly can't cope with relationships as I feel terrible after all of them. Funnily enough none of them have ever ended "badly" in terms of something I specifically did to cause it to end or them doing something disrespectful etc, it ends amicably every time which in a way is worse for me because it leaves me constantly pondering the "what if" and then I have to ultimately blame myself.

The thing with the last girl is I know she was going to move on, I am not oblivious to this, but feels like my time with her was not positive or meant nothing and I always feel like I mean or meant nothing positive to people. I don't know if this is my mind telling me this or whether I need to start accepting it as fact.

I am now currently in massive fear that this depression and anxiety is just who I am, I have been searching for who I am and maybe that's just it. Maybe I am depression, maybe I am destined to always feel this way and it feels like eventually this is going to get the better of me fully. I feel like I am in a bottomless pit and I won't climb out.

Hi Daniel12,

Thank you for keeping us up to date with your journey here on the forums. We're so glad that even though you're really struggling atm, you're still in contact and still posting - sharing your thoughts and feelings and reaching out to connect with us all. We're all here with you, Daniel12 - you're not alone!

We've noticed that recently your posts have been going down into a deeper and even more overwhelming place for you and we wanted to get in contact, so we've sent you an email this afternoon.

We want to point out that while we're really glad to see that you've been engaging with our other beautiful, supportive and caring members (and we love their supportive messages and their excellent advice), that we're also happy to chat with you anytime (in fact, we want to invite you to have a chat with one of our counsellors as well if you feel you can).

Our telephone lines are open 24/7 (1300 22 4636), or you can even hop onto the online chat (also 24/7) and connect with someone online if you prefer not to talk on the phone. Our telephone counsellors are all trained professionals and your call is completely confidential - we only want to support you!

Please don't give up - we know that it can be hard to find the energy and hope for a better future sometimes, but we also know that it can happen.

Take extra care of yourself, and we hope to hear from you soon,

Kind regards,

Sophie M

Hanna3
Community Member

Hi Daniel

Corrrect me if I'm wrong but I seem to remember there were other reasons you and this girl felt the relationship would probably not be suitable long term - weren't there cultural or family differences as well? In any case, long distance relationships are very difficult to maintain. Perhaps this girl, despite liking you, has been realistic and now she has moved away from Melbourne she has realized it is time to move on, which is what you also need to do i think?

I don't think anything I say is going to help you much, you really need to work with the psychologist at dealing with your underlying self esteem and anxiety issues that are making you so unhappy and must be interfering with any relationship you try to have.

Perhaps you could work at trying to recognise and stop these unhelpful thoughts - like "she's posting on social media, maybe she was unhappy with me" and replace them with more realistic thoughts, such as "she said she liked me and enjoyed our time together but now she has moved away and is moving on, it's great that she and I got along well, I just have to find a girl who isn't moving away next time!'

Do you think you could try to do this? And talk to your psychologist about ways to stop or counteract unhelpful thinking?

I still think a meditation course or relaxation such as tai chi or yoga would be incredibly beneficial for you. Would you perhaps discuss this with your psychologist?

therising
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor

Hi Daniel

I can relate to what you're saying regarding wondering about actually being depression, kind of like it's your nature, it's who you are. I can recall part of the way through my years in depression coming to believe this to be the truth. I think that's the nature of a depression, how it leads us to think it's entirely who we are.

Took a number of years after coming out of depression to reach a different conclusion. Here I am today with a better understanding of myself. When it comes to me mentioning self understanding being about understanding so many different aspects of who we are, I also understand parts or aspects of who I am can be depressing if I'm not careful. To offer a couple of examples

  • Most people think if 'the people pleaser' aspect of themself to simply involve pleasing others. It's that part of us that is happy to serve. I've found it does have a dark side. Sometimes this part of our self will do anything to serve others. It'll dictate we put our self last in some cases while insisting a self serving attitude should not be on the agenda. With it being so important to serve our self in soulful ways, the people pleaser in us can work against us. It may also dictate in some cases, 'What's wrong with you?! Why are you being so selfish? Why does that person not like you? You haven't pleased them enough, that's why. This is all your fault for being so selfish'. The people pleaser in us can be a cruel and depressing dictator at times
  • Another aspect of self may be 'the judge' in us, that part of us that judges what we've done or what we're thinking or what we've not fully succeeded at when it comes to the standard we've set for our self or others have set for us. While the judge can be helpful in judging more work needs to be put into something, it can helpfully dictate 'You're falling behind. You need to speed things up a bit'. Of course, it too has a dark side. It can also dictate stuff like 'You're hopeless. Everyone else is achieving what you want, all except you. What's wrong with you? Why are you such a loser?'. The judge can be a cruel and depressing dictator at times

I've found every aspect of self needs to be reigned in at times. If let go, any aspect of who we are holds the potential to get out of control. If I let the kid in me go with a credit card, without my more mature sense of self in play, I'd never have money to pay the bills with. If my serious sense of self became out of control, I'd never be able to have a laugh.