School and living alone

[Janey_beyond]

Hi, I just wanted to rant about how I’ve been feeling & hopefully gain some advice or make others feel less alone. I’m in my senior year of high school atm and have been living alone for two years now. I achieve good marks but find I regularly lose motivation for study because of my depression, eating disorder and often feel confused about my future. My most common feeling is loneliness. I have no friends at school or in my personal life so when I come home from school, I am alone & cope with these feelings through severe binge eating. This has become a daily routine of coming home and eating until I physically feel uncomfortable. Because of this, I have gained a bit of weight and struggle with body dysmorphia. It’s very hard to go out when I feel I don’t look my best because I place a lot of my worth of the way I look. I feel whenever people are looking at me, they are judging me, which causes me to isolate myself from the world. This usually results in major depressive episodes consisting of self harm and suicidal thoughts. I find when I feel sad, it’s an excruciating pain throughout my body and I become very desperate to get rid of these feelings (hence the binging). I am seeking professional help and about to start anti depressants for the first time in a couple years, I really hope they help. Thanks for listening:)

[therising]

Hi Janey_Beyond

Given your challenges, I think you need to give yourself credit for how hard you're working to manage them. It's definitely not easy trying to manage multiple challenges that can all kinda tie in together. I'm glad you seeking professional support and guidance as well as coming here, so that you're not trying to manage everything on your own.

As a 53yo gal, took me decades to finally work out how important it is to seek guides in life. They come in so many different forms and have the ability to shed light and help us gain a solid sense of direction. There's guidance for mental wellbeing, physical wellbeing and even a soulful sense of wellbeing. There are financial guides, academic guides and so on. There's guided meditations, online guides like with YouTube and the forums here and more. Guides are everywhere and, to tell you the truth, I couldn't live without certain guides in my life. It'd just be too hard. While there can be times in life where we can see the way ahead clearly, through our imagination, there are other times where we can't see a single thing or we can only see the worst. Finding a seer/guide at such times is so important, someone who can see for us.

Personally, I'm a serious emotional eater and mirrors tend to trigger some of my so called 'inner demons', such as the harsh and brutal depressing inner critic and the saboteur in me. The saboteur's a tricky one. When there's a mirror, it can come to life with something along the lines of 'You know what would make you feel so much better? A block of chocolate. Imagine that. Instead of standing there looking in the mirror, why not go for a Netflix binge with a pack of chips as well. You'd feel so much happier'. The saboteur and depressing inner critic become a bit of a tag team at times. Once the whole block is eaten and the pack of chips is empty, it can become 'You're pathetic. You do this every time...' and on and on it goes, that depressing inner critic. I found one of the challenges with living alone, when I was younger, involved there being no one to interrupt that kind of inner dialogue. Living alone can be a major trigger that's definitely worth managing. How to manage living on our own with no one to interrupt and take us on a detour away from the depressing chatter up there in our head? New ways to manage could be part of your quest for greater self understanding and self development.

Btw, I've found being sensitive is something to be proud of. Of course, there's an upside and a downside to such an ability, 2 sides to the sensitivity coin. To be able to sense what is brilliant, soulful, inspiring, joyful and more is the light side of the coin. To be able to sense what's stressful, depressing, enraging etc can feel like the dark side. A complex collection of vast spectrums of emotion, from one extreme to the other. To be able to feel or sense all this energy in motion within our self definitely comes with challenges, that's for sure. 🙂❤️

[Earth Girl]

Hi JaneyBeyond,

I'm proud of you for being able to still get good marks in school despite going through all of this! I agree that it's very hard to study and do assignments when you are going through a lot.

I'm not sure if this would be helpful, but do you eat much lunch at school? If you eat more at school it might make it a bit easier to not eat as much when you get home? I understand that you might feel uncomfortable eating at school if you don't have anyone to sit with. I use to emotional eat a lot too, not to the point where it was an e.d, but it did make me feel a lot better when I used food as a comfort.

Tbh, I sometimes notice people's body shapes a bit, but it's not because I'm judging them or trying to be rude. When I see someone who looks like they might be a bit overweight, I feel bad for them because of the reasons why they may be overweight as it's never really their fault. It's always either from emotional eating (like what you and I sometimes do), their parents may have fed them a lot of junk food when they were little (this happened to me a little bit and only just a couple days ago, I've managed to get out of the habit/stopped craving junk food), from medication that makes them gain weight or that makes them really hungry (one of my schizophrenic medications made me gain a lot of weight because it made me very hungry) or a reaction to extreme trauma or a disease they have that makes them gain weight or makes it hard for them to stop eating. There's probably even more reasons than these actually. So if people look at you, just try to remind yourself that they probably either feel for you because they understand that you are struggling or even if they are judging you and being mean, they will probably one day realize that you are struggling.

Being lonely and not having anyone is really hard. I also had no friends in school and I was really shy and got bullied a lot. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who has experienced this though because when I was in school, I'm pretty sure I was the only one who didn't have any friends and to this day people call me a loser because of it even though having lots of friends doesn't necessarily make you better than anyone else and not having friends doesn't make you beneath anyone. 

I hope your antidepressants you will be taking will help too! When I had depression, I didn't really find them helpful, but for some people they make a difference and I promise that depression does eventually end even though it doesn't feel like it because it tends to last a really long time. Even if the medication doesn't help, you will feel a lot better one day and you'll be glad you stuck around.

I hope you never give up on life because you seem like a really nice person, especially considering everything you've been through. I went through a lot of similar things when I was your age but I was really mean back then. I genuinely feel as though just a couple days ago (funnily on the same day that I stopped my food problem as well) that I've overcome (or a least am close to overcoming) my vulnerable narcissism problem that I'm pretty sure I had a bit of. I don't think I was extremely narcissistic, but I am pretty sure that I was a bit unwell and I was really struggling and hurting. I'm really proud of myself. I can even live in the moment now and smile genuinely. I use to not be able to smile genuinely even when I was happy. I'm so much happier and more confident as well and my listening skills have also gotten a lot better as well as taking accountability. (Sorry, I know that's really random).

But what I'm trying to say is that I'm also proud of you for being able to remain such a nice person even though you are going through so much! Also, thanks for sharing a part of your story because it helped me realize that I'm not the only one who was alone in school and I'm not alone with my struggles. 🙂

Since you are a senior in school, that means you won't have to go there for too much longer. I'm so glad I didn't give up on life because my life is so much better now and I also feel like I'm a much better person now too which is good because I'm turning thirty fairly soon hehe.

[quirkywords]

Janey_ beyond

well done for writing your story and sharing it so honestly. 
You are coping with many challenges at a young age.

I wonder if writing out your thoughts here has helped and if you already write a journal or may think of starting one. You write well and clearly with insights into your behaviour. 

the rising has shared her thoughts with you. You may find them helpful. I learn from her posts as she expresses herself and offers a different view of looking at things. 

[BlueLily]

Hi Janey_beyond,

Sorry to hear you are going through a difficult time but it's great that you are seeking help and sharing your struggles with others. I personally can relate to struggling a lot living alone. I had to live alone for few years in the past and realised that I wasn't able to cope being alone and as a survival mechanism I also starting doing things like over eating or watching too much TV to fill up my time which made me depressed. Spending day after day talking to myself in my own head made me feel like as I was all alone in the world. Then again there were so many people I knew who were living by themselves for years but really enjoyed it. That made me realise that living alone is an enjoyable thing for only some people but I wasn't one of them and it was the cause for my depression. After that I moved in with some friends and gradually started to socialise and was able to let go of depressing feelings. 

This was my personal experience so hope this sheds some light on to how you can overcome your situation. And know that you are not alone experiencing this kind of struggles..