Hi

[Bonbons]

I'm a 24 male who's has been trying to get out of the 'deep-end' for a few years. At my lowest point, I went to a Headspace center to be diagnosed with depression/anxiety and be prescribed pills I was supposed to take. I didn't buy the pills, and then ghosted the remainder of the scheduled appointments.

Thus followed a few more years where my mental state rode a sine graph, where I struggled to breach the median and spent increasingly more time in the negative after each cycle. If you were to ask me what I was doing this time last year, I could not tell you within any reasonable accuracy. I have been the typical Japanese Hikikomori or shut-in, waking at 5pm and sitting at the computer for 12+ hours on repeat, eating a loafs of bread and water.

Occasionally, I would get short-lived outbursts to want to try and re-integrate into society, but the last depressive bout was my longest and least productive.

The past few months I've been fixing my lifestyle, my outlook and self-grooming. I've done a 180 with the help of my adopted puppy, talking to strangers and taking part in every facebook/public event possible, nothing I could have done a couple years ago. I picked up a gym membership and thankfully my body still remembered how to move and I've managed to get to some semblance of fitness. This is the furthest out of my comfort box I've tried to go, even setting goals for several months in advance.

However, the previous couple of weeks, I've been feeling more exhausted than I thought possible. I'm scared of dipping back into my previous habits. I've spent a sleepless week being introspective, realising I work a dead-end job, with a dog that anchors me here, with a list of facebook friends I have vapid conversations with, across various dumb apps and having no qualifications to open career paths. All because I met the most beautiful girl I've seen.

I know I'm not worth her time, but I so want to be. I hate that I've met someone who I want to be with, but am not ready for.

All my stupid nervous ticks, and depressive thoughts won't leave me alone now, and I sleep in the foetal position cringing about dumb shit from the past. So now I feel like I'm slipping, eating chocolate at 3am and doing increasingly sedentary stuff.

How do you keep your motivation in check, or keep your head above water when it feels like you tied bricks to your own feet?

[demonblaster]

Hey Bon 🙂 welcome to the BB forums, well done opening up

Depression's rough isn't it, really a master at pulling us down in every possible way, kudos to you for taking charge and going for it with excercise, self grooming, puppy (cute things) and participating in social events. That's your strength kicking in.

Excercise is such a good stress release and I imagine starting to get fit again would be a very satisfying feeling, I wonder do you think is the tiredness that catching up? I too excercise, walk hills most days & with the endorphines kicking in it can take a while for tiredness to step up but I'm happy to be doing it and good on you too talking to strangers can be good, meeting new people can be uplifting aye, even if only a temporary with them still people contact usaully on good terms I find.

Good question how to keep the motivation in check, I've lost a lot of weight, more to go by trying not to be too hard on myself, and allow that chocolate break for a while with the mindset of I'm going back on the diet and walking, just having a break and of course good old depression being the master it is at pulling us down dredges up all the rot in the past. Tiredness has stress attached to it and we're at our weakest in those times, do you get much sleep?

Good you have goals, they're good to have, to keep thinking about them and how you'll feel when reaching towards them could be the key to getting the motivation back.

Ok if I'm not back regularly I do try to catch up with people eventually and in the mean time I really hope you're able to feel a bit better and find some peace.

Hope you return to keep us updated tc 🙂