Feel worthless

[Amber1991]

Hi there, I've never been on a forum before but I'm feeling like I need to vent. I'm so sick of feeling like I don't know where I belong and at this point I feel like I will never get ahead in life. Nothing ever seems to go right Im currently unemployed and have interview after interview but never seem to be good enough. I can't get the motivation to get out of bed in the morning so I always end up waking up around lunchtime or later and when I do wake up all I feel is a sinking worthless feeling. I've had depression since I was 13 and I'm now 24 and starting to think that this is just how my life will always be. I cant study even though I'm not stupid I just can't mentally do it. I don't feel like I belong anywhere and have no idea where my life is heading. I Feel like everyone around me is moving on having children and getting married and I'm stuck, I've always felt different to everyone else and I don't understand how people can just get on with their lives so easily, I struggle to have a shower half the time. Anyway thanks for listening.  

[Sawyer]

Hi Amber,

First of all, welcome to the beyondblue forums.

I'm sorry you are feeling this way and I can certainly empathise with what it feels like to just be sailing through life, barely just going through the motions.

It feels like you have a few negative thought patterns hanging around you that might be making it even more difficult to shake how you are feeling. You should understand that ideas like "I will never get ahed of life", "this is how things will always be" and "I don't belong anywhere". These are the kinds of thought patterns that we are all guilty of, and are very unproductive, hard to disapprove, and self-fulfilling. By this I mean, if we are in the mindset that we don't belong anywhere, we may be less inclined to put ourselves out their and find where we belong. If we are resigned to the fact that this is how things will always be, then we can decrease our drive to proactively deal with how we are feeling. 

I understand how you feel, and it is very healthy to vent these feelings out when we have them. You mentioned how other people around you seem to be getting ahead of you, I know this feeling too as i'm around the same age as you. I think it's just that at our age, for the first time, we begin to see major deviation in the paths people take. Some people have families quite young, while others study/work and progress their career, some of us just need time to figure out what it is we want to do. Neither path is inherently right, as long as you take the path that is right for you. I often bring myself down looking on social media like Facebook and seeing all the amazing things people seem to be doing. But I always remind myself that, these are peoples highlight reels, we don't see what goes on behind that superficial level, whereas we know how we are feeling quite intimately. It is unfair on yourself to compare the two. Often some of the people that seem to have it most together on the surface, feel as if they have no idea what they are doing. I am one of those. 

Do you currently see a psychologist? or have you in the past. It seems like you could benefit a lot from talking these feelings and their basis through and developing strategies going forward. Try browsing the forums for strategies other people have found effective, read their stories and know that you aren't alone in this.

 Kind Regards,

Sawyer

[BenD]

Hi Amber,

Welcome to the forums and good on you for posting 🙂

Sometimes it can feel a bit like everyone else knows what they are doing hey? It seems people are really good at going around with purpose and confidence and just "get" things.

Its pretty hard to reconcile with how some people can appear so blissful when others are just walking around in their head all day.

Whats good though is that you aren't just putting up with feeling crappy, you are doing something about it (i.e. posting here!). One thing that helps get me going and 'moving' is thinking about a time where I was most proud of myself. I think you can be proud of yourself for taking action. It's a good move.

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about children and marriage. Its not really about what other people expect you to do that matters, its what you are comfortable with doing yourself.

And as for feeling different to everyone else, I think you only have to look at the amount of visitors to this forum to see that lots of us are in this together. Together we will help ourselves out of it too.

What were you looking at studying and what jobs have you worked before?

Ben

[Neil_1]

Hi there Amber

Welcome to Beyond Blue and thanx heaps for coming here and providing your post.

Also brilliant to see that Ben has provided a really good response back to you.

As you wrote, you felt like needing to vent and that’s one of the great things about this site – anyone can come along and vent or unload at any time and it’s quite often a very good thing to be able to do.  Just to get things out of the system and down onto paper or in this case, computer screen.  🙂

You’ve mentioned that you’ve suffered with depression for a long long time now – and though you haven’t mentioned it, I’m hoping that during that time, you’ve been able to seek out some professional help, via a gp and/or counsellor?   And if so, do you see your doctor reasonably regularly?   If not, it might be time to make another appointment just to let them know how you’re travelling of late.

You’ve mentioned that you will wake up after lunchtime – does this mean that you’re going to be in the wee early hours and therefore, you’re needing that time to manage enough sleep or are you going to bed at a reasonable time, but still aren’t able to wake up till early afternoon?   This might be something to also discuss with your doctor.

One last thing before I send this off:   you’ve mentioned that you feel so many others around you are getting on with their lives, getting married, etc – but I’d like to mention here that so many of us are able to get through our days by ‘placing an invisible mask’ in front of our faces.  A mask that no-one else can see, but what it does is to shield our illness away from others.  You might be surprised at how many of ‘these people’ who appear on the surface to be going about their lives seemingly ‘so easy’, but I reckon that a fair number of them would be having their own demons that they face and they just hide it away from others by ‘masking’ it and therefore showing out to the general population of someone who seems to be managing everything, when deep down and when they get home, they are saturated with this mongrel illness.

Would love to hear back from you.

Neil