I'm lost

First of all, you go to college to learn. Not knowing is part of the process. I think you could do it.

Secondly, Learning to love yourself takes a little practice. Look at yourself the way another person would. Do you deserved to be loved? Would in your opinion that other person deserve love? Of course they would and so would you.

Try to make healthy choices in life. Take care of yourself. Treat yourself to nice baths, listen to good music. Walk in nature and soak it all in. It all has meaning and so do you. You are a good person, that says a lot.

Hang in there, others will respond. I think learning to love yourself is hard, but it is so worth doing. Once you get started it gets easier.

The only way you will know about college (if you still want to go) is to try it. Maybe start off with a few classes and go from there. Don't over load yourself. You want to be able to focus on each class. If you can't do it, then you can't do it. At least you tried.

I hope your day gets better.

Hugs, Karen...

Hi Marie.

Sorry you are feeling so low. I have some ups and downs too. I'm routing for you. Glad you found HW. I have a cat :)

Wish you the best. You WILL feel good again.

Derwood.

Thank you for all the replies. They are all really helpful. I'm really hard on myself even when I know there's no need to be. I just feel like I let so much time go by doing nothing.

Do you have a high school education?

What kind of work do you want to do?

Do you know what made you depressed?

Is it something like, it came on at 23, or was there an event?

Do you have any relatives who have depression, wondering if it runs in the family?

I'm not advocating automatically taking anti-depressants, but have you ever taken any of those?

Marie:

I was thinking about that not long ago.

Thinking how fast life goes.

You said, "I think just life in general became overwhelming at one point and I became depressed and never really bounced back from it."

I was thinking, like, when I was in the 6th grade, did I realize that in only 6 more years I was going to be a senior in high school? Did I realize in only a few more years, I 'd be in the work force?

How quick that happens. It's like time is going at a certain speed, and if you don't keep up, it can just roll over the top of you.

It's like maybe I don't want to be an adult. But then I don't want to stay in the fifth grade, either. It's like, there are not enough choices.

What made you buckle under? Were there life events? What would you like to do workwise?

Were you going along great, and then everything collapsed? Do you think an anti-depressant could get you over this difficult time?

How long have you been depressed? Two months. What did you do between 18 and 23?

Marie:

You said, “It started in 2011 when I was a senior in high school something with an EX a situation that scarred me for life mentally.”

I’m sorry to hear about that.
When I was a junior in high school, I had an incident also, which very much affected me.

I had a nervous breakdown in class (officially a “psychotic episode”) reading out-loud, due to an event that had happened just 15 minutes prior to that which mentally devastated me and put me in a frame of mind where I could not read out-loud, I couldn’t catch my breath, and could get out only 2 or 3 words at a time.

My girlfriend was sitting right next to me. She was mortified. She tried to dump me immediately, and I refused to be dumped, but kept dating her for a year to try and save my self and public image, which is what my girlfriend was trying to do by dumping me. Oh, horror upon horror.

You know, welcome to the real world at 17. Just complete shock.

One of the things that helped in a way, was that I had to go to a new high school for my senior year. In a negative way, I looked at it as a third horror, not knowing anyone in the new town and the new school, not fully seeing it as a natural escape.

But it was a help, and a hindrance. I did meet someone new at the new high school. She did sit right next to me in English. Storybook stuff. We were just friends, but, hey, she did wear a dress, so what else is necessary at 17 and 18?

She was perfect. She was also part of the buffer between me and the horrible experience. The more of those experiences I had, the further back and lessened the bad experience became from when I was a junior in high school.

I can now look back and see that my mental collapse at 17 was the result of stress in that classroom 15 minutes before when my girlfriend and my best male friend became over excited when an announcement was made over which one of the two won a high class office.

They were fawning over each other to such a high degree, most of it fake, that my psychic was under terrible attack and was crushed. I was threatened by this, to the point that my psychic imploded.

And 15 minutes later, I had to read out loud.

What I was going to say was, looking back through time, I can now see that this was just my becoming more of who I really was. I wasn’t King Kong. I didn’t really want to be King Kong, I just wanted to be who I really was. I just didn’t know that’s what I wanted.

I’m saying, that nasty event brought me down, down to who I really was, down to reality, where we have to live. I wasn’t supposed to be under that much stress in a social, dating, society type situation.

I had relatives who had emotional problems. That’s who I was.
So, when I mentally collapsed that day, I was coming home. Coming home to where my forefathers had been. People with emotional problems.

I did largely forget that problem in high school, but it didn’t forget me, in that, right now, I’m manic-depressive and have on-going emotional problems that have never left me. It’s part of who I am, which is really what I want to be most of all: myself.

So, I don’t know what happened with a high school ex at 18. But maybe it brought you closer to yourself. Maybe it brought you closer to reality.

Life is rough. It does throw you its worst to see if you can handle it.
These tests by reality go on every day, to find out where you are in the scheme of things.

It’s impersonal. It doesn’t know who you are. It just wants to know what your place is in the scheme of things.

And that’s how we fine our niche. Our home. Our self’s. That’s all it’s doing, it’s wanting you to find yourself. Your rightful place.

If you can’t handle stress, it’s got some places there with low stress. If you can handle stress, it’s got some places there, also.

Whatever‘s your pleasure. It doesn’t care. It’s whatever you want.

Maybe if you weren’t so sensitive, you would have bounced over that. Maybe you are sensitive. Maybe that’s who you are. There is nothing wrong with that.

As a matter of fact, that’s a plus. A lot of people could have perhaps gotten over that. Yeah, and a lot of people are insensitive jerks.
Aren’t we glad you’re not one of them?

My now deceased wife had a rough experience at 5. You want to talk tough? Yours happened at 18. That’s a piece of cake compared to what she had.

Hey, Marie, in a little bit, at 3:15 I have to be somewhere. Where do I have to be, Marie? I have to be at my psychiatrist’s office. Because I’m a loon.

I have to give her an update. I have to go to keep my meds refilled. My Lithium for manic-depression, which brings down the mania and eases the depression, and my Mirtazapine for my depression.

What would happen if I don’t take my medicine? I would sometimes have mania and couldn’t calm down, I would sometimes have depression, I would have panic attacks.

In that case, the medicine is keeping me from being myself, the sick part of myself. I am mentally ill, yeah, that’s me. But I’m not sick all the time.

I can write some nice people and hope they get better. Now that’s the good me. The person I knew I was when I was 17, but some other people didn’t.

I never gave up on myself, Marie. Don’t you either.

Marie:

I think it's good that you are seeing a counselor.

I think it's great. To try and carry that a step further, I would say, I would not wait 7 days or 30 days in between appointments thinking the counselor is going to save me in 50 minutes.

We all have days, weeks in-between appointments to work on ourselves. As in, "Looking for a helping hand? What about the one on the end of your arm?"

I say that to myself and others now because, I remember the time I waited about 3 or 4 weeks while I grew steadily more depressed, without doing anything for myself, until I had a nervous breakdown.

The saying also, "What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger" has some truth to it.

In that, for every gosh awful experience we have, it teaches how rough life is, and lets us know, we have to get tougher.

If we've had an experience that nearly destroyed us, we have to re-gear ourselves for that level of toughness. As in, don't give up, get tougher, and smarter.

Or, "If life hands you its toughest slam, never say die, say darn!"

What's helped me, also, is a column I read on being positive when trying to solve problems. I didn't know it, but uncon. I was neg., which is what I learned in childhood.

I didn't know it, but I was tripping myself up, uncon. looking for a way to lose, so it would match up with my childhood training.

The col. said, go into a prob. thinking you can solve it, and it increases the chances that you will. Now, when I have a prog., I don't think about the prob., I think about my neg. uncon. sneaking up on me.

So before I even begin to think about trying to solve the problem, I try to think about my problem, of being uncon. neg., and try to drive it out by saying, "Think positive, think positive....."

The problem is often very easy, it's when I trip myself up that makes it difficult.

I also now say, "One problem at a time, and be positive about that problem."

Also, volunteer work might help you. Getting your psychic energy turned around from worrying about yourself, to worrying about someone else, like I'm doing now.

Volunteering can get others in your life who can use your help, and you'll be the giant. Hospitals, libraries, tutoring, senior citizens homes. I delivered "Meals on Wheels" to seniors for awhile.

You said, "I am extremely sensitive at times I wish I wasn't because I take everything to heart."

I rem. years ago that I was not so sensitive. I thought, too, that it was a weakness. But it is not. For instance, it was a sensitive person who wrote:

"I shall pass through this world but once.
If therefore, there be any kindness I can show,
Or any good thing I can do.
Let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again."

See, right there, no jerk wrote that.

Since you've had a rough situation, you're in a better position to help someone else who has had a hard time.

For you can tell them, "Guess what happened to me one time!"