Thank you for sharing. It takes courage to feel your feelings and pour out your heart. Hugs.

Thanks for sharing. As long as you worry about what OTHERS MIGHT think of you, you'll be doomed to feel this way. Orhers frequently suck. If I may say, what you need to feel is a HEALTHY anger and a desire to aggressively have fun. Then exercise.

Bless your heart Blueeyes89. I'm crying just knowing someone took the time to hear me out. Thank you.

Thank you for the advice koolman, I just don't know how to find the desire anymore.

Dear Silent Scream, I have social anxiety also, I have pretty much put myself down all my life. I worry about what others think and try to make them like me and usually what happens is these people end up disliking me. Im uncomfortable in my skin even around people i have known for years. Some people call me fake bcz I am super nice to people by saying nice things. Its only bcz I dont know what to say bcz Im so uncomfortable in my own skin. I used to drink alot bcz that helped me loosen up alot. There were 2 times in my life my social anxiety stopped: when I attended college for 3 years in my 30's and I saw a therapist in my 40's for 2 years. Now I'm in my 50's and I feel like I have been misunderstood pretty much all my life bcz I cant ever be myself. And you're right about when you bring up emotional things to ur friends, they always change the subject. I am always praying and asking our creator, "Why am I here". I am sorry you are going thru such terrible pain. I would like to be your friend. If you ever need a friend, message Lisa Price oops Its called hero23-not

Hi! Good morning to you!
Just want you to know as long as i live I will not give up on jope for my sister and all of you. My beautiful and very smart 41 year sister feels just like you.
Unfortunatelly i do not the solution for " our happiness"..
So for now I tell her to live one day at a time knowing as long as i live she will not be alone. I hope life doesnt take me away from her anytime soon. I know she needs me. Suffering from depression is hard for people that have no real connection with you.
Most people in the world care for themselves and they are not going to be too involved in your life. This is just how life goes.
Your friends like you but they propably know they cant fix your problems.
It takes a lot more that liking someone to dedicate your time and life to it.
It takes a lot on unconditional LOVE to be the support. Thats why i am here, I want you to know my sister is eveything for me. I dont want to lose her, i dont want her to.suffer. i suffer a lot when i hear her saying the exact things you say.
I hate the fact all i can do ia drive with her to the dr appointments, cook nice meals for her, pretend our life is great when actually it isnt.
Last night we had a good night. We took our 9 year old boys out bowling for about 2 hours. At least i was able to make a moment of happiness or quasi.
Please dont feel alone. And you do fit in this world. You just have to accept your illness. Its hard i know, but please live one day at a time. I hope you have family that loves you like i love my sister.
I will not give up.

Hugs. I understand at least to some degree. Don't give up. If I've learned anything it's that feelings don't last forever. Yes, they can go on a long time but you will grow through this. You sound like a highly sensitive person (HSP) who does not want to talk about mundane things. Look it up - about 20% of the population is HSP and have difficulty relating in a not so sensitive world. We can learn to adjust around those who are not on our wavelength and make sure we connect with people who do get us. I don't have the easiest time talking to strangers but for me anyway, once I got a dog, people talk to me a lot more and I can talk about my dog without feeling the focus is on me. Praying for you to find all you need and dream of...

You are so welcome. How are you today?

I can relate to how you are feeling. im 25 year old female and realized that thinking positive about myself is helping me overcome things. Think....what are your strengths, what makes you happy........what can I do to get there?

I'm sorry for the late reply everybody. I've wanted to reply earlier but my self-loathing gets the better of me and I prevent myself from reaching out or asking for help.
The responses from all of you beautiful souls have been so overwhelming that I just simply breakdown but in this society, grown men are not allowed to cry as its's taken as a sign of weakness, I know it's not true but I still fell fragile. I've been taking nature walks, excercising, trying new to pick up new hobbies, talking to strangers and telling myself positive things but at the end of the day I still can't seem to break through of this mental blockade and learn to appreciate myself. I'm in a lot of emotional pain today and don't know what to do with myself. I have an urge to get rid of the possesions I deem to be childish in the hopes of growing the f**k up and gain some self respect but I'm unsure if this is a logical idea or not.
My mind is currently a mess with a thousand thoughts running all at once and the pain is getting so hard to bear that I just want to hug someone and not let go.
Thank you all for your responses and I hope you all find what you are searching for in life.

Okay it's not a mental blockade: it's an emotional one. You'll never get a result for as long as you think it's mental.

I was bullied as a child, victim of incest, blah, blah, blah. Beaten up by kids on way home from school etc ad nauseam but the point is it brings a person in to the adult world who is... on the back foot.

Everyone else is charging ahead, confident, relaxed. They're not testing every foothold. They're not looking around them every time they speak for the knife in the back. so they are having a great time and are floating across the surface of the sea, they are jetskiing on teh surface of life. They are having a great time. Us? We've got lead weights tied to our feet and we're walking across the bottom of the sea breathing through a hosepipe and trying to survive one day at a time.

This gives us extra burden. And the trick here, is not to be miserable, but to get smart.

Identify exactly what those burdens are, and remove them. Untie those weights.

You have depression because you're in a depressed state, because you're dragging yourself across the bottom of the lake breathing through a tube. It's a practical problem with a practical solution. it's not all intense and sincere, like we think.

We think intensely and oversincerely in this state because we can't find any bloody answers, so we have learned to over think. we have to unlearn that.

Go to a doctor, get a good antidepressant, and then identify, as practical issues, what you don't know how to do. Learn, practically, how to get along with people. Take each step as one step back up out of the abyss. What will you teach yourself tomorrow? What trick will you learn?

and along with it take one grief, one sorrow, one memory of disappointment or unhappiness and unravel it. Experience it. Go talk to someone about it if you can. Find out all about it, the whole context surrounding it. Learn and understand whatever it has to offer. Every single thing that happens to you has something to offer you by way of learning or understanding. Every single thing. Every bad thing can become a good thing, if you are determined to suck every bit of understanding and discovery out of it - and then throw the memory away like a used dishcloth.

If you can do this, and it hurts and is hard, you can kill bad memory. You can release yourself from those shackles. You end up where you find the stuff that happened to you in your past boring, and faintly embarrassing to tell people about for fear that they'll think it's a big deal. When in fact you're totally over it, and it could have happened to someone else.

You can be in the state you're in till you're sixty, or seventy, or ninety if you don't take practical steps to climb back out. And I speak from absolute experience here. It never unravels till you realise you have to unravel it. But once you get the hang of that, you're away laughing and could find yourself married and a father in three years.

PM me if you like. I find it hard to make sense about things like this. Very hard. it's like riding a bike. When you can do it, you can do it. Now... try explaining how to ride a bike to someone who can't ride a bike. :D

Oh also: the comments people make at you... they are flinging rubber 'jetski on the surface' darts. their darts are not designed to kill. Their darts are little fluffy foam rubber things, that are there to bonk into you and last you a day.

When we receive them, we think they are sharp, steel, heavy weighted things. And so we suffer for days and days, and 'stop trusting people for life' and all that. And it's because of location.

When you offload your lead weights and learn to jetski, you too will fling out these rubber darts, part for a laugh, part to offload when someone is silly... just sending things back to them gently for them to grow up from . You'll do it and you'll understand.

And you won't let one of these comments today bother you tomorrow, or mean you don't sit with them tomorrow, or mean you don't phone or talk to them tomorrow. it won't have a place in the future. It'll just be a fleeting moment in time.

Most people only operate in the now, and have a memory of at most three days. That's a really important thing to learn about them.

birdgie 101, I like what you have to say in support of Silent Scream. I myself don't have strong depression, but have a family member who does. I sent you a friend request so that I could send you a personal message because I had a couple of questions. If you get the request, you'll know then that I read your response on here and that's why I sent the request. To Silent scream, When you were diagnosed with some of these disorders in your twenties, did you receive therapy? or medication of some kind, or go to groups? I hope you can find some help like birdgie suggests and find some tools to help when these strong feelings come up. How to cope with them and see the messages you are giving to yourself which may be keeping you in a low place. I know these things are complex and don't feel I have the answers, but I'm glad you're here to share with the people who have gone through what you're experiencing.

I'm glad you came on and shared and got a lot of positive responses. In my mid-20s, I had younger roommates. I was in a partial hospitalization program and they decided to have an "intervention" to get me to leave the program because they thought it wouldn't help and I'd be in the same place 5 years later. They were very young and nieve. Those programs have saved my life.

Telling friends is tricky. I don't tell them until I know them pretty well or if they mention that they struggle with it too. One friend has been there for me for a decade. She's had severe bouts of depression too but not as bad as me. Another friend had no understanding of depression but what impressed me about her was that she asked me questions about what it was, what it felt like, and how it's treated. I've had others to tell me to just get over it. I get rid of them soon as I can. Choose your friends wisely to begin with, and be even choosier about sharing this subject.

I've become very reclusive myself, not because of social anxiety but mostly it takes too much energy to be around others right now. I am dealing with a flare-up of severe depression and a recent back surgery.

As you recover, either through medication, therapy, journaling, meditation or a combination (which is best in my opinion), you will find yourself regaining your interests in your hobbies. I know it's tough but try to give just one a try. My hobby/pt vocation is writing and I'm taking Coursera classes and applying to do volunteer work. I find that having something to focus on, writing for me, is enormously helpful. I recommend a book I just got called "The Mind, Heart, and Soul of Depression" by Cathy Reimers Ph.D. It's a guided journal of exercise that you can do. I find it very helpful. You might want to consider group therapy to help with the socialization and having an outlet to talk about all this stuff. I find them very helpful. I hope you start feeling better soon. Follow up with your doctor. Ask about individual and group therapy. Call your local hospital. They may have an established group you can join. And follow up on your medication. You shouldn't be feeling this bad if it was working. Combining medication with group and/or individual therapy is enormously helpful. I also journal and meditate almost daily. I hope you start feeling better soon.

Sorry everyone for my absence.
I was seeing a Psychiatrist in my mid-twenties by doctor's recommendation but found her to be not very interested in helping nor understanding in the sessions and very expensive which caused trobles with paying my bills and rent. I went from medication to medication. Effexor, seroquel, xanax and more, they either made my depression worse or the physical side effects were so bad that I would curl up in bed for days on end without eating. I eventually weaned off meds all together, cut ties with my Psychiatrist and moved on to seeing a counselor. Whilst the counselor was understanding and helpful in teaching me ways to combat the anxiety (which I still try to use to this day), she eventually had to move to another state. My doctor then prescibed my with valium which helped for a week or two until I was heavily addicted to it and taking 3 times the prescribed amount which severely affected my work, deteriorated my patient-doctor relationship and drove away friends and the only girl I have ever had feelings for, I never told her my feelings, by the way, at the fear of losing her as a friend as we were best friends for a long time. Since then I still try the methods I have learnt and I took up martial arts and going to the gym which made me feel slightly better about myself until I injured my back and right shoulder which forced me to drastically cut back on physical activity. I've looked into finding affordable professional help but none of them are close to my area.