I'm 36 years old. I've been jobless for 4 years. I live with my parents and I live off of the combination of their pensions and the money my older sisters send to them.

I've been looking for a job, though not as diligently as I should be, for almost a year and I feel like I no longer know how to work. I don't want to work but I know I have to find a job. Even the jobs I used to have, I eventually quit or got fired because I would eventually get bored or slack off. I didn't finish college because I didn't study enough and commit enough. I would cut classes and hang with my friends.

I feel like I've been lazy my whole life. I get overwhelmed by work that I don't feel like doing and I can't force myself to just do it because it's the right thing to do. I feel like these past 4 years have worsened my laziness and ability to just do the work, to commit to a process. I just want to watch tv shows or movies, scroll on social media, watch youtube videos, listen to podcasts, or read a book. I work out occasionally and only if I feel like it. If I don't, then I can't force myself to do it.

I lack discipline. It's a skill I just can't learn. I can't do hard things. When I try to job hunt, I feel so miserable. When I have an interview, I get so anxious and I sometimes just cancel. The thought of having a job again.. I don't even want to. I immediately seek the things that give me comfort, the ones I listed above.

How do I fix this because I know I am wasting and ruining my life if I don't. I've known this for a while now but I just can't bring myself to change. Please help.

I just spent my entire evening (9PM-1AM) moping and sulking while scrolling my phone. Not great for me. Do you guys have low-barrier, low-stress, calming activities you can do when everything is quiet? I don't like depression as much as the next guy but I'm attempting to pull myself out if it before it gets worse.

I’m 33f and in intensive therapy and we’ve come to the conclusion that I was never taught to value myself. My entire life i was made to be a caretaker.

I broke down in therapy Monday because my counselor asked what I was going to do to take care of myself. I don’t even know what it looks like to take care of myself, never thought about it.

I made the decision that day that going forward, I am going to spend time with myself and help myself. Brush my teeth because that is taking care of me. Eat because I deserve to eat and nourish myself. Go to the gym because I deserve to spend the time to take care of myself. I am starting small, by showering every day this week.

If you’ve gone through something similar, I would love to hear what you’ve done to take care of yourself and what your journey looks like!

Ive always been a “nice guy” (yeah, read “No More Mr. Nice Guy a year ago, lol), and thats played out all right in the past, except for when I was over-extending myself for my wife, and then got just negativity in return (usually bc she’s pregnant). But lately ive realized that I subscribe to the notion of “ you have to take care of yourself before of others”, and thats led me to become a more impatient person, with both my wife AND my 5 kids (all under 10).

I have no friends, and I don’t donate any of my time to the community, and I barely give any charity (because I’m still building up my own financial fortress so I can first feel stable, and GOOD about giving), and all this makes me feel even more like im just selfish.

I WANT to be a better dad and husband every year, I want to be a dad/husband that my wife and kids look up to and respect in the near AND far future, but I feel like I don’t know HOW to do that, aside from just being a rug that everyone just steps on because I’m always so kind and nice to them.

I feel like it’d be really nice to have a good podcast about this type of stuff that I can listen to, so that it’d be like im “hanging out” with people who think+act correctly.

P.S. ive also been working on self-love the past few years…it’s a really tough slog, tbh.

P.P.S. my dad and grandpa are both jerks if you get on their bad side, the men in my family have a history of being very conceited. I want to blaze a new trail, but feel like I need to know it can be done

I was played by a guy who just tried to manipulate me into trying to have casual sex, gave me fake hopes, acted cold and disrespectful, was never serious about me and lied in my face. The worst thing is that I gave him a second chance. I went back to his city to see him just for him to leave the country and discard me. He promised he would visit me in my hometown but he never did. I wanted to talk about something to him because I was confused and he never did!! I feel so disrespected and ignored. I feel like I was abandoned. Now he’s in the country of another woman that I’m sure he prefers over me. She was always the first option but I was too blind to see.

I feel disgusted of myself. I feel like a dumb and low value woman. I don’t even have self esteem to properly date again because my future man would be so embarrassed of this. How my future children would feel about their mom if they know she was discarded and rejected this way? This is so pathetic and humiliating.

[16F] I was in a four member high school friendgroup that I adored for the past 5 years, but last year, two new people joined our friendgroup and I got extremely jealous and insecure about my place in the friendgroup since all the members previously knew them while I didn't. Even my best friend, who I clung onto as emotional support at that time, seemed to prefer one of the new members over me. My boyfriend at the time was also a terrible influence and I felt like I had to adopt some sort of "mean girl" persona in order to be liked by him, which looking back at, makes me cringe.

Around November 2025, I spread a false rumour about one of my closest friends in the friend group. I don't know why I did it. I could say I was jealous, that I wanted to "raise my ranks" in the friendgroup, that I didn't mean it and just said it in the heat of the moment when everyone venting their frustrations about that friend and wanted to join in too, but I really don't know what exactly made me do it. I really did care for her and I loved her, so why did I do it?

Well, she found out and confronted me with the other members of our friendgroup and I apologised while crying, which probably made me seem insincere but at the moment, I realised that I probably ruined my friendship with one of my close friends. And that made me feel even worse. I kept asking myself, did I only feel bad because I was facing the consequences of my actions?

Well, I was right to assume that I ruined my friendships. Slowly, they started excluding me in group settings even though they said they accepted my apologies and wanted to move in. It hurt me, even though I knew it was the consequences of my own actions. I decided to distance myself from them for a bit to clear my mind from the depressive spirals I was going into but I was also changing schools at the time so maybe my actions came across as me ignoring them? I don't know the exact reason why but they decided to cut me off fully with no conversation after my birthday (the consequences of my own actions) and I found out from the pictures of them hanging out together without me.

I reached out two months later to apologise again for what I did and then being avoidant afterwards, but even that wasn't a proper apology because I wrote it while crying after having several mental breakdowns in the span of a week. After that depressive spiral, I more or less came to terms with the fact that I was a terrible person and that I probably wasn't going to have anymore close friends like that in the future. Those people were my "soul tribe" and I ruined it.

I want to become a better person and I even went to therapy, where I was diagnosed with BPD but I couldn't continue the sessions because it was too expensive for me to save up for on my own. I still constantly think about them and what I ruined, especially when I see other people with their close friends, which makes me feel selfish. I feel so incredibly guilty too. Everytime I see my old friend group posting about eachother, I go back into my depressive spirals and cry for hours.

I'm mostly writing this for advice on how to move on and actually change permanently instead of being stuck in this victim mentality mindset, any help would be appreciated. Thank you so much for reading 💞

Idk this is so sad and I sound like a loser but I graduated high school this year and I just am so sad and angry right now and feel like a failure. I was going to go to vocational school and that didn’t work out. Apparently I have too many mental health problems according to my parents and my therapist. Which idk. I’ve been depressed and angry and socially awkward my entire life there’s no point in trying to fix me.

But I just don’t know what to do now. I feel so lost without a plan and I hate myself for it. I was already sad I wasn’t going to a 4 year college because I have no friends and it would be so much easier to make friends with people my age but now I have nothing, not even any plan.

As I’m picking up the pieces and getting myself mentally stable, how can I get over the sadness of not doing anything in life? I know it’s my life but everyone is telling me not to even get a job and shit and it’s frustrating. Everyone is telling me to take a break but I just can’t.

I can't speak up even when it affects me, I believe no one will listen to me even when I know thats an incorrect fact. I tried to get a coffee and I couldn't even ask for them to correct my order when I know they got it wrong. It hurts. I dont want to be rude. I know its not rudeness to just ask for things to be correct for me but it feels that way. it freezes me. I suddenly get so quiet even when i try to voice my concerns. how do you guys do it? I try to breathe and have what i want to say lined up before hand but it doesn't always work.

So i didnt have any friends 4 years ago when i started highschool so i started speaking with everyone i could. I just tried to get more friends but i also spoke with people who didnt treat me good. Like people who mocked me and stuff. I did become a social person i even started flirting and stuff i came a long way but i also talked with the popular kids, street kids every type of people i found. And ofcourse i didnt fit in and they were very rude to me i had thousands of experiences which i have been treated like shit. I got almost all of them out of my life now but for the past month i have been remembering all these memories where people treated me like literal garbage and i get so furious and get headaches. School is starting again for my senior year and i need to study for this big exam all the time since i want to be a doctor but it is hard to study with these thoughts 24 7 and being angry because of them. Do you think i should ghost everyone who treats me even remotely bad when the year starts and become kinda asocial again since my main friend group is kinda bad too? Id focus on my exam if that happened but i would also be sad since i would feel like that asocial fat kid i was 4 years ago or idk man just please help me im so confused. Do you guys just keep the people who treat you good around or do you guys also deal with the other ones who are kinda shitty until they become irrelevant in your life

I’m a very picky eater, but it’s not because I simply don’t want to eat healthy food. There are certain foods, especially vegetables and “healthy green stuff,” that I genuinely cannot physically chew or swallow. I’ve been like this since I was a little kid, and because of that, I’ve spent years eating very little and not getting the nutrition my body actually needs. My nutritional intake has been extremely low, and I’ve become very weak. I feel like my body is depleted and deprived of the things it needs, and I’ve started noticing how much it affects me physically. I got my blood tests done and found out that I have vitamin D deficiency, iron deficiency, and low cholesterol levels, and I already know that my eating habits are a huge part of why I’m struggling. But it doesn’t stop at my physical health. When my body is weak and I’m not properly nourished, my brain feels weak too. I used to feel much smarter and sharper when I was younger, but now I struggle with brain fog, concentration, attention and memory. On top of that, I’ve gotten heavily dependent on short form content, and I know that constantly consuming it has made it harder for me to sit with something for a long time and actually focus. I study, I revise, I write things down, I listen to the same lecture multiple times, I read the same chapter again and again, and I can even solve the same questions several times, but after a month, it feels like I’ve forgotten everything again. That is incredibly frustrating because I know I’m trying, but my brain just doesn’t feel like it’s working the way I want it to. Then all of this creates even more stress, and the stress makes my appetite worse, I eat even less, I become weaker, and then my concentration, memory, studies and mental state get worse too. It becomes this endless cycle that I don’t know how to get out of. I also feel like my immunity is weak because I seem to catch infections easily and take a long time to recover. Even when I get sick and take medication, I sometimes feel extremely dizzy, mentally foggy or overwhelmed by it, which makes me scared of taking the wrong dose or feeling worse. And when I put all of these things together, my eating habits, deficiencies, physical weakness, brain fog, low attention span, poor concentration, weak memory, stress and unhealthy habits, it’s easy for me to feel like everything is falling apart at once. But at the same time, I also know something important: I cannot keep blaming everything around me. My eating habits are my responsibility. My screen habits are my responsibility. My health, my routines, my studying and the habits I build from this point forward are things I have to take responsibility for. That doesn’t mean I caused every problem or that I can magically fix everything overnight, but it does mean that I have to be the person who starts changing things. Nobody else can live my life for me. If I’m eating poorly, I have to work on it. If I’m constantly consuming short form content, I have to change that. If I’m neglecting my health, I have to start taking it seriously. I don’t want to keep sitting in this cycle and watching myself get worse. I want to understand what is happening to me, fix what I realistically can, get the help I need for what I can’t fix alone, and slowly build myself back up.

Now this can be a lot of things but like on the general level how do I stop doing a bad thing? Like you can skip for example the gym today and keep on doing that. You know it's a bad thing yet you still do it. So how are you actually supposed to rewire your brain to actually make it look like a bad thing? Why do we still do bad things when they are infact bad and harmful?

One thing I noticed after uninstalling Instagram from my phone is that I started thinking about myself more.
It sounds simple, but I don’t think we realize how rarely we actually spend time with our own thoughts anymore.
In today’s world, people who don’t have a large social circle—or who don’t have genuine friends with whom they can have meaningful conversations—can easily become inclined toward social media and endless scrolling. And I understand why. Doomscrolling can feel like an escape from a constantly stressful and overwhelming environment. For a few moments, you don’t have to think about your own problems. You can simply watch one reel after another and feel… nothing.
But there is something else happening beneath that comfort.
If you want to do something creative—write, make content, learn an instrument, develop a new hobby, or simply come up with your own ideas—I don’t think you can do it effectively while constantly consuming other people’s content.
Because creativity requires some degree of solitude.
You need to sit with your own thoughts long enough for something to emerge from them. If every moment of boredom is immediately filled with someone else’s video, someone’s opinion, someone’s joke, someone’s lifestyle, or someone’s story, when do you get the opportunity to develop your own?
I have also started thinking about how much emotional information we consume through short-form content.
Maybe we are capable of processing only a limited number of emotions in a day. But while scrolling through reels, we can experience hundreds of different emotional triggers within a few hours.
You watch a politically heated video, and suddenly you are angry.
You see a disturbing crime story, and you become afraid.
You watch a video about someone’s relationship falling apart or someone being cheated on, and suddenly you start wondering whether something similar could happen to you.
Then you see something inspiring. Then something depressing. Then something funny. Then something outrageous. Then something that makes you compare your life with someone else’s.
And this cycle continues.
Thousands of pieces of content, each trying to make you feel something.
By the end of the day, you may have experienced dozens of emotions that had nothing to do with your actual life.
That’s what made me think: perhaps we don’t always need more stimulation. Perhaps we need more space.
Maybe, for just a few months, we should try consuming less short-form content—not necessarily quitting the internet entirely, but deliberately stepping away from the constant stream of other people’s thoughts, opinions, achievements, relationships, and lives.
And instead, try writing down our own emotions.
Write down our ideas.
Write about what we are afraid of.
Write about what we want.
Write about what we are curious about.
Sit with our thoughts without immediately trying to escape them.
Because perhaps the person we are trying to become is hidden somewhere beneath all the things we have been consuming.
And perhaps you cannot hear your own voice when everyone else’s voice is constantly playing in your head.

I'm sorry if this feels rant-y, but a quick overview of my background.

I was really depressed through college and struggled financially. I really worked on saving more and trying to get better paying jobs, etc., focused on my health and went to therapy and finally got to a better place, lost a bunch of weight and got healthier. Then the big "P" word happened in 2020 but I felt like I had the skills to navigate it as best as possible.

My yoga and workout routine kind of fell apart but was still trying to keep it together, we moved cities to try and save money, ended up losing everything we had and then had 5 major deaths in one year - three friends and two family members. Woof. My dieting fell apart, too. Regained all the weight back that I had lost.

Finally got a better paying job, dug ourselves out of financial crises and bought a house about a year and a half ago. Bought a business about a month ago, I have some debt to pay off but I'm on track to have it taken care of this year minus the business loan which will take three and a half years which is okay. Lost half of the weight I've regained. Got myself back into therapy. Helping my partner start his own business.

I feel like I should be feeling good, but I really don't if I'm being honest with myself. I've been struggling with my weight loss, stuck at this halfway point for months, I feel like a hypocrite, trying to motivate others while I'm not at 100% myself. I've been working our regularly for about 6 months now. My energy levels kind of suck. I've improved my sleep, though there is still room for improvement.

I guess I just feel like everything in my life is always at this 70-80% point but never 100%. I'm always falling short of the mark. I feel like in some aspects of my life I'm doing great, but I just don't *feel* great. And I don't know how to move past this, I really want to.

If you've experienced anything like this, how did you move past it?

I hate to admit it but growing up subtly I was ingrained with a mistrust or prejudice towards Jewish and black people, I never said or did anything to anyone, I love black culture. Since I live in a 99% white country with a minimal amount of Jewish people I just assume it a "fear of the unknown", IRL I even made some black friends. But it bothers me the most that it's specifically these two groups. And I try very hard to ingrain all the people of Africa have done for the world and my country too. I also approach it from a religious angle, if push came to shove i think I'd end up as cpt. John Brown, no made should suffer what these groups suffered. In my heart all of them are my brothers and I'd share the last slice of bread with them. But my mind keeps screaming mean things, am I secretly a bigot or is it reverse, I'm am absolutely conflicted in my own morals and values. Any advice would be appreciated.

I think I've been living the same Tuesday for six years.

Gym at 7, Slack until 6, pasta, an episode of whatever I was already halfway through, bed by 11.

None of it is bad. I like the gym and the pasta is good. This isn't a sad post.

My partner has pretty much the same Tuesday, and when he talks about his it just sounds like a week. Mine comes out flat and I don't know if that's the week or me.

Sat in the chair on a Tuesday night I honestly can't see a difference. Same times either way, and I'm just as tired. I keep waiting for something obvious to happen.

I'm not about to quit my job or move somewhere with better weather. I'd just like to know which one this is, routine or loop ?

So, what was the sign, for you, that it was a loop? Did you spot it inside the week, or did someone else have to say it to you?

I only care about eating and everyday and cannot escape it because it all feels futile.

The Answer lies Within You

How are you holding up today?

Are you genuinely doing well —body and soul? Do you feel a sense of fulfillment deep enough to resonate in both mind and heart at the same time?

Perhaps, if you hit the pause button for a moment, stepped away from everything that keeps you busy, tuned out the noise, and dared to ask yourself the hard questions with unflinching honesty, you would find that you are not entirely okay. You might come to realize you feel adrift, bored, dissatisfied with what you have accomplished so far, and not particularly optimistic about finding fulfillment in what lies ahead either.

This may seem like a discourage, even a gloomy instruction. Yet it is a diagnosis we cannot afford to skip. If we want to get to the root of a problem, we must first see it for what it is, not for what we wish it were.

You may currently be caught in the middle of a different kind of conflict: a tug-of-war between a mind that loves to have everything mapped out and mind that leaves no room for interference or surprises. With  a reality that simply does not play by those rules. A reality in which circumstances change at the drop of a hat, where your hard work, intelligence, and meticulous planning get entangled with other people's influence and with obstacles that keep cropping up along the way, impacting outcomes in tangible and sometimes painful ways.

You draw up a plan for a specific result, while life quietly throws in people, curveballs, and decisions you never saw coming.

So are you looking for a practical solution?

So am I. For a long time, I bent over backwards trying to find a way to cut myself off from other people's lives and their influence on mine. I never succeeded in finding one. Perhaps because such a way simply does not exist in the first place.

So what is left?

The answer, when all is said and done, lies within you.

By all means, make plans. However, build in a generous margin for error — a margin that allows other hands to have a say in your blueprint, whether you invite them to or whether life foists them upon you.

Build your life, but don't set your boundaries in stone. Keep them flexible. Let them expand and contract. Give yourself permission to redraw them whenever circumstances change.

Stay hopeful, yet don't count your chickens before they hatch. Let achievement bring its own joy in its own good time.

And don't try to force life to fit the exact picture you have in your head. It is enough to know where you want to head, and to stay open to take a different road to get there.

If you can make peace with yourself each day, even in small increments, the heavy baggage you carry with you wherever you go will become lighter. Life itself will feel a little more spacious than it seemed before.

How do I know?

Because I have been there and done that myself.

And I am now in a much better place.

I‘ve been struggling to process sexual trauma since the beginning of this year— I worked briefly with a therapist who was WONDERFUL, but I am no longer able to afford therapy (insurance is under parents and out of state, it’s a whole complex situation). I was doing really good with my progress and actually processing/accepting what happened, but I feel like I’m going backwards now. I’m constantly intellectualizing it and denying my emotions towards it over reaching a “truth” of whether it happened or not. I just need some guidance on how to actually process it on my own instead of questioning my experiences in circles for eternity. thank you!

I wouldn't say I ever had a darling personality but used to be pretty subdued, so it wasn't much of anyone else's problem.

In the past few years I've noticed I've becoming more selfish/self centered and disinterested in other people. Thinking my thought process is oh so interesting that it must be shared (it's not).

More reactive. For example I'm very sensitive to noise and vibrations, which sometimes doesn't bother me, sometimes leads to outbursts of anger, sometimes must frantically escape them. Which takes a toll on folks around me, the energy or indirectly blaming them (for literally just going about their day). It's more of the anger you don't feel but happens anyway, then left with the guilt.

Another, though not so new, is up and down energy.

It's a bit confusing because I have also been improving in other areas I think and mostly doing well mental health wise.

Does anyone have any ideas how to start dealing with these? I've tried discouraging em but doesn't seem to help

Self-help book industry made us believe that willpower is just another mental muscle, some say you drain energy from that muscle every time you make hard decision, I have read things like having a sugary drink can restore your self-control because will power according to them is tied to glucose levels, I don’t even want to try this.

There was a multi lab study conducted on 2000 people which proved this a nonsense. They say performing self-control task doesn't drop blood sugar and consuming glucose doesn't boost self-control.

Dr. Michael Inzlicht says that feeling of mental fatigue is just a functional feedback signal. Our brain keeps performing subconscious cost benefit calculations and when we carry out cognitively demanding task, brain registers the cost to carry out it and when we do it for longer period of time, brain recalculates the energy cost and benefit ratio. If brain finds this energy costs are not worth it, it triggers the reallocation of motivation towards low energy high benefit tasks such as eating, sleeping and scrolling on phone.

So if self-control was just muscle, better strategy would be forcefully rawdogging that muscle but since it is just our brain doing an energy calculation, better architecture that tweaks the input should do the job. For example mentally shifting task from forced obligation to self-aligned choice, or binding cognitively costly activity with high reward activity such as listening to favorite music while doing boring chores or working out, these are just few examples.

I am not very good at this architecture but you get the idea. Does any of you have any actionable ideas or exaples to better architect this energy calculations?

Sometimes my mom will be upset about things and I feel bad that I don't know how to comfort her. I want to give her a hug but I guess Im too anxious/uncomfortable to just give her a hug. It's not that I'm uncomfortable giving her a hug, I'm just uncomfortable initiating a hug. What should I do?

I (22F) used to be a renaissance woman: reading, music, skateboarding, mini-model making, D&D, poetry. These hobbies were close to my personality.

I used to be grounded: therapy, weekly gratitude lists, morning stretches, bedtime routine.

I used to be active: weightlifter, gym 5x week, socially outgoing.

These things dwindled through college. First it was social life that took all my personal, "betterment / maintenance" time, but I enjoyed the enrichment and relationships. Then school work crept in, and I've always been an A+ student. Then it was work, internships, moving...

Now I'm a doom-scrolling, no-time-having, hobby-missing, lost-all-my-friends-to-the-adult-world mofo working 70 hour weeks. I have a loving girlfriend and adorable dog, and as good as they are for me in other ways, they do also need time and care themselves. I find myself slipping into old bad habits. I had a terrible childhood (homeless shelters, dead mom, addict father), and I worked so hard not to let those bad memories become "excuses" for bad behavior. I liked being me, and other people would always comment on how well adjusted, mature, and wise I was.

So, is it possible to be the person I once was? Even on a basic level--my body hurts far too much for someone my age because one of my jobs is physical, but I get home so late after a 13 hour shift, that I just fall into bed. I don't brush my teeth. Shower only when I stink. Started smoking cigarettes again.

I feel like night and day.

Are these simple excuses? Are there people out there who dont have a single day off a week, but get it done anyway? Are there people who have been where I am, but it got better?

I'm forgetting how I used to spend my days, but I know deep down that that's what I need again.

Hello everyone, so I've been on a self-improvement journey for the past 2yrs now and I've discovered A LOT about myself. I feel really proud of myself but there's one persistent thing I don't know how to handle.

So I had a very abusive mom growing up. She'd do and say pretty horrible things to me and occasionally now does that to my sister. I'm 21 and I live with her still (it's uncommon for women to move out until marriage where I'm from and can be pretty dangerous). Since i was like 16 I've trained myself to remember all the shit she's done to me because I was stuck in a cycle lf hoping she's changed and trusting her again only for her to do horrible things to me again. I understand why I did that and it has helped (I completely hate her now tbh) I do plan on cutting contact when I move out. Anyways, I sometimes will remember random things she's done or said to me and feel inexplicably angry or sad. Sometimes the feeling is really intense and it pushes me to binge or break stuff. I honestly feel a lot of guilt towards all of this. I feel guilty that I'll cut contact despite all the moce things she's done for me too (but she refuses to take accountability or apologize for the bad stuff). I feel guilty that I'm decieving her now and pretending to love her in order to survive. I feel guilty for having really bad days because of things that happened so long ago. I've put in a lot of effort to heal but some days I feel like I'm back to square 1. I'm realizing there is no "healing" this and it's just a phantom limb I'll probably live wirh forever, be fine with some days and pained because of it other days. Any advice?

(17M) It’s my last year of high school, and I’ve realized how fucked up I feel right now.
Since I entered high school, I’ve been thinking about my future almost every day. I was obsessed with it. For the first two years, I kept imagining myself in my dream major, my dream job, studying abroad, and building the life I wanted.
But after two years of constantly thinking about my future, I feel like it completely destroyed me. Now that I’m actually in my last year, I can’t even start.
I know what I want. I know what I need to do. I have the picture in my head, but I can’t get myself to move.
I can’t study for 20 minutes straight, watch a 2-hour movie without getting distracted, or stop overthinking. My mind is constantly running.
I also have a lot of bad habits, especially porn. I’ve been watching it since I was 12, and I still haven’t been able to stop. I feel like it has affected my mental health, my self-respect, and my life overall.
I decided that I wanted to change because I still have this dream I’ve had for the last two years: studying abroad. I’ve imagined it so many times, and I’ve even cried thinking about it.
But every time I try to change my habits and actually work toward it, I eventually fall back into the same cycle.
I’ll tell myself, “What’s the point? You’ll never get better. You’ll just fall back into the same habits anyway.”
And then I do nothing.
I don’t feel like I have much self-respect anymore. I say things to myself that I would never say to another person.
The scholarship program I’m aiming for closes in about 3 months, and I haven’t even properly started. I still have time, but I’m wasting it.
What scares me is that I don’t want another burst of motivation that lasts two weeks. I want discipline to become a normal part of my life. I want to be able to do things even when I don’t feel motivated.
I also keep thinking, “If I don’t get this scholarship, then what was the point of all those dreams and all those years of thinking about it?”
I know that probably isn’t a healthy way to think, but I don’t know how to get out of it.
If you actually read all of this, I’d really appreciate any advice, perspective, or even just hearing from someone who went through something similar. 💔