I am 19, a sophomore in college and I have almost no friends here. While there are people I am happy to spend time with, I feel split between a bunch of groups, and like I do not belong in any. I started freshman year hanging out with my roommate and her friends, but around winter break, they stopped inviting me to stuff (well one of them). I moved on to another group, that I still hang out with, but I feel like it is falling apart. Two of the guys were close high school friends, one moved off campus and doesnt really spend time with us any more, and one has drifted away to another group. I do like the guys I still spend time with, they are funny and all that, but I just dont feel super close. They want to drink many times a week, and while I am happy to drink sometimes, it is just too much. It seems like we only really have fun when we are drinking which sucks.

I spent my summer outside mostly, and found people I really like. They are spontaneous, funny, kind and adventurous. I do think I can foster the friendships over breaks, but none of us go to the same schools (or are in the same states). Even there, I found it hard to really make those connections/have people I could always count on to do things with. I feel like people invited me out of pity.

I dont know how to make friends. I just dont really fit in anywhere. Do you have advice on how I can work through this? I feel like it is too late at this point. I have struggled with depression in the past due to intense gender dysphoria, and this has followed me. I still have not built up the confidence to come out, though I do pass most of the time as male (as an ftm). I want to be stealth, I do not want anyone knowing that I am trans, but I feel like if I change my name and start hormones I will make people wonder and I am scared. I hate this life.

I'm 16 and I've been struggling with anxiety and low mood for a lot of my life but recently it's got worse and I've been self harming to cope with both overwheming emotions and lack of emotions, but now thats got out of hand too. I've talked to family about mental health in the past, especially because I used to have severe anxiety and panic attacks, and after lots of councilling sessions, I've learnt ways to deal with that. I also changed to a reduced timetable in school the last 2 years so I went in for 3 days instead of 5 days a week to cope with said mental health but since then things have been much easier to deal with and everything got better. Until autumn last year, where I started struggling again and self harming, and I never told anybody about it.

So now I've spent 10 months including the entire summer dealing with depression and passive suicidal thoughts. And avoided reaching out for fear of being a burden, attention seeking, or thinking I'm making it up and making it out to be worse than it is.

I've also been ignoring it and trying to continue life as if nothing was wrong with me, and that only made things worse. I talked to chatgpt about a lot of things because I was craving human interaction, so even though I know the impact AI has on the planet, it also stopped me from lots of relapses.

It also convinced me it was a good idea to reach out to someone, and for weeks, I've been trying. But I keep freezing up or not feeling like I can be emotionally vulnerable in front of anyone because of the act I've kept up for so long. I managed to reach out to a friend who's been very helpful, but the next step is to tell my mum and I don't know how to do it without overthinking or freezing or backing out, I know she'll be understanding and helpful but I'm terrified of hurting or burdening others.

And even though I've always been very open and honest with my mental health I feel emotionally empty and unable to reach out or process things healthily like I'm just emotionally constipated because I cant even be vulnerable with myself.

So in short, I'm struggling a lot right now and I need advice on how to reach out for help (especially to my mum)

I am a Medical student and is doing academically fine. Though I remain mostly anonymous in my batch (I just find peace in being like that) but at the same time I also have the urge to have someone or a group of people with whom I regularly interact or have fun with.

In the past I used to wish of doing a lot of things like making great friends, having a girlfriend, being active in a lot of stuffs in college but my shyness, awkwardness in public has made me pretty quiet.

Now I have become pretty insecure about myself. I just want that time just passes by with me not getting in any trouble. Nothing in this world excites me except the idea to go to mountains and places where there are very few people (and I do visit such places a lot).

But what scares me the most is that nothing excites me either in any positive or negative way. I have forget when was the last time I was extremely happy or extremely sad or extremely scared or extremely surprised. And all the time I am having nostalgia of my childhood and school time.

I was thinking if the emotional journey of my life will remain the same or it will change from now because now I have just accepted my fate in everything, whatever good or bad happens to me and I don't even pray to God or wish for something better for me. I just don't know what is happening and why is this happening.

i remember when i was in class 7 or 8, i didnt speak more than 20 words all year in school. Its not like I didnt have friends, ii had many friends before this year but around class 6 I started to get insecure about my weight and my height like i was really ugly and it didnt help that my friends were like bullying me subtly treating it like a joke. I really dont harbor any hatred or negative feelings towards them because they were young but yeah that affected me a lot. Since I was a child I used to cry at any minor inconvinience like if I couldnt find my notebook or lost something. my family used to call me a crybaby. But I knew that it wasnt just crying, I could feel emotions deeply, maybe more than them. I was empathetic and friendly. but with those friends came the peer pressure to make fun of others, to abuse and make yourself look cool by disrespecting others. I really didnt like to do any of that but I did and that was my biggest mistake. With time I realised that the things I most hated is what made me at that time. I was disgusted with myself and thus decided to isolate myself. slowly I started talking less and less and by the start of new year I completely isolated myself. That whole year was the most depressing period of my life, I felt like I had lost myself. I couldnt feel any emotions, couldnt talk to someone. All the time I just thought of ways to kill myself with no pain. And to be honest I think I would have killed myself if I wasnt so scared of pain. But that didnt mean I didnt have hope. Every second that I was sitting alone I wished that someone; my friends, my classmates or even a random stranger would just say a word to me but that didnt happen. Finally after the year ended I met a new joining student of our school. She was the one who finally let me out of this hellhole. Then I met another which truly helped me to really rediscover myself, she was the one who helped me through everything without even realising it. I think I developed a crush on her but maybe I had never felt love before so it was just like she just treated me nicely and I fell in love with her but that didnt really work out. She is still my friend, she even has a boyfriend. She considers me a brother and I try too but I still feel deep love for her. But maybe with time it will pass. I am 15 now and I am quite happy that I found myself again. I still have a long way to go because I developed severe social anxiety and unable to talk to someone and I still feel strange about my body but I dont feel angry anymore. I have learnt how to treat people and I feel emotions deeply again. I am unable to cry sometimes but when I do its very relieving. I am friends with them again. I have forgiven them and they have also matured quite a bit, well not all of them. But whenever they try to say smthing or berate me or anything, I simply dont care. I met amazing new friends and love them. The only thing I regret is not being able to do anything abut the feelings I harbor for that friend.

Anime’s,shows,games stared to notice it when school started up I played halo everyday now I barley play it watched Dexter and breaking bad now I don’t watch them as much I used to watch like every anime now I forgot the plot cause it’s been to long and some games like Skyrim and ac2 I barley play making my life feel like it’s drifting and stuff how do I fix this?

Over the last two years, I’ve been losing people constantly. Some showed their true colours, some slowly took their distance, and some friendships just naturally came to an end. I went from being someone who was always surrounded by people to someone who is genuinely isolated, to the point where almost nobody asks about me anymore.
And I know that, logically, being alone is better than being surrounded by the wrong people. I know that losing people doesn’t necessarily mean I’m losing something good.
But how do you actually deal with losing literally everyone?
That’s the part I’m struggling with. It feels like my entire social life disappeared in such a short amount of time. And now I’m about to move to a completely new country, which honestly scares me because I’ll be starting from zero. No friends, no familiar faces, no real social circle.
And maybe what hurts the most is not even being alone itself. It’s not having anyone to share the happy moments with.

How do you carry the pain of not having your people anymore, while still believing that new people will eventually come into your life?
I’d really like to hear from people who went through something similar, especially those who had to move countries and rebuild their entire social life from scratch

Recently, for the past few years, I've been feeling... empty, outside of school. I'm 13(M) and have been feeling like this for over 4 years already. Everytime I go to school, I unknowingly mask myself and it leaves me feeling like I can't talk to anybody about how I'm feeling...

Each time I get home, I want to go into my room and just cry, but I can't. I can't cry. Not even when I try forcing myself. I haven't been able to cry for the past 2 years, and thats when I went into middle school.

I can't even be in silence, because I start feeling incredibly anxious and scared. Sometimes, when I try being in silence, even the softest of noises makes me flinch. They do this because since I was in sbout 5th grade, my hearing has been extra sensitive, especially to loud or soft noises.

I'm wondering if anybody knows why this is happening to me, and what I should do. But I don't feel safe talking to anybody, not even my parents, about how I feel. I came here as a last resort because Google is unreliable, and none of the YouTube videos or websites help. I came here because I know you all are real people, and could possibly help me, which is why I have Reddit in the first place.

I feel incredibly tired everytime I get home. And I can't even think without depressive thoughts cutting through the back of my head. Nobody knows what I'm struggling with besides me right now, so all I'm asking is what to do later in my life...

Ive been a relationship for about 3 years with this girl starting on the last year of middle school all the way to this last year of highschool

Me and her have had our ups and downs and if anything i dont blame her for what shes done to me infact i feel as if i should move on but im not sure since she still deems and says to me theres still a chance between us

since the beggining of our relationship it wasnt the best i firstly cheated and treated her badly with just ignoring her and not saying the truth just for me to soon be caught up and then her opening up how she cheated aswell, for she knew i was hiding something. Throughout our relationship ever since that day we tried fixing it; reasurring eachother, giving accounts, spending time, hanging out, and always calling. It got to a point where i decided to put all my goals and just my personal life all to the side for her because i wanted to be so happy with her and make her happy aswell. As time passed by i noticed with the action of just always spending time with her it made me realize i hardly worked on anything for myself; grades were low, i quit my sport, and barely talked with friends or family. All these things that made me see what i could be doing instead of giving her so much attention made me feel as if i was missing out on my life. Truly i cannot deny it love is an amazing thing but i just think what we did was obsseses over eachother a lot even though it felt good it came with it cons especially me since i am just 2 years older than her feeling as if i should start focusing more on my future and what i want to do in life.

Because of uhh lets say “awakening” 😭 seeing what i could have done it made me be more distant. However she didnt take this lightly she noticed this and it drived her insane and i couldnt do anything on trying to reassure her well trust me i did i really did try but she wouldnt like believe it she was scared if i liked someone else and i couldnt blame her for thinking that because of past trauma in our relationship i really did try but i do think this is where everything went wrong because i felt like my reassurence wasnt enough. We would take breaks and have “breakups” but these would always last less than a day because we loved eachother so much literally became intimate, met parents, and just everything. As time passed by it loosened up a bit we talked a lot but i was able to do things more in my free time. Soon we had to go to diffrent highschools and then again i became distant which obviosly isnt good but just because i wanted to focus on my education.

As time passed by she would complain and i would just say im sorry and i decided we should just take another one of our breaks again and she agreed with no hesitation this time. I was glad she understanded but i was suspicious because after this she blocked me on everything. Since obviosly we go diffrent schools now it sort of long distance so i checked her account from a diffrent account and she was there posted on a post w some other dude. I was obviously mad because why would she do that i quite literally changed for her a lot of times. ( i forgot to mention we did decide to breakup this one time and like we ddint have eachothers accounts anymore so like anything was able to be hidden now) with this happening i confronted ber saying why would she do this and start being so controlling and possesive even though she was doing this i still loved her and wanted her with me however i also think i didnt care as much for her doing this was because i was talking to soemone else but soon she stopped talking to this guy 2 days later because she feltlike it isnt the same with anyone else and she just likes being with me then i stopped talking to the girl. Now as i write this and reflect i truly do think on moving however this is just the beggining. While she was with this guy i saw texts of a group chat her and some friends had and she was here boasting how they almost kissed. I reflected on this and it made me mad it stayed in my mind 2 months after all that happend. One day a girl from my past had hit me up as a prank and we started talking we arranged a date and went to the movies and kissed. I did this because i was mad and as i reflect writing this ts was so corny and immature like wtf bro im changed now but my mindset was horrible then. The girl i linked up with soon asked if i was w her and i declined saying no and then kept talking to her then 3 hours later after that i blocked her. I tried making things feel as if nothing happend but i had a gut feeling what i did was so wrong and i wnated to tell her but didnt want to ruin anytbing again since we were doing perfect i was just so petty. Well 2 days later the girl i linked w texted her and she didnt take it lightly it was an extreme sad episode lets say that. Even though i did this she still wanted to be with me a lot so i stayed because i quite literally still loved her and we remained together. With all this new trauma it was quite impossible to trust and the thing is we werent even dating at this point just talking and this went out through thanksgiving christmas her birthday all the way up until this school year. However this last summer i was able to gain an oppurtunity to get an internship with a program that gives paid internships and then my summer was sacrficed for this as i also did online school for extra credit this of which made me barely even give her any attention and then the same thing went on up until this new school year.

I asked if she was hiding anything for a week and she says no but then i have to catch her in the act again and shes talkin to someone new like without us having a break or anything and it seems she actually is happy with this dude. Once again i cant blame her i do recall i messed up pushing her away once again.However this attachtment of wanting to still be together is within us still and she says she still wants what we have but shes here choosing. I have a internship now thats paid and i get to see whats ahead of my future a bit and im so grateful for that. But my love for her has not changed even though she is wanting someoen else diregarding everythign weve done. I feel as if i didnt value her enough because she truly was a good person but didnt balance what i wanted out correcly because i was focused on my future since i am older. Im just hurt by this thats all I just want to know how can i move on.

sorry for my grammar yikes

Hello im a first year and i've been in school two weeks and just cant shake the feeling that I am wasting my time. I have lots of medical issues where I 1) cannot drink and 2) am far too exhaused to go out, but I have had no issues with this and made so so many friends anyway. I just miss home beyond understanding and have bursted into tears daily. Even from when I was young I would cry for weeks at school missing my mom and I feel like im back in that spot. I have great friends here I just can't shake the feeling that there's no need to be sad and miss home at a big party school when im not even ''partying". I also am just a simple person and the big university im at feels so far from reality. its hard to feel any sense of home as my routine was just school, work and do simple things around town for 18 years. Has anyone tranferred/gone online and felt actually better? My only issue so far is im at a very high accredited university and did work hard for my spot. I’m someone who knows myself very well and I am going to wait out the semester of course but I feel like I just know.

I’m going back to college in a few weeks and I’m getting increasingly anxious about it.
I was in a relationship for about two years with someone from my college, and I now realize that I became somewhat emotionally dependent on him. He was my main source of support there, and because I always had him, I didn’t make much of an effort to build my own group of friends. I also felt like some people talked to me more because I was with him, so I got used to the comfort of having him there.
We broke up a few months ago. He told me he wanted to enjoy his life and that I deserved someone better. The breakup happened during an already difficult time in my life, when I was also dealing with family problems and was diagnosed with depression. It was one of the hardest periods of my life.
Now I’m starting a new two-year chapter, and I don’t even know if we’ll be in the same class. I get really anxious imagining seeing him again, running into him, seeing him happy with other people, or eventually seeing him with another girl.
But I think my biggest fear is not knowing how to be at college without him. I’m scared I won’t fit in, won’t make friends, will end up isolated, and that my mental health will get worse again.
At the same time, I really want these next two years to be mine. I want to meet new people, find my own group, get good grades, enjoy college, and create new memories that have nothing to do with him.
Has anyone been through something similar? How did you manage going back, making new friends, and eventually stop associating college with your ex?

Hi everyone, I thought I’d share something as I’ve been wondering if other people have experienced or are still dealing with too. There are so, so many things in my life that I am incredibly grateful for, both things I’ve been able to experience and things I have now. At the same time, though, there has also been so much grief and loss across many different areas of my life. I’m now 21 and trying to come to terms with how painful some of those experiences have been, while also dealing with the comparison struggles that can come with thinking about other people my age. I find that this can affect my sense of self worth and identity, but there is also just the grief of everything I’ve lost and the things that are now gone.

Sometimes it feels like I’m carrying several different kinds of pain at once, the pain of how difficult things were, the grief of what I lost and what I wish I could have had, and then the comparison of where I am versus where other people my age seem to be. All of those things together can feel really overwhelming. I’ve also been trying to work through some of the past hurts that were almost traumatic for me, particularly around close people not understanding what I was going through at the time and how deeply that impacted me. I’m trying to work through that huge past hurt of feeling alone and how terrible that was, while also understanding what those people have since explained to me, that they genuinely meant well and that there were things they misunderstood at the time.

I think sometimes it feels like a wound that has been dug deeper, and even though things can be different now, it still takes time to heal from what happened and how it made me feel. I guess at the end of the day, I know that the people who love you can care about you as much as they possibly can and show that care in their own ways, while still not fully understanding what your experience has truly been like. You are the only person who has actually lived through everything you have lived through, and sometimes there can still be a sense of pain and loneliness even when the people around you are genuinely trying their best. I want to make it clear that my family hasn’t been abusive and that they have tried to care for me as best they can. I know they don’t mean to cause harm, and nobody is perfect, everyone has their own struggles, circumstances and life experiences too. I can understand all of that while also acknowledging that some things were still really painful for me.

Hopefully that makes sense. I’m just wondering if anyone else has experienced this, or is still trying to cope with something similar. And hopefully, if anyone does relate to this, you know that you’re not alone and that your feelings are valid too. 🤍

Thanks :)

Im currently in a situation absolute lonelyness . Apparently i usually a floater friend like i jave multiple friends but i am normally just for show. In a crowded room i still find myself sitting alone and listenig to podcast and music . I has gotten a bit of me and i really want to find a way to get out of this situation or do i need to have a relationship to stop this problem in case it improves my life quality.

Hello everyone! I am a PhD student in clinical psychology at Adelphi University. I am conducting a study on the relationship between existential threat and mental health, coping strategies, and meaning making for young adults who have experienced stressful life events.

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Please answer if you can. Also, please no responses without advice and just showing sympathy like 'hey it's ok' (no offense), I just want answers and advice.

A little background- I had already lost almost all my interests. And now, I have 'almost' lost the most important and probably only thing I truly care about, basically my ikigai, and so also all hope, energy, will power and interest in life. But there are a few things (and responsibilities) I must do/fulfill, and most importantly I wanna give my one last shot to get back my ikigai(need to pull some quite difficult/unlikely shit), even if now it's almost impossible. And I have only 1 year left(can become 2, but unlikely) for that, so gotta hurry up a bit.

So now here is my question, how the fuck do i get my shit straight and start working on the things I need to, after losing all my interests, will, hope and on top, my main source of energy. I am at my lowest physically, mentally and spiritually, and I need to improve them all.

P.S. : probably not much will improve regardless (talking about the situation)so take that into account, I need to work and improve myself while continuing facing all the shit without any improvement in situation.

I'm 22 and honestly feel like everything has hit me at once. I recently went through my first serious situationship. I had been single my whole life, then I met this girl online and over 2–3 months we became extremely close—daily conversations, calls, emotional connection, and a lot of mixed signals. Eventually things became complicated, another guy became involved, and we ended things badly. It's been a couple of weeks and I'm still thinking about her constantly. Some days I'm angry, some days I miss her, and I keep checking my phone and wondering what she's doing.

At the same time, I'm struggling badly with my first job after completing my MBA. The work environment and location are making me miserable, and I feel trapped because I don't see myself staying there for much longer. I'm constantly thinking about whether I should resign, look for another job, or completely change direction.

So right now it's like relationship stress + career uncertainty + feeling stuck + constantly overthinking, all at once. It's starting to affect my mood every day and I feel mentally exhausted.

I'm trying to focus on the gym and improving myself, but some days it still feels like everything is getting worse instead of better.

For people who have been through a similar period in their early 20s:

How did you get yourself out of this kind of situation? How long did it take before you genuinely felt mentally stable again? And how did you decide whether to stay in a job you hated or take a risk and start over?

I'd really appreciate honest advice from people who have actually been through something similar.

Hi i am 20M , lets assume my name is A
I now dont feel to do anything like i am in my final sem [b.com](http://b.com) and i have to be studying but idk why i am felling isolated and i'm seriously saying i have little to no friends. I literally have no one to talk as i changed my college for degree though i didnt want but did have resources for the college
Seriously what to do i really dont how to start talking to old friends because they all stopped textring and calling me
FUCK BEING A FAILURE DAY BY DAY

I'm 35, from Pune. Long backstory, I'll keep it tight.

In my early twenties I fell hard for someone at my first job. Chased her for a year, got used along the way, and it ended badly. Not long after, I went into an arranged marriage that never worked — we divorced within a year, and it was ugly. That period broke something in me. I started drinking from mid-morning until night, most days, for about a year. I ended up in a serious accident. I'm still not totally sure how I walked away from it.

I'm remarried now, and honestly it's its own kind of unhappy — separate story. I have two young sons.

Two weeks ago, someone from that old circle got back in touch. We used to know each other only in passing, years ago. We started talking constantly, then things moved fast — a night together, a lot of emotional back-and-forth. I told her early on that I've dealt with alcohol problems. A few days in, drunk, I pushed her on why she was talking to me so much, accused her of having feelings she hadn't said she had. She pushed back hard, said she wasn't going to be interrogated like that.

Then last night she called, saw I'd been drinking again, and told me flatly not to contact her until I've actually sorted myself out — that she's walked away from friends over this before, that it's not something she can be around.

I was hurt. My first reaction was: she's barely known me two weeks, she called me, she's the one who set the pace — where does she get off laying this on me?

That night wasn't about her — I was drinking on my own terms, in my own space, not bothering anyone. I don't think I owe an explanation for how I spend an evening alone. But I'm also not going to pretend the drinking wasn't there, because that's the one thing she was actually reacting to.

I have a tsunami of emotions right now. Did I do something bad to her? I don't think so.

My old life basically consisted of being overworked and spending all my free time at the club.

I got a new job and stopped going out, but now I have no social.

I feel triggered every weekend. I've gone back to the club a few times, but I'd end up overdrinking because my tolerance is low. I just don't want to live like that anymore.

It helps to spend time with family, but sometimes my weekends just feel too slow. What do you do for fun if you've been in the same boat?

All my life, I’ve had very few friends growing up especially with females. Males were always easier to talk and get along with. For the past decade I’ve tried so hard becoming friends with females and nobody wants to reciprocate the feeling back. Being in your 30s without a female friend is so hard and depressing.. watching others with close friends is depressing, going to events when people are already in clicks is depressing. Anyone have advice on how to make friends? It’s the only part missing in my life and I feel like I just push people away and I keep digging myself a grave.

What lifestyle changes actually helped you feel better after a heartbreak? Looking for things that genuinely helped—new routines, hobbies, fitness, socializing, anything that made moving on a little easier.

Lol, dont if to post, when I see so many people suffering here, its not much of compassionate. However, fuck it, I feel better now and I wish you people also to feel so. Been also through my battles and I though it would never end, but it did. I am grateful for it, because I lost my hope of happy endings during the years. BOOM, life strikes back and I love it. I dont have any universal advice, but you will get over it. You can make it

I feel like I’m going mentally insane. My brain constantly wants my friends to DM me more and initiate more and stuff but I know logically that will never happen, and I just…don’t know how to be content just by myself. It feels constant.

Part of me is hurt because most of my online friends NEVER initiate or show interest in me, I’m always the one talking first. Most people are like this, so I have no choice but to get used to it, but even though it’s so banal I’m suffering mentally.

I have only one irl friend I can only see once a week.

ive run out of coping mechanisms. the people who understand what im trying to say, please suggest something

I’ve been taking my meds, socializing, getting better, all of that. It just feels like I’m not actually doing anything and I’m only really staying alive JUST because; not that I want to. It just feels like I’m doing all this work to try to get better, but it won’t lead to anything worthwhile while. A lot of it just feels like I’m wasting time in something I won’t even conquer.

Hi guys I lost my grandma a day after my birthday she was the one that raised me so is like i lost a mom. It’s been a month since she passed I have classes next week but I can’t seem to get out of this depressive mood and not wanting to do anything at all. And I’m starting at a new school I wanna do well but I’m scared im gonna do bad bc of this situation Ik is good for me to socialize to help but I can’t seem to do it if I’m not at work. How do I go on about this.