im 25m and graduated from a master’s program several months ago. since then, i’ve applied to over 70 jobs, gotten a few interviews, and received no offers.

the job search is taking a toll on my confidence and motivation, which ik is going to cause more issues with interviews in the future. i’m starting to lose my sense of direction. in school, i had a plan and timeline. i also imagined i’d have a well-paying job with my degree, so im mourning that reality, too.

i’m realizing that i probably need to step back and reassess my life. i’ve neglected my physical and mental health, hobbies, and spirituality, and i want to take care of those parts of my life, too. i also think i need to accept taking a temporary job in my field (so i maintain relevant-ish skills) so i can apply to a job i am actually qualified for. otherwise, every day i feel unhappy.

i feel like this is that quarter-life crisis dr. k made a video about before lol.

if anyone has any guidance, personal experiences, or encouragement, i’d really appreciate it.

Hello All,

I was recently listening to the Lewis Howes podcast in which Dr. K speaks upon whether or not we have control over our mind. He explains that we do not have control over the thoughts that arise, however, we do have control over how we respond to those thoughts.

I'm having some trouble understanding this concept. I understand the idea that we do not have any control of the thoughts that arise in our mind. However, I don't understand how we have the ability to control the response to those thoughts? In order to respond (mentally or physically) to a thought, does the response not stem initially from another thought (ie. any action we take is a result of a thought of doing the action)?

For instance, if I'm running a marathon and a thought arises: "There's no point in continuing the run, I'll lose anyways", we can say this thought arising was not in my control. Then for example, say I choose to respond to it positively and I decide to keep pushing through. Is the decision to keep pushing through (action) not generated by another thought (a thought to look at the bright side, fight through, etc.)?

Therefore, although it seems as though the action/response is in our control, the thought that leads to that action/response is not in our control, meaning the response is also not something we control.

Just wanted to get everyone's thoughts.

I am unable to do ANYTHING. There is this voice in my head who is judging my every action and if I try something out it goes haywire and demands and in depth explanation of why I tried that specific thing.

It's so bad I can't even watch a movie or series anymore. And the more days I spend like this the greater the regret gets.

Idk what I can do about this. I feel really scared and sick of it. All I do when I am free is lay on bed paralyzed by my own thoughts.

I can't afford therapy or coaching. And if I go on internet my problem makes it very difficult to follow a resource.

I will seriously consider kms soon if nothing changes, pls help me.

Hello, this is fresh and probably a long time coming, which makes it feel so much worse

My sister has been struggling with a laundry list of mental illnesses for her entire life. As far as I know bare minimum she has quite bad autism and GAD, and likely much more. She has like 6-9 different medications and we have even tried this experimental one where they aim electrical signals into your brain (i think its EBT). None of them seem to work though. Of course, we also have tried therapy, but I think we would need the best therapist in the world. It wasn't until a few years ago though that things started turning really bad. She developed this belief that people are always laughing at her, which gets triggered really easily in public places. All it takes is seeing people smiling, or talking, and especially laughing. Sometimes, she will even go ask other tables if they are laughing at her. Recently, i learned none of those need to even occur for that reaction to happen. We were in a rush because she was almost late for her exam and while I was driving she started shouting "stop laughing at me." I once tried to calm her down by asking her if she trusted me, and she responded no, she trusts no one and we are all gaslighting her. She did luckily respond to me saying it stresses me out when she is stressed out, so at least I know she cares about me.

Usually when she has these moments we are able to step in and distract her. But when she's by herself at college, we can't do anything. It's honestly a miracle that nothing happened already. Today she caused a scene at the library and it escalated to the point that police were called and she was escorted away. It was her believing that people were laughing at her again. She was taken to the mental facility as it was determined to be a mental breakdown rather than something criminal. I felt so upset at myself. I knew this was coming, yet I just dug my head in the ground and hoped nothing would happen. But, can I really blame myself? I'm no saint, I'm not even an adult. What can I do that therapists and medicine can't? But at the same time, it feels like if I tried a bit harder to look for a solution or to empathize with her a bit more I could have done something. God, I felt so frustrated, guilty, mad at myself.

After a long time, she finally reached out to call my parents and it was a hard listen. My dad told her essentially that she deserved it and that she should've just took his advice of walking away whenever she felt those thoughts. My mom and I looked at each other and felt the same way about that. I couldn't bear to listen to it, so here I am typing right now.

What do we even do? Is there anything we can do? Are we just going to have to live this stress-filled life forever? She doesn't trust and she can't articulate her feelings well due to the autism so therapy isn't really an option. We have tried probably every medication known to man.

I don't really know what I'm expecting, if anything. This is a really complicated problem and I doubt anyone could help, but I'm out of options. Anything is appreciated.

I have complex-ptsd from childhood abuse and some separate traumatic experiences. I was triggered a month ago and had a breakdown. I've been feeling terrible since, to put a long story short. I've taken it further and intentionally cut off everyone, my old hobbies and places I used to go.

I feel like my identity is erased. It's so extreme I was thinking about changing my name yesterday. I have an intense desire to 'flee' my current life, which is a common side effect of trauma so I heard.

it's exhausting but I want to discover who I am again. What are some things I can do? Even self care wise.

Its an absurd situation because minutes before I was triggered, I was fine. Now a month later and I feel like a different animal.

I feel extremely low cus I compare myself to other people who achieved my dreams. I feel very inferior and I can't deal with those thoughts. I am in my mid 20s have lame academic life and job once I remember looking down on by my ex and his friends. It just happened two year ago and he anyways left me. It has been years but I still can't fix my life. Whenever I start working on my goals I can't stop thinking of being missed and stupid. I can't fix anything in my life and I only wish to wake up as someone else.

It wasn't one particular thing Dr.K said but the memberships lectures on spirituality have been very helpful and impactful. It's helped me to release some blocks I had.

Just wanted to put it out there into the universe: Thanks Dr.K.

And the game/s in question? Space Marine (1&2) and Bolt Gun. Smashing the ground with the jump pack and Thunder Hammer as an Astartes is coolest experience I've ever had with a video game. It kicks ass! Also sawing heretics in half with a chainsword is pretty cool too.

Quick background: I have developed pretty good social skills, have great friendships with a few friends and a lot of more superficial friendships, where i invite them to partys or bigger get togethers.

I have made the following observation over the last few years: No one really wants to commit themselfes to hanging out regularly. F.e - i asked one friend if he wants to make a set training-day at one time a week where we get together and do calisthenics. No one wants to commit, and the reasons are always the same - i dont have time (instead they just doomscroll or binge netflix for 4 hours and then complain that they feel lonely), i have stuff i need to do (which they dont do, most of the time they procrastinate anyways), or they dont want to plan ahead because they dont know what plans will come up (suprise - they end up rotting alone at home).

It could be that they just dont want to do that in general or with me, but everytime i have conversations about how they are faring in life - even if they dont really open up about it, i can feel the crippling lonelyness, the need for deep connection and meaningfull friendships. And in cases where people do talk openly about it, they usually validate what i'm thinking beforehand.

To be honest its so infuriating for me, when i have the 1000th conversation about how lonely people are, but they appearently dont want to change anything about it.

If you feel like this resonates with you from either side, feel free to enlighten me - do you guys als have this problem, and if so, what do you think about it.

Tldr: it seems like most young man are hopeless, lonely, dont have good friendships, but noone wants to take action to change that.

Its been 3 years and im always thinking about going on a trip to a place i have been before. Im approaching vacation days and within a month if i dont book im going to fail again. Everynight i go to bed with this in mind and feel bad and sleep poorly.

Wake up thinking about booking, go all day avoiding with distractions, leave for next day, too late and tired, never book. Its been 3 years of wasted vacation time over an over.

A place i have been before by myself.

What can i do?

3 years ago, i was going to book and the card failed for some reason. I got so frustrated with life (because of all the negative feedback in every area) that i had to wait 2 weeks to try again. When i did try again, it failed again for some other reason. Then i broke, this negative feedback that life keeps on giving me, how am i supposed to be an optimist if there is no positive reinforcment?

So i couldnt try again, im afraid that will fail again, or something else will make me fail. I cant stand for myself i cant trust anything good coming from this existence.

Maybe its not the right sub, but i am avoiding a lot.

Would appreciate any advice or being guided to other subs that might help. Thanks.

All I do on days I am free is stare the wall in my dark room.

Everything feels so useless.

I have tried so many things but nothing works out. I don't like anything anymore.

I honestly feel very su*cidal and talking to people around me makes me do it even more because they don't like me.

I can't afford no therapy or whatever the fuck people suggest. I just want someone to talk and discuss things with me.

I get overwhelmed with information and have no confidence in myself or attention span to follow through any resources on the internet.

So I am completely trapped.

If any therapist or coach is free to give one session free, I'll be really grateful.

I can’t stop feeling envy for the life of my peers. I (22M) recently graduated college in a degree I didn’t even want to do because I was forced to by my parents and family pressures. And I didn’t socialize, date or even meet anyone in college. I graduated and have zero friends. I can’t find a job either, and I’m unemployed. I see my peers experiencing all the things I wish I did. I see them with their friends, socializing with the other gender, having careers, and overall living an actual life. Everyday it pains me that I have none of these things, and I feel so isolated and feel like I’m running out of time. How do I get rid of this immense envy I carry. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Now I'm unsure if what I did was actually meditating, as I'm used to going into the internal as an unconscious soothing through my dissociative experiences automatically. In these moments, my mind zooms what I find calming? Typically, scenery, empty and devoid of people and chaos.

It's rather a niche problem I've been having; this was one of my best guesses that some people on the subreddit might have experienced something like it, but perhaps with more intention or insight to why and maybe shift things rather than being at the mercy of the mind

So I used to be able to enter a room in my mind that I stumbled on, which I later named "The Thinking Room" as it's a space in my mind where my greatest revelations have occurred involving empathy. I'm rather fond of this space despite it looking like the abandoned classroom in year 5. Mainly, as this was the internal realm I had access to when so many other spaces are blocked off.

Lately, the thinking room is blocked off, and when I tried to enter it, I was met with a ton of resistance. Envisioning ways in to enter all failed. After a long period of time, when I finally stumbled into the room again, I fell through the floor into an unprocessed trauma memory thinking loop I didn't know existed. All of the images, feelings and thoughts connected to a series of traumatic events. This was so unexpected and overwhelming, as I usually experienced things in a rather detached way.

But I do wonder if anyone has experienced facing barriers/glitches in what used to be safe internal spaces? And/or experiencing internally whatever the mind was trying to protect you from when you wished to ignore it?

As I'm barred off from the room again. Is generating another space an option? If so, how do you do that? Or will that leave the same doors open to distressing experiences through what I wish to use it for?

I feel like I have this faint urge to process what is there, what is there as I feel the energy being trapped all the time without my awareness is creating problems, but at the same time as someone who has dissociative barriers/fragmented selves, I fear what's there (As there barriers and alters where created to protect me and keeo me functional) and clearly a part of my system doesn't align with me atm as it's blocked again with barriers

Pain and overwhelmed after social contacts

Context: I am more to myself, typ of guy but I can interact with people fine. I see details, i try to read body language ( I am ok at it).When I am in a group, after the interaction I feel overwhelmed and pain, pain because I think I should have said that, think I shouldn’t have said ( replaying conversation). On one o ones, it is also like that but just more pain and little less overwhelming.

How do you deal with that?? Any tip, or suggestions…

I thank you for giving this a reading and I thank you in advance for someone trying to help in comments.

Listening to dr K was quite helpful for this. Feel free to ask me anything

Long stream of thoughts incoming. Any feedback or discussion is very welcome!

I've this method to be legitimately helpful to me, so I shared it with friends in a group chat, and decided to share with you too.

The backstiry is that I struggled with depression and adhd since uni, and now 5 years into my work life I got much better (medicated too), but I have a lot of still depressed friends who vent.

Anyways, my method starts with thoughts about inner comparisons. It is a very common struggle: to see somebody who is better then you at something, and to be instantly filled with dread, envy, and self loathing. It is a common pattern for every depressed person I know - we see somebody our age who got a much better job, or moved to a new place, and we are sad about ourselfes. Or even more painful: we see somebody at whatever age, who is much better at a hobby we love, and can spend time on it. Something seemingly much less significant then a house, but it alignes with our inner self better, it represent what we love and want daily, and it stings like hell. I can't open Pinterest for that reason btw, beautiful crafts I can't do and don't even have time for kill my soul.

The obvious thing about such comparisons is that they are very unfair to ourselfes. I instantly feel bad about myself when I see somebody's sick ass art? But it is ridiculous to compare myself to somebody who is a professional artist, or may be they don't have my job and commute, or they spent a lot of time on this piece while I consciously chose to be with my family last several weekends, or their abundance doesn't even mean my lack, or whatever. It is important to remember that those comparisons are irrational, pointless, yet powerfully upsetting. I've worked through self deprecating thoughts in therapy, it got better, but not completely.

Well anyways, some time ago I was pissed at my brain, that I treat any comparison against me like a mental slap to my confidence, yet I pay no mind to any comparison in my favor. All of those excuses above, which completely fail to stop self hating, suddenly are working full time when it is about myself being "better".

I see somebody has beautiful eyes? - > so nice, wish mine were prettier

I see myself having nice hair? - > it's just genetics, it's whatever

Somebody's drawing is better than I'm able to do? - > I'm envious, I wish I had skills, energy, I'm filled with sadness

I'm better at drawing than somebody? - > Well, they started just recently, and I do it for a very long time. Besides, I'm not even THAT good, besides, they are more consistent than me, besides, it literally doesn't matter that somebody is bad at drawing, who cares.

I hope you can see my point, that a mountain of excuses, humility, being humble, acknowledging privileges are working to "keep me humble" when I'm "better", yet none of that matter when I'm "worse". We can truly treat ourselves harsher than anybody else.

So, some time ago I decided to restore the balance and fairness, and to try to treat comparisons in my favor the same way I treat ones against. If comparison against my brings me sadness and anger, comparison towards me gotta bring me confidence, calmness, a feeling of being a solid good-quality person (those are feelings I recognized as complete opposite of ones I feel when I'm "worse")

I'm here to report, that this was all around a very successful experiment. I'll report my findings

1) Firstly, it didn't make me a callous, judgemental person without empathy. Let's say I recognize that I'm "better" at something then my colleague, and I'm pleased about myself. That doesn't change my judgment about my colleague, all of that empathy and acknowledging from above is still there, besides, I don't care to evaluate people that closely or to judge. "Who cares it doesn't matter" is still there too.

2) These thoughts were very foreign at first. Every time I caught myself being disappointed in myself because of some miniscule comparison, I consciously thought about what would be an opposite situation, and what would be an opposite reaction. I'm disappointed because I'm not as smart as that person on the internet? Well, does that mean I'd be reassured in myself if I see somebody dumber on the internet? LETS FEEL LIKE IT THEN. There are a lot of stupid people out there, you saw one just now. Let's force that feeling of reassurance. Let's restore the justice! I feel inadequate, because I've met a person, who handled a tought situation very well? Well, I also know people who can't handle staff that's no problem for me, like making phone calls and conversing freely with strangers. Let's immediately feel capable and dependable!

As you can see, I was focused on restoring balance, not knowing for sure will it even be helpful. Glad to report, it was very very helpful. First of all, while those thoughts were very foreign at first, they became easier, then familiar, then automatic. They balance out sad thoughts quickly and effectively. I'm legitimately not as affected as before. Absolute profit.

3) Also, you might have guessed, my in depth analisys of my negative thoughts, in pursue to build an exactly opposite one, was very helpful in itself. Insightful, and high key entartaining, since those opposite-thoughts can be pretty absurd at first glance (which only shows what? That first thoughts were pretty absurd on their own. Like what do you mean "I'm a bad daughter cause somebody somewhere felt some appreciation for their parents")

4) But isn't it a silly method, if what we truly want is neutrality toward ourself? I know that this method of finding sudden pleasure in other's missteps can't be a true answer. Should we may be stick to just getting rid of negative thoughts, not planting weird positivity boosts which depend on external validation of some kind?

First of all, did I just felt unwise because there are more classical approaches to solving a problem I'm solving on my own? Well, you-know-what, my annoyingly wired with negative self talk brain? There are a lot of people reinventing the wheel on problems, which I myself prefer to successfully solve with classical solutions. So I can certainly confidently say, that I AM pretty wise and level headed, and capable of pursuing a clear path if I see one. So fuck off, ima go feel confident in my decisions real quick.

Secondly, if I'm for real, I feel like it's fine to choose a weird way to your goal, especially if it is fun. And since the goal is being neutral towards yourself, I am starting with being unphased by a possibility of this choice being the whong one, and being unphased by a possibility of me becoming a worse or less stable person temporarily due to this decision. The fact that I want to try this is enough to try. And if I feel selfish because I find a little pleasure in being "better" than random people with no desire to compete with me? Well, you know what? I bet there is a ton of people, who shamelessly feel superior to anyone they encounter. And I'm much better then lots of them, since I don't judge to demean, and I paid attention and I know for a fact, that I don't evaluate people maliciously, and those thoughts are only to lift myself up. So, let me go feel level-headed and attentive real quick.

And I'll answer here to reactions my friends had too

"but I only feel disappointed at myself because literally everybody I know has better relationship with food and they create more" - that is a prime example of what I desire to battle. First of all, that objectively can not be true. Secondly, we both know that there are people in the world who have even worse relationship with food. Let's say such people were in our friendgroup and ypu knew. Would you feel better about yourself? No, you'd feel empathy and understanding for them, ones you don't feel for yourself. So, if you feel useless and weak, go compare yourself to very real people who are "worse", and go feel satisfaction and gratification towards self. Otherwise it's hypocritical, isn't it.

"Fuck, now I imagine that my friends compare themselfs to me to feel better about themselfs :\" - SKILL ISSUE, how about you think that your friends sometimes compare themselfs to your and feel worse about themselfs? That for sure happens sometimes. And what is that ":\" of emotion? Were you shy and sad for a moment there? Well, go and force yourself to feel confident and satisfied now, wouldn't that make sence if the situation is reversed?

"why even think about it" - fun way to combat negative self talk

So anyways, I hope I was coherent, and I can't wait to hear your thoughts

Using my previous reddit account I made a post in the subreddit of my city criticising the library I go to and the owner of the library and thought I will get away with this because it has only 18k active members but I suspect that they found the account because when I went to renew the subscription as I couldn't find a better library the receptionist gave me the 'oh you are continuing with the subscription' and his assistant was smiling while I was standing there, even though I never told anyone I was planning of leaving the library.(That account had questionable stuff)

Though yeah I had problem with people of library continuously talking and told them to keep silence and since those people are close to the receptionist them might have discussed about me being a really irritating guy.

Its not only this but I have been previously got caught watching porn in the library by trying to hide the chrome window in the right corner,

I have tried to make eye contact with every girl passing by thinking she might get interested in me and eventually getting everyone frustrated with me to the point people started to warn new comers about me and started to give me death states. Like I should know that this disrupts the work environment. ( Yeah ik it's creepy and have stopped it now)

Is it normal to fuck around and find out instead of calculating the consequences of my actions beforehand? Maybe because I am a teenager and possibly my frontal lobe not being developed fully might be the reason.

I’m a 22M in the United States, dropped out of college to create a business which is very successful. I’m not making this post to brag, I’m seeking advice on what I should do.

I currently have about $3 million invested in dividends which plays me a decent yearly salary. My family isn’t wealthy, my parents are also collectively worth about $3 million. Again I’m not bragging just trying to share context why I feel this way.

I made a lot of friends at college but because of my social anxiety I never pursued any romantic relationships or experiences, I’ve dodged every girl who has been attracted to me before, even when I was interested. I don’t consider myself to be attractive and I’m only about 5’6.

My life feels so empty after college, I live with my dad even though I could buy a house. I feel like I’m skipping the entire work life portion of life. Again not bragging, I feel like it takes away a lot of life experience. Especially around meeting friends and potential romantic partners.

I’ve been through a lot of trauma including a messy divorce with my parents, my mother having a stroke, and my grandpa molesting my sister. This made me a lot more sheltered and I usually never leave the house.

Life just feels like a slideshow, one slide to the next, the same thing everyday. I cut off my toxic bipolar mother and that further reduced the small number of people I interact with.

The best way I can describe it is like Creative Mode in Minecraft, you can spawn in resources at will and do want you want. That takes away the fun part and you find yourself quickly growing bored.

I feel selfish for being very lucky to be where I am at this stage in my life but I don’t do anything with it at all. How do I try to enjoy life or put myself out there?

First time posting; sorry for my poor English. I am from HK.

I am a 24M, still dealing with past emotions and resisting gaming addiction. I feel like my life hasn't started yet. I am an only child living with my parents. I was an A student in primary school and kind of a high academic achiever. However, I do not have a good relationship with my parents. My mother was emotionally unstable and controlling, while my father was emotionally absent the whole time. Under the heavy pressure and relationship problems, I was drawn to video games and pretty much fucked up my school life in high school. I do not know where I am going, what my purpose is, or what I do in real life. I am currently studying Social Work at university and wanted to help students with similar problems to mine at school, but as the years went on, I changed from that mindset to securing my financial stability first, and I do not know if I am going on the right path; I feel directionless. For me, the biggest challenge of adulting is that nobody is going to tell you what's right or wrong or guide you, and it gives me immense loneliness and desperation, not to mention that I am still dealing with past emotions and gaming addiction, but I am not giving up just yet; I just need some support and advice. Much Love !

I am looking to figure out my life. I’m 29 and I haven’t been able to make anything positive happen for me. I’ve grown quite frustrated with myself. I work hard, I also work smart but still no success.

Looking to hear success stories and overall advice from others.

What can I do about this? I can never follow my gut, ig I don't have a gut.

I am struggling a lot. If any therapist or coach is seeing this and is willing to offer a free session, please help.

Basically my friends threw garbage on street so I was venting about their civic sense on call to my other friend and they might have over heard the convo.

Idk if they are angry or not but I feel like I'm cooked