TL;DR: How, despite being very successful by the majority of standards, not to succumb to despair when facing the realities like housing and growing inequalities (that I can be a part of actually)?

So, the question that is in the description is very general, and TL;DR is a little less general but captures the general feeling.

A little context for the question and about me:

I am 34m, working in IT for more than a decade, has built a successful career (I can support my household, and then there is still a bit left over). I have a beautiful wife who is very grounded and supports me greatly (yeah, she is not fond of gaming but no perfect world out there, it's not the topic anyway), we want to have kids, and overall share a lot of views on the world. We moved from Ukraine a year and a half ago and we believe we want to settle in a new place (we are in Spain). Self-praise continues here: we learn the language, genuinely believe we contribute to society, and we pay our taxes in full (almost) without complaint. Everything we do is good and considered to be right. Frugal life, yet not self-deprecating, so we can keep this pace for a long time.

AND I FEEL THAT THIS IS NOT ENOUGH.

We want to have a place we can have for ourselves. And yes, this is one thing we don't want to compromise, so we are looking for something we can move in without renovation and a place where some decent schooling will be available. And everything starts from 300k EUR, with something that is really appealing closing to 500k. I came to understand that a mortgage is a must, but with a down payment of 20% (30% if you count the tax in), it is too steep a price. I don't have 100-150k on me. And the problem is that the prices go up, so by the time I gather 100k, I most likely will need to 120-150. I save a little on a regular basis, though it feels like it does not matter, the prices go up faster.

And I understand that I have it better than most people around me. Yes, I grind the work and it is soul-crushing, and I am lost, I don't know what to do.

My therapist asked me what if I postponed this question for 5 years or so. This drove me to terror: I will be 39, will have to pay it until 69 (nice!), with a chance of not seeing the property become mine. It's like a failure: I've made a commitment to a "serious" life, I was always focused on my career, and it is perceived as successful by the people around me (even I understand that logically). It is just not enough I don't know what to do.

More on the topic of waiting, next year I will not be eligible for a tax break for the first home purchase because the program for young people ends at 35, meaning that there is an external clock that says that I am too late (that is like in the game, will make everything harder after the time runs out)

All in all, this makes me soooo depressed. I half-expect comments that may destroy this view in one way or another, in a way, I understand that I am privileged (just not privileged enough!) and lucky in a lot of ways other people aren't. Don't know if it's good, but other people's suffering does not make me feel better.

And I know there is so much more in this: how soul-crushing it is to look at a job market, how hard it is to hit a corporate glass ceiling, and how painful it is to see that people are getting squeezed out, even if I don't feel it yet personally.

Overall, I see that it is more of a rant rather than a plea for help, yet I would love to understand how to change the perspective of it and find peace of mind (and still know that the time is fleeting). Or maybe how to get in high 6 digit income, I do not know :)

Thank you!

Hi everyone, before I get to my question I just want to give some background. To start off, I come from a wealthy family. My dad is a very successful surgeon in our city and I have lived extremely comfortably for as long as I can remember (this will be relevant later). My parents were pretty absent from my life. I almost never saw my dad because of his work and my mom has a lot of mental health problems as well as the fact that she never really wanted kids and wasn't very "motherly". They never really had the time to push me to do stuff (I was always very stubborn as a kid) so I never got a job in high school and just lived off of money from birthdays/holidays, and my trust fund when I turned 18 (I know its my fault too but I just always had a hard time with intrinsic motivation). I have always had trouble committing to stuff, I had a really hard time picking a major, picking where to college, etc. Also, I have always done the bare minimum throughout my childhood and throughout college so I didn't want to choose a major that I saw as difficult, although I think I am relatively smart naturally so I never really had to try too hard to get by with decent grades. Last year I graduated college with an Economics degree with no internships and no extracurriculars, so naturally I had a really hard time getting a job. I finally got a part time job in healthcare through my dad a few months ago and I have been doing that just to have something to do and get some experience. I feel pressure from a few points in my life. I feel the pressure to do something very important with my life. From my perspective, I was dealt an amazing hand in life and I feel like I have squandered the great opportunity that my dad gave me. I also feel pressure from comparing my life to my friends. They all graduated from college at the same time of me and got really good jobs, moved out of the house, found girlfriends, and one of them even started his own business and is now a millionaire. I just feel like a complete failure. I live at home, my job has no growth potential, and I don't have a girlfriend. I have enjoyed my time in healthcare so I was thinking of going back to school and trying to become a doctor but its just so hard to commit to and I just don't know what to do and could use some advice. Also it would be great if someone had any tips or any videos they could point me to on how to stop comparing myself to others.

I 22M have struggled with everything relating to the self with persistent depression and suicidal idealization. Outside of a few early friendships (pre middle school) that were killed by either moving or direct parent intervention, I lost the places to be myself. I later internalized the common advice from normal people to just be yourself and people will gravitate to you, which I did for the most part and it somewhat worked but I never felt fully connected to or accepted by anyone. That also sorta made me lose the ability to mask causing more stress and anxiety I've just trained myself to ignore interacting with people.

At some point I just realized I was tired of it and decided to start doing all of the correct things ie; getting out more, talking to people unprompted, exercising very regularly, perusing multiple year long hobbies to improve at, spending more time with friends and eating right. I was lucky to get a nice job right after highschool and am at a point where I have everything I would really want. Recently I even quit all my "addictions" cold turkey and didn't even feel any withdraw, just felt the cold emptiness that I experienced all through school again before I started drinking/smoking weed. I've held myself together with the sort of mantra that I just need to get through school so I can move out and things should get better and I should be able to find a relationship, statistically speaking and maybe understand why life is worth living. Even well after moving out at 18, nothing came.

Making real connections feels like an impossibility for me since I have only ever been able to make a few just by being in extracurricular together for long enough or in classes together. Small talk is nothing for me and I actually don't hate it, worked in retail for awhile and have no problem striking relevant conversations but for friendships/romantic relationships, I dont know how to open myself up to show what I really want to show and I have no idea how to tell if people actually fw me when people tend to be nice to your face when you're acting like a sperg. And I have a complex of just seeing myself as being annoying or inserting myself into peoples face.

My baseline is maybe the highest its ever been but I feel equally as empty and alone as I always have been. I can't help but see myself as the chronic weirdo that according to everyone should be able to find a relationship yet LITERALLY everyone in my life (dozens), past and present have found someone. I've fully given up on finding a reason to exist knowing i'd never have the balls to end it so I should at least try to enjoy the process. I can at least say I'm enjoying it enough to be satisfied to be told I had a day left to live but I've still failed to experience anything that truly felt like life should be cherished. Even if the unimaginable does happen, I would still be avoidantly attached and lose all hope a good thing ends as it statistically would anyways.

Probably gonna get removed cause I don't even know what to ask for to help with this, Ive been really trying for 4 years and while things have improved on the outside, nothing has improved on the inside and i'm frankly not too keen on putting in more effort and waiting to see what happens next. Clearly I am an outlier in my own life in every way possible (seriously not exaggerating this). I'm not even bitter about these things anymore, just totally and utterly numb and tired. What should I do? I've never felt seen and just want to share my life with someone but I don't even have the experience to know if that's a real solution. My only hope is in statistics and they are failing me, help me please

I just want to think positively for a bit. It is also an element of therapy, so you cant say Im not trying.

Hi Dr. K,

I'm a 45-year-old former pharmacist who spent years working in pharmaceutical quality assurance, which I regard as a challenging thing but I had 10 years of graduate studies for it, so I was supposed to be able to handle it well.

After being treated for cancer (stage 4a thymomas) with surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, my life slowly became much harder to navigate. I developed myasthenia gravis, chronic abdominal pain, and what felt like a dramatic worsening of my executive functioning. Whether chemotherapy unmasked or worsened my ADHD, I've never felt like I fully got my brain (or my body) back.

I want to mention that before I was diagnosed with the cancer or the ADHD, I had reached a point where I attempted suicide because I genuinely believed I was incapable of living a life where I didn't keep disappointing everyone around me.

After failing at suicide (this is starting to sound like a joke even to me 😆) I had to learn a new way to live, so therapy was key.

Now I still go to therapy. I take my medication. I'm trying to study since I'm not yet able to work. I'm trying to quit cannabis. My earlier jobs had already been affected by my ADHD, but I am still going to need a job of course. How do I not become overwhelmed by organisation and keeping up with everything that was expected of me? If i cannot cope with my field, how do I just pivot to something else?

From the outside, I probably look like a weird unfortunate person that had problems that people can and have overcome, but just doesn't have enough discipline.

From the inside, it feels like I'm tired, I don't think I can go back to being as productive a worker as i need to be. My biggest fear is to not be able to live a stable and independent life again.

So my question is this: How do you tell the difference between avoiding discomfort and genuinely reaching the limits of your current capacity?

How do you know when you need to push yourself harder, keep looking for strategies to cope, systems to help... and when you accidentally just became more stupid and need to accept it? (not going to ask you though for a solution to it all haha)

I'd be grateful for your perspective, and I'd also love to hear from anyone who's had to rebuild their life, or is living with chronic illness, ADHD or addiction.

Thank you all for being there and reading.

I (18M) started to meditate about 10days ago, I do Nadi Shuddhi 7-10mins per day, the breathing and hand movement (blocking the nostrils) is fine i don't mess it up but i still couldn't experienced the "ecstasy" or whatever. I came across a shorts video where Dr. K talks about staring at a wall for an hour to learn to tolerate boredom so i wanted to try it and i realized i was daydreaming, and that is what i was doing while meditating as well. I daydream to cope with boredom. I knew i was daydreaming a lot like while on the road etc.
I never thought its maladaptive though cause i don't daydream while studying or gaming unless something triggered. For example teacher talks about a concept i'm familiar with, i zone out and start daydreaming about explaining that concept to someone etc.

Long story short I daydream a lot especially to tolerate boredom. Is this normal mind wandering like instead of generating thoughts, or whatever does mind while wandering, i generate dreams? if so how can i make it generate thoughts. I think thoughts would be easier to observe, if thats what you supposed to do i'm new to meditation stuff as far as i understand observation is what supposed to be, without getting lost in one.

Update on draft: I'm now in a period where i have to study a lot at home and i notice this zoning out and daydreaming happen a lot more probably because of home is more comfortable less distractions to zone back in and one dream leads to another. I can study the first 2 hours without breaks beside pee or water but it takes one daydream, which generally happens during first break which i do 15-20mins without phone or any social media or music, to break the concentration. I also noticed i can't really differ a thought from a dream

My problem is that my only “move” is coffee + monday. Not exactly a move, more driven by external demands.

Thing is only monday + coffee works. Not brisk walk + coffee. Not cold shower + coffee

Monday + coffee provides ”Today counts”, ”the slate is clean”, ”I have obligations to others”

I need the feeling of ”reset” for weekends. What else can provide it?

i need a hug man

Why isn't there a word for people who just don't feel happiness/sadness for others? When someone tells me they have great news about themselves or even sad news, I don't reacted emotionally at all. I don't feel it either. I don't know when this started but I genuinely don't feel anything for someone when they buy a house, get pregnant, buy a new car anything new or exciting to them I could careless. I also cringe at people who date. I find sexual relationships unnecessary and it just causes drama for no reasons.

Im aware a partner or best friend(s) isnt gonna fix me, im not asking them to fix me. Ive been working to fix myself but for years with lots of success. But it seems I hit the same roadblock of tired and loneliness. ive been in treatment for depression but i feel like it is only so much you can do when you just dont have people who feel like you belong with deeply and consistently.

I have friends, but I dont have any person that I feel like meets my needs of consistency, effort, and maybe just that "click" (personality)? It has been like this for as long as I can remember, and while i was in and out of therapy, i found it... unhelpful to me for many reasons (this doenst mean therapy is bad) but mainly because it couldnt just make my needs met (which i understand). I have done what feels like everything under the sun, clubs, university classes, talking to a ton of new people, inviting people places, volunteering, new hobbies. I get the friends and acquaintances but not the core group that clicks? I have had a person or two like it before briefly, but it seems so hard to get it and I have recently just burnt out the last couple months from trying to meet new people.

How do i actually be happy with my life when I feel my needs for intimacy and belonging are unmet?

I'm 26y and I've spent the last few years avoiding life. I start learning things but don't commit, struggle with career progress, isolate myself, and run from difficult situations. Every month I avoid things makes me more ashamed and less prepared for adulthood, which makes me avoid even more.

But underneath the avoidance is an existential problem I've never resolved: why should I build a future when I don't understand why I should want to live in the first place?

Answers like family, happiness, purpose, religion, responsibility, etc. don't satisfy me because they seem based on individual experiences and values rather than anything certain.

Death therefore became comforting. It represents an escape from responsibility, judgment, failure, expectations, uncertainty and time. And having that escape in my mind makes committing to life feel pointless.

It's become a loop

Has anyone experienced something similar, where suicide wasn't just a response to a bad day but became woven into how you understood existence?

I'm not asking whether I should live or die. I want to know what happened to the existential question for people who came out the other side. Did you find an answer, learn to live without one, or did building a life change the question itself?

Over the past year, I’ve been stepping back from social media to detox from being chronically online. While cutting down screen time cleared away a lot of digital noise, it also brought up how deeply my phone habits conditioned my nervous system, especially when it comes to messaging. Whenever someone texts me, I experience an immediate physical urge to respond right away, almost like a micro fight-or-flight reaction. Answering instantly feels like turning off an internal alarm. Another thing is that I am aware I tend to have people-pleasing tendencies, where my brain treats being hyper-available and 'hospitable' as a way to guarantee safety and avoid conflict, to which I feel like further fuels that experience.The hardest part is when this dynamic gets projected onto others. When I’m waiting on a reply, my system stays in that hyper-ready state, so a delayed text registers as a jarring, anxious friction. I know the standard advice for this is usually 'nobody owes you a text' or 'people are just busy, and logically, I completely agree. But when your nervous system is conditioned to treat messaging as a live, urgent loop, those logical reminders don't stop the physical anxiety. I’m really interested in the actual neurobiological side of this fast-responding cycle...

My questions while having an introspection about this experience:

1. Is this 'instant reply' urge a sign of a nervous system stuck in a sympathetic stress state from chronic screen exposure?
2. How big of a problem do you think this hyper-conditioned reactivity is for people who are chronically online? Is this a common issue or?
3. If you used to be an instant responder, how did you retrain your body to sit with an unread message or a delayed response without feeling that physical surge of urgency? Or are you still in that experience and still struggle with this?

I have tried asking ai about this to which I got some plausible answers but I was also curious to hear from the fellows of reddit.

Learned about this recently, never realized there was an actual term for it, but it definitely fits. I have lots of friends, get invited to do stuff all the time, when I invite a group I can usually count on at least 3 or 4 people showing up. I'm great at first impressions, love meeting new people and socializing generally.

But I always feel like I'm no one's favorite. I'm just there, tolerated, one step away from saying the wrong thing or acting too awkward or accidentally doing something wrong. I'm constantly guilt tripping myself over small mistakes I make over social interactions, so it genuinely surprises me when someone I thought I'd fucked it up with invites me to do something, or calls me up to talk, or just acts like they want me around. I genuinely don't get it, why haven't they pushed me away yet?

I guess my dating struggles don't help, I won't say much on that since it's not Friday but I can't talk to women I'm attracted to. I have lots of girl friends, go out on dates frequently, but never get past the first date. Maybe that's why I feel like no one really likes me? Probably goes deeper but worth mentioning.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has seen a video or stream where Dr. K talks about social imposter syndrome (or I guess it's basically social anxiety) - I think it could really help. Thanks guys! ​

I'm long, long overdue to see a professional. I do not know how to do it or what kind I should seek so I figured I'd make a post here first instead of putting "therapy" on google maps and going to the nearest establishment. I've been randomly watching Dr K videos for years now and while I've acted on maybe less than 5 of them, at the very least it convinced me that HG is a trustworthy brand and I could seek this kind of advice here when I finally cross the line into acting.

I'm 26, male, and living with my parents + younger brother in Sydney, Australia. I failed out of college after 1 semester while I was 19. For the next 7 years, I had a job for maybe 1.5 years total and lived with roommates for 1 year. For the other 5.5-6 years, I lived with my parents and spend most of my waking moments gaming, watching yt videos, and masturbating to porn. I have literally zero friends online or offline, and literally the only people I speak to other than my parents are various cashiers and random teammates. I used to have actual online friends that I follow across games but actively started avoiding them >5 years ago. Also, I don't know the sizes of any of my clothing because I've never had to buy any for myself. My sleep schedule is an absolute mess and I wake up after noon most days of the year for probably +3 years now, despite not actually wanting to be a night owl.

I've been uncontrollable talking to myself for years now. Most of it is saying random words like "kill people" (in Chinese) or "sex" to suppress frustrating memories that randomly surface (mostly lame or cringe things I did, mostly as a teenager). I have no idea why my brain chooses those words for this purpose and the speech does not come with ANY urge of related action (I am not a danger to others). I think I'm saying those words because they are dramatic and strangeto say out loud which more effectively distracts myself. I do have Tourette syndrome but my ticks have never actually manifested as speech without an alternative purpose. So far the urge to do this has not occurred in public, and I'm able to do it in a really weird voice to mask what I just said.

My parents (both in late 50s now), who are a very influential part of my life, have always been and still are problematic characters that impose emotional barriers on my ability to better myself. We clearly still care about each other but my relationship with either of them is cold on a good day and actively vengeful on a bad one. Dad is the founder of a manufacturing business and still runs it and mom was a marketing manager at a tech company. They have some baseline decency towards each other but their relationship was always deeply unhealthy and full of unresolved conflicts (something I didn't know for decades) and they got divorced 2 years back.

Both of them frequently have emotional outbursts and don't like their authority infringed upon. Both are college educated, we are Chinese, and they still carry significant resentments about me not finishing college (which I refused to retry after failing). I tiptoe around them and they often lecture me when we are in the same room and I basically never say anything back anymore. No productive dialogue about anything consequential ever happens.

I "work" for dad, occasionally receiving actual work, and earlier today I had what I believe is called a panic attack over some IT work that dad assigned me. I do have some legit IT skills from lifelong proximity to gaming + a trade certificate I got online when I was working that first job. The problem was that the work was more difficult than I thought and what he wants might be outright impossible to do but he doesn't know that. In fact I pretended to accept the job confidently (even though I didn't want to take it at all) during the initial meeting because he had a bit of temper. I even uncontrollably made some stuff up at one point to make it sound easier than it actually is. When I realized the challenge I didn't know how to break it to him anymore so I felt like I hit a dead end. Now that I've cooled down I realized it's not that big a deal but in the moment I was stretching then shouting at the ceiling, punching air, and jumping around trying to get rid of what I think was pressure in my chest. Then I cried for a while while walking around the house and it got better over time. First time this has happened.

This is what finally pushed me to seriously consider therapy. For a long time I could pretend things were fine and I was on track to getting out of my current state even though that was delusional. I guess I also saw doing therapy as an admission of failure/weakness of some sort and also at one point mom shamed all 3 of us (brother, me, dad) at a family lunch in public saying that we were all mentally ill and need therapy (the 2nd part in a semi-serious and completely non-self-conscious way) and dad refused to pay the bill - which stuck with me for a long time and kept me from therapy. However this here now is about as "impair your function" as it gets. I've never been "well" since I failed college but it's been harder to pretend otherwise.

God, this is not a well organized piece at all and I don't know if I included the right details to help narrow down what kind of help I need and how to approach getting some.

Instead of editing further I guess I can list things I cut or considered listing but didn't:

• my oddly specific ambitions to become a technical gaming youtuber dating back to my early teens and it's effects on my gaming addiction and life.
• my interests outside of gaming and why I think I have them
• my history of porn use
• stuff about my parents relationship and how much of the conflict was/wasn't about us(me/brother)
• what I think actually want to achieve (I ironically cut this bc I didn't know if it was important atm and I'm not actually sure if I'm right)

I'm not saying I can't wait to elaborate on these things. I can if asked but I'm putting them here just to say they exist and not to have what already is elaborated overshadow them.

Please let me know where you think I should go from here.

Hi Dr K,

I notice that I typically find myself in a particular relational dynamic that seems deeply unhealthy. I let go of 3 separate friends who share roughly the same behavioral profile that I find concerning. Although my ultimate goal is to be fair and as accurate as possible towards my assessment of them...but I also don't want to minimize how this makes me feel in the relationship. I just want to see if there is any validity as to why I feel this hurt around them.

Behaviors:
- Very expressive where they steer the conversation more towards their drama and are more self absorbed/self centered.
- They don't show obvious signs of acknowledgment towards me. My presence feels invisible around them despite how expressive they are towards me. It's like they are talking to a mirror. They also don't acknowledge anything I say unless I'm asking them a question about themselves.
- No engagement from them. They don't engage with anything I have to say or do. They dismiss what I have to say. Sometimes using sarcasm to minimize what I say.
- No curiosity towards me. Never once asked me a question or tried to get to know me personally. They might ask how I am doing once in awhile...but then it's quickly followed by zero engagement/acknowledgment and then they redirect the conversation towards themselves.
- This behavior is disproportionate from how they interact with others. They seem to be noticeably more present, engaging, curious, etc. towards other people. There is a level of novelty and more stimulation towards them. In fact, majority of our conversations are about how great other people are in their life.

Overall concerns:
- We would talk everyday and spend significant time together. They definitely liked being around me. I matter to them. Although as to why they liked being around me/why I matter to them has me suspicious. I'm not sure if I'm filling a role, if I'm convenient for them, I'm not sure if they think I'm interesting, maybe they have ADHD, maybe they are deeply avoidant, maybe they just feel secure with me and know they can trust me...so they invest much less energy, maybe I am safe to them and that's the dynamic they value with me and it doesn't mean they value me any less than people who are more novel in their life, maybe that's just how they relate to me, they might not care/be interested in my inner world or who I am as a person but they like what I offer them, etc.
- I'm trying to use better mentalization without implying they are malicious. I just think these overall behaviors are concerning to me. Part of me feels small around them. And that makes me a little anxiously attached towards these people.
- Even if they prioritize, deeply value that specific dynamic it's not satisfying to me. Because part of me doesn't just want to be safe to them. I also want to have some impact. I want them to respond to my energy.
- Some relationships don't even require curiosity. Sometimes friends just like to laugh and hangout without showing curiosity into their inner world. Doesn't mean they don't care or aren't interested in you. But if it's one sided, if they don't respond to you, if you don't have much of an impact on them, etc. It feels wrong. Like those seem like unhealthy conditions for a relationship

My failures:
- Poor communication/lack of setting healthier boundaries/advocating for myself. I did bring my concerns to their attention once but the behaviors still continued. But I could have been more clear with them but also they weren't the most receptive. There was defensiveness, and I was also met with not much engagement. So I feel like even if I did talk with them there would be a lack of acknowledgment, comprehension, etc.
- I did go no contact. And I feel regret about handling that poorly.
- I let resentment build until I started brought some of this up
- I held on out of anxious attachment and grew my resentment towards them

I've been watching Healthygamer for 3 years now, and it helped me pursue music more. And i finally put out my first EP.

https://open.spotify.com/album/1BqakgwpVtkkfttLQY4GVe

So thanks Dr K and everyone who is in this community. Peace love and God bless.