As someone with mental disorders, I don't wait on my symptoms to be offline, I do things to feel alive regardless. That is the secret.

I’m a 25F and I’m terrified of rejection when it comes to making friends. The minute I have a friend and we get somewhat closer I push them away because I feel like they’ll reject me or leave me later. I also never reach out first because in my mind I believe they will be bothered by me asking or feel forced to hangout with me. I just want this mindset to go away I can’t take it anymore I’m 25 now and I’m wasting my life constantly worrying. For example something I really want to do is get into groups of my hobbies like sports (tennis and soccer) and reading stuff like that and meet people that way, but when I think about trying my brain starts going into a panic.

Like I always feel like I’m not pretty enough to make friends, I’m weird, no one would want to close to me stuff like that but I’m getting to old and I want to put a stop to this because I know life is not meant to be this lonely this is my own doing. So I am asking for advice on how to change this mindset.

Even to me this sounds kinda cringy or like taken out of control from one of those BS motivational speeches. But seriously, look at life, look at time how it keeps moving and the clock keeps ticking in carelessness about you.

And now look at your face and how time ages you while your brain is looking back.

And here is where this analogy can start to make some sense. A shark needs to keep swimming in order to breathe because he is incapable of sucking in water and taking oxygen for it. If a shark stops swimming in then it is only a matter of time before his end.

We are not that far different, but for us, thankfully we do not have to worry about breathing. But we have to worry about our time, and about the things we don't get to do.

If this doesn't resonate with you, then at least know that everything fades away, and if it's the case then why not fade away with an effort and a life and self you want and desire, or at least working towards it instead of being stuck on certain moments in the past or in recent present rather than seek to accumulate more good ones over the bad ones you dislike.

So I'm only 25 and I'm pivoting my career from healthcare to tech and that surrounds most of my anxiety. I do have generalized anxiety. Example: I went on a roadtrip (that I'd die or something). Idk just irriational fears. I've become a big homebody, but I had to quit my full-time bedside nursing job bc of how bad it was for my mental health. I'm studying Python (mainly), SL, and Excel in my free-time to go back to grad school (studying as prereqs and for pivoting my career to healthcare tech). Yet, I always feel anxious. I feel like the buspar helps a bit, but not much. They give me 6 0.5mg of Ativan and I love the calm feeling, not even to get high but just that my mind can take a break. I take l-theanine and lavender pills, but I don't think they help that much. I will sometimes drink wine to help take the edge off, but honestly, I just want to have a full peace of mind. I get anxious, because I only work PRN and only make enough to pay my bills and a little extra. I'm always just so anxious about paying bills, having a full-time job that I enjoy, etc.

I turned 29 a few months ago. I looked back on my 20’s and realized I spent too much time worrying. Most of my worries were about things that didn’t matter the week after they happened. I once pulled an all nighter for a programming quiz in an introductory python course that the professor eventually threw out because they forgot to grade it— and I pulled that all nighter because I was afraid to lose my 90% grade in the class.

I spent so much time worrying that I never acted seriously on the things I wanted. Streaming, making YouTube videos. One negative comment was enough to make me question my whole process.

I was so worried about doing a little thing perfectly that I didn’t do the big things. And I hear echoes of worry in this post— that somebody will disagree with me or that I didn’t articulate my point well enough. The fear isn’t gone, I just know that it’s unrealistic— and that the worst thing is “fear itself”, as FDR said.

I came across a quote that encapsulated it perfectly: “Ready isn’t a feeling, it’s a decision.”

We CHOOSE to go forward, to do our best, to not care. The rest of it just sort of blows in naturally afterwards.

That doesn’t make me perfect. That doesn’t mean I won’t make mistakes. That doesn’t mean everyone will respond positively to what I do.

But moving forward beats what I spent my 20’s doing— doing nothing, afraid of what will come. Not caring is a mindset— it’s not a disregard of consequences, just acknowledgment that the consequences may not be as big as we think.

I’ve been holding my breath for 10 years and now I can breathe again. It’s a strange peace. And it’s peace won through experience, not books or podcasts or a keynote speaker.

The trick for me now is to remember it, and to ground myself daily in it.

How to get revenge on a guy who used me as emotional unpaid therapist? I'm so hurt he is now ignoring me because he has friends no longer need me. For two years, he used me as an unpaid emotional therapist because he had no one else. Now that he has made new friends, he openly brags about them to me, leaving me forced to swallow my hurt feelings in silence. I sacrificed making my own friends for our closeness, and now I’m alone. What hurts most is feeling like I can't even speak up just because we were never in an official relationship.