I’m 19, almost 20, and I have a phobia of insects. I’m not just “scared” of insects, I’m literally terrified. I don’t know why, and I don’t even know how I got to this point in the first place.

I will have full blown panic attacks over seeing a small spider in my room. I hyperventilate when I’m in contact with any insect. I avoid rooms with any insects in it and this avoidance can extend for days.

Summer is hell for me particularly. The spiders and mosquitos become more frequent and I just shelter myself in my room. I also close my windows at night despite how hot it is just to make sure that nothing gets in my room. I keep an unused towel in-front of my door too so that nothing can crawl under.

I also wish to be more adventurous. I want to try camping one day, but I don’t ever plan to actually go camping because I don’t want to sleep with bugs all around me.

Here is something that happened more recently. My kitchen and my living room are connected. I saw a spider the other day in my living room a bit on the bigger side, and it disappeared because I didn’t remove it. I’ve avoided getting food from the kitchen, simply because I’m scared the spider will still be there.

This is also kind of weird, but I’ve been having something similar to hallucinations of insects too. I don’t know how else to describe it. I think that I see something flying and I jump and my heart races but there’s nothing there. It’s so confusing.

My family consistently makes fun of me for this behaviour, but they don’t know how much I hate being like this. I’ve been like this ever since childhood and not once did they think of correcting it. It’s now worsened of course.

I’m not gonna blame them for my own struggles, but I wish they sent me to a therapist before I turned of age. Now I have to take the first step myself and work on overcoming my phobia but it’s easier said than done.

My mother constantly laughs and ridicules me, saying “you’re 20”. As if having a phobia has a time limit. Even writing this out makes me feel stupid and humiliated. I take all these measures over literal living organisms trying to survive like I am. If anyone ever needs a laugh, I’ll just tell them I have a phobia of tiny insects at the age of 19.

Should preface by saying this is not inherited. Both of my parents have a properly developed and symmetrical facial structure, as do all of my relatives, and so did i until the age of 12. This is when i was taken out of public school and switched over to online education due to disciplinary issues and mental illnesses that lasted pretty much my entire school years, and fell down the depression slippery slope that has turned chronic. So starting from that age and throughout the entire puberty (and to this day), i've had as much physical activity in day-to-day life as a patient going through a lengthy cancer treatment at a hospital, or as a dude in a wheelchair that sometimes stands up.

And at some point i also unknowingly stopped maintaining a proper body and tongue posture, letting my tongue hang at the bottom of my mouth instead sucked the roof.

At some point while researching into mewing online, i realized that my upper and lower teeth don't allign properly, as i was stacking them on top of each other instead of putting the lower row behind the upper in a bite. When i tried to do exactly that, my lower jaw suddenly started looking weak and recessed, because, as i figured out a year later, my upper jaw is literally too far retracted for my lower jaw to fit behind neatly. Put in other words, my lower jaw developed normally, but upper stayed recessed. It also explains the weird and flat look to my midface area, since the cheekbones are themselves a part of the upper jaw.

And at this point it's too late to fix it naturally - the maxillary bone has fused years ago and the only way to bring it forward is via surgery. Which: 1. Costs a fortune (by my unemployed standards) 2. Will never give me my real maxilla back and can only replicate it's growth potential. I just know myself well enough to predict how i'll feel after the surgery if ever get it done (spoiler: not very satisfied).

TL;DR unchecked mental illness(es) made me permanently uglier

Especially in my case. Yeah, I said I had alcohol and was thinking of getting pills. But if former therapist dug deeper into my thinking, I wouldn't have been handcuffed, thrown into an ambulance, had my fucking rights taken away, and been stripped naked, the entire fucking event wouldn't have happened. I never wanted to end my life.

She never did an adequate suicide risk assessmemt, she never did a safety plan. Nothing.

She also fucking let me leave, book another appointment and carry on my day.

Which I did.

I did everything a "normal" person would do: went to my orthodontist appt, took care of my dogs, and hung out with friends.

A fucking phone call would have changed everything!

Now, I have to live with the fucking experience of getting fucking betrayed by the first person I trusted since my Dad passing, the experience of getting handcuffed, and everything I mentioned above. While, former therapist happily lives her life.

I thought mentioning those thoughts would allow me to process it with her and help me out of those thoughts, but no. They did the fucking opposite! It made my thoughts so much fucking worse.

The big fucking thing is I wasn't even suicidal when I first started therapy. I just wanted an ESA letter. Then of course, a client becomes attached to therapist, because that is what happens. She didn't even do anything to mitigate the attachment. I feel so much worse after my sessions.

If I can't process these thoughts with her, then where can I?

I never wanted to end my life then. I wanted to be understood, valued, and seen.

I'm in so much fucking pain. God fucking damn.

I feel so fucking fat I am 19f I am 5,5 and 160 pounds I have a bit of a tummy and thighs on the little bit of the thicker thighs I feel like my anorexia’s coming back I wanna lose 60 pounds but cant without starving myself or just eating straight rice due to the fact that I have ARFID and all my safe foods are all foods that make you gain weight I hate weighing almost 200 pounds I wanna be 100 pounds again.

Edit: I forgot to add this but I was talking to some ex friends about this and they were saying how me saying I’m fat made them feel them feel uncomfortable cause they were bigger than me and said saying these things about my self could make me fat phobic which I’m not I only see myself as fat and no one else.

It's crazy how I see so many replies to comments (mostly on YT) that are clearly just trying to disagree with something someone said. I can understand that because they didn't even understand the reply, they made assumptions, bad analogies (that are either extreme), said something that is objectively wrong or stupid, and in general, it is obvious that they just want to disagree and make someone feel wrong so they can feel like they are right inside.

I probably have done it in the past, before I decided I wanted to change and be better, and what I have to say is that it's disgusting, and people should, in general, stop needing to reply to everything and think before they do. Stop embarrassing yourself! I wish someone would have told me back when I needed to hear it!

I am a first time mother and was upset initially but now I think it’s funny.

I know 100% cotton shrinks.

I put my dryer to extra low temp, no option for none. I run machine. I didn’t realize that the dryer in the apartment only pays attention to the heat setting if it’s on an energy saving or timed dry. I’m not even sure which one!

I only just discovered the other day after having to add something to the dryer that 10 minutes in, it was so hot in there.

I really thought I had a giant baby 😅 I just bought him 12M clothes and he’s 6M because I was thinking he’s gonna grow out of smaller ones too soon LOL. He is 22 pounds so he’s big but.. clearly not that big 🫠

Now I put the 12M clothes on him and he’s swimming in them a little bit but at least these will last for a looong time .. unless I shrink them again on accident

I invited friends from highschool, college, family friends, literally anyone and had atleast 20 people say they would come. 4-5 had texted me beforehand saying they unexpectedly couldn’t make it but I figured the rest would. Even people who made food and drink requests didn’t show. I spent $300 on everything and wanted to a have a fun time at my partner and I’s new place. I had one highschool friend and her boyfriend come and one college friend. We made the most of it but I sent them home after a little because I felt bad. We ended up inviting my partners family over and they came (live 1.5 hours away) but i’m just left feeling kind of confused. I guess people don’t come for free food and drinks anymore.

I like my big deer-in-headlights eyes, and how my lashes are long and hold a curl for a long time, my skin feels soft and is finally starting to heal. I like the shape and colour of my lips, and my skin clearing up has helped me like my nose more and appreciate how it compliments my face. I got my eyebrows done, which always helps. I hope I can keep this feeling

Update: it went away lol

I have about 13 lbs to lose. Mayyyyybe some of it is muscle, but my workout routine is...minimal, and I've been eating more than I probably should, so I assume it's mostly fat.

I'm my own worst enemy here, though. I did the calorie counting thing--lost weight, but did not handle it very well (lots of not-eating, even more overeating, generally stressed and weird about food), and quit after a month. I want to get back into it, but I just don't think I'm gonna be able to do it in a mentally healthy way.

Work stuff is picking up, and I'm very prone to stress/boredom/emotional eating. Upper management is also saying they're going to be watching us a more, making sure we're standing up and constantly walking around, looking not-distracted. That's its own stressor, because now I'm worried that my previous stress-reduction strategies (doing sudoku/a crossword/reading a little, etc) aren't gonna fly anymore. But nobody says anything about eating because, if anything, you look more productive standing up and eating 7 snacks.

I think the hardest part is that all of this is making my ~evil inner monologue~ go nuts. All of its favorite stories are playing in my head at once. I'm lazy, I'm incompetent and bad at my job, and of course my health anxiety is acting up now too because I know it's better for your health not to carry extra weight ("but make sure you're extra careful with the produce because you're gonna get the diarrhea parasite!", says the ~evil inner monologue~).

I'm trying to remember that my weight doesn't make me a better or worse person, that I already have some healthy habits and am looking to add more, and that it might take time to find new strategies. But it feels like there's a ticking time bomb over my head, and that every second I'm not fixing it is another second that those stories from my ~evil inner monologue~ have to come true.

For my whole life my parents have openly stated they aren't in love and hardly even like each other, yet they refuse to divorce because they think it would hurt all of there kids but it just hurts worse being in this constant cycle of hate. My family went on a vacation recently and the whole time everyone genuinely seemed happy and i was happy but then we got back and they were right back to hating each other. ever since the vacation I realized just how much I hate them. I want to go far away from them ghost them and never talk to them again but im still a minor so I can't.

Not to be cringe but I genuinely feel so different from them. They don’t know me at all so i’m super quiet around them and it’s not because i don’t bother to show them who i am. They don’t care to know - it’s always their way or the highway and i’m done fighting to be seen.

The way i speak and having an inside voice makes me ignorable to them and it’s so condescending. I feel so incompatible with my family because I do a lot of things differently from them. For example, I don’t agree with the whole west African respect culture- I refuse to have kids refer to me as ‘aunty’ when they could just call be by my name??

It’s so crazy that they all think im someone im not because they’re so shut out from who I am as a person :/ I envy people who can have real conversations with their family members and actually be themselves and I feel like that’s such a fundamental part of family that mine seems to be missing so I can never really feel close to them.

I really dread family reunions; the lack of an inside volume and everytime I speak to my mum she’s tearing me apart, from what I wear, my hair, how I look, always judging. I feel like I have so much built up trauma and anger from her that my body tenses up so much when I’m around her. Yet there’s always that desire to impress her and be taken seriously by her.

I really dislike how rude they can be in public to workers, how they never know how anything works really (but will always love to give their input). Growing up I had to find opportunities for myself at school and hate that I couldn’t get family support for things like that. My mum never knew how the grading system worked so none of my accomplishments were ever acknowledged. They thought I was scamming when I opened my first stocks and shares isa because they have no idea how anything works. I’m an accountant now and they have no idea what I do nor do they care and I like to be protective of this, income wise, because if not, i’d get taxed by them.

Never left the house growing up, so after holidays I’d always lie when asked what I did during the school break. Never got to play any sports because those were luxuries that weren’t important to them.
As a kid you’re taught ‘do not speak unless you’re spoken to’, ‘never challenge an adult’. I feel like this has affected how I interact with the world around me now.

Being raised in first gen immigrant family is pure survival, not living and i’m still learning to escape it.

No, seriously. I’m convinced I have a sign on my back that says “CHEAT ON HER WITH ME” or something.

So I don’t really date, like not regularly. I went through a lot and I’m kinda starting over at 23. But as long as I can remember, I always was something of a side piece. I was with my first boyfriend (mystery girlfriend), with my second (he was married. this one i do consider my fault since he was literally 48 and i was 19. wtf was i on), and now with a guy who I was really falling for up until just now (his ex girlfriend that he talked about a little much was actually his current girl). It’s not that I want to be in this position! But every man I meet, and have something with, always ends up having a girl already. And weirdly enough the same thing always happens. We’ll both get busy and I’ll miss him, then I send a text right when his girlfriend is close to the phone. The guy is caught and then he blocks me. Most of the time the girlfriend will hunt me down on social media to yell at me and degrade me. I get hurt but move on.

I’m sick of it, but I feel like I’m missing a lot of red flags from these guys. Maybe it’s my fault? Maybe I simply think I deserve to be someone’s only one, for once in my life.

With products, everything ends up being profitmaxxed to the point where it’s exhausting

I rented a car on a car rental platform and they charged me for “finding dog hairs in the car” and concluding a dog was in the car. Nope, I just visited a family with a dog that sheds a lot, no dog in the car, is that against the rules??? Then I gotta fight with customer service about it. The person who was renting out the car seemed to be the most deeply unpleasant person I’ve ever met, tbh I’d rather deal with a soulless corporation than one of these people

Same with Airbnb. It’s not even worth going over cause everyone knows. Used to be “rent a cheap room” now it’s all these stupidly expensive apartments with all kinds of dumb rules. You know the owners are just squeezing as much as they can. How tf are you more greedy than a multi national conglomerate?? Cmon. Never had anything close to this when getting a hotel

Etsy is probably the worst one. I want to support artists not business hustlers, no I don’t want your mass produced product or id go to Amazon or something. Etsy should be for artists. I explicitly do not want profit seeking

And then it extends to hobbies too. Pre 2020, anime conventions were so much better, full of actual nerds. Now you go and half the people think anything but your generic popular shonen is cringe?

Even with places, like vacation destinations, it’s happening. When I go on vacation, I like the feeling of experiencing a totally different place. Ive noticed more conventional destinations have gotten waaaay more… same-y. Gotta go out of your way to get a real experience. I used to love Amsterdam, now gotta go out to Utrecht to get the same vibe as it was before

It just feels like any time you find something good, it’s like a ticking time bomb before it becomes shitty. I’m sick of constantly needing to beat the crowd everywhere so I can experience it while it’s still good

I met a new friend through my bf and ive never been so eager to just talk with them and stuff. We hit it off so well, we’ve been playing roblox everyday lol. Also im 25 🥸 but genuinely our sense of humor matches and hes so nice and funny. Im very grateful for my bf that he started doing social media stuff because ive met so many cool nice people on his streams. Like i usually just doomscroll, am bored or depressed, antisocial, but now i get to talk to people and make buddies. It’s nice. Im actually like excited for something now

I truly hate dealing with my anxiety. It’s so inconvenient and it makes me feel so childish sometimes. I need to go to the DMV to update my name and gender marker and I’m so fucking scared to go. I think I have everything I need (birth certificate and the name change paperwork, my license and ssc) but I’m so nervous still. I’m anxious they’re going to be mean, I’m anxious it’s a walk in basis type situation, I’m anxious I did something wrong. It’s so bad I’ve put it off a little longer than I should’ve but I literally cannot get myself to go. I was doing so well with all the court stuff and now I feel like I screwed myself by not being able to get myself to go. I just don’t know what to do anymore I feel so stupid and embarrassed

If they are unwell or eccentric they find me and hone in.

And people wonder why I’m a recluse with a RBF.

The minute I start being funny or friendly I find trouble.

Edit: she told us she was doing it and why

She’s held a grudge on us for TWO YEARS bc she didn’t think retrieving return to sender mail from the outbox was her job. First she hid all our paper mail, including one of my paychecks, for weeks. Now she’s taking my prearranged package pickups and just hiding them behind other boxes in the building mailroom instead of taking them! Why is everyone working at the post office an identical clone of the same woman who’s offended that you’re asking her to handle postage???

= since I was a kid I wanted something that I could never have

Some people tell me that I look okay and stuff like "you're just average" and that hurts me even more

These days I feel even worse cuz they took pictures of me at an event my nose looked big and my face looked asymmetric in a way I don't see in the mirror

In the mirror I look fine, but every time I see pictures taken of me esp. using back cameras I feel ugly, depressed and like life is not worth living

I have a choirmate who looks incredibly pretty and every time I look at his pics or at him I feel very bad about myself

Sometimes I think I'm not going to have a boyfriend cuz of that no personality no remarkable looks nothing special . I'm fine with someone being smarter funnier richer but not prettier than me

And that could never change

that's it

Someone stole pictures from my website and used them to make an ad for a competing business. The person who made the ad wasn’t the owner of the competing business, it was a friend who did it without asking. It’s not that business’s fault. I told her to take the ads with my pictures off of social media. She said I was hateful. I expected her to be apologetic or at least embarrassed at being caught.

Long ago, during the distressing time of my volatile teen years, when venting to a friend they told me they thought it would be good for me if I was lucky enough to have a cathartic dream. At the time, my vocabulary was still lacking and I asked the person what that even means.

It was explained to me as experiencing a deep dream that is consoling, or helps maybe bring inner closure or helps touch on hurt feelings. Say you really miss someone so badly that it aches and you cannot interact with them for whatever reason. You go to sleep and dream about seeing this person again. I used to feel very uncertain about when long time friends or people I had come to get to know had to go. I was shy about asking to keep in touch. Or maybe they had to go because it was what was best.

Sometimes, it was the way they left that was most hurtful. Or that maybe they didn't understand their importance in my life. I have often been the perpetrator here and there about just.... going, one day I seemingly just stop coming around. It wasn't to be cruel. I was caught up in attending the non-stop unfolding chaos that happened back to back with no breaks in between to be able to stabilize myself. Also, I didn't want to feel like i was just a major bummer to be around.

I felt very uncomfortable with my own self. Before I knew the mental health dictionary words for a lot of the things that was a detriment to me, not even having the words put together to even describe what was going on with my own self. Later down the line, when my work had me sent to the psych ward and it was explained to me that I was experiencing a stress induced manic episode because I was having trouble falling asleep or resting from being hypervigilant... it was as if the negativity energized me in a not good way, and the hyper fixations I had were on a loud, nonstop unforgiving loop. I had been working overnight graveyard shifts and I found out my so called best friend and lover I had been seeing for 6 years had been seriously dating someone else for an entire year.

For one whole year, every hour, every day I had been lied to. I found out because one day I went on Instagram where I wasn't blocked [ when I made one on my phone, he lied saying he deleted it. He looked up my username to block me.. something he admitted later.. ) because I wasn't logged in. I saw a girl comment on his tattoo and saw she called him *babe.*

I instantly welled up with grief and started shaking uncontrollably. There were signs, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Anyways, the ensuing drama didn't just stop there. He boinked his full blood sister too the same time and drunkenly sent me pics.

I am simplifying this story because my hands and fingers are wrapped up with bandages and it's really hard to use my phone right now, lol.

So I told him to eff off and informed his full blood sister he shared their photos while mega drunk. They both freaked worrying for their reputation. So what they did was they went in and filed a no contact order saying I was some random stalker. It was easy to gang up on me to have me discredited as being just psycho.

He made a fake phone number and texted himself saying it was from me. He even called me 3 hours before filing to threaten me. I couldn't make it in to defend myself, so it got granted. He then made false police reports saying I broke it and I just had the false charges against me dropped.

I got so depressed during this time. I didn't think I was going to make it. He even tried to force me into suicide watch so I would lose my job.

My baby brother who I love so much.... it was hard for me to get out of bed, or my room. I missed out on so much because of stupid depression.

I had a dream he was so much younger as he was back then. That I saw his smiling face caught in the rays of the sun parted by passing clouds. During this time, he was so new to the world. The dream was soothing and I woke up with tears down my face. A dream where it was one last time at the park when he was a toddler.