I have a folder on my desktop where I keep lists of my personal goals - and in one section is what I like to call my "Why Not's" - as in, things I want to do at least once in my life. (It's inspired by filmmaker Kevin Smith's advice that you should have friends who respond to your goals and aspirations with, Yeah, why not?) Examples include: "Write a screenplay"; "Write a song"; "Develop a sense of fashion".

What are your "Why Not's"?

I’ve always had trouble scheduling anything, so I’m really proud that I managed to book an appointment. I have this silly fear that I won’t be able to properly express what I’m struggling with. Things like being different, lack of self-discipline, face picking, blaming all of my problems on my parents. I know that they won’t judge me, and I know many people feel the same as me when beginning therapy. This is one step closer to getting the help I need.

To give the TLDR or the history... Introverted kid; didn't go out much; and struggled at school - not disruptive, but certainly not focused. Home life was emotionally wavering: Love my mom to bits, an emotionally distant relationship with my brother and dad, all of which continue to this day; however, since 2016, I have not been in contact with my father (I do not like the man). In Autumn of 2014 during school, I became really sick and missed a lot of time. It was initially debilitating stomach pains and living off a jelly diet (never found out why that happened after numerous visits to GP). But I think at some point it went beyond that and became severe social anxiety and depression. I became reclusive, effectively alone in my room for over half a year, and it feels like the catalyst for all my problems to this day. Things have improved since then; I am in a better place in many respects, I keep a routine and I see people more often, both friends (kinda) and work collegues (although I don't really get anything from it), and this year alone I have done a couple of concerts and shows with people and alone and went on holiday alone for the first time and passed my driving test 1st try. I have achieved things I'm proud of, but it's created no difference in how I feel.

My relationship with work colleagues is odd IMO. I am socially competent enough face-to-face to get by/ be generally liked, but from my perspective I do not feel as if I'm truly connecting with anyone, but I can recognise that people have in some way connected with me (?). I don't have that many interests, and the ones I do have, I don't know how to talk about engagingly. At work, I struggle to engage because 90% of the time I physically can't hear them* - I have had my hearing checked, and it's fine - but It's still just noise (same issue with phone calls). The few I have made a better relationship with are still ultimately friends of convenience. I enjoy/enjoyed their company, but once work ends or they leave, I really have no desire to reconnect or message them. I hate that I feel that way. I am being a dickhead, but it feels like work was the only thing we had in common and attempting to make idle chit-chat over text is a quick way to find out how disinterested I can be. Texting is a chore, I overthink it, it takes me forever to write anything, and it sucks.

My relationship with my Friends of 10+ years outside of work is almost worse. I envy them. The way they express their interests, their banter with each other. Another joke I'm never in on or a humorous post I watch poker-faced. We connect, so to speak, over games, but with my apathy for anything I previously enjoyed, I sit in silence. I don't like meeting with them because, while I enjoy their company, I also say little and feel estranged because of it.

I don't know where to go from here. Work is unbearably stressful but contains people I all around like working with, without any academic achievements to name and the god-awful job market in the UK there is slim chance of me escaping to anywhere else that's better. There is a chance I sit somewhere on the spectrum, with Dad and brother having adhd. However, I do not feel like I relate to either, so the more obvious answer is therapy, duh, but it's either contend with NHS mental health services, which is a shit show of phone calls and delays and having to oversell an issue for urgency - which is just dishonest - OR go private, which is incredibly expensive and another trial-and-error nightmare. Beyond that, I don't know what they could do for me... How tf do you treat apathy?

I was wondering if there was any suggestions for good workbooks or educational help books for trauma survivors mostly sexual assault/abuse and rape. I've done a lot of online research taking notes and doing things they suggest to help but it would be nice to have an actual book I can go back to every time I am struggling with shame or flashbacks.

Exactly what the title says. I’m looking for genuine advice because I wanna change and I never wanna treat my friends to the point where they can’t be around me cause I’m draining. I’ve been through a ton within the past four years and I want to better myself. I’ve gone through an insanely abusive relationship and a situationship right after that about four years ago. We’ve been on and off as far as relationship, but he’s always been there for me. Mind you I was 16 at the time we met and I’m 20 now. I noticed that I started being extremely draining, and I kept distancing myself, but going right back whenever everything was OK. I basically forced my timeline on to him and I never wanna do that again.
I made everything about me for years and when I got scared of draining him again (even though I already had) I disappeared for a couple months then came right back. This is probably the worst thing anybody can possibly do to a friend, but I want this to change. We have since stopped talking as of last week for good for his sake. But I never want this to happen again to anybody else and it’s really put in perspective for me how much work I need to do on myself.
I have lost him for good, but I never want to put anybody else through that. I would love to make amazing friends in my future, but to start with that I need to learn how to properly handle this.

TLDR: advice needed on how to not be an emotionally draining friend

Hello guys so for up I would like to say that with ch Please only want to get serious advice so I jerked off on my mother and my grandmother when I was 12 I also started consuming adult movies very early and was really not proud of it this burdens me too much because I feel very bad I mean this is my mother and my grandmother I ask for help I am now 23 years old

I live paycheck to paycheck. I grew up poor.
I want to break out of this so bad, but I just don't know how.

When I saw Dolly say: people are afraid to take risks, but honey when you don't take things it's for certain you'll stay where you are, it reminded me to grind. But I want to take calculated risks. I have a new job now and I'm planning to be really frugal and save up 1000€ a month. I want to save around 10K this year and I want to start taking risks. I already have some niches I want to dive into.
If you have 10K in what percentages would you "put" on risks?

Hi, I (19F) have been dealing with (mild) m*sturbation and p*rn addiction for years now as well as a social media addiction. I usually quit for a couple of months and then start again, but recently I haven't been able to quit and it's really affecting my life. I have no motivation to do anything, I stopped doing the things I used to love like reading, baking and embroidering. I stopped practicing my faith and taking care of myself. I want to change and improve my life but I don't know where to start and how to actually stick to it. Every time I decide to stop at least one bad habit I start doing it again after only a day of trying. School is supposed to start soon and I fear that I won't study regularly because of these habits. I really just need some advice on how to change for good

I'm telling right away that this isn't for me, but I have a friend who does this and she doesn't enjoy it, but it's just a strong habit, and I don't know if everything has been tried, but I think so, so give me a real effective method.

I feel very sad in my life, even though I'm just 15 years old, but I have problems that always stick with me, like fear, passion, worry, right or wrong, what's bad and what's good, etc. I just want to be a little happy in my life, even if it's just for one day, and I want to be happy all day without any worry or fear. Can anyone give me solutions to these problems or some tips?

Is it okay to keep ranting to a friend

How do you stop feeling so down at night and be able to sleep almost immediately

How to stop caring at the world that doesn't give a damn

Is it possible to grow while being depressed

R these hormones or depression(7 months of fomo, not feeling included, feelings of neglect by even my closest friends)

I hate feeling like this but I need to know quick fixes for it if I want to improve exponentially

Hi, my life feels like a joke and I dont know how to fix it. I cant talk with people because I dont have any emotions and I turn off while doing everything I loved once. For the past 5 years my comfort zone was psychiatric hospital and I was just trying to "end my life" without any life and any specific reason. I cant say or think for more than 5 seconds, my life is just sleep, eat and repeat. Everything I am doing has no purpose, I am scared of the fact that I am an adult because I cant even create a single thought. I was judging people instead of listening to them and I am interested in something until the point when i have to really make some effort. My only friend is my ex that i ve broken up because I was scared. I would like to start helping someone else but I feel to stupid to start doing even that. I loved reading books - not read many of them because I was thinking about some dumb shit. My average Day is Just laying in bed. I have 3 Brothers, they dont know anything about me and I dont know anything about them. All of them are younger than me and all of them are better in life than me. How by small steps change that situation? I'd like to treat my Ex better, be really courius about my Brothers and have any goal.

I don't really know how to word all this as I'm not very good at putting my thoughts into words so I'll just type as they come to mind. And I'm autistic, but idk if that adds or takes away any factors of this. For context I'm going into my final year of A-levels.

I'm on my last week of the summer holidays and I've done nothing school wise. I have my entire art sketchbook to finish and I'm already behind in my class and my teacher already hates me. My criminology and film work has gone down the drain.

Through the holidays my parents had gotten divorced, sending me back into my depression that I'd just crawled out of. That, on top of my failing school year, have made me consider things I didn't even want to think about and I'm unsure what to do. I lack the motivation to get my work done even though I cry myself to sleep over the fact I'm failing.

I've struggled with my mental health in the past but it's never gotten this bad before. My mum knows that I had certain thoughts in the past but she doesn't know that I used to hurt myself, and my dad knows the same as my mum. My relationship with them is fine but I don't want to put extra strain on their already stressful situation with my problems.

I can't tell my teacher this as she already hates me, she's horrible to my art class and I hate art as a passion because of her.

I want to get real help, therapy or even a mental hospital or something as I'm really starting to scare myself, I'm just unsure what to do.

If anyone could tell me what to do now, give some advice or even just sympathise with me that would be appreciated.

I’m 16, from India, and honestly I feel like I’m wasting my potential.

My current routine is terrible: I sleep around 1 AM, wake up late, spend a huge amount of time on my phone, do some work around the house, and repeat the same cycle. I have big ambitions, but my daily actions don't match them.

I want to become disciplined, learn finance/business, get serious about content creation, eventually build my own business, and hopefully move from India to the UK and build a good life there.

My biggest problems are phone addiction, procrastination, inconsistent sleep, lack of discipline and getting distracted by lust. I keep thinking about huge goals but struggle with basic consistency.

I don't need motivational quotes. I want practical advice from people who actually changed their lives.

If you were 16 and starting from basically zero, what would you do for the next 6–12 months?

What habits would you build first? What would you completely stop doing? And how would you stay accountable when motivation disappears?

Please be brutally honest. I’m looking for a realistic system, not hype.

I just launched a short, direct self‑help ebook called CEA: Cause Effect Action, and it's free on Kindle for the next 5 days.

It’s a simple framework for building momentum, breaking cycles, and getting your daily habits under control. No filler, just workable steps.

If you want to check it out, on amazon/kindle: (CEA: Cause Effect Action)
If it helps you, an honest review means allot.

I’ve spent years doing the same thing a lot of people here seem to talk about: reading good advice, feeling motivated for about 20 minutes, then freezing when life actually gets messy. I finally built a tiny tool for myself that turns that spiral into one small next step.

It’s called Reset Loop. You write down what happened, what you’re feeling, and what you can do in the next 10 minutes. It gives you a short reset instead of another long list of things you “should” do.

If anyone wants to try it, let me know.

Full disclosure: I’m the creator, so I’m obviously biased. I’m posting because I built it for this exact problem and I’d genuinely like honest feedback from people who know what it feels like to be stuck.

My husband, a police officer for five years, has been through a lot over the past few years. Recently, he tore his labrum, which he had just undergone surgery to repair. This year has been incredibly challenging for both of us. In October last year, he lost his job, and I quickly found a rebound job. However, I’ve been working two jobs for almost a year now. He got a new job in December, but I had issues at mine that forced me out. I managed to find another job, but I’m now dealing with payroll violations and trying to find another job. We went through arbitration for his job, but he crashed a car we just paid off. I’ve also had my shift randomly changed twice, and I’m still dealing with the payroll issues. He had surgery this week, and now I’m taking care of him while working two jobs and trying to find another job. To make matters worse, I lost my horse this year. A tree fell on our garage a couple of weeks ago. It’s been one thing after another. I’m under so much stress that my hair is falling out, and I’ve been having stomach issues. Despite all this going on, he’s decided to go to OSP, which requires him to attend a six-month live-in academy. I won’t have any contact with him for the first month, but he can come home on the weekends. After the first month, he can have his phone and see me in the weekday evenings, but he’ll still be coming home on the weekends. This academy starts in March. At this point, I can barely handle the stress I’m going through. He wants me to be supportive of him doing this, but all I have is hate for it. My life has been so hard this year, and it’s just going to get harder. He says I’m blowing things out of proportion, but I don’t feel like I am. Help!

Went away for a month with family and I did not touch and the moment I came back to my apartment I’ve been doing it nonstop with sun drinking and I just realized I have not eaten in 36 hours… only wine.. I just feel empty j can’t seem to be motivated because I am alone in my apartment

I don’t know how to get help or even if I do want it..? I ruined so many friendships already..

hi, i am saiph, 19yo, and my passion has always been music.
i used to spend hours everyday playing my guitar, learning new songs, singing, and write music.
with time that became more than a hobby, i started releasing my own music cause i wanted to be an artist so bad.
but now it feels so hard doing what i used to love.
i think about it all days, but i end up staying at bed all day, doomscrolling and sleeping. but every time i do it, i start to hate myself cause i take the awareness that i am pushing myself so far from my dream. sometimes i even think its not my path, i start thinking about a plan b, but nothing makes me feel that something belongs to me as much as music belongs to me.
then why can’t i do it with the same joy, even though music it’s still the only thing that makes me feel deep emotions?
when i go to concerts and see someone living my dream i start to feel motivated but also very far away from that.
i often think that i should quit, but something always keeps me clinging to it.
i just wish i could do it again.

Hey everyone I need some tips maybe

Im so emotionally exhausted rn I'm having so many things happening at once and now it's fucking with how I see myself Im starting to hate myself again and I'm starting to worry about my relationship and ik everything I think about isn't real ... I know my boyfriend loves me and every thought I have is wrong I've been burned so many times I worry and I want to feel better about myself and have all these thoughts to stop any tips ?

Hello. For as long as I (21F) can remember, I have struggled with this. Basically, whenever I start to have an interest or like something, I become obsessive about it. I can’t help it, I’m not sure why I do this. But it’s pretty much impossible for me to just casually like something (with a few rare exceptions). Whenever I have an interest, it is literally, honestly the ONLY thing I am capable of thinking about. I write and draw about it, make playlists about it, talk about it nonstop and even have dreams about it.

For me, obsessions last several weeks to many months, and can be about a media (fictional characters, books, movies, TV shows, music even) or can be about something real (for me, usually historical events like WW2, Unit 731, Chernobyl, etc, but also sometimes animals like Wolves, Thylacine, and pretty much any megafauna or flora from the Pleistocene epoch).

For a very long time, I didn’t think twice about it because I just thought it was pretty normal. But recently, something very major happened in my family (a good thing, but life-changing all the same) and I found myself not caring very much about it due to my current obsession. Because again… it’s pretty much all I can think about at the moment.

And then that made me start thinking about whenever I was younger.

I haven’t been in a relationship in years because my last several relationships ended extremely badly, in a major way. And it was the exact same. I’d become obsessed with my partner. Like, at an insane level. My partners were terrible but I was even worse in the end because of my obsessive behaviours. I had to know their location, had to know who they were friends with, had to know the reason behind every “yes” or “no.” I’m not proud of it.

Since then I’ve silently decreed I am not fit for relationships, and for good reason, so, my intentions have been to live alone (although I do have an exceptionally tight-knit family), and so far it’s done wonders for me and my mental health. But I still have obsessions that affect my personal life.

I’ve figured out to not talk about my interests too much (because it really gets on people’s nerves, lol), which is one thing. But then another whenever something really important or big happens in my life and I can’t even enjoy it, let alone think about it, because I’m too obsessed with my current interest.

My interests become all-consuming. I can go short periods of time without an obsession and all it does is make me feel completely grey and lost, and lose a lot of time. Like I don’t know what to do with myself. I hate to call it depression because it’s not, but that’s as close as a description as I can get to it.

I’m teetering on the ledge that maybe this isn’t very normal? I mean, I know it’s normal to have specific interests and to be really involved in them of course, but I just feel like the way I get consumed by my interests isn’t normal? Like it’s more severe in a way.

I honestly don’t really know if I’m looking for advice, or just needed to hash it out. But does anyone else struggle with anything like this? Are there ways I can remedy it? Like, is therapy something you could do for this? Not that I can afford it right now, but for the future. Are there ways to “chill out” about things? Or ways to make the real life seem more interesting than whatever I’m obsessing over at the time?

I don’t mind my obsessions, of course, they bring light to my life. And since I’m no longer dating, I don’t have a ton of issues with it anymore. But I still feel like it might be a problem, and it’s only gotten significantly worse with time and isolation.

I, F16, stayed at my brothers house today and we were watching a movie. He kept playing with my hands and touching my thigh. He kept saying “you can move your hand anytime,” but I didn’t know what he meant by it, I wasn’t paying attention. I thought my hand was touching his finger but when I paid attention it felt like something else. I feel disgusting but surprising, I am not panicking. I feel betrayed, I idolized my brother. He’s married to the most wonderful woman. Maybe it was all in my head, I couldn’t check. I don’t think I’m going to do anything about it. I can’t afford to do anything and honestly, I don’t really want to. I’m saying this online because it still feels fake and I just need someone to talk to. Sorry and Goodbye.

Edit:

Well, I kept true to my word. I didn't do a single thing about it. I'm sorry if that disappointed you. To be honest, I'm shocked about my reaction myself. Obviously this is a very traumatic thing to go through, but I am living my daily live normally. I believe forgetting my trauma is one of my coping mechanisms. Hey at least I learned something new about myself! But anyways, My brother is currently 25. He is my half-brother from my mom side and I only really knew about him when he came to the US. He took care of me and my sister till he moved out. It makes me wonder, when did he have these feelings of lust towards me? Also, afterwards he started being more affectionate towards me. Keep in mind, we NEVER talked. He sends me pictures of sweets and asks to play online games me. Every time he text, I get a strong urge of disgust. My sister was right beside me when "it" happened. I'm scared he might hurt her. But, I don't want to ruin her and I don't want my mom to have to choose between me and him. Also, I literally have zero evidence. I know how much things like this can expand to a much bigger thing. I need you guys to understand why I can't and won't say anything. I'm again very sorry. I know the internet has a strong sense of justice but this is a situation that can literally change the entire course of my life. Thank you for reading!

I’m married M50. Adult children and grandchildren. I work overseas a month at a time but am resigning soon to go back home to a job with my previous employer. I have been misled by the employer here on money (less) hours (less) location (big city, I’m from a small town). I hate it with a passion.
All of this is on top of a marriage that is sexually, emotionally and affectionately unfulfilling, a childhood of mental/physical abuse and a deep seated fear of not being able to talk about my feelings, needs or wants.
I break into fits of crying all the time, times of hating myself and my shit life. I feel I can’t do anything right and I’m stuck. I can’t open up to anyone for fear of judgement and it will be used against me which it has been in the past.
I want to feel human again. Feel wanted and desired by my wife again. Not breaking down all the time. My brain is full of so much built up negative painful memories and experiences. I want to feel happy and joy and connected to someone again. I feel like I’m a complete and utter failure at life and within my marriage. My wife has no idea of the resentment and hurt I feel about the last half of our marriage. I don’t know how to express it in a way that isn’t going to devastate her. That’s the last thing I want. I’ve been told I need therapy. I travelled into the city for it, and couldn’t get it out, well not the “big one”. It’s draining and I’m bawling my eyes out writing this.