Adammm
Member
Hey all,
I am not really a regular poster on here, but have been going through quite a bad few months with my anxiety and depression, and so thought that having a bit of a vent will help me to feel better (hopefully!). I normally just keep things like this to myself, so it will be nice to share how I feel/my situation with others.
Anyway, as a background I have suffered with social anxiety and depression for most of my life, and also had selective mutism when I was younger. I am now 23, and for much of the past 5 years I’ve had quite a lot of success in fighting my anxiety. I’ve managed to do things like going to university, making friends, working, living away from home, etc… I always thought that I was getting better, but in the last few months things have turned really bad.
Last year I decided to go travelling, as it was always something I wanted to do, and I thought it would be a great way to meet new people and to challenge my anxiety. I ended up going to Australia, where I spent 9 and a half months travelling around and working (I'm originally from the UK). Everything went pretty well for the first few months – I met a good group of people who I ended up travelling with for a few months. I was shy around them, but over time I was becoming more comfortable and talkative in their presence. Had some of the best times of my life travelling with them for sure!
After a few months of travelling I started to run out of money, and so decided to settle in Melbourne to work for a few months while I saved more money to carry on travelling. Things didn’t go to plan though – it took me much longer than I thought to find a job, and I ended up running out of money (had to borrow some off my parents to survive… was down to my last $20 at one point!). I eventually found a job, which I stuck out for a few months despite the fact it was the most mind numbingly boring job ever (very repetitive data entry work). During this time most of the people I had met travelling left Melbourne, and I was eventually all by myself there, staying at a hostel. As time went on I started to find it harder and harder to meet new people, despite the fact I was sharing a dorm room with other travellers. I started to completely avoid talking to people in my room and didn’t really talk to anyone at work unless they spoke to me first. I think I lost a lot of my confidence in speaking to new people. Things carried on getting worse, and so for the last couple of months I was in Australia I literally hardly spoke to anybody. I spent most of the time I wasn’t working either sleeping, wandering around the city alone, or listening to music and watching films/TV series on my laptop. I started to feel very depressed and lonely around this time, but I still tried to carry on working and saving money so I could carry on travelling (as I was supposed to have been staying in Australia for a whole year).
Anyway, things eventually became incredibly bad. I became depressed to a level I’ve never felt before. I couldn’t think straight, kept feeling like I was on the verge of breaking down in public, and started having suicidal thoughts. Looking back on it I think I was going through a mental breakdown. Once I got like this I decided that was enough, that I wasn’t cut out for travelling (at least for such a long period of time), and decided to cancel my original flight home and book a new one for the following weekend.
So I left Australia a few weeks ago, and have been back at home for almost a month now. I thought that coming home would help me, and it has to an extent (I’m not as depressed now as I was before I left Australia), but I just feel completely lost, avoidant, lonely and lacking in motivation at the moment. For most of the time I’ve been back at home I’ve just been sat in my room, alone, sleeping in late, surfing the internet for almost the entire day, listening to music, watching films, and drinking too much caffeine and alcohol… I’ve barely spent any time with family (even though I live with them), and have hardly told them anything about my travels in Australia (the good bits, at least). I’m becoming more and more distant from friends I made at uni (have only seen friends twice since I’ve been home), and am scared of initiating any conversations over facebook or via text. I’ve been trying to look for a job in the last few weeks, but I can barely get the motivation to even search on job websites. In 2 weeks I’ve only applied for 3 jobs, none of which I have had any luck with (haven’t even heard back from one of them).
Basically, I just don’t seem to have the energy to change my life. I want to be able to get a good job that I actually enjoy, move out again, get a social life back again, find a girlfriend, etc… but it all just seems like too much effort for me. I think I may also suffer from AvPD, which is another factor in how I feel at the moment.
I also feel like such a bad friend at the moment – two of my friends got married yesterday, but I ended up missing the wedding. Because I was in Australia until recently, I wasn’t invited to the wedding when they sent invites out. However, when I came home I was invited to my friends stag do, which I went to the weekend after I arrived home. The following weekend my other friend invited me to her house party for her birthday. I think it was implied that I was also invited to the wedding reception, but I wasn’t directly invited by either of them. I felt like it would have been rude to ask them if I could come to the wedding, so I ended up just not going. So I feel very guilty about that today.
Anyway, I apologise for the long, muddled, boring post! If you made it this far, thanks for reading!
I’m hoping I’m just going through a bad phase at the moment and things will pick up soon.
Related Article: No motivation to do anything
I am not really a regular poster on here, but have been going through quite a bad few months with my anxiety and depression, and so thought that having a bit of a vent will help me to feel better (hopefully!). I normally just keep things like this to myself, so it will be nice to share how I feel/my situation with others.
Anyway, as a background I have suffered with social anxiety and depression for most of my life, and also had selective mutism when I was younger. I am now 23, and for much of the past 5 years I’ve had quite a lot of success in fighting my anxiety. I’ve managed to do things like going to university, making friends, working, living away from home, etc… I always thought that I was getting better, but in the last few months things have turned really bad.
Last year I decided to go travelling, as it was always something I wanted to do, and I thought it would be a great way to meet new people and to challenge my anxiety. I ended up going to Australia, where I spent 9 and a half months travelling around and working (I'm originally from the UK). Everything went pretty well for the first few months – I met a good group of people who I ended up travelling with for a few months. I was shy around them, but over time I was becoming more comfortable and talkative in their presence. Had some of the best times of my life travelling with them for sure!
After a few months of travelling I started to run out of money, and so decided to settle in Melbourne to work for a few months while I saved more money to carry on travelling. Things didn’t go to plan though – it took me much longer than I thought to find a job, and I ended up running out of money (had to borrow some off my parents to survive… was down to my last $20 at one point!). I eventually found a job, which I stuck out for a few months despite the fact it was the most mind numbingly boring job ever (very repetitive data entry work). During this time most of the people I had met travelling left Melbourne, and I was eventually all by myself there, staying at a hostel. As time went on I started to find it harder and harder to meet new people, despite the fact I was sharing a dorm room with other travellers. I started to completely avoid talking to people in my room and didn’t really talk to anyone at work unless they spoke to me first. I think I lost a lot of my confidence in speaking to new people. Things carried on getting worse, and so for the last couple of months I was in Australia I literally hardly spoke to anybody. I spent most of the time I wasn’t working either sleeping, wandering around the city alone, or listening to music and watching films/TV series on my laptop. I started to feel very depressed and lonely around this time, but I still tried to carry on working and saving money so I could carry on travelling (as I was supposed to have been staying in Australia for a whole year).
Anyway, things eventually became incredibly bad. I became depressed to a level I’ve never felt before. I couldn’t think straight, kept feeling like I was on the verge of breaking down in public, and started having suicidal thoughts. Looking back on it I think I was going through a mental breakdown. Once I got like this I decided that was enough, that I wasn’t cut out for travelling (at least for such a long period of time), and decided to cancel my original flight home and book a new one for the following weekend.
So I left Australia a few weeks ago, and have been back at home for almost a month now. I thought that coming home would help me, and it has to an extent (I’m not as depressed now as I was before I left Australia), but I just feel completely lost, avoidant, lonely and lacking in motivation at the moment. For most of the time I’ve been back at home I’ve just been sat in my room, alone, sleeping in late, surfing the internet for almost the entire day, listening to music, watching films, and drinking too much caffeine and alcohol… I’ve barely spent any time with family (even though I live with them), and have hardly told them anything about my travels in Australia (the good bits, at least). I’m becoming more and more distant from friends I made at uni (have only seen friends twice since I’ve been home), and am scared of initiating any conversations over facebook or via text. I’ve been trying to look for a job in the last few weeks, but I can barely get the motivation to even search on job websites. In 2 weeks I’ve only applied for 3 jobs, none of which I have had any luck with (haven’t even heard back from one of them).
Basically, I just don’t seem to have the energy to change my life. I want to be able to get a good job that I actually enjoy, move out again, get a social life back again, find a girlfriend, etc… but it all just seems like too much effort for me. I think I may also suffer from AvPD, which is another factor in how I feel at the moment.
I also feel like such a bad friend at the moment – two of my friends got married yesterday, but I ended up missing the wedding. Because I was in Australia until recently, I wasn’t invited to the wedding when they sent invites out. However, when I came home I was invited to my friends stag do, which I went to the weekend after I arrived home. The following weekend my other friend invited me to her house party for her birthday. I think it was implied that I was also invited to the wedding reception, but I wasn’t directly invited by either of them. I felt like it would have been rude to ask them if I could come to the wedding, so I ended up just not going. So I feel very guilty about that today.
Anyway, I apologise for the long, muddled, boring post! If you made it this far, thanks for reading!
I’m hoping I’m just going through a bad phase at the moment and things will pick up soon.Related Article: No motivation to do anything
