How do I give up on myself?

[LowSpeed_HighDrag]

This is not an appropriate place for this kind of thread, sorry.

Go see your GP, tell him you are depressed, ask for a referral to a good therapist/counselor/etc and possibly something to stabilize your moods. Get connected with real people at a brewery, church, rec league, etc.

[Aetius]

Start looking outside yourself. Happiness and fulfillment comes from helping and creating value for other people. Join an organization that helps other people, like a church. A church that focuses on physically helping their local community.

Help people the way they need to be helped, not the way you want to help them. Helping does not mean giving them money.

Adjust your expectations. If one dream slips away from you despite your best efforts, seek another. Happiness does not reside in one person or profession.

Beware of the success stories of others. Many many success or “motivation “ stories are fraught with survivorship bias. Everybody loves an underdog story where one man overcomes overwhelming odds, but we love them because they do not happen often.
This does not mean to give up on ambition or settle, but be realistic.

Read the book of Romans.

Stay away from mind altering substances in times of trouble. They only offer temporary relief and at minimum they steal your time.

Work out.

Seek professional help if you feel suicidal.

[SomeOtherGuy]

Go see your GP, tell him you are depressed, ask for a referral to a good therapist/counselor/etc and possibly something to stabilize your moods. Get connected with real people at a brewery, church, rec league, etc.

Be cautious, getting entangled with mental health diagnoses and psych drugs is likely to make things worse.

[BoringGuy45]

Be cautious, getting entangled with mental health diagnoses and psych drugs is likely to make things worse.

That depends. A low dose of a mild anti-depressant is likely to help and not be too disruptive to functioning. It's only when they start suggesting things like bipolar or antipsychotic drugs that the red flags should go up.

Patriot, sometimes doors to certain goals and dreams are closed. Unfortunately, we're told that this is a land of opportunity where you can be whatever you want to be, and so if you are unable to achieve your goal, that's your own fault. That obviously doesn't help anyone, because it's simply not the truth. Sometimes, due to things out of our control, jobs or experiences we wanted to have are just never going to be an option. Other times we get the opportunities we want, only to find that we're wholly unsuited for them, or that we don't enjoy them nearly as much as we thought we would. Either way, it's not easy, because it leaves us at a loss of what we should be doing with the rest of our lives. Trust me, that's been my life for the past 20 years. I spent years working towards my first career goal, only to find out that it was going to be impossible to achieve. I then spent another 10 years trying to pursue my secondary goal, finally achieved it, and found out that I hated it. I'm just now, as of this time last year, finally finding a career path where I strongly feel I'm going to be both happy and successful.

It's a dark time when the goal you spent years focused on is washed away. But realize that there's more stuff out there than you probably noticed. If you want to know how to focus your efforts, you should ask yourself these questions:

1) What in life interests/concerns/drives me?
2) How do I engage with it/fix it/use it to advance myself and humanity?

Examples: "What lies beyond the horizon? How do I get there?" These are your traveler types. They want to make a career or lifestyle of seeing the world.
Others may ask "What does the dark side of the world look like? How do I fight it?" These types may join the military, law enforcement, medical field, social work, psychology, etc.
Others ask, "What is success and what does it look like? How do I achieve?" These are your businessmen, entertainers, etc.
Others ask, "What makes things work? How do I make them or fix the things that don't work?" These are your tradesmen, engineers, inventors, etc.

So, think about your questions and go from there.

[jbjh]

Be cautious, getting entangled with mental health diagnoses and psych drugs is likely to make things worse.

^ And this is how we end up losing so many vets to suicide. People are afraid to seek out help.

We’ve come a long way treating depression in the last 20 years, as many of our vets, including my father.

Look, taking a pill won’t fix this on its own. And any doctor worth a damn monitors their patients closely when they’ve prescribed new meds. As someone who has had an adverse reaction to antidepressants (not dangerous), I can also say that there are more than one class of drugs that can help stabilize moods. And Ketamine treatment is an absolute game changer.

DO NOT get it into your head that there is some magic fix for this, or that going so extreme people will finally notice you is a good thing (some blaze of glory version of “I can do this...”). It’s the flip-side of the “I’m a loser and a failure” coin.


Sent from 80ms in the future

[militarymoron]

Like the title says, how can I quit believing in myself? It only sets me up for failure and disappointment. I’m not good at anything and have failed at obtaining a single dream of mine

#1 - be realistic. No matter how much I believe in myself, I'll never run 100m in the Olympics. Ok, that's being delusional, but separate what's under your control (your actions) and what's not (particular medical conditions for example). Move on.

#2 - Don't base success and failure on your dreams. Dreams are 'lofty goals' and 'nice to haves', not absolutely necessary to having a great, successful life. Look at what your dream was (to be a pilot) and then look at all the people who go through life who aren't pilots. We make do.

#3 - Everyone has failures and disappointment - it's what you do after that, that makes the difference. We learn and grow from adversity and disappointment just as much as we do from our successes.

#4 - take a bit of time off if you can, and volunteer at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter. Listen to people's stories and learn from them.

#5 - Wake up every morning and be grateful for what you have, whatever it may be (a roof over your head, a computer, etc).

[DG23]

Like the title says, how can I quit believing in myself? It only sets me up for failure and disappointment. I’m not good at anything and have failed at obtaining a single dream of mine

Get a dog. No matter how bad you screw up in life they will always be happy to see you when you get home.

(so long as you feed them and half ass care for them)

[AndyLate]

Military Moron's post is great.

Think about #4 for a minute - there is no way to fail when you help people. Having a stranger just sit down, treat you as an equal, and listen/talk with you is a great thing when you have nothing and no one.

Andy

[pag23]

Everybody has highs and lows, some more than others. The important thing to look in the mirror and convince yourself that things will improve.

Retired Navy SEAL, Dave Goggins' book.."Can't Hurt Me" is a great read and shows the mental fortitude to overcome

I wish you luck..

[yoni]

I don't mind opening up a bit if it can help someone.

First understand I have NEVER know a person that has not had ups and downs.

I know someone that was so big that when his business fell due to a change in the global market place, he took down a bank and many big name investors. He never got back to that level. He has had numerous failures since that time. A couple of years ago he was riding his bike and got hit and run by some jerk. But the accident saved his life as they found a rare cancer due it it, that would have been terminal before he knew he had it.

One of my employees, just had bad a divorce . Rather than give up, he got in shape and has 2 smoking hot girl friends.

Myself, my company was the company that was chosen out of all the security companies in the world to investigate a major incident that was in the news a while back. We offered our services at cost to get our foot in the door. Unknown to us our local rep., added a lot of money to what we said it would cost. They loved our report and in the course of our work we found they had bigger problems. When we informed them of the issue they wanted us to name names. We refused to do so and said we would do so if they allowed us to run the counter measures program . Plus in our report we gave them a program of up grades that would up their security. They said for how much they paid us we should name names. We found out through our own sources what they had paid and how the local rep., was a liar and a thief. They took our report and upgraded security recommendations and went with an other company. Such is life.

Corona has knocked us down to minus income every month. I will admit here, that I was slipping into depression. Stopped working out and sat at home bored out of my mind, eating and drinking too much.

Nobody is really looking at restarting jobs we were on, and every one we contact says only after the first of they year maybe.

So I understood, being at home like this was going to do very bad things to me. So I took a job working for someone else, just to get out of the house and break the cycle. I now get up every morning at 3am and workout. Then go to work at 6am, I have the freedom to take calls for my company if I need to and even answer email. So nobody really can feel the difference, when they contact me for my company. When I get off at 2 pm I work 4 hours a day on company things.

So set goals, that are small to start with. Start working out and if this started with Corona, it will pass.

Life is a great thing, seek out things that make you happy.

Lastly get this book by a great Rabbi on faith and perspective of G-D and us.

https://www.amazon.com/universal-gar...167326&sr=8-58