Ask Lemmy

What follow is only suggestions based on my personal experience I want to share with you. Take whatever you might find helpful and safely ignore the rest.

I gotta move out first but like I said I already tried and failed

Failing is normal. I mean, it's impossible to do anything difficult without first failing at it. Multiple times.

Failing is how we all learned to walk, by falling over and over again on our padded butt as a toddler. That's how we learned to write too, by tracing clumsy letters that looked nothing like letters, and after that by making many, many mistakes when we learned grammar and spelling.

That's how we learn... anything. From wiping our ass clean to being a partner in love, from ironing a shirt to not feel like a failure when things don’t go as expected.

It’s like being paralyzed by the fear of life.

Alas, it looks to me like kids aren't taught to face failure anymore. Quite the opposite it’s like they’re being taught that things should be quick and that failing is a shame. It’s neither.

Hence so many of them being afraid to try stuff, and to take risks.

Normally I have lots of hobbies (...) I partly did all that when I wasn’t living with my parents.

Imho you need to get back into some hobbies, no matter what they are, quick. You need short term objectives and hobbies are excellent for that.

Is there anything I can do?

Get out of their house and away from them.

Long-term, this means getting a place of your own. But that’s long term and it will require a lot of work. So I would not focus my energy on that for the moment.

Much shorter term, you need to be out of the house, away from your parents, as often as you can, and to do it as quickly as you can. And for that you need nothing but your willingness to experiment various activities so you can find ones you enjoy doing outside.

You like jogging? Set your alarm clock an hours earlier, get up, shower, take a light breakfast and go out jogging. Come back. Do whatever you would usually do and then go out again, later the same day, to jog more. Do it like that every day for a week or two. And see how you feel.

If you fail jogging a day, that’s fine. Use that as an opportunity to better understand the reason you failed so it won’t happen for the same reason again. Be honest with yourself: like when I decided to lose weight it only started working the day I stopped lying to myself.

You find it boring to jog every single day? OK, give yourself some interesting destination. Go to the public library, go watch a movie, go to an expo, in a park…

But currently my state is paralyzing me and preventing me from doing any of that.

You really need to find stuff to do outside of your parent’s home.

If you feel like you can't go out because of your depression, it may help to focus on smaller/shorter-term objectives. These smaller objectives will help you feel better (but you will still fail don’t forget it, and that’s OK) and they will also help you get out of the house and reach you longer-term objectives. The more you manage to spend time out doing things you enjoy, the better you will feel (for me that would be going out for long walks, but that’s just me)

As a kid (I'm talking 8-10 year-old kid, I'm now 50+), I had a less than ideal relation with my parents, to put it mildly. I quickly realized it was less painful to live inside books and… in the outside world. So, when I was not reading some book, I used to go out all day long, and soon after that during evenings too. First, I would go to the public library to read more books but then, I started going out carrying my little toy film camera, randomly roaming the streets. I explored the whole city with nothing but that little camera and my shy 9 year-old smile and an absolute lack of worries about going to odd places and talking to perfect strangers (it could not be worse than at home). Also, back then kids were not raised to be as paranoid as today, and I can say that most of those strangers were OK-ish. What mattered to me was that I was away from home. I could breath and I was allowed to be… the real me, unlike at home. Also, even though I had my fair share of issues too, I was spending a lot of my time with people that helped me feel better. That was so much better than ruminating in my room.

(Incidentally, going out and snapping pictures it also helped me developed my photographic skills and pushed me to quickly learn how to earn money to... pay for more film, and a better camera)

The thing is that no matter how great it felt and how badly I wanted to keep doing that, I still screwed up things more than a few time and I failed people even more often. Sometimes, it was a real mess. If I told you how badly I screwed my first paid photographic gig! I was not 12 and I was supposed to help a photographer shoot a small local band concert. I was so proud! That was some 40+ years ago but I still vividly recall the shame and anger toward myself when the guy realized all the films were ruined because of clueless me. Of all the rolls, a single one was salvaged… the one I did not touch. That day, I also learned things that would help me for all my life… and to accept that I was not the best, even when I wanted it very much ;)

Sorry, it was long. Hopefully you may find something of use in all that.

Sounds to me like you could use a good therapist. I know you said you’ve already tried that, but you can try a different therapist if the one you have isn’t working. A good therapist will be able to help you to successfully break away from toxic people (including toxic family members), and also help you to stabilize in your new toxic-person-free life.

Medication can help with the depression, speak to your doctor about what options are available to you.

As for becoming more independent, you need employment that pays enough to cover your bills. If this is not available to you, then think about what you can do to lower your cost of living? Can you move in with a friend? Or get a roommate?

When I first moved out, I rented a house with some people I didn’t know, and ended up becoming lifelong friends with two of them. Renting a room in a house was a better option for me as it was cheaper to do this than to rent an apartment on my own, I got access to more living space (and a backyard-and going outside does wonders for mental health), and because I had roommates who were already set up in the house, the only “stuff” I needed to provide for myself was my own bedroom furniture. It worked really well as an in between step in my own path to independence. Maybe this is also an option for you.

Du sprichst exzellentes Englisch und bist hier auf Lemmy. Das zeigt bereits, dass fähiger bist als du denkst.

Und du bist noch ein Baby. Weißt du wie lange ich gefailed habe, bis ich mein Leben auch nur ansatzweise auf die Reihe gebracht habe? Länger als du am Leben bist.

Hör auf die Tips in diesem Faden. Geh nach draußen such dir Hobbies und Dinge die dich Interessieren. Bibliotheken sind ein guter Zufluchtsort. Hol dir ein Notizbuch und nen guten Stift und Schreib deine Gedanken auf.

Siehs mal so, wenn du schon nichts auf die Reihe bekommst, dann kannst du wenigstens Spaß haben. Und du wirst erstaunt bemerken, dass mit dem Spaß auch ein wenig Erfolg kommen wird.

Dependent on your member state, look for websites such as this one: https://www.opferschutzportal.nrw/beratungsstellen

Is there anything I can do?

Yes, lot of stuff that you can't even think about.

Your mind is playing tricks on you. It manipulates reality into an image that seems hopless and for you its the true state of the world.

Step 0 is to find safe space.

For starters I began with walking out of the house as much as possible (walks, riding a bike, hanging out in the libraries and malls to not freeze during wintrer)

Find minimum wage job that you can hold for a longer amount of time so you can earn money to try and rent a room somewhere to escape from your house.

Then you can proceed into step number one, where therapy and medication begin to work as you have safe space to go back to every day.

There maybe a possibility to convince your parents to send you away into the university and to live in cheap dorm rooms where you could escape from home and back in your healing journey.

I'm so sorry you've been struggling so much. It sounds like you've tried multiple avenues and they haven't been as rewarding or transformative as you thought.

I know you've had a disappointing experience with therapy. You will think that what I will suggest has a low likelihood of succeeding. However, it sounds like you're also open to options that could help.

Imagine the longest essay you've ever had to write for school. A dozen pages? Two dozen? Now picture it in front of you, printed out, on a desk. Imagine there's ten copies of your essay spread around the desk. Add another layer of essays on top. And another. And another. A hundred times. If you organized the documents into a single stack of paper, it would be 1.2 meters tall. That is how many randomly controlled trials there are on the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Here are two places where you can look at the evidence: one and two.

ACT has changed my life and that of hundreds of thousands of people. While I would suggest to get an ACT therapist (and a good one!), there is evidence that you can learn the skills of psychological flexibility if you engage in the appropriate mental processes, regardless of how. You can learn about how to do ACT exercises in A Liberated Mind, which you can find here https://stevenchayes.com/.

I have to concede that I personally like the way that ACT is explained by Steven Hayes. After all, he is a developer of ACT and of the theory behind it that explains why it works. However, there are many ways of becoming more psychologically flexible. Other people in this thread have mentioned meditation, for example. What's important is that it works for you!

I wish you the best of luck and please feel free to ask questions!

You're 21, there is still much to be learned and experienced and healed. You have a lot of time to figure yourself and the world out.

Give yourself the time!

I can understand on some level the difficulties you face, I'm not sure if there's any advice I can give that will translate, but my best is:

You don't have to have it all figured out by now.

Make mistakes, take chances, be wrong. Give yourself the flexibility and oppertunities to understand what you are and are not. Just trial and error your hobbies, friends, activities, and jobs - eventually you'll target or even accidentally bump into something that works for you.

It takes a long time to build yourself into something you like. But eventually it does happen, and its rarely into something you predict.

My biggest dream always was to get rid of my parents and live independently on my own but I'm just incapable.

Is there anything I can do?

Not while you see yourself as being incapable.

Do you have anything that you love to do, i.e. a hobby or something that you want to do? I would try to use your energy to focus on that, which can serve as a good distraction from the other problems in life, and, with some income, can help you become independent.

I feel so stuck in life and I tried everything from therapy, mental hospital and medications but nothing worked.

Okay I'm not a doctor and, for legal purposes, this is not medical advice, but:

There are options like TMS and ECT. These are very extreme treatment options, and should be considered a last resort, especially the ECT, and I personally consider them as "experimental", but these are options if you want to take some risks for a chance to feel better. Try TMS first since its lower risk, then if that fails, try ECT. These can be costly tho, so it depends on entirely if you can even afford it. I thought about it, but I'm not gonna try these yet until I've tried every medication.

As extreme as these treatment options are, its probably better than death or lifelong disability.

Edit: Talk to a doctor about these options ask for their opinion.

Lebenshilfe, betreutes Wohnen vlt. eine Option für dich?

Suche dir eine Tagesstätte, die dir eine Struktur bringt. Sei nicht zu hart zu dir und feier auch kleine Erfolge.

There's some good advice from other people, especially about continuing to pursue medication and/or therapy when possible, but in terms of putting distance between you and your parents so you can feel safe, there's a couple things I think might help.

First off is something other people have mentioned: going on a jog/walk regularly, preferably daily, to give yourself the physical distance from your parents. Making sure you regularly have 15-45mins to yourself every day will help a lot with giving yourself room to mentally and physically be away from them.

Second, finding places other than your room for spending time and relaxing will help a lot too. If you have a local library, a park, a café, anywhere that you can spend a few hours hanging out at, that will help a lot too. I mention cafés and libraries because they usually offer free internet and a calm environment, so you can hang out in a corner and do whatever personal work/fun stuff without being at home. For example, I used to stay at our library after school and do homework, talk with friends, and pass time on the internet. The other upside to these places is seeing new faces more often, plus it can be a chance to meet with friends, or find new friends if you'd like.

I'm not sure what your financial situation is like, but in any case these should be cheap, low-barrier-to-entry options for getting away regularly. I'm also in my 20s and have pretty intense anxiety, so I know first-hand that there's a way for us, it's just not as easy as it should be. You're already doing better than I was: you're asking questions and seeking help. As long as you keep searching for help and regularly giving yourself the mental/physical space to have some peace, you'll be alright.

I hope some of this was helpful for you, I hope you're able to find what you need to get the peace you deserve.

Betreutes wohnen ist hier das Stichwort. Gibt es auch mit eigener Wohnung so das je nachdem wie viel Hilfe du brauchst jemand vorbei kommt. Zusätzlich helfen die auch bei Ämtern oder zb Therapeuten Suche.

Und ansonsten es ist okay wenn man nich alles Schaft und hilfe braucht. Kein Meister ist vom Himmel gefallen und du gehst schon deinen Weg also achte auf dich und übernimm dich nicht sonst geht es oftmals schnell bergab und eventuell weiter runter als zuvor. Spreche aus Erfahrung.

Many people with depression are helped by ayahusca retreats, but if you feel like a total wreck, it may not be the right choice. Ayahuasca let's you work on yourself through facing your fears.

You can search YouTube for "ayahuasca experience" and see if it may be something for you. If not, I hope you find some other solution. Depression is hell.

Try finding work from home in your environment, maybe some freelance work. Once you're able and structured from your work, then you'll feel more safe about caring about yourself and your life. You're very young, it's a young age for giving up on everything. Freelance clients are much more understanding than normal office jobs. Build up your confidence and your independence and you'll get there.

Money.

Have you ever tried medicine? You should talk to your doctor about Wellbutrin. It’s anti-depressive but without the negative effects of an SSRI. Also helps with changing your reward system in a positive way