I've basically lost all desire to socialize with people and improve myself. I've been seeing a therapist and taking various different psych meds for years and have basically made no improvement. All I want to do anymore is eat way too much junk food (I feel like my friends and family would judge me very hard if I went back to toking and drinking like I did before rehab), play video games, and lie down doomscrolling chapo.chat.
The worst part is I know I have a lot going for me in life and I have a negative number of excuses to be this way: I'm in a cushy overpaid computer toucher job with a promotion on the near horizon, I'm doing well in my education, I haven't had anything really bad happen to me in years, and even the things that have gone bad for me are incredibly mild at most - first world problems. Even when I do the occasional good thing like walking or not eating like complete garbage for a day, I'm incapable of actually feeling any sense of accomplishment.
Whenever I talk to any of my mental healthcare providers about it, their advice basically boils down to "let yourself feel good about good things". There's also the more actionable advice, like use a sun lamp to make up for lack of sunlight and make some time to write my thoughts down every day, but I suck about following through on them. Trying to make myself feel good beyond split-second dopamine hits from base activities like stuffing my hamplanet pie hole with empty calorie laden garbage feels like trying to draw blood from a stone.
Often times I find myself thinking that maybe people like OrganizeOrDie are right. Depression is no excuse to stay out of organizing (something I'm also shirking my responsibility to do, largely because I'm at an intersection of privilege where I benefit from capitalism and imperialism far more than I am harmed by it), let alone doing the barest minimum to keep myself healthy, all of which will at least increase my chances of not feeling like an soulless automoton all the time. I know that humans are social beings and that community is essential to being human, but my temperment makes it so I don't actually feel good from socializing - not even in a social anxiety or lack of social skills kind of way - so I stay in my room and continue to rot. I feel like I'm part of the problem and not part of the solution and that if I'm incapable of actually becoming better then I may as well just self-destruct in silence.
I've been depressed basically since I was a child - over 20 years at this point - and it's so ingrained in who I am that I don't know how to get rid of it, or if I even want to. People who want things work to make them a reality after all.
I'm not sure what I want or expect from this vent-post. I just hate that I am the way I am and have no will to change.
I read it more as the equivalent to bullying the obese who never even bother trying to go to the gym (incidentally also the case with me outside the analogy as well). But yeah, there's no denying that that kind of view hurt me way more than it ever helped me.
Part of what sucks is that I'm currently incapable of motivating myself any other way. Back when I was eating well and exercising regularly and thrusting myself into social events even when I didn't want to, it was a burning self-hatred that kept me going. It's like I'm incapaple of tasting the carrot no matter how many I'm rewarded, but I can still feel the stick, making it the only option.
The most difficult part of this for me is that I was barely put down by other people in my life and that, as far as I can tell at least; my negative views about myself were largely absorbed in a kind of cultural osmosis from many disparate sources several degrees of separation from me. I'd find myself hating myself even when everyone in my immediate circles liked me, or at least weren't bothered by me. The inner critic used to shout at me with my own voice years ago, which made it easier to pinpoint and fight against, but for the past several years it's resorted to more covert methods of attacking me.
Self-hatred is a learned condition. While it can do short-term motivation, the fuel for it that has to burn to keep it going is yourself.
I believe you deserve to heal, not to burn. Self-confidence is a skill that can be trained, built up, and accumulated, and it doesn't require gradually burning yourself down in order to keep going.
Those Pete Walker books I mentioned are a good start just to have some guidance for how starting off on the new approach can look.
Banish the /r/GetMotivated
as best you can, too. That was a place for bullying, "perseverance porn" reeking with Great Man Theory, and drill sergeant LARP speeches, not lasting or healthy motivation.
Thank you for your kindness. I'm not sure if I'll successfully act on it, but it's good to be reminded that the headspace that's destroying me is wrong.
I believe that you can.
Building confidence in yourself is a learned skill and one that takes practice. Like working a muscle, it isn't about lifting all the weight tomorrow as much as lifting a little more weight after straining oneself, resting, and recovering.