Mental Health/Relationship General

I was committed to a mental hospital 2 years ago and got fired from my job as a security guard for it. I am not allowed to get the license required in my state because of it. I don't have many job options and I just want to go back to doing security but nobody will help me get it off my record...

I had a girl that I been acquainted with that slept with me one night when we both got really trashed. I told her I liked her and she said the same. We agreed to talk while she was away since she's been moving around a lot for her job but we still talked on the phone for an hour or two every week. We talked a lot and our conversations got pretty deep. A week before she came back I asked her out and she said yes initially but on her drive back she said it wasn't a good idea since she doesn't want to lead me on and that I've been a great friend. Is this over? Can't help but feel like she's just scared of commitment but I also feel like she just didn't like me enough... Wondering what other people think.

I'm planning to kill myself tomorrow by swallowing a bunch of pills
Not just one kind of pill either
Think it will kill me?
Most of them are heart related but I'll also take some fluoxitine

Thank you for offering your services.

I have a boyfriend of 3 years who recognizes that I am a very giving person and that I care very deeply about our relationship. He also knows hes narcissistic and likes to inflate his ego, even if it means yelling at me when he's stressed out, putting me down and valuing his wants. He says he loves me, wants to change and treat me better, but it always circles back around to his original behavior. I love him a lot and I want this to work out, but it feels like hes too comfortable with being who he is. I give and he takes. I am also always there to please him sexually, yet I never once was able to cum from him. He cares more about receiving the foreplay/being the bottom. Sex still feels good for me regardless since I enjoy making him feel good, but I feel very drained. I feel like if he really wanted to reciprocate and make me feel loved, he would've done so from the beginning. But, a part of me is hopeful that he loves me as much as I love him. And not just what a do for him.

Any thoughts on this and what I should do? I really want this relationship to work

Thank you for reading

>Can't help but feel like she's just scared of commitment but I also feel like she just didn't like me enough...
user, in my experience, there is no amount of love or affection or emotional bond between two people that can heal deeply seated intimacy issues. I don't know anything about this girl's history but I can break down the typical sort of scenario I see in situations like these.

Typically, people who are trapped in these kinds of patterns are described casually in slang as "emotional tourists". They visit relationships for brief periods of time and then leave because short bursts of intimacy is all they can handle. Any sort of prolonged stays makes them feel trapped and panicked and the idea of allowing themselves to open up too much to another person terrifies them. Once they run away they come back and do it all over again because while they can't deny their desire for human connection they also can't sustain it.

If anything you should feel flattered in a sense because if she didn't believe there was any possibility of her building an emotional attachment to you she probably wouldn't have ran away from you. Typically the more powerful the feelings these kinds of people have the more powerful their recoil when things get a bit too close. I'd really encourage you not to take it personally. These kinds of things happen and while it never feels good to feel rejected or unwanted there was really nothing you could've done. Sometimes we share wonderful moments in time with people and then, suddenly, those moments are over. This seems to me like one of those times.

Would you mind talking to me and explaining a little bit what has lead you to concluding that suicide is your only option?

I think the first thing you need to do is come to grips with the reality of the situation. The reality is that your boyfriend is verbally and emotionally abusive.

The other bit of reality is that your investment in this relationship is entirely based on your hope that, eventually, if you sink enough love and affection and commitment into this relationship that he'll see the error of his ways and fundamentally change who he is and how he treats you for the sake of this relationship.

Here is what I will tell you; there is nothing healthy or productive about allowing yourself to be abused. There is no productive or positive conclusion to allowing this behavior to exist in your home. The next thing I will tell you is that you are most likely going to have to sacrifice one of two things to rectify this; you'll either need to sacrifice yourself in the hopes that he becomes a different person and starts loving and respecting you or you'll have to sacrifice him to save your own emotional/mental health.

I believe, at the very least, you need to explore some therapy or reach out to someone you can trust to begin exploring your participation in this relationship. You're being abused. There is no way around this reality. How far you're willing to go to rectify that is the next reality you need to grapple with.

For more than a decayed my life has been school/uni/job, then home, then sleep, repeat.

I have no friends, I haven't been on a date since almost as long.

I'm seriously considering getting off this ride sooner rather than later, I'm not losing or missing out on anything, just prolonging my solitude and agony.

Thanks for the input. As a follow up, do you think I should even try to be in a relationship with someone like this?seems like it can be a big disaster

I'm 21 dating an 18 year old. I've just got back into college after a year break, and she's going into her first year.

she's pretty, like knockout pretty. I feel like I haven't captured her attention the way I did when we first got together (been together almost six months) and I want out.
I got way into it in the beginning two months, and we started talking about marriage pretty quickly. she's old school Cristian, and I wanted to jump on what seemed to be a great deal as quickly as possible. With time though, she has repeatedly seemed like more dramatics than she's worth. I caught her in a lie about hanging out with an ex in a group setting, found out about her having an affair with a married man when she was seventeen, and some other random stuff.

I tried to break it off almost a month ago, but in all reality we never really stopped talking. I feel guilty and spineless for having to do it a second time, especially given all the shit about the future I've talked to her about. I don't feel like I can trust her though, and that all my embarrassing (I am a decent looking but very strange person inside) things she's learned about have already been broadcast to her friends. Being in a small town, this is frustrating to no end, and the thought of her spilling the beans if she hadn't already is largely what's kept me here this long.

how do I combat the shame, embarrassment, and self loathing long enough to just break up with her? a large part of me feels like this is all just a game to her anyways, but if it isn't I don't want to hurt her. On the surface she's a very sweet girl, but I just have serious core doubts about if that's real or not. Please, someone tell me what to do.

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To bad modern pyshcology is heavily politicized because of feminism so its ultimately of no help to men.

one other element that I forgot.

I check my tinder every so often, and a former older co-worker who I had a big crush on when I was 17-18 matched with me. I know it's shitty, but I want to try and pursue her. While I have no idea if it was a novel "oh I know him" swipe, we had great chemistry and always made each other laugh a lot. I'm so tired of being with younger girls, and as I'm finally growing up a little bit I can't help but be drawn to the idea of a slightly older relationship.

Please Dr.NameFag, you're my only hope.

The unfortunate reality is that you'll never be able to fix someone like this. The solution to their intimacy issues has to come from within. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with engaging in relationships with people like this but allowing yourself to become emotionally invested or to develop the expectation that if you love her enough you'll heal her is where you really get in trouble.

I have been considering suicide for a long time now, threatened to kill myself back in high school, felt like ending my life on and off since but lately, I have been genuinely thinking about just doing it. I really think I'm at the end of my life. I always envisioned that I would give it one last push, try to fulfill my hopes and dreams, and really work hard to make it and I'd only kill myself if I reached 35 and nothing had changed since then. But it's been so hard lately and I've been so down, that I've been thinking about just killing myself really soon, like within the next few weeks. I wish I could purchase a shotgun and just shoot myself in the face but I can't do that since I was locked up in a mental hospital in my state when I was a teenager, so I'll have to look into other methods, which is a shame since that's by far and away my preferred method since it's the most lethal one iirc.

Have you ever spoken with a mental health professional? Have you ever shared your feelings about this with anyone?

Mental health professional - no.

With anyone - no, my family have weak health and constitutions, and I fear that if I break this sort of news seriously, it will impact them very heavily.

My family is the only reason why I haven't done anything till now. But I don't think I can wait for them to pass on, I think I will just move way and slowly ease out contact before the deed, less painful for them this way.

But even if not, they don;t have that much left in them anyway.

Without getting too much into it, OP, young relationships burn out quickly. That is the most definitive way to explain it. You both have a lot of very intense emotions and intentions and because of your young age you don't yet have the tools to properly express it in ways that don't overload the both of you. I have no doubt that you genuinely feel all of the things you're saying but I think you and I both know that this relationship was more about the burning hot passion you felt when you were with her as opposed to any kind of genuine certainty that she would commit to marrying you and being a stabilizing foundation of support in your life.

I think its perfectly understandable that you feel a lot of very intense things. Young relationships, like I said, tend to burn very hot. I think that as a 21 year old guy this is a good opportunity to learn how to trust your instincts. I think they are telling you something very important about the kinds of people you should and shouldn't invest in. These are very hard decisions to come to terms with. Unfortunately, I don't believe this is a matter of you not knowing what to do. I believe this is a matter of you building the courage to do what you know you must do.

May I ask what you were institutionalized for as a teenager? Do you have any formal diagnoses?

thanks, that was very very well said. I don't know why a stranger on the internet telling me what, as you've said, I already know makes me feel better about it but it does.

The sooner I break it off the better right?

>Mental health professional - no.
Well, I think this is a good place to start. I don't know anything specific about your history so I can't say where your problem lies. All I can tell you with any kind of certainty is that if any part of you has any genuine urge to change your circumstance a therapist, counselor or comparable mental health professional can help you find where the root of your dysfunction lies. The double-edged sword of this stage is that reaching out and seeking help is often the most difficult part. Everything after that is dependent on how much you are willing to invest in finding a solution.

>May I ask what you were institutionalized for as a teenager?
Threatening to kill myself. It was what I was talking about earlier in my post.

>Do you have any formal diagnoses?
Type-2 Bipolar disorder, social anxiety, ADD

>The sooner I break it off the better right?
I'm getting the impression that this is the conclusion you've already come to but you're struggling with the mechanics of it. I understand that you don't want to hurt her but from what you've explained it sounds as though you've already acknowledged in yourself that its guilt that is keeping you in this relationship, not love and trust. All I can tell you is that, typically, prolonging these kinds of difficult decisions only make things worse. If breaking up is what you want allowing things to continue and for her to become more emotionally invested in or dependent on this relationship is probably going to complicate things.

>Well, I think this is a good place to start.
I know this might sound strange, but its a no go where I live.

Since people are poor, the good mental health professionals go abroad, while here onlty the worst ones remain, while still demanding high prices.

I neither have the money, in a literal sense, nor if I had I would waste them on the barely passed uni ones here, I would rather travel or something else.

>Type-2 Bipolar disorder, social anxiety, ADD
Are you currently or have you ever received treatment for any of these conditions?

Well, this is certainly an unfortunate set of circumstances. However, as I said, a lot of this is dependent on how much you are willing to invest in finding a solution. I get the impression that you're at least invested enough to reach out in a context like this and acknowledge that this is a problem for you. Traveling for mental health services may not be convenient but it may also be your only shot at some comprehensive support.

>Are you currently or have you ever received treatment for any of these conditions?
Yup, but not taking anything, because medications always have shitty side effects that fuck me up something serious, so I don't even bother.

I've also been diagnosed with depression (though I forget which type exactly) and schizoaffective disorder. Took meds for my depression, but same deal.

The strangest part is I don't think there is something deeply wrong with me.

I look decent enough, went to a good uni (top in my country) etc. Sure, I sit at the PC for a hobby, am basically dime a dozen guy, but I don't smoke, drink, I'm not aggressive, I'm by no means a bad person to be around.

I don't even see what a therapist or whatever might suggest. I just don't meet any people in my everyday life, and when I do, I just can't make good, lasting, deep friendships blossom, let alone relationships. People seem to brush me off, they have more interesting people to be with I guess. Thats true, I don;t have anything special to offer to anyone.

Nah I meant like recreational travel.

Man I;m from a POOR country, I can't travel AND pay for help, that's way WAY beyond anyone in my country's paygrade.

It sounds as though your problem may be more interpersonal than it is psychiatric. The fact that you're able to function is a good sign. It is obvious, however, that your social dysfunction is negatively impacting your life to a great degree. The good news is that getting help in learning to build interpersonal relationships is not an incredibly rare or difficult aspect of mental health support. I think you may be surprised at how simple a lot of therapy for this kind of thing is.

All I can tell you is that, despite the side effects, I've never known an unmedicated bi-polar patient to successfully manage to stabilize their symptoms. Bi-Polar can be a unforgiving illness, user. As much as you dislike medication its my professional opinion that stabilizing your bi-polar is stage one to addressing the foundation of your issues.

Man, that sucks. lol

I'm probably going to end up taking my life eventually then.

Can you write, or give links to common advise or practices or something?

At this point I truly have nothing to go on.

Also I think I misrepresented myself a bit. I'm not shy or anxious when I'm around other people. Actually the few people that know how little social interaction I get are always baffled, they say they would have never imagined it based on how I behave in groups and with other people around me.

My friend and I keep having fights, and it's both of our faults. However, she refuses to try and talk to me about it so we can work it out and I always have to be the one to initiate that while apologizing and feeling like shit afterwards. I'm reaching my breaking point, but I know I'll be the bad guy if I abandon the friendship, and I don't want to leave her high and dry like everybody else has done to her. I just want to feel like she values our friendship as much as I do.

I'm currently relapsing into my old habits right now and I could really use some help.

Few months ago I got dumped and ghosted by my gf. I 100% deserved it because I became obsessive and abusive due to my unhealthy lifestyle that revolved around being depressed and smoking weed.
Since then I've tried to make changes to myself, stop smoking weed, changed from e-cigs to cigarettes, tried to decrease the amount that I spend on playing repetitice videogames(since I'd play quite literally all day long).

I graduated college, found a job, made new friends, went on a date from a dating app. My ex contacted me out of blue to see how I was doing, and she was happy to hear about the progress I made. We started talking again and enjoying each other's company, but it's hard to keep my feelings under control since she talks about her new bf quite often. Then I started becoming insecure about my new job, how I'm underperforming and the other opportunities I let go during my job search.

So I smoked some weed at a friend's party to de-stress over the weekends. Since then the floodgate opened and all of my bad habits came back. I feel like just staying at home all day and I avoiding my friends, waiting to talk with my ex or jerking off and playing vidya.

Sorry if I'm hard to understand, English isn't my first language and I get quite ranty sometimes. I just feel so disappointed in myself and unsure of what to do outside of wanting to get high and forget.

There are a lot of resources out there about techniques to build relationships. This isn't really my area of expertise so I don't have any recommendations that I have any personal experience utilizing with my clients but what I can tell you is that a lot of it entails exposure therapy. Getting you out of your comfort zone and slowly exposing you to situations/people/conversations that you typically avoid is the basics of it. Because your issue isn't anxiety based I'm assuming that typical exposure therapy isn't going to be the most effective. I think doing some research into kind of avoidant personality issues and interpersonal dysfunction and getting some perspective about yourself will give you a better starting point for address your issues.

Why do I only seem to like people who don't like me? I feel like it's probably due to my low self esteem and the internal belief that I don't deserve people who are super nice.
Is there anything I can do to help my lack of self esteem so I can find someone who isn't an asshole?

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Unfortunately my expertise is in a clinical setting, user. The only methods I've personally witnessed as being the most effective in stabilizing people with severe bi-polar illnesses is a combination of therapy and medication. I sincerely hope you find a solution that isn't suicide. Telling people things they want to hear is not a common occurrence in my line of work. Its unfortunate but your options with this disease are fairly limited. Finding a combination of medications may be difficult and come with a lot of side effects but I've had a lot of clients really respond well to it given enough time.

Have you expressed all of these things to her? It sounds as though you have some solid insight on both the problem and solution.

I'll break this down into a couple points.

1. Its obvious that this relationship with your ex is not healthy or productive for you. Maybe you'll be in a place someday where you're recovered enough not to be phased by her but now seems to not be that time.

2. Coping mechanisms are very powerful. Addictive behaviors and substance use are common mechanisms to control stress. Your insight is fairly accurate. Whatever you did the first time to pull yourself together I'd recommend starting again.

3. Don't be discouraged or disappointed in yourself. You have the awareness to realize what is happening and the benefit of having overcome your addictive habits in the past which puts you much better off than 95% of the addicts I work with.

4. You can't get stuck in your pattern again. Put yourself back into the period of time and emotions you experienced when you first decided you had enough and that you were going to begin addressing your bad habits. Find that fire. Find that drive. There's nothing abnormal about having some relapses, user, but now that you've paused long enough to collect your thoughts and acknowledge whats happening to you its time to regain your footing and start walking forward again.

>Why do I only seem to like people who don't like me? I feel like it's probably due to my low self esteem and the internal belief that I don't deserve people who are super nice.
You seem to have perfectly articulated why you're attracted to dysfunctional people. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your relationship with either one or both of your parents kind of accurately simulates the sort of relationships you're attracted to now. People who are conditioned to dysfunctional relationships tend to be the ones most drawn to them. I think the best thing you can do it probably see a counselor. Nothing fancy or intensive, maybe just once a week to start. I think having an objective mirror to kind of reflect the perspectives about yourself that you need to be aware of could be helpful. This is a very common issue that I've personally found only consistent support can help address. Without support and advocacy the vicious cycle of attraction, justification for negative behaviors and the subsuquent chaos can sneak up on you fairly effectively.

Doc I am in a situation similar to this where I have let the guilt fester for a really long time. Is there any tips you can give on overcoming the anxiety of trying to end a longer relationship?

I think in a lot of ways its not much different than hard decisions we make in any aspect of our lives. In a perfect world no one would ever have to suffer in order for us to take care of ourselves but that just isn't the case. Sometimes making difficult choices will produce victims. There is no way to get around that. The only thing you can do is really reinforce to yourself why you've made the decisions you have and what purpose they serve. It will never feel good to leave somebody or feel like you've abandoned them but in the long run, do you feel like you've made the right choice? Do you feel like you've done something that, in time, will yield better results? I know it sounds silly but taking time to reflect and practicing thing like meditation and journaling can be very helpful. The thing about guilt is that it often operates against our better judgement. We know we shouldn't feel it. We know why we shouldn't feel it, yet, we feel it anyways. Building a set of habits that enable you to deal with this guilt will help you overcome it. You'll never get comfortable making decisions that could possibly make other people feel hurt but what you can get comfortable with is internalizing the reasons why you made that decision and reassuring yourself that you've done the right thing.

Wish I saw your thread first. Please see

How can I deal with my gf's anxiety in terms of having sex. To start, when the relationship began the sex was fine, not crazy or insane but enough to where I was satisfied. Now I can barely even get her to turn on. Every time I try to initiate, I always get some excuse the main one is just the in general "I'm not in the mood", which i can respect because I know she goes through alot dealing with anxiety and depression, but while that's a fact I try to respect, I'm starting to resent her for not taking care of the physical needs of her bf. She's told me in the past that she was sexually abused a few times in high school, but that it was something that never really stopped her from having sex with me in the past. Idk...I dont wanna break up with a girl because of sex, but at the same time I'm tired of feeling like my own gf doesnt want to fuck me and go literal months without sex and expects me to do the same. I even listened to her and agreed to tell her if I was trying to initiate so that she can get herself in the head space, but that by non surprise backfired too. "Why are you asking me so early? I dunno how I'm gonna feel later" *later* "yeah I'm just not in the mood"

What do I do about this? Shes a great girl in all over aspects, but I'm slowly starting to resent her and even ideas of cheating are starting to brew. I already told her that I was physically unsatisfied in this relationship lately and that she needed to either fix that or that we wouldnt work and she tries once and goes back to the usual. Any advice? Cause I dont see myself staying for another year with her declining sex drive. I understand life is stressful and that we're all getting shit done, but if you dont know the needs of a relationship then you shouldn't be in one. I want a woman who wants me.

I think the issue is you've built a fantasy in your head. You're more obsessed with the feeling and period of time that this girl represented as opposed to who she was as a person. She represents an opportunity in your life that you feel you messed up. Over the years you've built up this fantasy in your head that she is the best looking, most intelligence, most perfect and most wonderful person that you have and ever will meet and along with this fantasy you've build this self-defeating mechanism of ritualistically demeaning and punishing yourself for failing to acquire this aggrandized symbol of your childhood. The truth is you're far more obsessed with your self-imagine and your perceived failures than you are with her. She is merely a symbol that reflects back at you the things you dislike about yourself. She reminds you of these traits and this weakness that you wish you didn't have and, thus, you are trapped in an endless cycle of desire and punishment. The best way to get over her is to realize that this problem is not about not having her - this problem is about how not having her has brought to the surface all of these uncomfortable truth you've had to face about yourself.

Granted, you're young. A great deal of this angst and self-doubt will correct itself with age and wisdom but, for now, taking some time to explore yourself and maybe even getting some therapy to assist you in this introspection could assist in uprooting some of this self-loathing that very obviously has deeply embedded itself in the way you perceive your life and relationships.

>What do I do about this?
Encourage her to seek some professional help. In my experience a drastic decrease in sex drive can be a lot of different things. It can be physical, it can be psychological, it can be psychiatric. It call also be a combination. If she hasn't received any treatment for sexual abuse this could be a very significant factor. I think the first step is seeing whether or not she's actually invested in solving this problem. If she isn't willing to work on it with you then there isn't really a point in staying around and trying to settle a problem she won't acknowledge.

The second step, if she's on board to help address this issue, is to have her medically screened and making sure there is no physical/medical/medication component that could be causing this. If there is nothing medically causing this issue then it could be all psychological. Regardless, her dedication in helping you solve this is the lynchpin here. Either she's on board or she isn't. If this is really a deal breaker for you then once you set your boundary and expectations you have to enforce them or they mean nothing.

Thanks Doc. I think you're right in a lot of ways, this part:
>You're more obsessed with the feeling and period of time that this girl represented as opposed to who she was as a person
especially. I think I've accepted that the problem is the way I've come to view the situation and back then and myself because of it, but I often have difficulty truly moving on from something without some kind of pivotal event to give me closure mark an end to the problem. Like, sometimes I imagine that I'll run into her randomly or something and just have a friendly conversation and then go our separate ways and then I'll finally feel done with the thought of her afterwards. Maybe that's my real problem here. Idk, but thanks again. God bless you.

Not very helpful, but thanks I guess...

No problem, user. Take solace in the fact that this is a very common issue with people your age. I experienced it myself when I was in my teens.

I definitely understand the urge to want closure but a lot of that is kind of our desperation to put conclusions to our unresolved feelings. Its difficult sometimes to accept the reality that sometimes there will never be a magical moment in which our past suddenly slips behind us and we can bury our failures. Sometimes this process takes time as opposed to a single moment of clarity or conclusion.

I think you're on the right path. You have a lot of insight on this issue. You're willing to self-examine. You have a general idea of what the issue is and what conclusion you want. You have a good head on your shoulders. Give yourself some time and perspective will help you sort this out. Believe it or not, when you get a little older you'll probably feel a lot more wiser and stronger a person for going through this experience. I wish you the best, user. Good luck.

How can I tell her then? Like I said I've told her in the past about feeling this way and she's told me its many factors such as her anxiety meds, her job and home life, but this has been day 1 shit with her, it's not like all these issues just spouted up one day and I have no idea why only her sex drive took the hit. I understand she's tired, I get that and we all are, but like I said doc, a person knows that a relationship takes work and compromise so in my eyes if you cannot meet them halfway then why even enter it? I've cut my libido literally in half to keep up with hers and even at half I'm still growing annoyed with her passive attitude on having sex. She's told me she needs time which I'm willing to give, but how much time doc? I dont want to move in or marry this woman and find out shit hasnt changed at all even though her overall situation is better. She's working on all her issues but this one.

Don't just tell her how you feel. Tell her what your boundaries are and what will happen if she isn't present the way you need her to be. Tell her that if doesn't put fourth the effort to solve this aspect of your relationship that you'll have no choice but to move on. Like I said, the thing about setting boundaries is that they're meaningless unless you enforce them. At the end of the day it isn't incredibly bizarre for relationships not to work out due to massive discrepancies in sex drives. Seeing as how your interest is in fixing this relationship your only option left seems to be an ultimatum of the sorts. Be careful when telling her this, by the way. Don't communicate it in a way that makes her feel as though you're reconsidering the future of your relationship because she can't make her body do what you want it to do. Communicate that you feel you must set this expectation because she hasn't displayed to you that she cares enough to really focus on trying to fix it. Remember that its not her sex drive that is the point of contention here, its her unwillingness to take this concern of yours seriously and really put some effort into solving it.

Thanks doc, I think that sorta explains why I constantly search for reassurance and affection from friends and it also makes me feel a little better about it too even though it's pretty clear I shouldn't take it out on friends. I'll seek out a counselor/therapist soon, just a bit of life getting in the way.
Again, thanks for your time!