How to get through my mental chaos and become a happier person?
November 23, 2012 1:26 AM Subscribe
Thoughts about life and how to ground myself and get stuff done, finally.
It's almost the end of 2012, and it's been a long year. Right now, my thoughts are swirling with alot of unfinished business, frustrations, and general discontent. I need help purging through those thoughts and cleaning my act up.
I got a new full-time job at a retail store for a huge, world-renowned company that's well-known and well-liked, in the spring. For the most part, I like the job, but lately I've been losing my drive and motivation. It's became pretty much the same thing everyday, and increasingly is more rule-driven. I don't do too well with rules, so that's been eating at my motivation (and the long hours standing on my feet day after day dealing with customers). My bosses seem to like me and are impressed by my performance, but I never do anything with my co-workers (they never ask to hang out or anything), so that causes me to feel lonely at work.
I feel like I'm having a hard time sorting through the issues of my life, and little things are "tearing" me down and eating at me. I feel lonely and often forgotten by people. So, I'm going to go through the issues I have, while keeping it as short as possible.
a) Facebook, Instagram, and loneliness:
I'm definitely a lonely person those days. I haven't gone out with any friends in a while. I'm often the first person to text someone, or someone who makes the first effort. Facebook and Instagram contribute to that loneliness. While I see friends of mine getting 100+ likes/comments (no, I'm not exaggerating), I look at my puny ~20 likes and feel forgotten and unattractive. Last year's post addressed this extensively, and I did tone down my approach, and it did get much better, but lately, it's been going back downhill, and it's bothering me to no end. Reasonably, I know I can't expect pictures/posts to be liked all the time, and that my friends do like me, but that needy, wanting side of me feels dissatisfied with the ~20 likes/comments, especially being compared to others. Also, reasonably, I know that: a) there are people who get less likes than me; b) FB/IG shouldn't be a reflection of who I am in real life; and c) the people I'm looking at who gets 100+ likes aren't ALL of my friends, they're relatively few out of the majority of my friends. The problem is that I already have insecure feelings about my looks, so that causes me to want that validation, that feeling of being liked, and I'm not feeling that now. I guess emotion is overshadowing logic in this situation. It's difficult because I feel needy, and I don't want to be.
With iOS 5/6, and FB's new systems, when you text/IM someone, it shows as read at xy time (if the person specified it in iOS 5/6) compound my loneliness. Major pet peeve: texting/IMing someone, not getting a response, and seeing the text marked as read. It really gets on my nerves, and hurts my feelings. It's really been bugging me, and chips at my already tiny feelings of self-worthiness. Especially if they comment/like stuff on FB/IG afterwards.
I'm tired of being the first one (mostly) to initiate conversations. I often feel like I'm not important to anyone, except my family. When my mom texts me (which is almost everyday), I feel annoyed. I know, it sounds pathetic, but I feel like my mom is the only one who makes contact, and I want people my own age to do that... I'm thankful for my mom, yeah, don't get me wrong, but what I need is social stimulation with people my own age and at where I live.
I'm also hating the feeling I get when I work all day helping customers (some of them who come in are friends of mine) and at the end of the day, I don't really get any recognition/appreciation from them, and I go home with no texts on my iPhone.
On a bright note, the situation with Zee was resolved after I moved and no longer keep in contact with him - I love my new house and my roommates. We don't talk much due to our busy lives, but it's a much better living environment so far!
b) Diana/Amber (post here):
Reader's digest edition: supposedly good friends of mine, helped them with papers, got frustrated helping all the time, told them the truth, bad conflict ensued, they never talked to me again.
Update with them: I never heard back from Amber during the summer, so in October, I wrote her a heartfelt letter explaining how I felt, how I really wanted to know where we stood, and so forth. Never heard back from her. She is still on my Facebook list, but we never like/comment. It's a really strange 'friendship' in limbo, and the truth is, everyday, I keep having a hard time moving on from them. Theoretically, I should have been over them by now, but I really miss the memories. I know realistically that Amber wasn't a true friend and didn't act like one to me, but still. It still is hurting at the core, I think, and being lonely in general only compounds to the problem, and makes me feel like a bad person. I really have no idea how to get over her and move on. I've tried, my other friends made good points, but it's just me.
c) Hertz situation: still unresolved. It's really bugging me everyday as well. Another thing to worry about, to solve. I have tried contacting numerous lawyers.
I also have other little things to do/take care of that are nagging at my mind. I need to get myself a real bed (still am on an airbed). I need to find a therapist. I need time to do both those things, and on my days off, I'm too exhausted and lazy to do so. I want more friends. I want to be happier in life, to feel like I am worth something. I have my good and bad days. I don't know if I want to stay at my job, because it can be really fun helping customers with their technical problems, yet it can be stressful and way too fast-paced for me, which overwhelms me. I'm 26, never even been on a date, and I just want to get a clean start in 2013 and really find happiness. I feel insecure about my looks and my personality, and have been given so much conflicting information about myself from others, that I don't know anymore. Some people say I'm the nicest guy out there, some say I'm annoying, some say I'm an average guy. Trouble is, I don't know how to really sort through my issues, and I don't really have time to do that in therapy because if I miss work, I get an attendance point. Yeah, I just am lost right now and frustrated and feeling generally unappreciated/ignored/unimportant. I want to be surrounded by friends, people who love my company and actually initate get-togethers, and to finally find a boyfriend (no rush on that though).
Side note: I'm not suicidal (another post gave some the impression I was, so this time I'm clarifying that's definitely not the case now). I'm just worried, worn out, frustrated, and sick of having the same problems, and could use some life experience insights to help me move forward and get a fresh start in life.
Thanks for listening and your time. It was a challenge to sum everything up neat and tidy, so hope it came across clearly.
It's almost the end of 2012, and it's been a long year. Right now, my thoughts are swirling with alot of unfinished business, frustrations, and general discontent. I need help purging through those thoughts and cleaning my act up.
I got a new full-time job at a retail store for a huge, world-renowned company that's well-known and well-liked, in the spring. For the most part, I like the job, but lately I've been losing my drive and motivation. It's became pretty much the same thing everyday, and increasingly is more rule-driven. I don't do too well with rules, so that's been eating at my motivation (and the long hours standing on my feet day after day dealing with customers). My bosses seem to like me and are impressed by my performance, but I never do anything with my co-workers (they never ask to hang out or anything), so that causes me to feel lonely at work.
I feel like I'm having a hard time sorting through the issues of my life, and little things are "tearing" me down and eating at me. I feel lonely and often forgotten by people. So, I'm going to go through the issues I have, while keeping it as short as possible.
a) Facebook, Instagram, and loneliness:
I'm definitely a lonely person those days. I haven't gone out with any friends in a while. I'm often the first person to text someone, or someone who makes the first effort. Facebook and Instagram contribute to that loneliness. While I see friends of mine getting 100+ likes/comments (no, I'm not exaggerating), I look at my puny ~20 likes and feel forgotten and unattractive. Last year's post addressed this extensively, and I did tone down my approach, and it did get much better, but lately, it's been going back downhill, and it's bothering me to no end. Reasonably, I know I can't expect pictures/posts to be liked all the time, and that my friends do like me, but that needy, wanting side of me feels dissatisfied with the ~20 likes/comments, especially being compared to others. Also, reasonably, I know that: a) there are people who get less likes than me; b) FB/IG shouldn't be a reflection of who I am in real life; and c) the people I'm looking at who gets 100+ likes aren't ALL of my friends, they're relatively few out of the majority of my friends. The problem is that I already have insecure feelings about my looks, so that causes me to want that validation, that feeling of being liked, and I'm not feeling that now. I guess emotion is overshadowing logic in this situation. It's difficult because I feel needy, and I don't want to be.
With iOS 5/6, and FB's new systems, when you text/IM someone, it shows as read at xy time (if the person specified it in iOS 5/6) compound my loneliness. Major pet peeve: texting/IMing someone, not getting a response, and seeing the text marked as read. It really gets on my nerves, and hurts my feelings. It's really been bugging me, and chips at my already tiny feelings of self-worthiness. Especially if they comment/like stuff on FB/IG afterwards.
I'm tired of being the first one (mostly) to initiate conversations. I often feel like I'm not important to anyone, except my family. When my mom texts me (which is almost everyday), I feel annoyed. I know, it sounds pathetic, but I feel like my mom is the only one who makes contact, and I want people my own age to do that... I'm thankful for my mom, yeah, don't get me wrong, but what I need is social stimulation with people my own age and at where I live.
I'm also hating the feeling I get when I work all day helping customers (some of them who come in are friends of mine) and at the end of the day, I don't really get any recognition/appreciation from them, and I go home with no texts on my iPhone.
On a bright note, the situation with Zee was resolved after I moved and no longer keep in contact with him - I love my new house and my roommates. We don't talk much due to our busy lives, but it's a much better living environment so far!
b) Diana/Amber (post here):
Reader's digest edition: supposedly good friends of mine, helped them with papers, got frustrated helping all the time, told them the truth, bad conflict ensued, they never talked to me again.
Update with them: I never heard back from Amber during the summer, so in October, I wrote her a heartfelt letter explaining how I felt, how I really wanted to know where we stood, and so forth. Never heard back from her. She is still on my Facebook list, but we never like/comment. It's a really strange 'friendship' in limbo, and the truth is, everyday, I keep having a hard time moving on from them. Theoretically, I should have been over them by now, but I really miss the memories. I know realistically that Amber wasn't a true friend and didn't act like one to me, but still. It still is hurting at the core, I think, and being lonely in general only compounds to the problem, and makes me feel like a bad person. I really have no idea how to get over her and move on. I've tried, my other friends made good points, but it's just me.
c) Hertz situation: still unresolved. It's really bugging me everyday as well. Another thing to worry about, to solve. I have tried contacting numerous lawyers.
I also have other little things to do/take care of that are nagging at my mind. I need to get myself a real bed (still am on an airbed). I need to find a therapist. I need time to do both those things, and on my days off, I'm too exhausted and lazy to do so. I want more friends. I want to be happier in life, to feel like I am worth something. I have my good and bad days. I don't know if I want to stay at my job, because it can be really fun helping customers with their technical problems, yet it can be stressful and way too fast-paced for me, which overwhelms me. I'm 26, never even been on a date, and I just want to get a clean start in 2013 and really find happiness. I feel insecure about my looks and my personality, and have been given so much conflicting information about myself from others, that I don't know anymore. Some people say I'm the nicest guy out there, some say I'm annoying, some say I'm an average guy. Trouble is, I don't know how to really sort through my issues, and I don't really have time to do that in therapy because if I miss work, I get an attendance point. Yeah, I just am lost right now and frustrated and feeling generally unappreciated/ignored/unimportant. I want to be surrounded by friends, people who love my company and actually initate get-togethers, and to finally find a boyfriend (no rush on that though).
Side note: I'm not suicidal (another post gave some the impression I was, so this time I'm clarifying that's definitely not the case now). I'm just worried, worn out, frustrated, and sick of having the same problems, and could use some life experience insights to help me move forward and get a fresh start in life.
Thanks for listening and your time. It was a challenge to sum everything up neat and tidy, so hope it came across clearly.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Hey, sorry, but this kind of post is a problem because of 1) multiple issues, and we ask that people concentrate on one problem to solve; 2) each of these has been addressed in previous questions at least once, and there's no reason to think the answers will change, and 3) this is really just sort of a mind-dump of stuff that's bugging you, and updates of old problems, and that's not what Ask Metafilter is for. -- taz
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I have a couple of suggestions.
1.) deactivate your facebook account. just do it. cold turkey is best. same goes for instagram.
2.) get your bed thingy sorted out
3.) tell your mum to only text you once a week (same goes for the other family members)
4.) start a creative writing journal. don't write about "feelings" perse, try to be more figurative.
5.) go for a run every morning (distance and pace are immaterial)
6.) what are your eating habits like?
7.) do you get enough sleep every night?
8.) do you have any hobbies? are there any clubs around your area dedicated to whatever you feel passionate about?
9.) what does it matter what anyone thinks of you? in the end of the day, you are who you try/want to be. end of! we all have nice/annoying/unbearable facets to ourselves! humans are not meant to be monolithic!
10.) go through dating it at a pace which is comfortable to you. But clean up first. sort your life out first.
11.) don't feel obligated to initiate conversations with anyone! but if you need to talk/vent, ensure that you're doing so to someone who is able to address your emotional needs.
12.) forums like mefi, wrongplanet.net, and their variants are a godsend.
13.) my only friends at the moment are: my law books, a girl way on the other side of the globe (in south america who ive not seen since 2008. i'm based in england and south east asia), my brother (who goes to uni 15 mins away from me by tube and whom i've not been around for more than a month since i was 12. until now- i went to school abroad), an acquaintance i recently made at a legal workshop (whom i've only seen twice), this one classmate who i talk to in passing (who ended up hitting on me, so I've been trying to avoid him since).. yeah. my day to day life consists of trying not to get behind in the modules I'm studying.. i stay in a public dorm place (no roomates, but it's designed so that one never feels isolated nor need to force themselves to interact with anyone).
14.) sort the bankruptcy thing out asap with a lawyer. try your best not to get dispirited.
posted by thespiritroom at 2:02 AM on November 23, 2012