You clearly understand the downward spiral that you're involved in here, making your anxiety worse by removing yourself further and further from society because of your anxiety.

You have to break that. Get outside. Force yourself to do it before your father does, because when you make these choices for yourself it's much easier to live your life than by letting others force you around. You can make excuses for why you failed when anyone else forces you to confront your demons, but if you do it of your own accord, your impetus for success is greater.

Seriously though. You can recognize that this anxiety is affecting the quality of your life, so you're already able to take those first steps. Do go get help from a professional. It's nothing to be ashamed of, and medications can help you get out of the hole of anxiety. They will not be a magic life that suddenly returns your life to normal, but they can help you be able to climb out of the hole you're in.

>>3076
Casanova is 100% right. Do whatever it takes to get out of that downward spiral. The nature of it is that you will not be able to rationalise a way out - you must take it on faith. Perhaps you can remember a time you did something similar to get out of a dark place.

What I mean is to take on faith things like:

-The benefits of eating healthy
-The benefits of exercising regularly
-The benefits of being in contact with stable, safe and supportive people who respect AND put up boundries
-The benefits of psychotherapy
-The benefits of intentionally taking time out to relax, to meditate, to concentrate, to lose concentration, to immerse your attention in nature
-The self-esteem benefits of hygeine and personal grooming
-The benefits of a safe environment

You won't necessarily see the rewards immediately. You will not be perfect on the path to improvement. Set small gals and work towards them.

Although you may feel comfortable seeking external help at this stage, you can start with using tools to deal with your stresses online, first, with the note that you may find yourself using them completed wrong because they have instructions designed for clinicians rather than newbies.

You clearly have some fantastic self-insight. It sounds like you have huge potential for improvement if you let yourself and you give yourself the time. Start small and the improvements support each other - upwards spiral.

I'll give you a few starting points on how to seek help online. Please, please please do not get lost on random self help sites, spiritual new-age bullshit or browsing Wikipedia or journal articles in an attempt to relieve (it actually exercates health anxiety) your worries.

Instead, be very selective and use your best judgement (which should improve, in this process) to deal with the following leads:

paragraph two (line 2) indicates an abandonment schema - you can look up material on this with google

paragraph 3: shame based thinking perhaps associated with a defectiveness schema

paragraph 3 as well: triggers - I don't know much about this but if there is something else you're not telling us about that may have been traumatic consider thinking about yourself thinking about imagery associated with that/those events in turn, while watching the following: http://megaswf.com/s/2679757

It is referred to as EMDR, which I recommend you also look up

unemployment: Shit sucks right? Society is demanding. The economy is demanding. Fulfillment is demanding until we find ourselves in an upward spiral. I would like to revisit these issues with you after you have made some strong steps on the other issues. There really are no easy answers here. Unlike the other issues, 'social problems' are not just about you - no matter how well you play the hand you've been dealt.

Last paragraph: What country are you in? Some countries GP's refer you on to psychologists. If you are in a less awesome country, they may refer you on to a psychiatrist. If you are in a shitty country they may try to deal with it themselves.

If you want to go a psychologist independently, CBT is the most empirically validated psychotherapy so I recommend finding a CBT therapist and if that doesn't work ask them for a referal to the more abtract ones cause they might help.

And yes it's going to be a scary. There is no escaping that. At the point you are at, you are probably at the most challenging point of the rest of your life. The problem is that what other option do you really have? Remember, anxiety is never your 'problem', it is your brain signalling that something else IS a problem. YOU are responsible for managing your brain. Everyone else is going to just fuck it up if you don't put in the effort. When you get to an upward spiral, you are in control, and the people helping you are just getting you to an even better place, no lifting you to some platform above humiliation, shame, anxiety, and normal human things. Your goal is to be able to deal with them when you experience them, not remove yourself from those experiences.

Not op. I'm 24, have no job, girl broke up with me due to E.D. Lately I've been feeling very sad. I read up on stories of horror and atrocities, and all the things being done in Iraq, and it almost feels as if I'm there, just watching it happen. I start to cry and feel powerless.

Gonna go to my high school reunion, lie and say I have a job, hit on a few girls and be disappointed by their limited emotional availability.

>>3153
It's not their pain you are feeling. No, it is the fear you associate with their pain. In the past you have been punished for harming someone. But that past is just a construct of the parts of your mind you have less control of at the moment. That lapse of attent blinds you to your true potential and you fool yourself into believing you can't make decisions on your own without reference to your own unconscious's feedback.

>>3153

You might be reading these horror stories to affirm to yourself how safe and secure you are (or, how 'far' you are away from this situation).

Don't lie at your high school reunion, but do be interested in other people, ask a lot of questions.

My dreams are also vivid and terrifying.
I am in a room in a hospital, for some kind of orientation. Others, mostly young adults, are either walking around, or seated on metal benches. This goes on for a while. My blood is taken. I notice the people on the benches have thin cords around their necks.

All of a sudden, their nooses are raised through a slit in the wall, up to the ceiling, strangling them, and all around me, kicking, convulsing, dying. A loudspeaker gives a catalog of their crimes.

I know I should try to help someone, but I can't move, I'm too afraid. I just got here. I'm not a part of this. I sit down behind a pillar and cry. Try not to draw attention to myself.

And in my other interactions I have to pretend that nothing is amiss, be cheerful to the staff, as if the place were Jonestown.

I become infatuated with a girl at the facility. When she is accused of reusing lunch tickets, I plead before the warden for her life. He offers this mercy.

The whole facility gathers. She is to be spared from hanging, as long as I can hold up her weight. I think I can undo the knot, but the cord is thin and tight, and any adjustment loosens my grip and chokes her. It's really hard to hold steady as it is.

She begs me to just let go, but I can't, I won't.

Everyone is watching. They want me to let go. I won't let go. I refuse to let go. But, I can't hold her anymore. She slips through my arms and is gone. Nothingness. I wake up, seated straight, clutching at thin air.

>>3165
Whenever you see idealization, in yourself or others, ask yourself what you or they are trying to escape. Read about idealisation and love and other drugs on that afterpsychotherapy blog and read the Wikipedia page on Defence mechanisms.

HOWEVER. My interpretation comes from the assumption that you act in your dreams like you do in real life. If this is not the case, then my analysis is bullshit. Consider whether your dreams are consistently placed in the real world before deciding.

Also, I might even recommend intensive psychodynamic psychotherapy.

But most importantly, just start reading about the mind and what not. It's not bad. '"psychoeducation" is safe as long as you aren't a hypochondriac...which is still possible.. So know yourself first before feeding that fire.

Also, in any situation, don't start evaluation. instead, make a subjective report to yourself about what's going on. Then, like a scientist, analyse the relative importance of each component of that reality you are constructive for yourself. Remind yourself that the psychological realm is a world of facts, not things.

>>3168

That post is far more apt than I ever would have expected from a Freudian. My conscious rates Freud at a B, but my emotions have already given him an F.

I am reticent about visiting a psychiatrist. I do have a fairly standard insurance. Considering the decade we live in, I could definitely see a scenario where with my morbid descriptions, if I make a detail too tone deaf I fear becoming a cause for concern or suspicion.

>>3171
I'm not a Freudian, but concepts derived from his creativity have clinical utility.

Most of them, however, where just bullshit.

never the less, they did help psychology help some people who were otherwise lost to the depths of their unconscious (not in the normal, cognitive sense, but the psychodynamic definition of the term)

>>3175

Oh, well then I guess I'll return to my previous assumptions.

But, things are getting better now. Why, even today I messaged this one girl and I simply told her the truth with much hyperbole and she thinks I'm a player now, but it's actually just the first time I've ever been this honest with a person.

I think hash has improved my life in three ways. I'm smoking less, but getting higher. That's two ways. Fuck, I'm high.

>>3178
Dude, I think I fucked up. Seriously just go see a psychotherapist everybody is at best talking to hypothetical constructs of you based on what you write. Get to know someone who knows how brains and minds work. Pull up your fucking laces. The world expects you to pull your weight. Everyone else and only retards pretend its easy or on the flip side complain.

>>3074


This is all in your head. I mean all of this, from your anxiety to this website, to the house you live in. Your anxiety does not exist in the desk I am sat at.

Your post has a rigid belief in this anxeity. You are not anxious, but you believe you are. You imagine that an interview would humiliate and shame you, you do not believe that you might charm and impress someone.

People will die for things they believe in. We would kill people for being witches, we were convinced the earth was flat, etc. Currently, your (belief in your) anxiety fits in and completes things. Please note how absurd it is; that we would actually kill others because of our belief that they were witches.

I will tell you that you are not anxious, and you'll react by calling me a heretic and claiming that I don't know the truth, or that I'm misinformed. In your state, you're a bad judge of your character and abilities. There is a choice here, you can burn me at the stake for my idea, you could replace your idea with my idea, or, most helpfully, you could understand perspective, and you could understand a difference between you and your anxiety.

>>3146

This perrson wrote a list. I'd just like to say that from a very factual point of view, it's a good thing to eat well, to spend time outside etc. These things will make you better, as explained you might not feel it, but in order to grow a tree needs to be well looked after, in order to run well a car needs to be maintained, you are no different.

So OP what have you got for us?

We're invested in your well-being. There are a bunch of people out there who are intrinsically motivated to do what it takes to help you get out of your rut.

What have you put into tackling the causes of your anxieties?

Stop self handicapping, Stop wallowing in self-pity, go realise some great outcomes. DON'T depend on advice from 99chan, but do take it seriously and when you run into a problem that you have tried to solve with your own mind first, we will help you. That way, you will get better and better at solving problems independently and quickly.

Come on, once you've fixed this shit up, you'll be pissed at yourself for wasting so much time that you would have been really getting something good out of it once you're on the road to your goals.

OP? Fear is an unreliable and primal emotion. The more human culture evolves, and our ancestral environment changes, the less useful it is. Danger is real, fear is irrational. Fear that goes beyond danger is delusion.

Come back, you coward!