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Hi, This is my first post ever to a forum like this ... kinda nervous! I have discovered in the past 2 months that I am suffering quite badly from anxiety ... but the past few weeks it has gotten increasingly worse. I'm 19 y/o and female. The circumstances that have made it worse are these - I live with my boyfriend at uni, but I am home for summer now and I don't handle being away from him so well, I spent almost every day of the past year with him, and having to suddenly have that taken away is really hard for me, especially when our communication is limited due to the business of his life at home (he lives a 3 hour train journey away) - I'm constantly paranoid that he is becoming less interested in me, which I know isn't true! But this paranoia is something that I have found to come along with my anxiety. I feel that it may be putting stress on our relationship, and yes we've discussed it and we've set some ground rules to help us, but I'm the kind of person who feels like I always mess things up, and this is the one thing I do not want to mess up as I feel it's the only thing I have right now (and it's kind of a perfect thing). Most days are bad ... especially at nighttime, I don't have many friends, in fact I only have 2 including my boyfriend - therefore I feel bad constantly telling them about all of this... This is quite a long post and I didn't expect it to be so I'm just gonna sum up how I feel right now; I feel a heaviness in my chest yet an emptiness at the same time, I'm constantly worried about one thing or another, I feel sick quite a lot of the time, I cry myself to sleep most nights and I just feel bad about myself ... I should also probably add that I suffer from OCD, which I feel definitely doesn't help my anxiety ... I'm planning to go to a doctor once I get back to uni but that's not for another month, so I was wondering if anyone on here would be able to help and give me ways to cope with this until that point? Thank you

When I was in primary school, I had never come to know any serious sadness. Looking back now and even then, my life felt like a Utopia - most of which I probably just made up in my mind. Of course I was extremely quiet and loved isolation - my parents recall that I would worry incessantly about the smallest things & that they would often find sitting alone in the dark. It was around the age of 12 or 13 that I began to experience guilt & regret. And here's the thing. It's like the guilt and regret is intrinsic to my essence - and occurs in me abundantly & independently of actual life events, and latch on to anything to make me extremely sad. If I were to address a situation that I am feeling guilty about - the guilt would simply attach itself to something else. It never goes away. Just moves from place to place. I didn't mean to pick on guilt, I worry, stress, and regret things that in actuality might be trivial, although some I admit are substantial. I can't escape from these feelings. I am DROWNING in every waking moment. Does anyone else feel this way? How do you cope?

I am an Italian young girl. Way more young than someone can think. But not that much young. I have schizophrenia, depression, anxiety and really, REALLY bad anger problems, and nobody takes that seriously. I started knowing I had schizophrenia when I was 8, by seeing a shadow of a little girl with red eyes following me and saying mean things to me, and it's been going for 4 years now. One particular thing that has started this year is when the voices tell me to do something and I ignore it, they start screaming, which makes me scream too. That makes my family think I'm totally insane. For the depression and anxiety case, I started knowing I had them when I started posting drawing online. I got many haters because I drew with a mouse, but actually I really did appreciate my skills. But then, everything fell apart, and everytime I drew I started crying and hyperventilating, so I stopped drawing and rested. I even had some deadlines, like for a galaxy drawing that I had to make, my deadline was at Wednesday, but I started my drawing in Tuesday. I got so scared, so I decided to delete the deadline and never finish that drawing. I still have it on my art folder. For my anger problems, they are caused by the lack of eating and sleep I have. I am a girl who barely sleeps and almost never eats, and even if I try to take naps or I try to get a snack, I either feel sick, or my body literally refuses. Whenever someone speaks to me when I'm busy, I start screaming and threathen them, but I really don't want to do that. I even have suicidal thoughts. I tried to suicide 20 times in this year. I don't even know how many times I did the past years. Pills, hanging myself, cutting myself, jumping off my window and even poison myself (only once). It never works. I always wanted someone to help me, and seeing that this website is about helping people with my same problem made me feel more safe. Thanks for reading, and I hope I didn't disturb anyone. Have a good day. -Alice

Please, help me. I am a teenage boy who lives in the US. I'm fairly intelligent (my IQ is around 130, albeit IQ is somewhat debatable in its telling of intelligence). I have a high number of friends and I'm liked by my community. However, I am a very mentally stable person. Due to suffering from bullying when I was a child, I suffer from a generalized anxiety disorder. I also have an at times hard to control rage, which I try to hide from those who are close to me in order to not concern them. I am an extremely fearful person, and I am quite prone to fear mongering; it can prompt me to become absolutely petrified for hours at a time. My fears also frequently overtake my rationality; I once feared that I had a brain tumor for multiple weeks, then feared that I was sociopathic for around a month. I have experienced a fair amount of loss in my life, most prominently within the past few years of my life. I lost two close relatives within a few months. Additionally, someone who I was getting to know committed suicide somewhat recently, which was a somewhat traumatizing experience. Recently, my stress has been at an all-time high. I am currently having an internal conflict over whether or not God is real, of which I am right in the middle. While I used to be Catholic, I left the church for various reasons. I disagreed with them about some things, felt extremely uncomfortable due to being pansexual (attracted to men, women, transgendered people, etc.), and was unsure why an all-loving God would allow there to be so much evil in the world. I now have an extreme fear of hell, but I also am not sure if I can believe in a God, or if doing so is at all rational. I feel like an abomination due to my sexuality, as well. I am also becoming very paranoid about terrorism and conspiracy theories. I am getting over the conspiracies due to how irrational the vast majority of them are; however, I still fear terrorism immensely. ISIS is what scares me the most. I fear that they may be winning, and that they will succeed in killing everyone who disagrees with them. I have minor fear when going outside or being in crowds as a cause of my fears. My biggest fears are things I cannot control; tensions between nations, terrorism, world problems, and potential asteroid impacts are just a few examples. I am also scared about the potential of me dying, or witnessing atrocities happening. At times, I enter this almost "manic" state in which I cannot see any of the positive qualities of my life. I panic. My heart rate rises immensely. I tense up and feel purely fearful and sad. I cry for around half an hour to an hour, and get enraged while doing so. I fear that I may soon harm myself, or potentially even do the unthinkable. I have a therapist, but I'm scared to mention this stuff to him because I don't want anyone to be concerned over me. Please, if possible, help me. Thank you for your time.

I would like to start this off by saying thank you to whoever chooses to read it. Ever since i was a young boy my family, mom more than the others, told me that i would grow up to be or do something great. These words sort of haunt me in a way, because i'm not doing or being anything great. Everyone i meet tells me they see compassion in me and that i am just genuinely a kind person. Well for the most part at least. I prided myself on being that kind of person for a long time, but not so much anymore. I have sort of given up. My father died when i was four years old but i didn't take it too hard. We weren't close (i hardly ever saw him) and i didn't have a grasp on what it really meant to die yet, but my mom was devastated. I remember watching her cry for some time. She eventually moved on though. After he died we moved out to New Orleans (from Tucson, AZ). That was his home town and it is where him and my mom originally met. We lived there for two years, during i became really close to my cousin who was a year older than me. He was kinda like the older brother i didn't have (I had a little sister 3 and a half years younger than me at the time). But before Hurricane Katrina hit my mom had me move back out to Tucson with my grandmother. She came home a while after i did so i lived with my uncle, grandma, sister, and two cousins who were both younger than me. Nothing really bad happens for a while and life is going on smooth. But my mom eventually started dating again When she got back to Tucson and when i was about half way though my fifth grade year she started dating the man who is my step father now. When i first met him he seemed cool and fun. I was already sorta a punk rock kid because that's what my mom was into, but he furthered my ambition for it. I lived on and off with my mom for the rest of the year and then fully moved in with her and step father. Before i moved in there was really no domestic violence or abuse, maybe like one or two verbal fights. But after i moved in with them full time with my little sister everything started taking a turn for the worst. They fought all the time, weather it just be them yelling or pushing or shoving, whatever. They were at it constantly. It just never got better and gradually got worse and worse. I was failing basically everything at school in sixth grade because i hated the school more than anything else. I got bullied a lot when i first arrived there and it sort of changed who i was. The innocent child who was a fifth grader living in a nice neighborhood was lost to this school. I was one of few white kids there so naturally i was going to catch some grief. But the other white kids there were already somewhat hardened because they had lived in the area and grew up there. Me, on the other hand, thought that everyone still played pretend games at lunch and ran around like little kids. Eventually after getting picked on so much, being the person that i was, i stood up to them and as a result i got in many fights. That's the big game changer. You really can get prepared for what it feels like to get punched in the face for the first time, but i had somewhat of an anger management issue (still do in respect to being hit) and lost it. I ended up winning that first fight and it gave me some amount of pride in myself which was new. I got in quite a few more fights thought that year and got suspended more than once for it. That aside this whole time my home life is hard as well. My parents were still fighting all the damn time. I immersed myself into video games and it helped alot. But the fights were starting to get serious at this point. There was one that i remember clearly. They were getting out of hand, throwing and breaking things, so my little sister came into my room crying. I calmed her down but then i heard my mom start to scream from the living room. That worried me and my little sister started to freak out again. I told her it was going to be alright and that i would go see if everything was ok. I opened my door and walked around the corner to the living room and my step dad had my mom in a chock hold and a knife to her neck. He looked at me and yelled to get back in my room so i did so immediately. It eventually died down because he left to go to a friends house like usual. Time went on hectic like that for some time until one summer when i wen't to go visit my family in New Orleans. When me and my little sister got off the plane to get driven home i felt something was wrong. There is always sort of a lingering heaviness when someone is holding onto bad news. We went to my uncles house instead of home and when i got inside i could feel the thick angst on the air. There were a lot of people there, almost like a party. And then we gathered everyone up in the living room for the news to be announced. my mother had died while i was away. My two cousins that were there and my little sister immediately burst into tiers and crying. Whoever, i knew for quite some time that she was going to die soon. I almost prepared myself mentally for the encounter. I ended up breaking and let out some tears so i went outside to gather myself. I wanted to be the one not to cry, the one that everyone could lean on and cry to. So i went back in with my new demeanor ready to face them and to my surprise i stopped caring. I lost the urge to cry altogether. The next year at school was rough. I moved back in with my grandma and attended the middle school there. I guess the thing to to that year was to add "your mom" to everything. That was horrible for me and i almost got into more fights, but i was able to keep my cool for the year and not lose it with anyone. Time passed seemingly effortless. And before i knew it i was in high school. Nothing to big happens here. I had a crush on a girl since seventh grade but get turned down pretty bad freshman year. I tired my luck with her again sometime sophomore year too. That ruined dating for me and i still don't try to make romantic relations anymore. Then i start smoking pot late freshman year, but not because i was depressed. I thought it was fun for a time, but that lost its charm and I went back my my online gaming. All this time the gaming helped keep me together. I got pretty good at Halo Reach for the Xbox 360 and it gave me some self worth (i ended up switching to computer gaming as of now). I ended up failing a bunch of classes and had to go to a credit retrial school. And here i am about to finish junior year. My problem is that i don't care about much anymore. I feel apathy for almost everything. I always say i'm just lazy but lately i have been questioning that. My friend from school was talking in my group about how i never come to school and he said something like "yeah, the difference between you and -john- is that john is lazy by choice, but your lazy by nature." That got me thinking really hard about why i just don't give a damn. I find myself thinking about concepts to big for myself to handle without any proper education. Like about personal morals and social standards. And I can't help but view myself as a psychopath sometimes. I don't even get fazed by these sick stories of people raping their own kids and drowning puppies in rivers. Every once in a while it gets to me but only briefly. I wonder where the person i was when everyone had hopes that i could be something went. That kind hearted, uplifting, energetic kid who was always smiling. I have become the vessel of lost memories and confused thoughts. My original intent with this post was to see if anyone could identify a mental problem or state i hold but now i'm not sure. People in my family have told me i seem depressed but i honestly don't know what depression is supposed to feel like. I got prescribed vyavanse to help me focus in school and they really help. I get this feeling of motivation that i lack when i'm off of them but when they wear off its like waking up from a good dream that you wanted to go on forever. I wish I knew what i wanted. i wish I knew what i need to do. I wish I had all the answers. I wish someone else had all the answers too. But the sad reality of this all is that it's unrealistic to hope that someone will be able to help me get away from the place i'm stuck in and change the way i am just based off this post. Don't get me wrong though, I appreciate any feed back. i would love to hear all of your opinions, and thank you for reading. ~TheLonelyReaper