My boyfriend has been in this really bad place for the past couple of weeks. He says that he doesn't feel like himself (or act like himself) & that he feels like 'nothing'. He's saying that he doesn't feel like a friend or a boyfriend. And that he feels nothing towards our relationship, even though he loves me like crazy. He just feels nothing towards everything right now.

Because of this he wants us to take a break from our relationship so he can focus on himself and getting better. He wants to do it alone.

I am really worried about him. I can't just leave him to battle this on his own when i'm the only one that knows he's in this bad place.

Even though we are on a break I really want to be there for him and help him. I just don't know how...

so i have d.i.d. (dissociative identity disorder) and one of my alters is named benji. benji is an 8 year old boy in the body of a 18 year old biologically female. i have no issues regarding my gender or sex and feel i was born in the right body. benji has such bad dysphoria that he hates coming out, refuses to look at himself in the mirror, refuses to take pictures, and everyone can feel how much sad it makes him. last night was the final straw though when my mom wanted to take pictures and he was co-fronting with me he started to cry because he asked her why she needed to take them. my mom dismissed his feelings and i just want to help him. anyone have something similar to this or have any ideas on how to help? i am so lost right now...

I've been having pure o OCD for a long time. I was never properly diagnosed, but I've been having obsessions ever since 3rd grade. Lately I started to obsessing over my sexuality, even though I've already had a crush on a boy in my school. I got over my HOCD, and after a day of pure relief, when I was scrolling through YouTube, I found a video about a trans. Immediately a thought popped in my head, "What if I am transgender?" I started to obsess over that. I am tomboy-I had a lot of the character traits and humor of boys, my voice sounded slightly deeper than other girls, I was different than other girly girls, I hate pink, my childhood toys were cars, and I even looked kind of like a boy. However, I always loved being a girl. I felt quite comfortable in my body-and I've never disliked being called 'her' and 'she'. I've had a lot of fantasies and daydreams, all of which I was a girl. I imagined myself growing old as a girl. I've always believed/identified I was female, and that was what I told myself when I first started to obsess. As time worn on, I became less sure. Every time I look in the mirror, I felt ugly and boyish. I don't want to be transgender. I keep on having unwanted thoughts m=of y=myself as a boy-I don't want to think about what it ould be like to be male because I'm scared I might like it. I dont know if I'm actually trans in denial or just TOCD. Please help!

Usually people who struggle with drug and alcohol abuse or other forms of addictive behaviors come from a background of abuse or neglect or have experienced some kind of trauma when they were younger. Being in these situations, a child and/or a young person can experience various painful feelings such as fear, helplessness, shame, guilt, sadness and eventually hopelessness. Becoming overwhelmed by these emotions and not having anybody to help them and validate their feelings may lead to them learning to run away and avoid such feelings to protect against pain or become consumed by those feelings and act upon them impulsively. Later in life, they may use substances or engage in addictive and destructive activities to numb those painful feelings. Despite their effort in avoiding these emotions, they are stored implicitly in a deeper level of the brain and will be triggered more often than they may have expected.

These emotions that have been stored in a less conscious part of the brain may not be accessible verbally, but can be found symbolically in images that the person creates. Therefore, the goal of art therapy is to access these hidden and avoided emotions that once had the purpose of protecting the individual, but either have been denied or exaggerated and lost its purpose to rediscover their adaptive qualities.

Images in an art therapy session can simply be composed of a few lines, colors or pictures from a magazine to more elaborate drawings, clay sculptures and other forms of creativity. These images will give an expert art therapist the opportunity to help the recovering person uncover meanings behind the symbolic images, discover more information about oneself than just talking and open many deep thoughts and emotions. Participants in art therapy don’t need to have any skills in art.

Talking about feelings can be very frightening and painful for a person who has been avoiding them for a long time. This person may not even be able to verbally express him/herself, but may be able to express thoughts and feelings about past and present events and situations non=verbally through lines, shapes and pictures. Creating them can become a new form of communication which is less threatening and safer for the recovering person.

Individuals struggling with addiction are usually very judgmental of themselves and are flooded with shame and guilt. Creating art can give them a tangible, concrete perception of their feelings and thoughts and give them the opportunity to observe themselves from a distance which can help them gain a new, less judgmental and more compassionate understanding of self.

Recovering individuals may engage in a simple art project whenever they feel overwhelmed or have an urge to take drugs/alcohol or engage in an addictive activity to distract and sooth themselves. Creating can give them a sense of control over the situation and a tool to accept and manage overwhelming feelings. Using their hands while using art materials such as colored pencils, markers, crayons, clay, paper and scissors can help them release some of their avoided feelings such as anger and lower its intensity, and to sooth and calm themselves when they are anxious.

In general, in art therapy sessions, the recovering person will be given permission and opportunity to experience and express those feelings that he/she has been running away from and avoiding for a long time in a safe and supporting atmosphere, with the presence of an empathic professional psychotherapist /art therapist who will help him/her understand and make sense of those painful feelings, acknowledge and accept them with compassion, reduce their intensity and tolerate them, and finally use them effectively to fulfill their needs and goals.

At the age of eleven, five years ago, I recall calling a voice in my head the narrator, because he would refer to my life in third person, always negatively, constantly talking, and arguing with me, To this day. As far back as I can remember I have had a want to become female, purely for physical reasons, however, this need was intermittent, usually I had the standardly accepted gender identity, I even imagine being a father- not a parent or mother, a father- and now at sixteen my gender identity feels as if it has split into two, transgendered and 'normal,' while I am now 'turned on' by material of transgendered nature at times, but usually am not. The narrator has also evolved, triggering bouts of sudden uncharacteristic anger, while I am usually calm and cheerful. I sometimes find that my face is curling into a look of anger or contempt, or that I have sudden images of badly hurting people who do something I dislike, that may have been an acceptable thing to do, but for whatever reason I just feel foreign satisfaction in imagining pain.

I began looking through myself, basically just trying to figure out what the hell is wrong, and the following are the results:

At the age of six I had a crush on a girl in my primary school class, she left that year, for other reasons. This is the most definite starting point I can place for my tgism. then, at eleven, I had my second crush, on another classmate, and she walked up to me and told me to stay away from her shortly after the two friends I told this secret to went and told everyone. My theory is that my subconscious took these rejections, and the stereotypical views on geeks and indians, and sculpted from them the idea that I was so repulsive that the only way I could ever have a girl in my life was to be a girl, and so that shard of my gender identity broke away, and from this information I called that shard Lust. Lust doesn't seem to be as conscious as the narrator (who is now named Anger), though she has on two occasions exclaimed on how 'hot' a guy was, though this may be because of nightly masturbation to the idea of being a girl, leading to lust already being expressed. Anger, however, is kept under lock and key, and so usually has a voice. There are other signs as well. I used to use electronic devices excessively, even when supposed to be sleeping, but I voluntarily stopped, and recently I've started feeling tired after 11am, as if I hadn't gotten the sleep that I obviously did. Occasionally, when writing, my hand forms a squiggle instead of a letter, and my handwriting has deteriorated, and today when trying to write while holding the pen loosely, I could only make squiggles.

There may be other voices, occasionally when playing a sport I become giddy, speaking without thinking, and really jumpy, and sometimes I hear a crowd, but that may be Anger messing with me.
There's a chance I am only imagining all of this, but I don't want to take that risk.
Help me please.