I just don't understand my "family". I leave my purse and wallet out on the table and they come and go through it. They just pick my wallet up and flip through my check book. And when I said something my grandmother got mad. She just got mad and smarted me off, then walked away. It's like this all the time, it's like I'm supposed to let them run over me and do or say whatever they want about me or my stuff, and if I say anything I'm a bitch or I don't know what I'm talking about. Honestly it makes me sick just to be here. Sometimes I just feel like I can't take it anymore, like my time is over and I should just commit suicide.

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.

This all started about a year and a half ago. I was spending the night at my best friends house for the first time and i got a little warm so i was changing into a tank top and while i had my shirt off his step dad came into the room. i saw him give me a strange glare and walk away. i hadn't thought anything of it for about seven months. Then after noticing that we weren't hanging at his house at all anymore i started wondering. so one day after school i went over to his house. his mom let me in and we talked until he got home. Throughout the this whole time his step dad has blocked my number on their home phone, tried convincing the homeowners community not to allow me to walk on his street, he's banned me from his property, and his son can no longer come over to my house at all anymore. Ive overheard his dad call me a few very unflattering names. and his mom has called my parents a complete waste of time. I'm wondering what options i have either to file a suit against him or how i can get him to understand what he has done over the years.

Rightio, guys! Welcome to my world! It's great in here, albeit the landscapes may appear a little cerebral and neurotic sometimes. I lead the fine young life of an Irish student. Yes, student life is... well, chaotic. Effective organisation is always precluded by the necessities of student life (i.e. sleeping erratic hours, inconsistently meeting inconsistent deadlines, and an all-round simultaneous lack of planning and spontaneity). I am doing what I love (that's binge-reading on metaphysics and critical theory and writing highfalutin essays on it all), and even if it doesn't make me happy, that's okay, because I'm doing the right thing with my life right now. Clarity helps.

Happiness (whatever it is) is a thoroughly overused term these days. Why on earth should I be happy just because I have everything and my life is pretty darn good?! 'Erm... perhaps because you have everything and your life is pretty darn good...?' This is called circular reasoning, a logical fallacy. In fact, the entire pursuit of happiness in itself is both illogical and pointless. For a fact, nothing makes me happy. Ought I be stricken now by an avalanche of guilt? Not really. It's okay to feel whatever you feel and it is absolutely ridiculous to feel what someone else (or society, in fact) tells you to feel, because that's even more absurd that not feeling good, when life's good. In fact, the pursuit of happiness makes people depressed, because it's cheating logic and breaking down the faculties we rely on to make clear distinctions between things!

I like my life. I don't like my depression. I live life with depression. I do not live a depressed life. When I am really depressed I am not living my life, but this has nothing to do with my life and everything to do with my depression. It is important when I am very depressed to never wish my depression to end, because this would mean ending my life. And I like my life. It is much more likable than my depression. It only makes sense to say, then, that I like my life more than I can ever dislike my depression, because depression requires life in order to exist and wishing my life to end because it will end my depression is completely absurd, because it denies the origin of depression, which is not life, but absurdity. Yes, depression is absurd, but life is not and in order to affirm what is true and meaningful (i.e. the fact that depression is absurd) we must affirm life.

Of course, it may appear to be problematic when philosophers say that life is absurd and melancholia is a natural reaction to the absurdity of life. This may be true (and if it is it becomes difficult to distinguish depression from life), but even these philosophers find a way of affirming life, even if only in spite. For Camus, absurdity must be affirmed because our lucidity is the basis of all that we have. According to him, we must continue to push the boulder up the hill knowing it will fall back down, because acknowledging the pointlessness of this task liberates us to accept it. For Kierkegaard, it is defiance: rejection of help or escape which gives us strength to be our own and endure. For Nietzsche, life, suffering and all the tragedy in the world must be relished in order to rise above the adversity of slavery and become masters of ourselves through strength and creativity.

So for my first post, Im just going to do this as a journal I guess. I don't know.

So basically, Im a teen. Please don't even ATTEMPT to judge me because I've been through so much already and I am going to lose it.

I feel so sad, hopeless, and SO angry all the time and I don't get why certain things happen to me. I mean, I was never a bad person. I don't know why I deserve all this at such a young age and I'm so depressed and It's so UNFAIR.

I hate me, I hate everyone, I hate the world. I hate everything. I never wanted to feel this way. I never EVER did. And now I do, and everything freaking sucks.

My family thinks I'm emo and my friends think I'm outgoing and happy and I'm going to lose it. I can't be who I really am because I'm so afraid of being judged and I hate it so much.

I spend most of the time in the bathroom breaking down to the point where I have to cover my mouth to make myself quiet.

I'm a TEEN.

I never wanted to be like this AT ALL. I wanted to worry about my looks, my studies, and pop stars such as One Direction or Justin Bieber or something but NO. Life will not permit it and IT'S UNFAIR.

I want to be normal and so many bad experiences happened to me at such a young age and I'm trying my best to BE happy but I can't and I don't know why.

Instead of being HAPPY I'm depressed, hopeless, angry and I HATE IT SO MUCH.

I don't know what to do. I don't see any future of mine. I want to die but I don't and I really don't know what to do anymore and I'm sick of it!

I want to have dreams and I want to have crushes but I don't and as I said so many times,

IT'S SO FREAKING UNFAIR.

I'm too young and all these experiences and troubles in family, friends, school, and life is just piling and piling.

I thought that maybe, this was a phase or something but I've always been this way ever since I was young and I've only realized it this year.

I've always been quiet and emo. Even in school, but I changed myself because there were people who teased me so, in a snap, after one summer, wow, I was happy on the outside. People used to say that I was really quiet and I always looked like I was mad and I just realized that I was just really sad. And now that developed into depression. I know you think I'm lying since I'm too young but we're all different here and we go through different things and I just had to go through many things at a young age.

I'm really tired. I really am. I tried everything. I even self harm. I have scars from razors and my parents think it's something I got from my dad called Keloid wherein you just get tiny scratches and they turn to look like scars and I agreed so they won't be suspicious. But after awhile, they did of course, so I started to cut elsewhere other than my wrist.

Anyways, other than that rather disturbing paragraph, I just want help.

I don't want to be some depressed teenager with anxiety. I hate always being jumpy, nervous and I want to be NORMAL.

So. If anyone reads this. Please help me before this gets worse. I'm really tired of feeling this way and I don't think I can hold my sadness and anger in any longer. I just want to scream at the world that I'm upset and lost and to help me but I can't. I have no one to talk to. No one I trust.

But I know there are people out there who will understand and that's why I am here now. I don't like thinking of suicide or anything. I really don't. And I want it to stop. So if anyone can PLEASE help me, just... HELP ME.

Please, I'm begging you. I'm so desperate and I just really need someone to be there for me right now.