My friend absolutely terrifies me. He has never done anything violent or harmful to me and is the most gentle and peaceful person I know (Though he is quite distant). He is also the most dangerous person I know. He usually has a calming air about him. It's calming to the point where he picked a bee off a flower and held it in his open palm for who knows how long before he sent it back on the flower without it stinging him. However, his air about him changes to absolute dread when he gets aggressive. This dread caused a dog to whimper and hide just by being near him. A moment to feel this dread is to ask him about his past.

My friend has a rather dark past. He had drug addict, alcoholic, and sick parents for the first three years of his life who were constantly fighting. He also was being watched by his legally crazy grandparents who were also drug addict alcoholics. He saw his mother brutally die in front of him from a car accident he was in. His father legally died then came back into a coma. He was physically, emotionally, and psychologically abused. He was raped. He was constantly being bullied at school and at home by his cousins. He hasn't seen his sister for ten years. He almost died countless times. He was also taken away from his father by the CPS. I was his first friend ever, and that was in the 5th grade (He was held back one year). I am still one of his only friends. The bullying never really stopped, it's just that everyone was to scared to.

As I said before, he is the best person I have ever met. However, he becomes a monster when aggressive. During these moments, he is not angry in any way. He is actually very happy when he is aggressive. I have seen him do some monster like things when he is like that. Ranging from will his way through a sleep hold to overpowering four football players. A note to take is how he is a 5' 5" 135 lbs slender-athletic build guy who isn't very bulky despite his martial art training, but he is stronger than he looks and is very resilient. When he becomes aggressive, his entire being changes. His eyes become empty and have a death stare, his body language becomes feral and relaxed, He gets a joker like smile and tries to keep himself from giggling and almost growls, the air around him becomes full of dread, and his already efficient and dangerous fighting style becomes even more efficient and dangerous. When he is in a fight, killing an insect, or gutting a hunted animal he laughs harder and smiles harder. He clearly enjoys being hit or hurting things when he is in that state. He also doesn't feel any physical pain in that state. After he snaps back to normal, he bursts into a crying mess, and will often vanish when we all check to see if the guy he was fighting is okay.

When he is normal, he has noble body language, a gentle look on his face, and love in his eyes. He will try to never harm anything and will resolve anything peacefully. He also genuinely cares about his few friends and gives amazing advise and can console anyone.

My friend has gone to therapy, but the fact he couldn't remember what he did in the aggressive moment, the therapy didn't help him know what was wrong with him. He also went to anger management, but he apparently has an outstanding control over his anger. We both wonder what is wrong with him, and I am absolutely terrified of him even when he isn't in his aggressive state.

hi i am new to this sight and just wanted to say that i have depression and problems with people and talking i am a cutter and very suicidal. so i kinda need some help and ideas on anything that could help me. i am only 18 and im a very shy girl

Thank you for your time
I am currently a male upperclassmen in high school. My grades are... For lack of a more accurate word bad, I have about a 2.0 cumulative. I used to want to be a 2d animator you know like cartoons. When I think about it that goal it is as far as can be from my reach. About a year and 4 months ago I saw this girl who is now the only thing I think about, I talk to her In very small conversations daily, she is the only reason I even want to go to school when I'm in class I zone out and just think about her I would do anything, everything, and more to make her smile. I go home from school too depressed that I'm not more to her than just someone to talk to for ten-twenty minutes and forget my homework and just think about her, cry for a few hours. Then my mother gets home and it's time for me to fake a smile and make sure she never worries about me. I usually talk to friends on skype which surprisingly takes my mind off of her a little bit, then nighttime comes and I'm back in bed crying,shaking, tired but too scared of how bad my depression may get if I don't keep working for her I've even caught myself whispering her name and talking about how much I love her when I'm in this state. So I'm trapped in this cycle, I ignore school and think of her then I remember she's the one and only thing I would ever work for and my grades just keep dropping. The one funny thing, nobody knows I have this problem, I seem so mentally stable, and I have plenty of friends, I'm only lonely because i avoid talking to people sometimes so I can just lay in bed and think about her. I had brought this problem to a different site and I was banned within a day (I must've swore or something) and I felt like nobody could help me, i have 3 ways I think of my life going, either I end up with this girl that I would be as loyal as a dog too, I somehow manage to pursue my dream of being an animator, or I don't end up with her and my depression takes over, and It scares me so much. Please just give me feedback, I need this help I feel empty.

So i've never written a post ever on any forum, ever, and since things have changed for me recently, i'd decide to give this a go. Might not come back to this but i want to get whats in my head out there and see if anyone has anything to say about me and my problems.
My problems: I care about my family too much. I'm almost certain that I have depression, mild anxiety and a myriad of other mental health problems but I've never been properly diagnosed because I care about my family too much to have them worry about me at all. I also come from a culture where mental health is not a 'real' problem, but rather a thing for the weak or the bored.
I think about death a lot BUT i'm not suicidal. I'm fine with death and i'm not scared of it but I would never be able to go through with it as long as my parents are alive because I can't put them through all that pain. If they died though, I would have not much of a reason to keep going, but that is not the point of this post.
I've always been very aware of my issues and i've always been able to talk myself down in my head like there was a third person that tells the two conflicting voices in my head what to do. This third voice sounds like a trusty friend, insightful parent, or even a advising counsellor, when i think about it. This voice knows what people views as normal and suppresses my arguing voices to make me seem 'normal'. It usually takes effort but I know it works because everyone thinks I'm still this smiley, happy girl, which really hasn't been the case since about 7 years ago (when my first encounter of death in the family happened)
My dog (who's been with me for almost 15 years) died yesterday and I was sad but it wasn't a fearful, regretful sadness. It was more of a "i'll miss you" and "we've spent good time together" happy sadness, though it was really sudden and shocking. I still miss him but I don't think I'm doing too bad. My parents on the other hand haven't been able to sleep, eat, not spontaneously cry, and not talk about morbidity every couple of hours. They also hug me a lot because they think its comforting for me, and probably themselves too.
I guess what I'm saying is that is it weird that I'm so aware of what I'm almost sure I have? Does this mean I don't have these mental health issues because it doesn't really affect my daily life and I know what triggers it, how to control it, and what works/doesn't work? Do other people with mental health issues experience this too?
An analogy (if you're still reading): I deal with my problems like dealing with my period. When it starts, I know what I can do to not let it leak out for the world to see. I know what the best way to deal with the dirty pad/tampon is, to chuck it out (feeling all my feelings/non-feelings but in a physical location where no one will see me then throw them out or at least leave them where they can't be seen). I clean up after myself and flush the bloody mess away (make sure no one can physically see or pick out that I have problems at any point of any time)
What do you think?

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.