I'm 19 years old and for my entire life I've been having troubles feeling anything at all. I always thought there was some logical and simple explanation to why I wasn't like everyone else, and I assumed it would heal with time, but it didn't. It just keeps getting worse. First let me begin with that I'm completely unable to open up to other people. I have never opened up. To anyone. If I'm even close to doing it I feel disgusted by myself, I get nausea and an urge to flee. I've also never cared like others. I can't really feel empathy. Or I mean, I can, for like animals and my family, but no one else. I'm literally serious when I say my best friend could die tomorrow and I wouldn't be able to feel a thing. Obviously I'd think it's sad, but it wouldn't effect me on an emotional level.

I hide this part of me, and I certainly don't talk about it with anyone. I want to be normal but I just can't. I have tried to involve myself in other people, in relationships, and even - in my sillier moments - in love. But it doesn't work. Something in me is broken or missing. I love my immediate family, but that's about it. I can lie without feeling any kind of remorse, I manipulate people very easily, and when someone really gets on my bad side, I just attack their weaknesses and break them down with words. It's terrible, I know, but I can't stop. Even as I write it, I know I say it's terrible, but I don't feel terrible. I just know that it's not how a person should act. I could never physically hurt another person, but not because it would make me feel bad but more because I know it's wrong.

My condition is just getting worse, I've started to distance myself from everybody because I feel so tired of wearing a mask and constantly faking to like what they like or play their stupid games. I don't love others. I'm incapable of feeling on a deeper level, there are no strong emotions in me. I feel narcisstic but at the same time I hate myself. I can get furious very easily but it goes away as quickly as it comes. I haven't had such a bad childhood but I mean my mother was going through her hardest part of life when I was a kid, and she took it out on me a lot. Sometimes physically but mostly mentally, such as I constantly heard that I was a bad kid, and bad news, and she blamed me for a lot of stuff that wasn't really my fault. She changed and got so much better when I was like 13 or something and now she's the best mom ever and apologized 200 times but I can't seem to let go. It's stuck with me.. I'm seriously worried that my condition will become worse and something bad will happen... What's wrong with me?

I am an 18 yrs old female. I want to have a real relationship, but everytime i get the chance the same thing happens. We hang out for a bit, every thing is great we get to know each other and all that gooey mushy stuff, then as soon as we have sex I lose interest in the guy. and its not like the sex is horrible i mean there was one or two times but most of the time its f-ing great. regardless i lose interest and then i want nothing to do with the guy. sometimes we try and be friends but it just becomes awkward. whats wrong with me?? i try to have feelings but they are none exsitent, why is tht? i am not a promiscous person at all, I havent had sex in forever because of this (6 months and counting).Its hard for me to actually express my feelings. My ex told me i was a robot cold and emotionless. i would just like some opinions on this whole situation. I discussed this with some close friends and they tld me i should see a therapist because i might be a psychopath.

Hello I'm a teen boy and I'm having a real tough time I'm not 100% sure I have OCD but when I was younger I would always have thoughts of dying and got really scared and frightened of it and also stuff in my room I liked it to be in order also my dad had OCD symptoms when he was younger like if he felt a certain way he would walk on the white lines on a road so he'd fell better and stuff like that so since I was young boy I can remember I was always into girls I fantasised and felt emotionally and sexually attracted to them and there was no thought that crossed my mind I was gay I remember going to a leisure center with my mum at around 7 or 8 and I would get changed in to woman's (because i was to young to be by myself) I always found myself looking at the women and liked it when I saw them naked but when I was 9 I had to get changed in the male part and felt uncomfortable as they were all naked so Back to my story I started masterbating at a young age (around 9) and it would be over like nude chat shows on tv and stuff like that once I found porn I couldn't stop masterbating over straight and lesbian porn once I entered secoundry school I had a massive crush on this girl and couldn't stop thinking about her I also remember being very jealous when she got a boyfriend it all started when I entered year 9 a girl had asked me out (I had liked her) and I did but I was extremely shy around her in school and so I felt so shy around her I broke up with her and then she tiled a lot of people the reason why dumped her was because I was gay this made my life hell I lost so many mates but got over it .then after a while I started to question If I really was gay ? I started to test myself by watching gay porn which didn't arouse me (even when I tried to masterbate and it made me start to gag) then I'd watch lesbian porn and be aroused this would stop me obsessing for a while but it came back and my mind is saying that I didn't try tow masterbate to gay porn because you like it really so I started looking and asking on yahoo awnsers they all gave me awnsers like your probably gay/bi this made me doubt myself even more this is making me stressed and I hardly go out on the weekends incase I see a man and have sexual thoughts i try to have gay thoughts but they don't feel rightI'm also having grounal responses why is this happening ! I don't want to be with a man also I've been having gay dreams and these dreams I'm literally checking if I'm aroused like in my dream but I believe I'm in love with a girl at the moment ? Also I'm constantly looking at myself to see if I look gay also when I see someone and there looking at me while talking to someone I automatically think that they think I'm gay I am also worried that girls think I'm gay when I started doubting my sexuality I thought I was gay bit now I think I'm bisexual and now my mind is saying that I'm thinking that because it's true also when I look into my past and see one part that seems homosexual it will cause a spike and cause me to panic is there a reason why I'm like this ? I play rugby and when I've made contact with males I don't feel aroused but my minds telling me I am I have also seen my friends penises before and not been aroused and just laughed what shall I do ? I don't know how much I can take of this it's everyday and I feel I have to keep checking If I'm aroused is this how it's going to be for the rest of my life am I in denial ? I just hate these thoughts I also remember when I was about nine that my cousin would sit on my lap but I pretended it was a girl and now mind keeps focusing on that and won't go Please someone tell me what's wrong I also look at myself in the mirror and and see if I look gay or have a gay voice or if I give off a gay vibe

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.

the root of all evil is not money. it is not greed, or any other “sin”. it is the perversion of perception. it is to separate “good” and “evil” to begin with. “light” and “dark”; “creation” and “destruction”; “feminine” and “masculine”: those who have been taught there is a line between the two, cannot understand either. it is a product of the imagination even to say that “1″ is separate from “zero”. physicists have done well to prove this, as they have followed their numbers into realms where all of their equations fall apart. into delusion, where they ought be sent. man cannot gain understanding by dividing his reality into smaller and smaller pieces. exactly the opposite, his field of view has been reduced. this story is told by the history of language itself. where once he had many symbols for the infinite and the large, he now has many symbols for the small and the finite. the zoroastrians, for example, had 101 names for “god”, all bearing a different meaning. the earliest symbols appealed to the holistic nature of man’s mind, which saw the giants of the cosmos. today’s symbols appeal to the fragmented nature of man’s mind, which is drawn to think of the “atoms” and “molecules” and the even smaller things. the children of today are made anxious just to think of the vastness of the void, because they can no longer fathom it.