Hello. I have been diagnosed with anxiety for a few years now. I am a sixteen year old girl, and I often struggle with intrusive thoughts. My latest anxiety has been sexual thoughts, and feeling guilty about everything. For example, my mom was doing something (I don't even remember what) and was sitting down and was in her underwear, though i couldn't tell if she was naked or not. I looked over at her for whatever reason and just kind of instinctively looked down at her crotch area (I have no idea why I do that when I accidentally see someone naked, even a family member) and afterwards, I felt like I looked too long or it was creepy of me. I have no attraction to my mother or anything. But my anxiety has been making me worry about it all day. I even kind of forced myself to glance at hers and other people's butts to prove to myself that it wasn't weird and they're just body parts, etc. But this kind of thing happens to me constantly, especially when I'm tired. I also always feel guilty and like I'm hurting my boyfriend for having these thoughts and doing these things. Is it weird that I glanced at my mom like that? I'm sorry if this is a strange question, but I appreciate your answers. Peace and love.

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.

Hello dear reader, I've recently discovered my disorders and wrote something a while ago in a blog. Sorry if it's too long but I can't really divide it into part, you may find it very boring but I want to thank you to whoever read the whole thing or even just looked at!

Introduction, burning iceberg/frozen flame
I’m not very good at writing; in fact I suck pretty much at everything.

I think of myself as a walking bag of issues. I’m a highly sensitive person, I have borderline personality disorder, social anxiety, I have little bit of OCD and ADD and I often think that I’m bipolar.

I understand that everybody goes through some kind of stress in their lives and that other people might have bigger problems than me…honestly I don’t give a ###$, ###$ those people! ###$ people who judge ( I do that sometimes too but then I get punished at night by my over thinking habit), ###$ people who pretend to be nice, ###$ overconfident people, ###$ people who are shy, ###$ people that like politics, ###$ people that are into religion now that I think of it, ###$ everybody! Myself included!!

I’m sorry I didn’t meant to offend anyone (maybe I did), so I have extreme mood swings(as you’ve already noticed), sometimes I wanna meet people but most of the times I hate people. It’s probably because of my social anxiety, every time I’m in public I feel like everybody’s staring at me, I always thought it was some teenage stuff and that it would eventually subside but it never truly did, in fact sometimes I feel like it’s gotten worse. Each pair of eyes feels like a burn and I start sweating and panicking and I keep telling myself “oh god why are people staring at me? Is it because I’m overweight? (at a time I was but even after I lost weight I felt the same way) is my hair messed up?” Sometimes I do feel ok when I’m in public, most of the time it’s when I’m drunk or in an extremely good mood, unfortunately both don’t last very long and don’t happen very often and sometimes are mutually exclusive.

I feel like I’m the ugliest person in the world, the most weird too but at the same time I realize that I’m just an ordinary guy, nothing special at all. Other times I label myself very special because I’m pathetic and I want that pity but there’s just no one in my world that would ######6 understand me so I only have myself, which is just not enough but sometimes can be overwhelming. My biggest fear and my biggest enemy are both- myself. I tend to over think stuff, stuff that other healthy normal people don’t even care about, don’t notice. I like to analyze my day right before going to sleep, every ######6 time. Every time before going to sleep my brain’s like “Oh you wanna rest? ###$ that! Let’s go through all the ###$ up $#%^ that happened today. The mean stuff people said to you or you said to them. The stupid awkward situations you put yourself or others to, about how it’s gonna haunt you for a couple of years until you do something more ###$ up, which is gonna happen pretty soon by the way.

I always feel lonely and sometimes I just wish I had a girlfriend, actually every guy wants that…but then I remember what it’s like for me to be in a relationship with someone. It’s ######6 hell, both for me and for the unluckiest girl in the world who agreed to be in a relationship with me. Whenever I’m in a relationship (which is SUPER rare now) I tend to idealize (or even idolize) my partner and I cling very tightly to that person. Thinking she can understand me, support me and just always be there (which is literally ALWAYS) and of course eventually I get disappointed, always. Because I’m a selfish bastard, the very kind of people that I hate. It is part of the curse of having the borderline personality disorder, no one will ever be good enough for you and you’re never gonna be good enough for anyone as well. When people I’m really attached to stop messaging me or talking to me for whatever reasons (busy, not in the mood) I instantly take it the wrong wa...

[ Continued ]

Hi,

So I would like to know what you think, I have been lucky enough to see a therapist for three months in an organisation that provides free counselling. She has really helped me and I want to thank her with maybe a card and or a box of chocolates but I don't know if it is appropriate.
I think it is because the service was free so she has been giving her free time to help me and I have seen cards in her office, would a small box of chocolates at the end of our last session be appropriate ?

Thank you for your advice

So, my step brother took the plea. What now? What happens next? I have been preparing for the worst, and now I'm suppose to be happy? I don't understand.