None of my experiences feel valid (18M)

I’m writing this because I feel hopeless, like I’ve been carrying a lot of mental baggage for a while that I can’t process or make sense of in a healthy way. It just always feels as if there is something off about my experiences/concerns, like a lot of the time “it’s just in my head” and the best thing for me to do is to simply ignore my thoughts. There’s probably some truth to that solution, but it comes at the expense of making me feel empty, invalidated and plain ######6 weird.


Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had this tendency to overthink, over-complicate and question myself way too much. I was even know as “the thinker” in primary school because I would sit on my own at lunch and entertain myself with my thoughts. Much of my thinking actually wasn’t entertaining though, because I used to worry a lot, in obsessive ways. I know for a fact that I’ve exhibited thought patterns consistent with obsessive compulsive disorder, but there’s also been many instances where none of my mental problems really made sense at all. Without a disorder to attribute to these odd patterns of behaviour, it all just seems like nonsense that didn’t mean anything. I would worry that I was gay for example, but looking back I can’t take this seriously at all, despite the obvious effect that it had on my well-being. I would think about this obsessively, and I even convinced myself that I was suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder despite not being diagnosed. I would legitimately think about being gay for the majority of my day, it seemed like the worst possibility in the world, completely unforgivable. And then the topic would transition to something else, next it was my academic performance. These fixations would have my full attention, literally nothing else mattered and there were constantly new questions that I had to solve. As I said though, none of this stuff seems relevant when I look back on it, I’m actually fighting the urge to stop writing this post because much of it feels exaggerated and pathetic. The obsession with my academics involved compulsive behaviours aimed at reassuring myself that I wouldn’t fail, or something along those lines. These obsessive rituals involved a lot of anxiety, so I also experienced social anxiety problems and had a lot of issues making friends. It was very hard to be present in conversations, and a lot of the time I was just an insecure asshole. Coming back to before and how I was fighting the urge to delete the post, I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that I can’t remember much from this time period - even though this was only a few years ago. I know there was a lot of obsessive compulsive behaviour that I was hyper-fixated on, but there honestly aren’t many details that I can explain in detail. I know that a had a lot of anxiety problems, and that I never really formed any meaningful connections/friendships because I was soo distracted with my obsessive thoughts about my academics. My grades were good, but it was often hard to concentrate because it felt like there was soo much pressure to do well (this would’ve been from the ages of 13-16). Not long before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the topic of my obsessive thoughts shifted to intelligence. My new obsession was intelligence, and the only thing that mattered was whether or not I was gifted. I remember not being able to concentrate on conversations because I was focussing on my ability to solve problems, my grades actually didn’t suffer much because I could use them as evidence/reassurance that I was intelligent. This probably sounds like obsessive compulsive disorder, but I doubt that a lot. I think that even if it was a case of OCD, it would be relatively mild. That’s why I hate myself for all the time that I wasted, I literally wouldn’t leave my room on my holiday breaks because I was too busy finding new IQ tests to complete. It was always the same: yes I finally found it! Evidence that I am intelligent and everything will be OK! But then doubt would start to settle in, I needed to reach another high through reassurance/evidence-seeking. This process was extremely time-consuming, all of this time was “pissed away” completely, years of my life. And it isn’t as if I have a meaningful reason for why this all happened, all of it could have easily been prevented if I’d forced myself to stop, but I didn’t. My theory is that this was a coping mechanism that I developed in childhood, which is really painful to think about because like I said, all of this could have easily been prevented had I responded to these obsessions like a normal person. My family is also wealthy, so it’s even worse because I had easy access to therapy. The pandemic ended and the topic switched, now I was obsessed about physical attractiveness. I asked tens of thousands of people online about my face, many of the photos even were taken in my school uniform. I stopped completing assignments to ask people online about my face, in class. What’s even worse is that I took legitimate pleasure out of thinking about these obsessions too, I ######6 enjoyed a lot of it. What disgusting person completely neglects their education to obsess about their attractiveness? It is pathetic, especially when combined with the fact that I had more opportunities than 99.5% of people. I’ve had some other obsessions in the past that more closely resembled typical OCD, obsessions about germs or the existence of hell, but I still don’t believe that I ever had the condition. At 18 years old, I am not ready to be an adult at all. I constantly find myself realising that I am more vulnerable than most people, I missed out on much of the growth that 90% of people went through in their teen years. You could tell me all you want that I am exaggerating, but I know this deep down, I can just feel it. Here’s the ###$ up part though, I sabotaged myself through my senior year, my grades were soo bad that one of the exams was listed as “ungraded” on the report card. Honestly, I felt a lot of shame. It was a cycle of self-hatred, I’d feel ashamed and respond by sabotaging myself because it felt like the easy thing to do. Much of this stemmed from the obsessive behaviour involving my physical attractiveness. I remember going onto web chatting platforms when I was 16-17, I would pretend that I was confident in front of younger girls (girls aged as young as 13) and this would give me a sense of sexual validation. Not once did I ever make one of these girls feel uncomfortable, or say anything overly sexual, and I stand by that because it is the truth. I would put on a mask though, and would seek sexual validation because I wanted them to think that I was attractive. I wasn’t sure what sexual validation was to be honest, I only found out later through ChatGPT and it all made sense. But for a while I walked around believing that I was a monster because it really felt like I was communicating/interacting with these younger girls in a sexual way, I felt very ashamed about it and never told anyone. Like I said though, not once did I ever make any advances or act overtly creepy. Anyway, I bottled this up for a while and the shame festered in the back of my mind for a long while. Especially because I’d been obsessed about my attractiveness soo much, the shame compounded even more. After all I’d asked thousands of younger girls to rate my face, what if I was falsely labelled as a paedophile? There were also times too where’d I’d asked for the Snapchat/Instagram or girls as young as 13, I didn’t plan on speaking to them I just wanted validation. This went on for months, like for months I was locked inside my room seeking validation like a degenerate. My face was all over the internet and I felt like a monster because I would sexualise each interaction that I’d have with a girl (even younger ones), my mind was constantly looking for the kind of validation that I spoke about before. But coming back to my senior year, a large reason that I failed was due to paranoia. I was afraid people would catch on to these masks that I would put on, that they’d realise how much of a monster I was deep down. I guess I felt like I had to sabotage myself because it allowed me to avoid all of these mental problems, it was a cop out.

I managed to stop relying on the coping mechanism that I had developed. The truth is, I’m not even sure what the real issues behind the obsessive thoughts were, largely because there isn’t really any evidence that anything even happened. It is the greatest mind ###$ of all, legitimately has me questioning whether I’m insane a lot of the time. These days I still worry about things, but it isn’t the same as it used to be. At least before I knew what the problem was, now I just feel like a hollow NPC that can’t connect with anyone. I’m hyper self-aware, hell I even find myself sometimes missing those obsessions that I used to have, at least they gave me a sense of identity and stability. Now, now nothing really makes sense at all. You see I’m writing all this with such confidence, but there’s also a high probability that I’ll leave this feeling like I #######4 95% of it. I hope you guys get the general gist though, I can’t connect with who I was at all, it legitimately feels like I made everything up for a sense of internal validation. It’s just a massive pain because I’m at an age where mental problems are held against you, sure I still have a safety net, but if I go off the rails again there will be legitimate consequences because I’m an adult now.

I should also mention that twice now, I’ve done extremely risky things impulsively for a sense of meaning/validation. Whether drinking too much on purpose or dangerous driving, these behaviours gave me a sense of importance. The idea of coming very close to death felt special in a way that I can’t explain, I don’t know if it was the sense of personal significance that led me to do it, or the sense that a near death experience could be transformative. I don’t think these were actual attempts by the way.

I’ve told my parents about half of all this, I genuinely feel like it would be impossible to tell them the other half though.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, reading this has meant the world to me.

Wow, that's really horrible. Reading this, I felt like you couldn't hide your mental problems, and for that, you were brave enough to pour everything out. The important thing, is that you have to tell your parents that you're not keeping up with your daily life. Simply tell them that you're having those obsessive thoughts that you have no capable of ignoring, but also, drives you into engaging in compulsive behaviours. I hope you find some peace for yourself. You're going to be okay.