Hi I'm, well I can't tell my name, but I'm thirteen (almost) and I have been struggling a lot since I hit puberty a couple years ago. I didn't even know what it was at first but I started to learn more n more about mental health problems, therapy (u see I'm an Indian so I never rlly knew what therapy was) body image issues and a lot more. I started watching a lotta positive videos and tried so hard to motivate myself to become like them then I stopped cos I felt like it was just a waste of time but now I finally feel a little more comfortable in my body. in the beginning when I started getting panic attacks (cos I was a dumbass n didn't know what was happening to me) I would go to my mom wouldn't rlly tell her the correct reason but ask her to comfort me. It worked kinda cos at that time I didn't rlly know what I needed but she was always telling me it was my fault n I shud be more flexible and adjusting n I get that it'll help me in the future but right now it's tooo much preparing myself for the future that I can't enjoy my present. I rarely stand up for myself so.... what I need is someone to confide it not someone who's constantly correcting me. nowadays I still try to talk to my mom but uh it's kinda rough. N well whenever she's in the room n I ask her to go out cos I wanna change she asks me I'm ur mom it's ok n then yesterday I finally told her that ur too judgemental in a funny way but she kinda kinda took it in the harsh way. And she used to even cry to me about her problems n how much of one I am to her and I didn't realise how fucking much that hurt me so now if she cries to me I just kinda ignore her unlike past me who used to drown myself in guilt. A couple months ago life was feeling like I was thriving but now it isn't bad but it's not good either it's like I'm barely surviving but I gotta keep swimming cos the shores still very far. it's still the beginning of what I think is gonna be a very long journey but I feel like I'm hitting a milestone now. Cos like I feel a Lil more comfy in my body n it makes me soooo happy n I wanna celebrate but I can't cos what I want to celebrate is always gonna stay a desire. I see so many yt'ers n they talk about their teenage n how they were miserable n then how they r thriving now. Yes it's inspiring for many people but for people like me we rlly need ppl who we can rlly relate to who barely have happiness in their lives. U see I have an aunt n she the most toxic fucking bitch I have ever known n will ever know...n I fucking live with her. So happiness is rare n only found with friends which is a whole another topic for tomorrow also thank you app for letting me have someone or rather something to actually share stuff to

In the past, I would overwhelm myself by shouldering the problems of others without having anyone to help me with my own. I felt obligated to because that’s what friends are for, right? But after a year of therapy, support workshops and self-help exercises I’ve come to learn no, that’s NOT what friends are for.

When I lacked boundaries and healthy communication skills, I allowed people to constantly trauma dump on me. These people were individuals I called “friends.” The thing about it is, they had no regard for MY mental/emotional wellbeing and would discard me once they felt better. Or if I attempted to be vulnerable around them they were “too busy”/unavailable.

Now that I have healthy boundaries, an understanding of my limitations and respect my limited capacity to receive negative information, I honour myself by asserting these boundaries and communicating these limitations to anyone I’m building rapport with.

Because if it’s something I’ve also learned, it’s that everyone’s definition of a friend looks different. For some, it’s someone you occasionally talk to, for others it’s what a person can do for them. Myself personally, a friend is someone I can share laughs with but also expect them to hold me accountable if I say/do something inappropriate. It’s me knowing I can also hold them accountable and that there can be healthy conflict without fallout. It’s sharing core values and interests, but also having differences and still getting along.

These days a lot of people don’t want friends, they want “fans” and “followers.” Individuals who’ll cosign on anything and everything they do regardless of it’s right or wrong. They don’t want to take responsibility or grow to better themselves, they don’t want to build long lasting relationships, just superficial and short term connections. They don’t want ACTUAL friends, they want therapists; people to dump things on, and because of that I’ll remain selective social and continue holding space with myself.

Yes, your friends should be there to support you in your time of need but they shouldn’t be treated like therapists. YES, your friends are loved ones and people apart of your support system but NO, they’re not qualified professionals to guide you through traumatic events and life experiences.

That’s why I’m tired of seeing the narrative, “You’re a bad friend/person if you don’t let your loved ones trauma dump on you!” because it’s so inconsiderate? Everyone has a life outside the friendships they build and that should be understood as well as respected.

Everybody’s capacity is different, and if you can’t take two seconds to ask if the person is in a well enough, mental and emotional head space to receive information that has the potential to be triggering then you’re not as good of a friend as you think. Your friends and loved ones shouldn’t feel “obligated” to be emotionally overwhelmed because they’re afraid you’ll accuse them of being uncaring.

Additionally, just because you might have the capacity to do it doesn’t mean you have to. It’s great that you’re looking out for your loved ones but it’s their responsibility to seek professional outlets that’ll accommodate their circumstances. People really don’t understand how that can put a strain on friendships, intentional or not. And I understand that receiving professional help is extremely difficult, but if you think your friends are therapists then you should re-evaluate yourself. While there are people comfortable with having this dynamic, others aren’t.

With me deciding to no longer be the therapist friend, it’s been QUIET. With me setting boundaries, it’s, “Oh Mitchel you’ve changed.” With me stepping away from anything that doesn’t positively serve me after respectfully communicating my disassociation, it’s, “Mitchel’s weird.”

I didn’t change nor am I weird, I just respect myself enough to no longer let people take advantage of me and they dislike it, but I’m okay with that. No longer being the therapist friend is one of the best things I’ve done for myself, and while I of course still support and advocate for others when possible, I do it in a way that doesn’t overwhelm me or invalidate them.

I have a lot of things from my past I still have problems progressing, so I wanted to tell my story with you here. Of course I experienced a lot of good events in my life so far but I will be mainly focusing on the negative ones because these are the ones that make life difficult for me sometimes because there are some bad experiences I have made that I have problems with. Anyways, let's get started!

I grew up with my parents though I don't have any siblings. My parents were pretty good parents, I'm not gonna say that they were bad like who knows why they acted the way they did in some difficult situations and who knows how hard parenting really is because I'm only 17 and I don't have any kids yet even if I could've been pregnant once (against my will) but I'm lucky about not having kids because for me personally it would be way too early to have kids at 17. I don't want to offend anyone having a different opinion for themselves but I just don't feel ready to be a mom, also I'm single ;). Back to my parents, I spent most of the time with my mom because my dad was working in a jail and he had night shift quite often or he came back from work in the evening, so I didn't have much time to spend with him which I still regret a few years later because I feel like I really would have needed the time with him. Now that he is retired I kinda have a need to catch up on all the time I have missed with him. My mom was okay as a mom, let's be honest. I see she tried her best but she was unsure and overwhelmed with me so often. She was a pretty strict mom and she always warned me to do what she said. She was and still is a perfectionist which I inherited from her in some way but I made myself clear that perfection does not exist in this world. Nothing and no one is perfect. She got better somehow right now but she was an extremely perfectionist person when I was younger. She wanted me to do everything perfectly since day one. Of course I couldn't so she was never satisfied with me and she rarely told me I did something well. Then there was her insecurity which made her unsure about how to act, for example when I didn't want to listen to her she just yelled at me and one time she even hit me. Not hard but it still broke a piece of my heart because she always was the person I trusted, she was the first person I saw after being born and now she did this, I couldn't understand anything at that moment. 

When I was 3 years old my parents decided to bring me to kindergarten. They had some kindergartens for choice and they chose one near where we live so they didn't have to drive a long time till there. I'm not gonna blame my parents for the bad experiences I have had there at all. They couldn't know that it would be so bad there. I wasn't a good eater as a kid and I nearly never had an appetite, I was underweight. I can understand that everyone, my parents, as well as the kindergarten teachers were worried about me but the way they treated me was just unacceptable. They forced me to eat even if I wasn't hungry and if I didn't eat they put the whole food in my mouth and choked me while eating so I threw up nearly every single time. This time for me was terrible. I remember all the kids around me telling the teachers to stop doing that to me but they just kept doing their thing. I was so shocked and maybe traumatized about what they did to me every day that I felt kind of paralyzed in my mind if you know what I mean. I mean I was unable to talk about what was happening to me till I was 7. That day my dad was really angry about this. I was his only child and he was and still is fighting for me like a lion or something. Back then he also protected me so much because he felt like he owed me something because of the lack of time we spent together. I remember him calling the kindergarten telling them I wouldn't ever come back there. I still feel how relieved I was about this. (Btw if you're wondering why I was still in kindergarten at 7, I was there for learning and stuff after school till my mom picked me up). 

My elementary school wasn't bad at all. I got to know a lot of friends and had fun going to school. When I was in 4th grade, a student of the 3rd grade started harassing me. He often had more boys around him so I was pretty shy around them (I was and still am shy at all but this was just another situation). He was treating me like his slave. He wanted me to do everything he wanted. One day he tried to pull down my skirt and kicked me between my legs. After that he kept harassing me. The teachers called his parents twice but nothing changed. Anytime I went to some of my classmates and they protected me from him.

Later I went to secondary school. In 5th grade I got bullied by two of my classmates who were jealous of me. They offended me, stole my things… I talked to the teachers and to my parents a lot about this but no one took it really seriously. One day they grabbed me and told me they wanted to see my corpse and pushed me in front of a truck. I didn't get injured but this was the moment where everyone realized that it was serious. I remember how I went home from school that day and told my dad about what happened. He immediately called my class teacher and told him about it. My teacher was crying on the telephone. One of the students got expelled from school and the other one is actually one of my friends right now. The following years were pretty nice til I graduated. I didn't have any problems with others. Maybe 2 weeks after I graduated, an ex classmate of mine texted me that he likes me and that he would like to meet me. I was really happy and surprised about this because I liked him too. The next week we met in a shopping center. I thought that it would get really nice to finally be outside with someone I really like and who really likes me. But it didn't get nice at all. He dragged me into the stairway of the parking garage of the center and sexually assaulted me there. Since that experience I'm afraid of boys and men. When I went back home I told my parents a bit of what happened. I couldn't tell everything because I got the same feeling I had in kindergarten so I was too shocked to talk about everything. My dad told me to sue him a thousand times but I didn't want to let other people like the police know of that situation because it felt really embarrassing for me. Also I felt like everything was my fault, I should have known it all so I didn't sue him. I'm still one hundred percent satisfied with this decision. I think that was all of my bad experiences I have had so far. Of course there may be a lot of small experiences I don't remember right now but the ones that I have mentioned are the most influential ones for my life. But what have I got from them now? 

• Through the fact that my dad was working a lot when I was a little kid, I have a really close relationship to him
• Through the kindergarten thing I don't trust people fast and I'm actually scared of them when I don't know them well. Also I got insecure about my eating habits (even if I'm normal weight now)
• Because my mom rarely complimented me / told me that I was doing things well & through the bullying thing, I got insecure about myself and got depression and anxiety
• Through the experience with the boy who assaulted me, I got a fear of boys and men

What other problems do I have?

As I already mentioned, I am suffering from depression, anxiety and insecurity. Additionally I got diagnosed with autism last year. I don't think that autism makes me unsure about how people feel. I feel like I am more empathetic through that. I immediately see how people are feeling, they don't even have to tell me and my experiences make me able to give them some advice in many cases. Also I overthink quite often. 

That was my story :)

I don't know what's going on. Hi everyone, I'm 18 and I'm a lesbian. When I was a kid I liked guys, but then around 13-14 when I found out that you can like girls, I felt like I liked them more...? (so I think I might have daddy issues or something like that, so. I used to kind of like guys, but I really like their attention to this day. Like, "I'm in a relationship with a girl, but if this guy gives me attention that would be cool! I like to be the center of attention!" I don't think I'm bi because I can't imagine having sex with a guy or being in a relationship. I feel comfortable to be with a girl and I would like to live my life with her, I like to get attention from a girl, kisses, etc... now let's get to the problem. when I realized that I am not hetero, in my country everything was more or less fine with same-sex relationships...how? nobody cared about it. I was in a long distance relationship with a girl for 2 years and I loved her and she kind of loved me too. as I realized after the breakup, our relationship was not healthy at all. She lied to me, she ignored me a lot, she seemed to love me but sometimes she could just get offended. she lied about everything, about being raped by a guy, about the people she was dating, she said her parents beat her up, etc. I was a fool and really believed it all (although I had my doubts and they were justified). eventually she started to ignore me a lot saying "that's it, we're breaking up". one time we had a political fight and she wanted to break up with me, but she kind of gave me a second chance. I didn't know she was seeing someone else at the time...as time went on, I experienced the same insults from her friends. And when I said, "Don't hang out with that person, they talk shit about me, I don't like it, but it's your choice. I didn't push too hard but it was in this context approximately (before that she insisted that I stop communicating with my friend or she would leave me, I had to do it) another situation happened: she had a friend who lived next door to her and they didn't communicate live but often texted each other. My ex liked to make herself cool and pretend that she was experienced in sex. At the time I was a virgin and did not really talk about sex with her, I was not really comfortable, but something I trusted her. and once my account in the app was blocked and I asked her for a while, she said "no problem" and in the dialog with this guy I accidentally saw "My girlfriend is such a slut, she does fisting". I was shocked. I had never done that in my life...I cried for a long time after that, because I felt uncomfortable and like I was humiliated. Also there was something like "my girlfriend has big tits, like two planets" this was also unpleasant for me, especially the fact that she tells this to a guy I don't even know. after a few months she started to ignore me hard, just write rarely, I could write to her she sits online, but does not answer, just reads. it drove me to tears and hysterics..I thought that everything will be fine, but I thought that everything will be fine. but when we were on the call and I was discussing our future like "oh, it would be cool if we got a kitten" it was at this point that she said "I want to break up with you" (I think it's very nasty of her to do that at this point) I started crying, begging her, etc...but she just told me to fuck off and disconnected. Then I texted her "can we be friends?" she said no and I accepted it...But the most disgusting thing was that when I was crying and suffering she just texted me "I'll think about it till morning and tell you my decision" I was broken and cried all night, hoping that in the morning she would say it's ok etc...She woke up and texted me "I'm blocking you, bye! "After a few days I found out that she had cheated on me. she immediately started dating a girl the day we were separated. and that girl turned out to be a friend who humiliated and insulted me..hmmm so there you go! now I have a new girlfriend who loves me to bits and treats me well and with respect.

But the problem is that after our breakup my country passed a law banning "LGBT" now if you are gay or lesbian you can go to jail...for 12 years. I'm really scared to write this now a little bit...in case they find out. but now I want to go to the main problem.(I'm very anxious, I suffer from overthinking and bad thoughts) At some point after the ban and distance with the girl, I started to feel like I'm attracted to guys...(I never dated a guy and all my 3 ex were girls)it's like my body makes me love them. I'm just looking at an almost at every guy and get a very weird feeling in my belly..I thought, "Okay, if you're bi, it's okay, don't worry about it," but it got worse at some point, like I started reacting to any guy, or to their voice like it was supposed to make me I don't know into him. I pushed those thoughts away. I also want to add that my mother doesn't know about my orientation and I often hear "such a nice guy,tall,handsome,cute,sucker" and it makes me feel even worse>_< I realize that if I react to all guys this way it could be anxiety and fear of falling in love with a guy. Help me please. What could it be? How to treat it? i really need your opinion, maybe someone has faced this before!