I know work problems are extremely common in people with bipolar disorder and I am no exception. One day I excel, the next day…yikes. I currently work for my best friend, it has been a blessing in many ways because he understands my needs and where I’m coming from. The problem is, I’ve gotten too comfortable with his understanding. When I’m having an off day, I take more breaks than I would if I worked for anyone else. Because…you know. He understands.

I’m starting to feel guilty because I worry that I’m taking advantage of his kindness. At the same time, there are days I would be genuinely unemployed through no true fault of my own, if he were anyone else…which often makes me feel even worse! He deserves someone reliable to support his business, instead he has me. And he won’t fire me, I’ll have to choose to leave if things get bad enough.

I can see his stress is building. Some days are so bad that not only am I not helping him, I’m also holding him back because he feels responsible for helping me through whatever I’m going through (you can see why he’s my best friend). He’s doing his own work (which consists of a full time day job plus our startup tech company), my work, and supporting me emotionally. It’s too much for one person which is partly why I’m here, to lesson his emotional burden at least.

When I think of leaving and getting another job, something more routine and where I could get fired if I don’t do my work, I freeze up. I’m a single parent of three kids. I live with my parents who help watch them, but it’s still a lot more responsibility for me as a parent than it would be if I were still married. I’ve spent most of their lives working, and missed out on a lot. With my friend, I get to work from home most days and can spend time with them. So here there’s a threefold problem, one of being terrified of getting a new job, and one of not wanting to lose the time with my kids, and one of being in a position where I get fired.

I just want to know how I can eliminate my habit of taking a mile when I’ve been given an inch. In a way I can continue to blame my disorder because impulse control is a known weakness in people like myself, but I don’t want to. I have enough awareness on those days to know I’m doing wrong, and I’m screwing myself out of the opportunity to take time off when I’m actually falling apart—because although he won’t fire me, there is still a limit to his patience.

I’m tired of feeling guilty. I’m the last person on earth you would ever expect to take advantage of a good situation, yet here I am.

Hello! I have a lot to say. I am trying to keep it short.There are lot of issues in my family.One among them is - My dad and mom had parted ways when I was 4 years old. My dad is a psycho. He always troubles our family. There are lot of issues between us in the court and police. I and my mom are currently in my grandparent's house.I do not have a sibling and cousin. I have two cousins,but they are kids.So, I dont have anyone to share my feelings. I do not have friends because no one in this world is interested to help with other's problems. Everyone wants to have friends only just to have fun. No one is true to no one. I just have friends only for formality both in school and college. I am not in touch with my school friends because of the reason I mentioned above. I am currently doing my 2nd year college. I dont like the friends circle here. It was not as expected. I have 2 good friends around me in college. But they too dont understand my problems. Even though they know that I have many issues in my life,they speak only about college matter and other fun stuffs. I always suppress all my feelings inside me since my school life and I got used to that. Now, it has led me into trouble. I cant tolerate it anymore. I want a person to share my feelings and I too want to be true to that person. I need either a friend, cousin, sibling like person or a life partner. I am a loyal,caring, trustable and helping minded person and I need a person with the same qualities for me. I never leave people and run away during their toughest times.But it is hard to find people who do the same to me. It is not possible in this world.

I joined BFSc course in college with my own,whole hearted interest. But I am unable to focus on it even though I want to. I am zero now. I dont know what to do. I feel jealous by seeing people with siblings. They help each other in difficult times and by seeing that I always feel that I dont have anyone for me. It puts me into so much stress. I lack concentration and focus in things I love to do. I got addicted to phone by playing games,listening to music and watching videos because i dont have any true people around me to speak with. I am lagging in everything in my life. I always overthink. I have insomnia. I have fear to mingle with people because my dad always troubles whoever are our close friends or relatives. Surely most of my friends will not be friend with me if my dad troubles them too. Because my friends cant understand my issues. They have been brought up by their parents so happily without facing any issues. So if they know about my dad , they will surely dont be friend with me. ( I am not assuming it.I promise. I analyse people so deeply and correctly. 90% ).

I and 3 of my friends usually walk to our college after getting down from the bus daily. One is a boy and the other 3 are girls. We are dayscholars. My dad once saw us walking together in the road. He came to a temple in that road. I suddenly stopped speaking to my friend and walked fast in front so that my dad will not trouble them. But he went behind and spoke with that boy and asked why he spoke with me. That boy is my good friend . He told that I am his friend. And then my dad warned him and went immediately. My dad did this to give mental torture to me. He didnt mistake that boy. And then when I went near my friend and asked what he said, my friend told no problem we can go. And then I asked him again. Then he told me what my dad said. I called my mom and she apologised to my friend. My friend told he did not mistake me and it is not an issue. He is a good friend . But my doubt is from that day to till now he did not ask me what is the issue between me and my father. He did not ask me what problem i am facing in my life. He always speaks only about fun stuff daily in college. So , i feel he is not a true friend . He only wants to have fun with me. He is good,loyal, helping minded person. But I dont understand why my friends dont care about my issues.

My dad may again come to that road and make more trouble than before. My fear is people around me in that road may mistake the problem and think that I am not obeying my dad. So I feel helpless. My mom told about that incident to the court and the judge warned my dad. But as I told my dad is a psycho he will trouble us again.

In future wherever I go for work or higher studies , there also my father may trouble me , and I feel that people around me wont help me and understand me. That is my major problem. Most of the people in this world are selfish and dont want to help others. I feel so depressed nowadays. I am helpless. I have mentioned here only some of my issues. A lot are there...Please help me out. I am helpless.

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 :)

Hey all, I’m Aileen. I’m 24 and I’m having another rough week. It’s 4 on a scale from 1 to 10 (1 means the worst). No mental health diagnoses. My biggest issue is that smallest things bother me more than they should. I get stressed out too easily, and recently it’s been impossible to manage my emotions. I’m tired of having these really intense feelings about people slightly raising a voice at me or just being too loud (which doesn’t seem to bother anyone else but me). It makes me snappy and irritable. Sometimes feel like crying. Other times just want to explode and lash out, and it requires tremendous efforts to keep myself in check. Inside I feel emotionally exhausted all the time and I’m unable to let go of these small daily episodes for hours on end. It affects all aspects of my life. I get in trouble at work sometimes because I find myself in emotional paralysis and unable to function for long periods of time. Any time I have to talk about uncomfortable or difficult topics with my partner, I’m having a meltdown and cry, almost against my will. It affects my relationships in a negative way. Everything feels like too much for me. I get better after staying in a quiet place for some time or distracting myself with a TV show or a book. However, I can’t do it at all times, especially at work. There is another side to it, a positive one: when I’m happy, I feel like I can do anything and can channel seemingly unlimited energy. It’s like I can’t feel anything halfway. Am I just a sensitive person? I’ve researched it a bit on mental health forums, and many people with similar issues have certain diagnoses associated with inabilities to regulate emotions. Does anyone else relate or have any thoughts in general?