thirtysomething1970
Member
Hi. I am a 34 year old man in the UK and this is my life story. I hope someone can help me.
As long as I remember I have been an anxious person and also felt a kind of despair or depression about the future. I have always found it very hard to make friends, right from the very first day I started school. I could n't cope with school work at first so my first teacher put me with the "remedial" children, basically the least intelligent in the class. Although in later years my schoolwork improved greatly and I appeared to be one of the cleverer ones in the class I never really got over it.
I could n't talk to my parents about it. My mother would get angry or upset about my lack of friends but then making it difficult by saying it would be rude to invite myself round to other people's houses or getting embarrassed by the state of our house (it just a bit scruffy in parts, that's all).
My father was a lot older than my mother but seemed to take the role of little boy to my mother (get thinks wrong, make messes etc). I never saw any kind of affection between them. He would often be very quiet and subservient but sometimes get very angry about trivial things.
I am ashamed to say that increasingly as I got older I wanted my parent to die in a car crash so I would be adopted by a nice family (like on the TV!)
I did n't go out much as child. When I moved to Comprehensive School (aged 11) I was bullied quite badly for the first 2 years because I did n't make friends. I was what we call in the UK a "swot", someone who works hard at their school so not popular. Some people called me “robot”, presumably because I did n’t speak much and join in with the others.
I admit I was not a nice person at times. Sometimes when the bullying got to me I would lash out, at boys AND girls.
In the later years we were all divided up in classes according to ability. The bullying lessened off and I found that there were some girls in the class I was attracted to. Unfortunately, I did n't know how to talk to girls and felt I was n't intelligent or good looking enough to ask any of them out. I become a bit strange in my behaviour, pretending not to like girls at all to such an extent it became a joke and ironically attracted attention to me from girls.
I felt a lot of guilt about sex which I think stems partly from the fact my parents never talked about it and also from the bullying I had. The other boys would make fun of my lack knowledge about sex.
Some boys did invite me to become part of their Dungeons & Dragons club but I did find stressful and oddly depressing. For some reason I do feel depressed sometimes in company of other people.
Anyway the pressure of trying to be friends with people, wanting to talk to girls, guilt about sex and studying got to me. I did very badly in a test one day and deliberately cut myself with a blade in class. The teacher found out and I was marched off to the nurse's office and then my parents were sent for. I was taken to the doctor's for a tetanus injection.
At the time I felt guilty about having done it. The nurse did n't say much, I don't think she was very sympathetic. The Head of the Year was there but kept saying she did n't understand why I had done it. The subject was never mentioned again by ANYONE afterwards.
Looking back I don't understand why no-one could see it was a cry for help. WHY WAS I NEVER REFERRED TO A THERAPIST?
I managed to get through my exams at 16, although I still got stressed and sometimes hit out at people.
I went to Sixth Form at 16 at the same school which was n't as pressured (less work to do!) and hung about with some guys I knew. I still could n't talk to girls. There was a Christmas disco one year and there was a girl there who I fancied from a couple of years before (when I had self-harmed). I desperately wanted to talk to her but barely said "Hello" and then the party was over.
At 18 I went away to university which was a big mistake. I just did n't cope. Although I had a few friends (they made friends with rather than the other way round) I did n't cope at all with being away from home, mixing with people and all the stuff about wanting to talk to girls but not being able to. I got stressed, missed meals, developed irritable bowel syndrome. I did n't go and see a counsellor because I did n't think it was for me. I thought it was to do with problems of debt/landlords etc (I was very naive then)
Eventually, it got to me and I let fly with a lot of abuse (including racism) and hit someone. I was lucky not to be expelled, but dropped out soon afterwards.
I returned to live with my parents. I enrolled on a different course at a university and saw a cognitive behavioural therapist through the NHS (our public health system). The therapist helped me with my irritable bowel but I could n't overcome my fear of speaking to strangers and making friends.
The NHS only pays for a certain number of sessions, so I decided to help myself. I went to evening classes in Assertiveness and also one on Transactional Analysis. I read Susan Jeffers' book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.
I learned to swim (I could doggy-paddle at school), started weight-training and joined a hill-walking club. I went cycling (on my own) most weekends.I also started seeing a Transactional Analysis therapist.
Careerwise, I did n't achieve. I have never felt good about changes so I did n't feel enthusiastic about starting a new job with new people. Also I have always been very nervous at interviews so I ended up taking numerous temporary clerical jobs through an agency. Eventually I found a clerical job at my local town hall.
Unfortunately, I developed problems with my feet and it became very painful to going walking so I stopped going to the hill-walking club. I still don't know the cause but it may a back problem in origin.
In an effort to sort my problems once and for all I tried a weekend residential course. It proved to be a very strange experience. The therapist was very bossy, for example tried to force me to sing when I could n't sing along with the rest of the group. She insisted I commit to leaving home but that left me feeling scared and very depressed.
After that I went away twice to a New Age community, thinking of joining it for a year. However, I felt very anxious being with people I did n't know and I seemed to have a real mental block about my feet. The pain seemed to distract me from participating fully.
All this time I still been seeing the TA therapist, but now in a group, which I left because the others were talking about relationships and I just could not relate to what they were talking about. I just was n't relative to me.
Recently, I changed jobs and I now work with budgets and accounts. I thought it would be a step up but I don't feel I have enough work to do(!) and I am unclear a lot of the time what I have to do.
Last week, I made a big mistake and logged on to the Friends Reunited site, here you can find out what school friends are now doing. Most seemed to be married and successful careers. The girl I fancied, the one from the party that I never managed to talk to has married a man from the Royal Air Force (must have been the uniform!) and has a job selling pharmaceuticals.
I am filled with regret at what I did n't do and the things I could have done 20 years ago (TWENTY YEARS!). I don’t feel I am doing anything useful in my life. I keep thinking about the girl I liked even though it’s 20 years ago.
I still live with my mother. My father died 6 years ago and became increasingly difficult as he got older. My only conversations with him were about how he was irritating me by picking his nails or fiddling with his false teeth, or talking about me in third person to my mother as though I was a small child (has he set the video for ….?). I think he had the early signs of senile dementia.
So what now? I tried various treatments for my feet and now I am going to see a chiropractor to see if he can help me. I am still swimming, I do Pilates to help with my posture. But to change my personality. Lose the despair, depression, anxiety. I just don't know. I just seem to be missing the vital spark, the thing that other people have which makes them embrace life.
As long as I remember I have been an anxious person and also felt a kind of despair or depression about the future. I have always found it very hard to make friends, right from the very first day I started school. I could n't cope with school work at first so my first teacher put me with the "remedial" children, basically the least intelligent in the class. Although in later years my schoolwork improved greatly and I appeared to be one of the cleverer ones in the class I never really got over it.
I could n't talk to my parents about it. My mother would get angry or upset about my lack of friends but then making it difficult by saying it would be rude to invite myself round to other people's houses or getting embarrassed by the state of our house (it just a bit scruffy in parts, that's all).
My father was a lot older than my mother but seemed to take the role of little boy to my mother (get thinks wrong, make messes etc). I never saw any kind of affection between them. He would often be very quiet and subservient but sometimes get very angry about trivial things.
I am ashamed to say that increasingly as I got older I wanted my parent to die in a car crash so I would be adopted by a nice family (like on the TV!)
I did n't go out much as child. When I moved to Comprehensive School (aged 11) I was bullied quite badly for the first 2 years because I did n't make friends. I was what we call in the UK a "swot", someone who works hard at their school so not popular. Some people called me “robot”, presumably because I did n’t speak much and join in with the others.
I admit I was not a nice person at times. Sometimes when the bullying got to me I would lash out, at boys AND girls.
In the later years we were all divided up in classes according to ability. The bullying lessened off and I found that there were some girls in the class I was attracted to. Unfortunately, I did n't know how to talk to girls and felt I was n't intelligent or good looking enough to ask any of them out. I become a bit strange in my behaviour, pretending not to like girls at all to such an extent it became a joke and ironically attracted attention to me from girls.
I felt a lot of guilt about sex which I think stems partly from the fact my parents never talked about it and also from the bullying I had. The other boys would make fun of my lack knowledge about sex.
Some boys did invite me to become part of their Dungeons & Dragons club but I did find stressful and oddly depressing. For some reason I do feel depressed sometimes in company of other people.
Anyway the pressure of trying to be friends with people, wanting to talk to girls, guilt about sex and studying got to me. I did very badly in a test one day and deliberately cut myself with a blade in class. The teacher found out and I was marched off to the nurse's office and then my parents were sent for. I was taken to the doctor's for a tetanus injection.
At the time I felt guilty about having done it. The nurse did n't say much, I don't think she was very sympathetic. The Head of the Year was there but kept saying she did n't understand why I had done it. The subject was never mentioned again by ANYONE afterwards.
Looking back I don't understand why no-one could see it was a cry for help. WHY WAS I NEVER REFERRED TO A THERAPIST?
I managed to get through my exams at 16, although I still got stressed and sometimes hit out at people.
I went to Sixth Form at 16 at the same school which was n't as pressured (less work to do!) and hung about with some guys I knew. I still could n't talk to girls. There was a Christmas disco one year and there was a girl there who I fancied from a couple of years before (when I had self-harmed). I desperately wanted to talk to her but barely said "Hello" and then the party was over.
At 18 I went away to university which was a big mistake. I just did n't cope. Although I had a few friends (they made friends with rather than the other way round) I did n't cope at all with being away from home, mixing with people and all the stuff about wanting to talk to girls but not being able to. I got stressed, missed meals, developed irritable bowel syndrome. I did n't go and see a counsellor because I did n't think it was for me. I thought it was to do with problems of debt/landlords etc (I was very naive then)
Eventually, it got to me and I let fly with a lot of abuse (including racism) and hit someone. I was lucky not to be expelled, but dropped out soon afterwards.
I returned to live with my parents. I enrolled on a different course at a university and saw a cognitive behavioural therapist through the NHS (our public health system). The therapist helped me with my irritable bowel but I could n't overcome my fear of speaking to strangers and making friends.
The NHS only pays for a certain number of sessions, so I decided to help myself. I went to evening classes in Assertiveness and also one on Transactional Analysis. I read Susan Jeffers' book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.
I learned to swim (I could doggy-paddle at school), started weight-training and joined a hill-walking club. I went cycling (on my own) most weekends.I also started seeing a Transactional Analysis therapist.
Careerwise, I did n't achieve. I have never felt good about changes so I did n't feel enthusiastic about starting a new job with new people. Also I have always been very nervous at interviews so I ended up taking numerous temporary clerical jobs through an agency. Eventually I found a clerical job at my local town hall.
Unfortunately, I developed problems with my feet and it became very painful to going walking so I stopped going to the hill-walking club. I still don't know the cause but it may a back problem in origin.
In an effort to sort my problems once and for all I tried a weekend residential course. It proved to be a very strange experience. The therapist was very bossy, for example tried to force me to sing when I could n't sing along with the rest of the group. She insisted I commit to leaving home but that left me feeling scared and very depressed.
After that I went away twice to a New Age community, thinking of joining it for a year. However, I felt very anxious being with people I did n't know and I seemed to have a real mental block about my feet. The pain seemed to distract me from participating fully.
All this time I still been seeing the TA therapist, but now in a group, which I left because the others were talking about relationships and I just could not relate to what they were talking about. I just was n't relative to me.
Recently, I changed jobs and I now work with budgets and accounts. I thought it would be a step up but I don't feel I have enough work to do(!) and I am unclear a lot of the time what I have to do.
Last week, I made a big mistake and logged on to the Friends Reunited site, here you can find out what school friends are now doing. Most seemed to be married and successful careers. The girl I fancied, the one from the party that I never managed to talk to has married a man from the Royal Air Force (must have been the uniform!) and has a job selling pharmaceuticals.
I am filled with regret at what I did n't do and the things I could have done 20 years ago (TWENTY YEARS!). I don’t feel I am doing anything useful in my life. I keep thinking about the girl I liked even though it’s 20 years ago.
I still live with my mother. My father died 6 years ago and became increasingly difficult as he got older. My only conversations with him were about how he was irritating me by picking his nails or fiddling with his false teeth, or talking about me in third person to my mother as though I was a small child (has he set the video for ….?). I think he had the early signs of senile dementia.
So what now? I tried various treatments for my feet and now I am going to see a chiropractor to see if he can help me. I am still swimming, I do Pilates to help with my posture. But to change my personality. Lose the despair, depression, anxiety. I just don't know. I just seem to be missing the vital spark, the thing that other people have which makes them embrace life.
