Hello there, I’m a 21 year old guy from Germany and have very strong depression because of the constant abusive, toxic and manipulative behavior that I received from my parents since I was a kid.
Those strong depression are also the reason why I struggle a lot in life to get anything done by myself and become independent.
I already lived on my own when I was 17 but I failed because of my depression that made me incapable of taking care of myself which is why I moved back to my parents a year ago who only make it way worse for me because they won’t stop hurting me and treating me like a awful person.
I feel so stuck in life and I tried everything from therapy, mental hospital and medications but nothing worked. The burden is just too strong causing me to feel worthless and incapable of living, I have lots of shame, guilt and major anxiety.
It’s like being paralyzed by the fear of life.
My biggest dream always was to get rid of my parents and live independently on my own but I’m just incapable. I wanna get rid of this victim state so bad but I can’t find a way to escape/deal with the hurt.
Is there anything I can do?
What follow is only suggestions based on my personal experience I want to share with you. Take whatever you might find helpful and safely ignore the rest.
Failing is normal. I mean, it’s impossible to do anything difficult without first failing at it. Multiple times.
Failing is how we all learned to walk, by falling over and over again on our padded butt as a toddler. That’s how we learned to write too, by tracing clumsy letters that looked nothing like letters, and after that by making many, many mistakes when we learned grammar and spelling.
That’s how we learn… anything. From wiping our ass clean to being a partner in love, from ironing a shirt to not feel like a failure when things don’t go as expected.
Alas, it looks to me like kids aren’t taught to face failure anymore. Quite the opposite it’s like they’re being taught that things should be quick and that failing is a shame. It’s neither.
Hence so many of them being afraid to try stuff, and to take risks.
Imho you need to get back into some hobbies, no matter what they are, quick. You need short term objectives and hobbies are excellent for that.
Get out of their house and away from them.
Long-term, this means getting a place of your own. But that’s long term and it will require a lot of work. So I would not focus my energy on that for the moment.
Much shorter term, you need to be out of the house, away from your parents, as often as you can, and to do it as quickly as you can. And for that you need nothing but your willingness to experiment various activities so you can find ones you enjoy doing outside.
You like jogging? Set your alarm clock an hours earlier, get up, shower, take a light breakfast and go out jogging. Come back. Do whatever you would usually do and then go out again, later the same day, to jog more. Do it like that every day for a week or two. And see how you feel.
If you fail jogging a day, that’s fine. Use that as an opportunity to better understand the reason you failed so it won’t happen for the same reason again. Be honest with yourself: like when I decided to lose weight it only started working the day I stopped lying to myself.
You find it boring to jog every single day? OK, give yourself some interesting destination. Go to the public library, go watch a movie, go to an expo, in a park…
You really need to find stuff to do outside of your parent’s home.
If you feel like you can’t go out because of your depression, it may help to focus on smaller/shorter-term objectives. These smaller objectives will help you feel better (but you will still fail don’t forget it, and that’s OK) and they will also help you get out of the house and reach you longer-term objectives. The more you manage to spend time out doing things you enjoy, the better you will feel (for me that would be going out for long walks, but that’s just me)
As a kid (I’m talking 8-10 year-old kid, I’m now 50+), I had a less than ideal relation with my parents, to put it mildly. I quickly realized it was less painful to live inside books and… in the outside world. So, when I was not reading some book, I used to go out all day long, and soon after that during evenings too. First, I would go to the public library to read more books but then, I started going out carrying my little toy film camera, randomly roaming the streets. I explored the whole city with nothing but that little camera and my shy 9 year-old smile and an absolute lack of worries about going to odd places and talking to perfect strangers (it could not be worse than at home). Also, back then kids were not raised to be as paranoid as today, and I can say that most of those strangers were OK-ish. What mattered to me was that I was away from home. I could breath and I was allowed to be… the real me, unlike at home. Also, even though I had my fair share of issues too, I was spending a lot of my time with people that helped me feel better. That was so much better than ruminating in my room.
(Incidentally, going out and snapping pictures it also helped me developed my photographic skills and pushed me to quickly learn how to earn money to… pay for more film, and a better camera)
The thing is that no matter how great it felt and how badly I wanted to keep doing that, I still screwed up things more than a few time and I failed people even more often. Sometimes, it was a real mess. If I told you how badly I screwed my first paid photographic gig! I was not 12 and I was supposed to help a photographer shoot a small local band concert. I was so proud! That was some 40+ years ago but I still vividly recall the shame and anger toward myself when the guy realized all the films were ruined because of clueless me. Of all the rolls, a single one was salvaged… the one I did not touch. That day, I also learned things that would help me for all my life… and to accept that I was not the best, even when I wanted it very much ;)
Sorry, it was long. Hopefully you may find something of use in all that.