Welcome to My Life

[Jake61186]

For those of you who have not seen me in the chat room, my name is Jake--I usually go by the tag Jake61186. Simple enough as it is my name and birthday. Anyway. Depression Understood has become an important part of my life for times when I feel low or anxious or just down right not myself. I wish to thank the mods and whomever decided to write this site because it is so valuable and so wonderful to have it up. I guess why I am writing is because I am asking for advice on the following:

1) How to achieve happiness when depressed about where life is leading me: i.e. I still live with my parents and I wish to move out and pursue a Master's Degree and feel happy that I can be productive and successful.

2) How to get over the fact that people in American society for whatever reason are unkind to the LGBT community. Having recently come out as bisexual, it is difficult for me to understand how people can not see a member of this community just as responsible and respectful as their heterosexual counterparts.

3) Being okay with how I feel about my anger, depression, anxiety, and aspberger's and how it has influenced my life.

4) Feeling that just because I am learning disabled and I have a speech impediment does not mean that I can not achieve what I want to.

5) Why I continue to fight with my parents over the stupidest of things--whether it be my eating habits or how my emotions run my life.

6) How to realize that I can become independently happy without medication.

7) How I can not cry myself to sleep when I realize that yes I do have friends, and yes those friends care, but some of them just do not want to reciprocate.

8. How do I learn to better equipped to pick up on social cues of what bothers some people and not others.

9) How not to be so self-indulged that the only person I care about is me, me, me.

I am sure that many other things will come to mind, but I feel better putting this out there because I know people will respond to this.

Thanks,

Jake

[isojoy]

Let me start by saying I don't have the answers :/ but I still wanted to respond!

1) I don't know how to find happiness, but I know that the fact that you want to find it means something. You haven't given up, and you're trying to find it, which in my heart makes me believe you will!

2) You've got to focus on those who love you as you are! There are much more people who aren't discriminatory than who are, find those people, surround yourself with those people.

3-4) It is going to influence you're life but it doesn't have to stop it or change it or slow it down. You know you can achieve what you want, you've already got a plan, move out, get masters degree, it's just a matter of doing it. Figuring out a plan is half the battle


5) well you mentioned that you want to move out, plus you're working on yourself in so many other ways, I'm sure that's tough and that's normal to argue in that situation.

6) Don't worry about that, use the medication until you don't need it, but try not to use it and worry about not using it

7) Do your friends know of your struggles?

Is that part of your Aspergers? From what I understand of it, it's part of the symptoms. If you have friends who love you, you must be doing pretty well

9) It's OK to care about just you in my opinion, especially when you're goal is to get your life together.

I don't think I answered anything but I hope you find all the happiness this world has to offer!

[Monty]

Jake,

I watch the news a lot, actually I think that you could call me a news junkie.

There have been many articles on the adult children that are at home. Due to the financial situation it is not a surprise to find this out.

I ended up moving in with an elderly parent and can certainly understand that the longer you live with your parents to more history you develop with them. Who better knows how to push your button than someone who has known you from Day one. It certainly happens with me and I am on the other side of 50.

I have friends from the LGBT community and know how difficult it is for them to find a place in the heterosexual world. As I said I have good friends that are in the community and are members of a choir. I attend most of their concerts and wish I could type out for you the words for "Some of my Best Friends are Straight".

Is there some kind of office in the town/city that you could get a hold of, and maybe connect with others that are bisexual. I have children and know that sexual orientation is a huge part of society and can be very difficult if you are not the same a the majority of society.

I can just tell you that my gay friends so stand proud. I think that it is brave your coming out.

I have always had trouble with the friends and fear of abandonment thing and often wonder why people are friends with me, and if they knew the real me that I would be dumped quite quickly.

It sounds like you have good friends that stand by you. A measure of our goodness as a person, is not measured by the number of friends that you have, but the quality of the ones that stand by you.

I don't open myself up enough to really let friends into my life. It is good that you can do that.

Didn't mean to go on so long.