I hope this works

I’m 24 years old and I suffer from anxiety, depression, apathy etc. I’m naturally very intelligent but haven’t done anything with it at all and wonder if I would even still be classed as intelligent. I still don’t know what I want to do with my career I live with my parents and I have sort of isolated myself from friends to the point where I don’t really have any friends, at least not close ones that I see often. The mental thing is that I can still have a laugh and be relatively normal around people even with my issues, in fact I think the reason why I’ve distanced myself from people is because it makes it easy to hide my problems however I am incredibly lonely and deeply sad. I broke up with my only girlfriend I’ve ever had in September but I didn’t want to, I did it because I know how hard I was to be with and I loved her too much to drag her down with me. I often pushed her away and got irritable with her and argued when we were together and I still love her with all my heart. I don’t speak to anyone about my problems, I went to the doctors a few times but they don’t understand. My anxiety isn’t so much thoughts as feelings, like my vision is distorted and everything seems not real and dreamy and whenever I exercise enough to get my heart pumping it feels like it’s beating out it’s chest and I feel like I’m dying. I’ve had panic attacks in the past but not in a year or so and these aren’t exactly panic attacks but I still think this may be why I feel like that. Despite this I still do cardio exercise at a less intense and do weight training and am in very good shape however it’s annoying because I can’t run or do sports and have to be careful when weightlifting not to make my heart beat too much. I can’t approach girls in public but use dating apps and have had short term sexual relationships off of using them however I’d like to have the confidence to approach girls as I know I am very attractive but for some reason just can’t do it. It has dawned on me before that these issues may be due to porn/masturbation addiction as I have watched porn and masturbated excessively both with or without porn since I was 12. For a while I didn’t fap when I was in a relationship but after a couple months I did and I think this coincided with our arguments. I’ve tried to abstain before and once made 40 days but relapsed as I was feeling shitty but I now think this was flatlining. Another time, only a couple months ago I made 20 days then had two night in a row where I couldn’t sleep at all so ended up relapsing and binging and have been constantly since. I hope that sharing my progress on here will help me to go for longer this time. I don’t really have a set time but I think I’ll take longer than most people as I’m seriously addicted, I just want to keep going until I don’t feel restricted anymore. I know it will take a lot of hard work and won’t be pretty but I’m at the stage of my life now where I’m desperate and I need to beat this so I can be the man I want to be.

 

Thanks for taking the time to give me advice and any suggestions are very welcome as I’m willing to try pretty much anything. It’s also a relief for me to hear that other people have felt similar to me in the past. I have tried meditation before but never consistently so I guess I need to be consistent with it, I’d love to find a hobby I could immerse myself in to as well but like i said I can’t play sports due to heart rate/ panic/ feeling like death. Also don’t even have a room or storage space as I just sleep on a mattress by the patio door in my parents house so I can’t reslly play an instrument as everyone will hear it and it would be very annoying. I’m learning Spanish so that is something but I want to find something more hands on and more fun as I find learning Spanish tires me out rather than invigorates me. I also forgot to mention that I suffer from ibs and psoriasis and these two things are linked with anxiety problems