Ask Lemmy

I have a selection of social anxieties. Many of them revolve around me being let down so many times by people or groups I thought I belonged in. Any time I find some cool group, this feeling creeps up, letting me know "aw shit, here we go again". I'm sure the failures are a self fulfilling prophecy at this point. I suppose the solution would be to ignore all the warning signs and get used to people being genuinely nice (and then walking into the minefield as I ignore the warning signs. And the purgatory restarts).

Every day I go to work, come gome, sleep, etc. That's not the issue. The issue is that every day, I fear for my kids and family. I sit and wonder what of their future? Pollution and climate change is in our face and no government entity is doing a thing about it. No corporation is budging. It was over 50F in January where it should be below zero. Should I get a survival kit? Would it help? Do I need something to grab and go? How can I teach my kids survival skills in the wild when I have no experience myself? Where will we go? How will we get clean water and food when the system shuts down? What will we eat when we are rationing fresh water and the crops are dying due to heat and sun baking?

https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/

A calvacade of concerns:

1. Black Sheep - I'm the black sheep of the family for various reasons too numerous to get I into here. But suffice to say I have effectively zero contact with most of my immediate family except for my parents. My parents keep trying to force me into fitting into their own view of things, whether it be religion, antivax, etc which has put strain on the relationship when I refuse to fit their mold for me.

2. Forgotten - I'm forgotten by any friends/family that I do still have contact with. They rarely, if ever, reach out on their own initiative. I rarely reach out partly because I'm busy with my own stuff and simply don't remember to do so, partly because I'm tired of always initiating, and partly because I don't see the point, as I've been burned too many times before and it likely won't last anyway.

3. Money - I have significant debt that I'm years away from paying off with my current budget, both due to necessary expenditures and not so necessary ones. I'm also significantly behind on my retirement savings, especially if I want to have anywhere near my current income when I retire, if I can ever afford to. Add day to day expenses and couple that with both a desire to still occasionally frivolously spend money and a strong loathing of being in debt and you have a recipe for significant stress all on its own.

4. Covid - I'm one of those people who has enough health concerns that I want to play it extremely safe when it comes to potentially contracting the virus. This has put a serious damper on trying to go out and meet new people.

Frankly I think its a minor miracle that I've managed to hold it together as well as I have.

People that I love who I want to keep in my life are proving incapable of accepting who I am.

I have a lot of other friends and family, so I'm not without people to talk to, but it's pretty hard to have your spouse and parents and priest so tell you that you need to get mental help and figure out what's real, after you've been getting help and are on the road to accepting yourself...

Dealing with my father's disability, poverty, living under dictatorship... You know, just the usual things. I just want people to be more compassionate, I think.

I'll let you know through a song

Though honestly, it's more just a sort of blah feeling I've been having the past few months now, all day every day. I feel like I'm just going through the motions at all times in life, on auto-pilot, like there's this sort of cloud hanging over everything and I'm having trouble focusing on anything. Granted, there's been a string of bad news items almost daily it seems like and anxiety around the big upcoming general election, but I suspect it's some level of depression. Otherwise, I myself don't have many of my own problems that are bothering me, it's more the problems of other people around me that probably give me the most issues, people that I can't just easily ignore or tell them to piss off.

I have no meaning in my life. I go to work and I consume and I don’t connect with anyone or help anyone.

The way you can help me is you can tell me some way I can help you.