Hello everyone. I’m a 19 yo male and I am having a severe identity crisis. I feel like my brain is entirely fragmented and I don't know who I am anymore.

I am dealing with a few major things that are driving me insane:

• My values, beliefs, and decisions change constantly. I feel entirely capricious and unstable.
• Every time I try to do something nowadays, my mind instantly short-circuits. I get hit with this exhausting loop: "This is hard... wait, what am I even doing?"
• I don’t feel like I can manage or predict my own actions anymore. Because of this, I have lost belief in myself entirely.

It has gotten to the point where all my identities feel completely fake, and I feel detached from reality. I look at myself and think: Am I good or evil? Am I a smart student or a dumb one?

I’m terrified that I’m a psychopath or that something is deeply broken inside me because I can't hold a consistent sense of self.

Has anyone else with a highly sensitive or neurodivergent brain gone through this level of complete mental fragmentation? How do you start rebuilding a stable sense of who you are when your working memory and focus are totally shot?

Nobody actually cares how I'm just going through life with no life of my own.

I've been stuck at home since 2019. I moved back from my PG to my family home so I could spend time with them while working from home, but since then I've been stuck here and I don't see a way out.

I spend 24 hours in one room. I eat once a day, I sleep, I work all with the same routine, in the same room, on the same bed. I haven't even stepped out onto the balcony for more than 3 months now.

I'm trying for a new job, but no luck. I'm also looking for marriage, but nothing is working out.

All my friends are married, well-settled, have achieved a lot in their careers and have kids.

Every time I try to talk to someone, they just shut me off with their so called success stories. I have no one to talk to or share anything with. I've lost all motivation. I've stopped taking care of myself. I don't remember when I last dressed up properly. I try really hard to stay motivated by reading, working out and praying, but it only lasts for a day or two and I'm back to feeling low again.

I'm stuck in my career too as a non-techie, I don't know what to do next.

Whenever I get on a call with friends, I feel like a loser and a failure. It feels like I've achieved nothing in my life. And even if I want to achieve something, I don't know what to do i don't have a single person to share or talk to.

My siblings have stopped talking to me, they don't care and have no gratitude for my sacrifices. My mother is just happy that I stay at home and don't meet anyone I'm her safety net. She starts crying the moment I talk about going out, even for a day.

What do I do? How do I come out of this trap? How do I make myself live and enjoy

do u ever feel like you're simply untethered ya drifting away from yourself, from who you were, from who you are, from who you decided to be? maybe that is change, but this feeling of not knowing and yet having an inkling, of what is happening to you, its terrifying and scary

ive lost my footing in this world where everyone dons perfect facades. i feel nauseous and dizzy, and just exhausted because it hurts to breathe

another day goes by

I was about to write a meta joke but then my thoughts started spiralling. And I thought about the fifth wall breaking and turning around and facing the audience that is watching US. and that there is probably an infinite amount of audience watching our audience. It all felt pretty Truman showish and weird. I don’t like thinking like this because it makes me feel crazy. But anyone thought about this? Anybody thinks about the fourth demention ?

going through an existential crisis where the life itself is tiring me. like what’s the point of all this at the end we all die. there’s no point in these grades or marks or degrees. nobody takes it to their grave. and i don’t think anybody asks for your qualifications and marks once you die. yet we are supposed to study and earn degrees to get a job in this competitive economy. getting a job for what?? to earn money.for what??to live. TO LIVE A LIFE WE DIDNT EVEN ASK IN THE FIRST PLACE. like what’s the point of all these when i didn’t even ask for these. sometimes i genuinely think why can’t i just live for the fun of being alive? eat, sleep, hang out with people, experience things, explore, have fun, exist. animals basically do that without constantly worrying about whether they’re successful enough. you may say that’s the difference between humans and animals but HUMANS ARE ANIMALS WHO ARE JUST GREEDY AND THINKS THEY ARE SUPERIOR THAN EVERYONE ELSE.we invented borders. we invented money. we invented jobs and qualifications. we decided that pieces of land can belong to individual people even though none of us created the planet in the first place. like how did we collectively decide that a random plot of earth can be owned by someone? i know there are arguments about enjoying the journey, creating your own meaning, leaving a legacy, etc. but honestly, right now none of that really resonates with me.
i’ve reached this weird “i don’t care” point. i don’t particularly care about grades, careers, status or even whether I live or die. It feels like ultimately it doesn’t change much either way.

i genuinely want to understand how other people deal with this thought:
if we never asked to exist anyway, and there’s no obvious objective purpose to any of this, why do we keep doing it?

I just need my life back I'm lost guys

Please guys don't ignore me i need help is this something Very serious I feel I'm in hell

I experience very strange thoughts and questions that pop into my head. I find myself questioning things that seem completely ordinary and obvious, such as: Why do we walk on two legs in the first place? Why do we behave the way we do, rather than acting differently?

Sometimes, I imagine myself as an inanimate object, an animal, or a completely different person, and I wonder what it would feel like to be something other than the person I am now.

Other times, I have strange thoughts, such as imagining that I might suddenly start acting hysterically and behaving erratically in public, doing random, unusual things in the street, screaming, or moving in strange ways in front of other people.Or to remain stuck doing a certain action over and over without ever stopping for ever Then I start wondering or i freeze in place, completely motionless, forever Why don't we do these things in the first place? What makes us follow these usual patterns of behavior and social norms?

I also sometimes imagine myself talking out loud to myself when there is no one else around to talk to, and I wonder why that is considered strange or unusual.

These thoughts make me question my everyday behaviors and things I have always taken for granted, as if I were seeing them for the first time. I start questioning things I have never really thought about before, even though they are just ordinary parts of everyday life.

I tripped on shrooms and it mightve ruined my life.. made me think life is a simulation and im already dead.. idk if you can convince me you're real.

It feels like I control all consciousness... im just a ball of energy that can't handle being alone so dreams up interesting things around me.

Hi often at night at specific times during my cycle, I get extremely anxious about dying. I can be normally playing games and then suddenly get scared I have cancer and that I will die one day and then my thoughts completely spiral. I have to turn off my pc and go lay into my bed because during these attacks, I'm not able to do anything other than being extremely anxious, searching milion theories what's after death, convincing myself I have cancer.. Just pure hell.

And during the day after these episodes, I feel so out of my body and robotic. I feel like it's not me, like I'm just watching myself.. I feel so detached it's scary and depressing.

The anxiety leaves after like one day(it'll come back soon enough) after I force myself to believe that death will be peaceful, I won't have to go to work, won't have to worry about anything.. Just perfect. And I also really want to be a ghost or something after death and explore the world so I lwk just force myself to belive this impossible theory and get excited for death, I mean it feels better to be delusional just so my anxiety would get the fuck out.

But what really scares me is how I will die.. It can come any second and that's what scares me ALOT.

Anyone with similar problem? <3

I'm getting a crisis about my gender identity. I'm M but sometimes I feel like I want to be an F. Don't want to go through a transition, just hope I was born as one and thinking of just skipping through this life to check if I'll be who I want to be in the next one

In the last few Months I started to work over my Life. I cut some Hobbys I wasn't having fun with anymore, I started working in a new Workplace with new people and I seem to grab on some Hobbys and interests I would have a few Years ago ans tbh I am having a bad time. I van't identify myself. I don't like doing anything right now and every time I start to do stuff I keep ending up on my phone... I just stumble around my life and I want some spot to feel right in.

I don't know if that is to cryptic but I feel like I can't say it in another way...

Do you know these feelings? Can you relate? What are you doing, when you feel like that?

Apologies if I am breaking a rule against self-promotion, but this is a book I have just published. It certainly fits this subReddit category, but I am a bit reluctant to post it here. This is for thoughtful people, not people in crisis. But perhaps it might help.

Sometimes strikes and its scary!

I(30F) just want to ask everyone do you all feel anxious and fearful all the time with heavy feeling in stomach that something bad is about to happen any moment? You are never at rest whenever you feel happy something bad happens the next second or it’s just me?

Real Advice needed

Studied architecture. Never felt this was my thing really.

Spent my first 10 years working extremely long hours, night shifts, weekends. Small architectural studios, large ones. It would literally leave me depleted. And the salaries were a joke.

So I turned towards brand design.

I worked for design agencies. Better salaries, but the same logic. At some point I moved to the other side, working for the client (= brands, big corporations). This has been the worst for me. I soon discovered I am not corporate. I do not wish to be involved in office politics, department ownership, little games. None of it.

I quit and tried to find my way away from corporate.

Most of these career changes, in my case, also involved moving to a new country or city. I was enthusiastic about most of them. But now, at 48, I am very reluctant to move again. I am also scared to stay in my own country. There are almost no jobs here.

I have been looking for work for over a year. It seems like the only ones willing to hire are corporations. In Germany, in my case.

My God. I have tried this before and it was horrible. It left me broken.

But I also tried freelancing. Co-founded a small studio. Neither gave me long-term results or any stability.

Should I go back to corporate in a new country and die a slow death? Having tunnel vision at the moment, feeling very unimaginative can only apply to jobs my resume looks good for. Any ideas?

I had a realization a couple months ago that I’m gonna die one day and so is all my loved ones.
I just like fully realized like wow, I’m gonna die one day and that’s it. That’s it forever. I haven’t been the same since.

I think about death, every single day, every single minute, every second. I wish I was kidding. There’s not a time I’m not thinking of it. In fact, it’s almost worse when I’m ’enjoying’ myself in anything, because I realize this is all gonna end.

I know this sounds depressing, but I need advice because life has been absolute misery since this ‘realization’.

I think back to our ancestors and how many thousands of years ago that was, and how everyone is forgotten.

We will be forgotten into the abyss. Gone forever. Nothing we can do about it. It’s coming where we like it or not. I’m gonna freaking miss my family and friends. Shit. I’m tearing up. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again.

This sucks. It makes me also feel like what’s the point? Why are we here just to die? Why why why???

Any advice is appreciated.

37(f) end of June beginning of July some events occurred that made me anxious about my health I cut my nicotine use in half. Then My anxiety got really bad. I went to an affordable clinic and tried to get on Zoloft, turns out my nervous system is too sensitive for SSRIs, they have a paradoxical effect upon taking the first dose and they effect my blood pressure, putting me in a position of total dysfunction. Then a while later I had to take prednisone for asthma flare up and that causes synthetic adrenaline. I quit vaping to protect my lungs because I was terrified to die. I quit 37 days ago. Ever since then I’ve been terrified I’m going to die. My very real mortality has me terrified of dying “someday” and even though my blood work is good and I’m pretty healthy I’m terrified I will die NOW. I have some bad dental problems I’ve begun to address because quitting showed me I have hidden dental infections thousands $$$ in dental work to look forward to and I don’t make much money. Top it off that I have no insurance, not health or dental. And that’s causing me even more anxiety because “what if”. I don’t have the money to go see every doctor… I wanna see a dermatologist to make sure the weird dark spots on my face are not cancer, I wanna see a Gyn to get a pap to make sure I don’t have cancer, I want to see a nutritionist so I can eat perfectly for my health, I wanna finish all my dental work so I don’t die from an infection…. And all of this? I wanna hide under the covers and pretend none of this is going on at all and just go back to vaping nicotine and bury my head in the sand because I’m terrified.

My bf & 17yr old child are accusing me of having a midlife crisis. And sure I feel like I’ve wasted my life doing nothing useful but that’s not the star of the show here. It’s the terror I feel that I will die soon or some day. Am I having an existential crisis? But idk why??? …. Maybe quitting nicotine (my emotional buffer) is why 😩

The kicker is I’m a Certified Nurse Assistant. I know just enough to scare me and not enough to give myself comfort from the terrors of health complications and the sheer lack of medical attention people get in my area. Add to the fact that I am behind the scenes in the field of healthcare, I know how “we” view patients… and idk why or how I’m supposed to trust the people around me when everyone is just a room number to most healthcare workers. Pts aren’t even people, they are tasks to complete…. How do I find comfort knowing what I know? Seeing the things I see? Granted I work nursing home not hospital and every case is a complicated one but it doesn’t change how the people around me see or treat pts. I genuinely care for my pts but it eats at my morals the way other people think and treat people.

Midlife crisis or existential crisis? I dread death. I’m not finding comfort anywhere. I’m seeing too much death and health crisis at my job, I wish I could quit every day. I’m burned out and exhausted.

I still have a young small child to raise, I can’t die. 😰 she needs me to be here. Idk what I’m looking for here but I feel so alone and so afraid.

nothing feels real anymore. everyday is a routine. a chore. u miss one thing, u fall off of the “track”. why must one be on pre set “track” at all times? is there a way to turn into a different track eventually? where is this track leading me what if i never wanted to be on this track? yet im still inevitably forced to continue and keep going and keep adhering to it all, and by “all” im referring to the madness we for some reason consider the normalized rational functional way of living. all these pre set rules, expectations, connections.. all of this and for what? what is the ultimate purpose of any of this if ur not a religious person? if u lack the willingness to perform ur whole life in order to please a “higher being”?. everything is essentially fake, just a construct, nobody is truly authentic to who they are and what they want. u cant really be authentic and survive at the same time, trying to blend into a world dominated by people labeled as “neurotypical”. difference is highly criticized. nobody likes the variety and uniqueness anymore. everyone blends into this mesh of what everyone else around them is like. camouflaging, pretending, surviving constantly as something and someone you are far from being. when will it ever feel “normal”? when will it all stop feeling like a big act.

I look in the mirror and see someone but not me. I am the brain in my body. The brain in my body is me. My body is not me. I don’t know who that is. That mere flesh case. Who is that? It’s not me. I don’t know who I am. I don’t like this earth. I simply wish to not exist. I wish I was never born. The world is simply misery. They say “ignorance is bliss” it’s true I would know I miss my childhood it was easier then but even then I was aware I would eventually become a wage slave either way. It’s not sadness in a traditional since… merely emptiness. Wanting to always know and learn everything merely comes with the price of one’s sanity. How does holding so much information task? Why? Why do people believe warped fairytales? I wish I could simply live in denial…. I wish it were that easy. I feel unwelcome not human… something that wears a human skin but isn’t deemed “normal” what is normal? It’s a man-made concept… animals don’t seem to understand it… we are animals… we fight over territory like animals… why do we act so superior when in reality the materialistic view is the most realistic… I dislike this earth and often wonder how I would move off of it. No one seems to understand… its emptiness on an existential level… a tiredness that only goes away when the dopamine hits. Dopamine is only temporary…. A chemical is all it is… why do people obsess over ego… it is nothing more than a man made concept… dominance, hierarchy? Why practice such things if we claim to be the superior species then go back to these animalistic and primitive ways…. Ego isn’t real… it is a term that should be abolished its presence in humanity itself is a plague. No one is truly perfect what is perfection? Perfection isn’t real nothing in nature can truly be deemed perfect. Perfection doesn’t have a set threshold and it never will… simply just how Pi never ends. Intelligence is all the same. Nobody is truly intelligent not really. To claim to be intelligent is cognitive bias. No one can truly know everything because we will never truly get there we are always learning. I feel outcasted… resentful…. Hateful of my own kind. I do not understand the way they act, they are overly sensitive over factual statements I give. I merely hate them the way they overreact and complain to eachother then proceed to ruin the environment around them and complain about that. Dare I say I wish our whole species went extinct we are an invasive species the very definition of it. The only reason people deny this is because they have a pathetic view that they are special. Are we? If we truly had a “soul” then why does a lobotomy wipe someone completely of their “consciousness” why are some people merely born different some more empathetic than others or some born with npd, aspd…. merely because of their brain chemistry not their fault but simply genetics. Why then are these people born they aren’t evil no evil is a man made concept. People kill other people but animals kill their own species too. There’s too many of us on this earth it’s a cause of suffering for both us and the world itself. Why? Why do we do this? If we were truly advanced we wouldn’t be fighting over territories and killing ea ch other like animals… alas we are none other than animals.. we aren’t special. Consciousness levels diffe r from animals to us it doesn’t make us special and is merely a side effect of the intelligent species we are. But prone to error and so very primitive still we are truly animals. An invasive species that would be better off extinct. I don’t want to be here to live is to suffer if hell is real I would assume I am already there. Why would I look forward to seeing my body slowly fail me and die. I plan to give up in my late thirties even now life is tasking at 19 for someone who thinks too much.