Trying to start an active life

[Karolis]

Hello everyone.

I have been playing video games from a young age of 6 years old when i first got a computer in my household. My parents were limiting my play time to 1 hour a day, so i had a pretty good childhood and decent teen years, but as my age increased the limits set by my parents kind of disappeared and and i got myself completely into video games. Even though back then i had a group of very close friends and did hang outside fairly often. Another problem was that from a young age I was shy and had problems meeting new people and starting conversations with them. In highschool i started playing FPS games competitively and started hanging out with my friends a lot less. I was pretty much spending all my free time just sitting in front of my computer and playing without a care in the world. After school our group of friends split up to go to universities/colleges in different cities/countries, so I was left pretty much alone. What was i gonna do? I dedicated even more of my time on video games and web surfing in general in my university years. Out of the 30 people in my university group i made friends only with 2 of them and due to my addiction I did not even hang out with them outside of university, which resulted in me having no friends at all after university finished. Now I have been working for 3 years as a programmer without any social life outside of work. I feel like i don't even have the skills required to converse with people. One on one i can manage some talk, but in a group I can't muster a single word, because I don't feel like I can add anything to the conversation. Having wasted my teen years and university years doing pretty much nothing I don't have any stories to share, I don't even know the city I live in that well because I never went out to clubs or bars. Obviously my love life is non existent, I have had drunken sex a couple of times, but never made the effort, or knew how to make a connection with a female and date.

I turned 25 this year and realized how much of a failure I am compared to the people I work with, who have many interests, have read many books, accumulated all kinds of knowledge from experiencing different things, created families and are leading active lives. With these heavy thoughts depressing me i tried quitting gaming and it kind of worked, since games for the past couple of years have been just a way to spend my free time, I don't actually enjoy them anymore. I have reduced my gaming time to a maximum of 1-4 hours a day as opposed to 5-8. But it is still not even close to being enough, since i replaced my gaming time with useless internet surfing time. With all of these thoughts in my head i started getting depressed and started to seriously consider suicide. I am having suicidal thoughts around 3 times a week, once a month I would cry to myself about my pathetic situation and what I have become.

But before I depress myself even more with these thoughts of mine I decided to take action and completely remove gaming from my life, reduce pointless internet surfing time and add 2-4 hours of some kind of social/active activities. So my goal being here is to quit gaming completely and quit pointless internet surfing in general, find a new group of friends and hopefully create myself a healthy social life, where I could hopefully become more confident in my self and eventually create a family of my own. The biggest problem i will have to solve is how to open up myself to people more to befriend them, because socialization is definitely one of my weakest points at this moment.

I wrote quite a lot, if you have read it all you have my thanks. I'll be sticking around this forum looking for tips and advices on where to go on from now and what kind of activities i could take up. So if you have any kind of starting advice, i would love to hear them, thanks ?

Edited February 24, 2020 by Karolis

[Leo B]

Hey Karolis! 

I did read it all and I completely understand your frustration... 

I can see why you think that life is not worth living, and that you're so far behind... But the truth is that those thoughts mostly come out of  your depression. 

You have to separate yourself and what you tell yourself (force positive thoughts upon yourself) and what your depression is telling you. 

And obviously you should seek a counselor and even consider taking medication, because it seems to me you have a chemical imbalance due to all the screen time. (meds have really helped me at some point, just to allow myself to pick myself up and not beat myself up all the time). 

 

But IMPORTANTLY your gaming years might seem like a waste, but they are not a complete waste. Your English is excellent, you developed some skills there, maybe team work, maybe just having fun with others... Etc. 

It's a long process but those are transferable skills to other parts over time. Team work principles are the same in video games and at the office. Like how not to be toxic and focus on team goals... 

Plus you have a job and what not in your life... 

So you have a platform to build up firm there. 

Don't give up on life. You had a rough start, but the awareness you have now will take you far in life. 

Some people drink their whole life away, because they lack that awareness. 

 

Please seek out a counselor and visit your general practitioner about your depression ASAP. Will you be able to do that? 

 

Cheers and good luck, 

Leo B

 

[Guest]

Hello karolis .

Me and you have same situation somehow i wrote a lot about it in a topic .

my life is not better than your life at the moment but here are some tips that i use them and i am 100% improving every day:

1. never compare your life to anyone. this is worst thing you can do or someone do to you. the only one you need to compare yourself to is you. try to get better every day. when you get up in the morning write everything you to and the time . at the end of the night look at it and see what is that you don't like about that then try to change them 1 by 1 

2.about gaming the thing is we abuse gaming. gaming is not bad itself. it is like a knife you can cut the fruit with it and eat the fruit or you can hurt yourself or someone else.i had a bad addiction to league of legends that i swear once i played 20 hours in 1 day when i was alone at home. i had the addiction until afew weeks ago . i didnt delete the game but i play less then 2h in a day and that only before i go to bed. i have the addiction to my phone and internet for now im trying to set things right. if you dont delete games teach yourself how to use them in the right way

3.i don't want to say something bad about my country(i am from iran) but here is a seperation betwin  boys and girls and that's not easy to find a girl friend ( at least for me) also most population here are muslims and that make that even harder( i am muslim myself thats a diffrent story to tell). i think you don't have those limitaions in your country and that makes comunication easier for you. confidence doesn't need tips it only needs action . i still need to have the courage to take action .

On 8/30/2019 at 11:57 PM, Karolis said:

I am having suicidal thoughts around 3 times a week, once a month I would cry to myself about my pathetic situation and what I have become.

4. about this one. i exacly know how you feel . cuz i had the thought 1000 times because my life is really really hard for almost 4 years and my family is dealing with issues for 6 years. and lately i lost it. i couldn't wait more i kept thinking about sucide. there are afew things that compeletely removed the sucide thought from my mind. once day i was just like i can't die before i have a love and romantic relationship with a girl or i want to have my own house someday or many more things that can motivate you.  sucide doesn't solve anything and maybe add to your problems if the attemp fails. 

 

My english is not very good but i think i wrote 93% of what was in my mind . sorry that i talked alot and i wish you the best 

Edited September 3, 2019 by Guest

[Karolis]

23 hours ago, Leo B said:

 

 

1 hour ago, reza Mrb said:

 

Thanks a lot for the advice and insight to both of you.

I was thinking of going to a counselor myself as I don't really have any ideas on where to start the change. Guess that's the first step I'm gonna take, use some professional help.

[CornishGameHen]

On ‎9‎/‎3‎/‎2019 at 7:38 AM, reza Mrb said:

1. never compare your life to anyone. this is worst thing you can do or someone do to you. the only one you need to compare yourself to is you. try to get better every day. when you get up in the morning write everything you to and the time . at the end of the night look at it and see what is that you don't like about that then try to change them 1 by 1 

This is a good reminder because it safe-guards our self-esteem.  It's so easy to compare ourselves, I have done it multiple times.  It's not easy to steer clear from those thoughts.  But RezaMrb made another good point;  write everything down that you've accomplished, or want to accomplish, or would like to improve on.

Write it down. 

It's basically a history of written accomplishments that will remind you how far you've come.  It will also inspire you, I think.  I decided to create a journal on here even though I'm not so addicted to gaming, the journal will help focus my ambition into narrow goals that I am able to accomplish over time. 

I used the 'search' button for ''social anxiety' to find your post, btw, and others who also experience SA. I cope with the same thing, and for a time  I felt badly for myself too.  But we can only grieve so much.  We must take action to change our circumstances, and not wait around for us to 'feel' motivated.  It's actually the opposite.  Action 'precedes' motivation, which will then increase motivation.  If that makes any sense? 

Edited October 14, 2019 by CornishGameHen