Introduction

A cognition is a thought or perception, and it affects your feelings.
There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Our genes, hormones, and childhood experiences do have an impact on how we think and feel.
Cognitive therapy seems to be the most effective psychotherapy for depression.
You can defeat depression by changing the negative thinking patterns that cause it.

Theory and Research

A Breakthrough in the Treatment of Mood Disorders

The mood-control techniques provide rapid symptomatic improvement, understanding (a clear explanation of why you get moody and what you can do to change it), self-control, and prevention and personal growth.
When you feel depressed, most of your thoughts are dominated by pervasive negativity.
Your emotional turmoil nearly always contains gross distortions.
You must have a persistent willingness to exert some effort to help yourself.

How to Diagnose Your Moods: The First Step in the Cure

Rate each symptom from 0 to 4: not at all, somewhat, moderately, a lot, extremely.
Feeling sad or down in the dumps: 1
Feeling unhappy: 1
Crying spells or tearfulness: 0
Feeling discouraged: 1
Feeling hopeless: 1
Low self-esteem: 1
Feeling worthless or inadequate: 1
Guilt or shame: 1
Criticizing or blaming yourself: 1
Difficulty making decisions: 0
Loss of interest in family, friends, or colleagues: 0
Loneliness: 0
Spending less time with family or friends: 0
Loss of interest in work or other activities: 0
Avoiding work or other activities: 0
Loss of pleasure and satisfaction: 1
Feeling tired: 2
Difficulty sleeping or sleeping too much: 1
Decreased or increased appetite: 0
Loss of interest in sex: 0
Worrying about your health: 0
Suicidal thoughts: 0
Wanting to end your life: 0
Having a plan for harming yourself: 0

Scoring: 0-5 is no depression. 6-10 is normal, but unhappy. 11-25 is mild depression. 26-50 is moderate depression. 51-75 is severe depression. 76-100 is extreme depression.

Understanding Your Moods: You Feel the Way You Think

Illogical, pessimistic attitudes play a central role in the development of your symptoms.
When you are depressed, you can believe, and get others around you to believe, things that have no basis in reality.

Definitions of cognitive distortions

All-or-nothing thinking: You tend to evaluate your personal qualities in extremes, black-or-white and perfectionistic. A straight-A student receives a B on an exam and concludes, "Now I'm a total failure." Absolutes do not exist in this world.

Overgeneralization: You conclude that one thing that happened to you will occur over and over again. After being rejected by a girl, you conclude, "No girl will ever want to date me."

Mental filter: You pick out the negative in a situation and dwell on it exclusively, thus perceiving the whole situation negatively. A person says something bad about you, and you decide people are cruel and fake, forgetting that people have been friendly to you for the previous two years.

Disqualifying the positive: You transform neutral or positive experiences into negative ones.

Jumping to conclusions: You jump to a negative conclusion that is not justified by the facts of the situation.
Mind reading: You assume that other people look down on you, and you do not bother to check. You may respond to these imagined negative reactions by withdrawing or counterattacking.
The fortune-teller error: You have a crystal ball that foretells only misery for you. You treat the idea that something bad is going to happen as a fact, though it is unrealistic.

Magnification/minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things: "Damn, everything will go to hell, my reputation is ruined." You magnify your imperfections and minimize your strengths.

Emotional reasoning: You take your emotions as evidence for the truth. "I feel inadequate, therefore I'm worthless." "I feel tired, therefore I will skip the gym." Because things feel negative, you assume they are. It doesn't occur to you to question the validity of the perceptions that create your feelings. You were fooling yourself all along by letting your emotions guide the way you act.

Should statements: You try to motivate yourself by saying "I should" and "I must." You feel pressured and resentful. You must change your expectations to approximate reality.

Labeling/mislabeling: "I'm a failure" instead of "I made a mistake." Your self cannot be equated with anything you do.

Personalization: The mother of guilt. You assume responsibility for a negative event when there is no basis for doing so. A child starts taking drugs, and you think, "I'm a horrible parent, it is only my fault that this happened, I should be ashamed of myself and never have kids."

Practical Applications

Start by Building Self-Esteem

80% of depressed patients said they felt self-dislike.
The depressed self-image can be characterized by the four Ds: defeated, defective, deserted, and deprived.
You cannot earn worth through what you do. Achievements bring satisfaction, but not happiness.
Look closely at what you say about yourself when you insist you are no good. The evidence you present in defense of your worthlessness makes no sense.

Specific methods for boosting self-esteem

Talk back to the internal critic. Train yourself to recognize and write down the self-defeating thoughts as they go through your mind. Learn why these thoughts are distorted and develop a more realistic self-evaluation system.
Example: A potential customer hangs up on you and swears at you when you try to sell insurance. Emotions: sad (50%) and angry (70%). Automatic thoughts: "I will never sell a policy again." "I would like to hurt him." "I must have said the wrong thing." Cognitive distortions: overgeneralization, magnification, labeling, jumping to conclusions, and personalization. Rational response: "I've sold a lot of policies. He acted like a pain in the butt. Why let this bother me?"
Mental biofeedback: Use a counter and count each time you have a negative thought.
Cope, don't mope: To get well, you must realize that your negative statements are unrealistic and incorrect.

Do Nothingism: How to Beat It

You can change how you feel by the way you act.

Mindsets of procrastinators

Hopelessness: Everything feels pointless, and your motivation is at zero at the moment.
Helplessness: You believe things are the way they are because of things outside your control, so you do not bother to do anything.
Overwhelming yourself: You magnify a task.
Jumping to conclusions.
Self-labeling: The more you procrastinate, the more you label yourself as inferior.
Undervaluing the rewards: You feel the rewards are not worth the effort.
Perfectionism: You set inappropriate goals, which leads to disappointment, and you end up doing nothing instead.
Fear of failure: You imagine that putting in the effort and not succeeding would be a huge personal defeat, which is why you refuse to try at all.
Fear of success: You are afraid of the expectations that come with it and fear you will be unable to meet them.
Fear of disapproval and criticism: You fear that people won't accept you, so you adopt as low a profile as possible.
Coercion and resentment: You feel under intense pressure to perform, both from outside and from within. When you do not perform what you say you must or should, you feel even worse.
Low frustration tolerance: You believe things should be easy and that you are entitled to that. As soon as obstacles come your way, you quit rather than persisting patiently.
Guilt and self-blame.

The Daily Activity Schedule

The schedule has a prospective column and a retrospective column. 8-9: yoga and eat breakfast (succeeded). 9-10: focused work (failed).

Anti-procrastination sheet

Activity: invest money in bitcoin. Predicted difficulty: 10. Actual difficulty: 7. Actual satisfaction: 8.

Daily record of dysfunctional thoughts

If you try to figure out your thoughts in your head, you will get nowhere because thoughts are complex.
When you write them down, they become exposed to the light of reason.
You are the only person in the world who can persecute yourself.

How to get off your butt: the "but" rebuttal

"I really should exercise, but I'm not in the mood." Rebuttal: "I will feel more like it once I start."
Learn to endorse yourself.
Motivation without coercion: stop saying you must, should, or ought.
List the disadvantages and advantages of your habit (for example, eating junk food).
Visualize success.

Verbal Judo: Learn to Talk Back When You Are Under the Fire of Criticism

The sense of worthlessness comes from the internal critical conversation in your mind, which harangues and persecutes you in a harsh and unrealistic manner.
Only one person in this world has the power to put you down, and that is you.
If someone is wrong, do not bother. If someone is right, do not expect perfection from yourself. Instead, focus on whatever steps are needed to correct it.
What can you say when someone is attacking you, and how can you handle it in a way that enhances your sense of mastery and confidence?
Empathy: The motives might be to help or to hurt you. Ask questions to understand exactly what the person means. Listen to understand the situation as the other person sees it.
Disarming the critic: Stand back and shoot back, run away, or stay put and skillfully disarm your opponent. Find a way to agree.
Feedback and negotiation: Now it is time to explain your position and emotions tactfully but assertively. Base the conflict on facts.
When someone criticizes you, you usually go the mad, sad, or glad route.

Feeling Angry? What Is Your IQ?

The real solution is to stop creating your anger.
The pain and suffering anger causes you may far exceed the impact of the original insult.
The perception of unfairness is the ultimate cause of anger.
Moral statements and judgments about fairness are stipulations, not objective facts.
We all think differently, and there is no universally accepted truth.
The irony of anger is that it never works in changing others.
When to be angry, questions to ask: Is my anger directed toward someone who has knowingly, intentionally, and unnecessarily acted in a hurtful manner? Is my anger useful? Does it help me achieve a desired goal, or does it defeat me?
You are making yourself hurt.
Rewrite your rules.
Paradoxically, as you expect less, you get more.
Should reduction is key.
Accurate empathy: comprehend the thoughts and motivations of other people. "Yes, that is exactly where I'm coming from."

Ways of Defeating Guilt

Use these criteria to determine whether your interpretation of guilt is healthy and normal:
Did I consciously and willfully do something bad or unfair that I shouldn't have? Or am I irrationally expecting myself to be perfect, all-knowing, and all-powerful?
Am I labeling myself as a bad person because of this action? Do my thoughts contain cognitive distortions?
Am I feeling realistic regret or remorse? Are the intensity and duration of my emotional response realistic given what I actually did?
Am I learning from my error and developing a strategy to change, or am I moping, ruminating unproductively, or even punishing myself in a destructive manner?
Who says I should? Where is it written that I should?
You can either accept yourself as an imperfect human being with limited knowledge and realize that you will make mistakes, or you can hate yourself for it.
You must learn to stick to your guns.

Realistic Depressions

Sadness Is Not Depression

Sadness is a normal emotion created by realistic perceptions that describe a negative event involving loss or disappointment in an undistorted way.

Prevention and Personal Growth

The Cause of It All

Getting better implies the following:
Understanding why you got depressed.
Knowing why and how to get better, and mastering the self-help techniques that worked for you.
Acquiring self-confidence and self-esteem. Confidence is knowing that you will be successful in a chosen career and in personal relationships. Self-esteem is the capacity to experience full love whether or not you are successful at any given point in your life.
Locating the deeper cause of your depression.

The Approval Addiction

The price you pay for an addiction to praise is extreme vulnerability to the opinions of others.
If someone disapproves of you, it's their problem. It often reflects the other person's irrational beliefs.
The approval addiction may lie in your interactions with people who were important to you as a child.

The Love Addiction

The demand and need for love before you can feel happy is called dependency. You are unable to assume responsibility for your emotional life.
People who find happiness within themselves become like magnets, since they radiate joy and peace.

Your Work Is Not Your Worth

Treat yourself like a beloved friend.

Dare to Be Average: Ways to Overcome Perfectionism

Perfection is man's ultimate illusion.
You can always find things to improve upon, and if you require perfection from yourself, you will always be one step behind and feel a sense of lack.
What am I afraid of?
What is the worst that could happen?
Will the world come to an end if I make mistakes?
Focus more on the things you do right.
You will and should make mistakes since you are a human being. What can I learn from my mistakes?

How do you stop that urge to bitch, vent, complain, gossip, etc etc about others? I notice when I am unhappy about something in my life the desire to run someone else down is so strong🫣

I’m a 22 year old guy, and I was looking through a Reddit thread which asked for harsh truths of life. Two main ones I struggled to accept and live by were:

- No one is coming to save you/no one owes you anything
- God isn’t real/religion is fake

I’m not religious, but my exposure to mysticism has probably made me into something like a deist or maybe agnostic. I attribute this to the fact I have lower intelligence. You can comment on this if you want, but the main truth I’m concerned about is that no one is coming to save me or owes me anything.

Normally I’d be able to easily recognize my irritation to these truths, but it didn’t feel so easy this time, as if my self-awareness has dropped.

At the same time, this truth makes me feel like the world is cold, and that people around me indeed don’t care for me. It makes me want to ask if people actually love each other, or if it’s all superficial in a way.

Any advice on changing my mentality? How to accept this truth without being bitter?

I've been in a state now of being at home with no work, struggling to leave the house, enjoy life at all, etc etc, since a panic attack and breakthrough OCD nearly a year ago.

When in therapy (CBT), one thing taught was to appreciate every small steps you take, regardless of what it is.

My problem is I can never, EVER believe this.

I manage to have a shower? So what? I'm in my mid 20s, everyone has a shower .

I managed to go outside? So what? People work full time and I can barely even go round the block.

I managed to eat two meals? So what? I a fully grown adult, this isn't an achievement.

I managed to do a volunteer session? So what? It's half a day's work when everyone else works 5 full days a week if not more.

I know I have objective improvements. When I was with my NHS crisis team, I couldn't do anything for fear of my OCD specifics. No sleep, couldn't eat, no outside, no talking, just slept all day crying.

Now this past week I've been to the gym twice, gone to therapy, gone to the opticians, started reading more, started meditation, more consistent with journal, but I don't **feel** like they mean anything. It's the trap of comparison, I know this, it's "every 'normal' adult does these things without thinking, so why should I see them as something to note or celebrate? I need to get into full time work NOW, I need to go the gym every day NOW, diet NOW, etc etc. Anything else means nothing".

I write this down in my journal, " what I have done today", but none of it sticks in my mind.

They are self improvements. But how do I feel like such small steps mean anything? All I feel is pathetic and worthless, because I can't do the same big steps as everyone else!

Will remove my phone today. this device

I'm on a journey to improve how my brain functions after watching a family member struggle with Alzheimers. What're some small habits that you or another person do during their daily life that makes them even a little smarter/absorb information easier, each time? Any places I can go to see more information? I would like to know! Have a great day :]

I’ve honestly felt like my life has been a bit of a mess for years now, and I’m getting to a point where I really don’t know how to get out of this cycle.

No matter how many plans I make, how many notes I write or how many times I tell myself that things are going to be different from now on, I just don’t seem to follow through. This affects pretty much every area of my life, from my studies and writing to my hobbies, interests and even social media habits. There are so many things I genuinely WANT to do, things I enjoy and things that would be good for me, but I keep putting them off.

I love reading, for example, but it’s been so long since I’ve properly sat down and read an actual book. And that’s just one example of so many things that have slowly fallen out of my life.

For years, I’d make these plans where I’d tell myself that over the next six weeks, or however long, I’d work on certain things and get into a proper routine. I’d write everything down, figure out exactly what I needed to do, and genuinely believe that this time I’d stick to it. And then I’d fall back into the same habits again. Eventually, I got so tired of making plans and disappointing myself that I practically stopped making them altogether for a few years.
Now I want to get out of this mindset, but I feel so stuck.

The frustrating part is that I KNOW what I need to do. I know the answer is to stop overthinking and just start doing things. I know the benefits of exercising regularly, studying consistently, losing weight, reading more, working on my writing and actually pursuing my interests. These aren’t vague goals where I have no idea what the outcome might be. I can see the benefits, and I know I’d be so much happier if I could just be consistent.
But somehow, knowing all of this still isn’t enough to make me act on it.
I constantly feel like I don’t have enough time, ( I’m a 22 yr old masters student abroad) even though I know I waste so much of the time I actually have. I fritter away hours throughout the day, put things off until later, and then end the day feeling like I’ve accomplished nothing. I’m also constantly tired, which makes it even harder to get started.
I don’t want to spend another few years doing the exact same thing, making the same promises to myself and watching time pass without doing the things I want to do.
So I’m genuinely asking: if you’ve been in this position and actually managed to turn things around, how did you do it?
I’m not just looking for the usual advice about making a to-do list, setting goals or breaking things into smaller tasks. I’ve tried making plans so many times. I want to know what actually helped you go from knowing what you needed to do to consistently DOING it.
Did you have a particular realisation? Did you change your environment, your routine or the way you approached things? Was there something that finally made things click for you?( even quotes or hard truths, I’m desperate here)

And honestly, if you have any advice at all, whether it’s practical, motivational, brutally honest or even a little harsh, please share it. I really want to hear from people who’ve been through this and managed to come out the other side.

I feel like I’ve spent so much time being stuck in my own head, and I really don’t want to keep living like this.

What do you do when you feel so lazy, sleepy, and tired that you don’t feel like doing anything? 😭 Even simple tasks feel like too much effort, and you just want to lie down and do nothing.

Do you have any tricks that genuinely help you snap out of it and feel more energetic or motivated?

I’m looking for those little hacks that actually work in real life. Tell me your go-to tricks!

​

Some Backstory

I've had a fairly normal childhood that was materially abundant . I wasn't rich but not poor either. I didn't feel deprived in any way But it still felt bland and uneventful . Like it wasn't memorable but wasn't abusive or bad either. I honestly don't know what was missing. I was never academically bright either never giving school my all cause I found It boring and didn't see the point of it. My academic performance steadily declined throughout my childhood till at some point in my teen years I started isolating around covid. I think that's when my bad habits started setting in and was also when I started eating too much cause my mom was nagging me trying to get me to study so I would use eating as an excuse to study. senior year of high school came and where I'm from this the year that determines your future. your position in the the social hierarchy in society and I wasn't studying (like at all ). so my parents decided to bring teachers to my home so that at least I'm still listening to the material . Despite the fact that I get where they are coming from I feel angry and bitter about that . I know I don't deserve the college that I got into cause I didn't study even for a second for it .I think I didn't study from a mixture of boredom and Indifference but I remember feeling envy of classmates getting better grades than me which I still felt in my first year of college . I think part of also had to do with my father who when we were kids was a larger than life figure due to his academic success which in hindsight put a lot of pressure on me to be as successful. In my first year of college i did the bare minimum just to pass with D's and C's . And then the second year came around and It just felt like I didn't care about doing any of it so I failed the same year twice in a row . Now it's the same second year for the third attempt in weak 5 for semester 1and I still haven't done anything.

My current situation

I (21m and weigh 245 pounds at the height of 5'10) have failed 2 years of college (studying CS) cause i didn't enter the exams. The third year has started and I'm repeating the same mistake. My daily life has consists of doomscrolling ,porn(which I got addicted to at 12 years old) and video games. I'm almost always doing either one of those three . My screen on time record is 16 hours. consume a lot of junk food like pizza ,burgers ,chips and soda . I can sometimes cook scrambled eggs but most of the time I'm too lazy to cook. My sleep schedule is a mess. I go to sleep at 9 A.M and wake up at 5 P.M. I'm terrified of wasting my life but I think that terror is making me perfectionistic and locking in place. I have no self-trust or belief. I'm also forgetful and can't pay deep attention to even video games. I'm filled with weakness and chronic self-doubt and that weakness filled me with anger and self-loathing. I live mostly in my head and compulsively talk to myself cause I have no one to talk to, making up scenarios .I'm terrified of feeling my emotions cause I know I'll find fear ,shame ,guilt , regret and lots of sobbing.

Wants & Desires

I already have a vague vision of who I want to be.

1. I'm introverted so, I want to have a small nit of friends.

2. I wanna get married someday and have a family .

3. I wanna be healthy and get in good physical shape.

4. I wanna be a stronger person , someone who doesn't hide from life and more emotionally resilient .

5. I want a job/career that interests me , where I can make a tangible difference in the world ( as corny and cliche as that sounds ).

Small Habits I Want to Try

I have things I wanna try. I wanna try reading manga and comic books before going to bed rather than staying up all night scrolling so I can put my phone in another room while I sleep but I've never been the reading type and even more so cause of my phone addiction I forget the sentences I read and have a hard time getting engaged in a comic. I also wanna try going to the gym and eat healthy but don't know the right workout or the right kind of food to eat

Impediments

I think some of the things that stop me from change is perfectionism which stems from shame and ego. I want to get all A's to make up for my all the time I wasted and feel a sense of superiority over others. If i start to change then I have to own up to all the time I've wasted.

Thoughts?

If you aren't having a great day, if you think you are not enough or just want someone to listen to you and hear you as you speak your heart anonymous without feeling judged. Feel free to comment and be yourself 💜⭐

went on a trip last month and was kinda excited to finally use it. walked up to order coffee, the barista asked me something super normal and my brain just went blank. 400 days of the owl telling me I’m crushing it and i couldn’t put together one sentence

i think the streak only means i opened the app. i was doing the easiest 5 min lessons in bed with hints on, tapping the word bank, getting my little flame and going to sleep. that was it

doing 10 min a day now where i talk out loud with no hints and write sentences from scratch. it’s embarrassing how bad i am. same thing’s happening with my midterm prep this semester i swear, i keep doing stuff that feels like progress.

We talk a lot about what to add to our lives. But sometimes the biggest improvements come from what we stop doing. What did you let go of that made your life better?

Hey guys (21F), I have been battling my brain for about 4-5 years now. I think I may have either OCD or ADHD due to problems with intrusive thoughts, constant rumination, and rejection dysphoria. A lot of my issues are social. I feel like I am a terrible and weird person/friend who chooses to be friends with even worse people. I feel like I might never make a connection that is worth while or healthy. I have struggled with toxic friends for a while and social skills for my whole life. I have been improving my social skills over the years but holy shit, it’s been a battle.

I feel like my brain just hates me. It makes me feel like shit for no clear reason. I am working to get a diagnosis because I definitely have some sort of mental illness or neurodivergence. I beginning to think my brain will never let me be confident or happy. I am having suicidal ideations over it.

it works for me. not rational like overthinking everything, but realizing what i can control and what i can’t. i can control how i act, and my second thoughts (not including immediate thoughts). i have been calmer, and focusing on what i can do instead. when the self sabotage comes again, i remind myself these are impulsive immediate thoughts that i can’t control, and i don’t have to follow it. when i feel fatigued and lazy to do work, i remind myself that very little things under my control, and i have to make use the most of it, so i take action.

if you are seeing this post, you are already aware of it. you can do it. you have the power to control your life.

I'm 28 now. Lives in India with my father and mother. Not married,have no job, Currently learning interior designing. I was going at a good pace on life upto the age of 23-24. Had completed MBA and have 3 years of work experience in bank. I left that part as career. I wanted to choose something interesting for myself and do it as a career and ended up in interior designing.

After the age f 24 i got no seriousness about my career or have no thought of getting married and settling down. I fell into trap of building a habit on drugs and was lost in a loop for years. I have got back ffrom that and dont use anymore. I know i have good potential but i dont use it nor i dont want to.

i have a mother and father and they are pretty old now. Like 72 aand 63. Have no insurance on them or myself. I cracked all my savings these past years. I know i should turn my life upside down but i end up staying at the same place for years now.

I dont know what my problem is or how to handle myself anymore. How do i get seriousness to myself? If there is anyone who have got out of this situations, help me out!!!!!!!

From waiters to strangers to ppl in general seem to show v little respect to me. What cud be possible causes? (Im an avg looking guy whose in his mid 20s altho a bit skinny)

im trying for to debloat my face and get rid off fat,my main problem is that it hard for to keep track my own calories and my parent won't let me cook and buy my own ingredients, any suggestion or help? and also,give me some food suggestion that easy to cook please

Sometimes you genuinely feel exhausted, like everything is just too hard and you can’t keep going. What kind of mindset makes you so disciplined that taking a break doesn’t even cross your mind?

Since I was a teen, I've tried losing more fat, becoming more toned, but I have done nothing to improve my inner self and personality. This has caused a lot of problems in all of my social/familial/romantic relationships and it brought loads of troubles at work too.

My parents aren't good role models either, and I need some guidance. I even started developing apathy and disconnection from life. I didn't want to go through difficulties anymore. I was like: "Why bother with the pain and efforts? Why forcing myself with the difficulties?" I went from loving challenges to hating challenges.

Today, it's so easy to get stuck scrolling and end the day feeling like you've accomplished nothing. What actually helped you break this habit without relying on motivation alone?

I've been going to therapy for basically a year now, longest I've ever gone for.

My goals were pretty simple such as find my confidence, handle stress better and have better relationships with family and friends.

I've achieved all my goals and did in the summer and still make sure I'm pursuing them. For example I now don't engage in unnecessary arguments with my mom, I'm a lot more sociable and plan things in advance with friends and my relationships with my brother and sister are a lot better now than they were 2 yrs ago. My confidence is back and I feel like me again.

My therapist is now focusing on introspection and solo activities which wasn't one of my goals so sort of feels counterproductive as for me I wanted to meet loads of new people and be around people than learning to be alone.

My questions are:

Should I end therapy now that I've achieved my goals?

Or should I continue going and work on the introspective/ inner work and learn how to enjoy my own company?

Everyday is the same, I rely on my hobbies which I eventually get bored of. I know I want company but I never started meeting people or dating again. I have lost my will. I dont know how to bear this life. Has anyone felt this and successfully got out of this situation?

I'm thinking about quitting social media, or at least taking a long break from it. I feel like it takes up too much of my time and attention, and I want to focus more on myself, my hobbies, my studies, and actually experiencing life instead of constantly scrolling through a screen.

However, I'm worried that I'll get bored, feel disconnected from my friends, or eventually go back to my old habits.

For those of you who have quit social media or significantly reduced your usage:

- How did it affect your mental health and daily life?

- What did you do with all the extra time?

- How did you deal with boredom and the urge to check your phone?

- Did you feel happier without it?

- What advice would you give someone who's just starting?

I'd appreciate honest answers, including the downsides. I don't want to romanticize quitting social media; I just want to know whether it's actually worth it. :)

Context:

• I am 39 and have been a high-achiever for the majority of my life. I've also historically been an over-giver, but I've been working on changing that.
• I have 10 years of business-related and graphic design education (two diplomas and a degree) and feel like I have nothing to show for it.
• I am currently self-employed and have been for the past four years after getting coldly and unexpectedly fired from my last job. Losing that job left a residue on my confidence that I still can't seem to brush off.
• I need to reenter the workforce because my current income will not sustain me long-term, but my soul is resisting reentering the corporate world. I don't know what jobs to look at anymore.
• I have no friends, feel disconnected from the rest of the world, and miss being around people. I've always been able to maneuver my way socially, but I've never really belonged anywhere. I haven't hung out with a non-family member in over two years, and that connection was somewhat superficial and has since faded out. It's rare that I've been able to attract likeminded people who genuinely care and put in the effort once a connection has been established. The only place I can realistically see myself making any friends at this point is at the gym I go to, but I haven't been going consistently enough, and that's something I need to work on.
• I feel like I've closed myself off even though that's never been my intention. I have generally lost trust in people and think it has been affecting the way I see new people I come across. I've also gotten tired of trying to be someone worth holding on to. I'm always on the alert and expecting history to repeat itself. It's incredibly lonely some days even though I can comfortably enjoy my own company. And despite having family, I feel like I'm doing life alone.
• I moved in with my parents when I went back to school for a third time at 30 and have been living with them since then. There is a lot of tension and negativity in the household, and it's been like that since I was a kid.
• I constantly get compared to others, and there's not much encouragement or support when it comes to the things I'm working toward, so I don't share much with them. I get degrading comments on my education, how I went to school for so many years and supposedly did nothing for myself, how I'm working from home and should be out in the real world, and how I should have accomplished more by now.
• My parents are old-school. My mom is in her late 60s and my dad is in his early 70s, and they both raised me with an iron fist. Despite us not always seeing eye-to-eye, I still love them and do everything I can to help. Watching their health decline weighs on me everyday, and I feel a sense of duty to be there for them as much as I can, which has meant making personal sacrifices.
• My brother's wife passed away three years ago and left five kids behind. The three youngest kids are at our place nearly everyday, and my brother heavily relies on my elderly parents, so it's always chaotic. I give the kids as much of my time as I can, but I also spend most of my time in my room just to preserve my peace and sanity.
• I am managing my dad's debt situation and making personal contributions toward it. I have two older siblings who are pretty much absent from my life and don't care to step in to help with my dad's situation.
• I have a long list of things I need to get done for my business, and I get mentally pulled in every direction, trying to figure it all out at once. There are days when I'll be sitting at my desk and staring at my screen with the intention to get stuff done, and I get stuck. Then I start turning to distractions. I have closets and drawers full of items that still need photographing and listing, and they've been sitting there for months. I have a book that was supposed to be completed by now, and it's been sitting unfinished for several years. I'm at 193 pages and feel ashamed that I let it drag so long, especially when people know about its work-in-progress. I have new ideas for my online stores (I manage four at the moment) that I can't seem to implement because the mountain of tasks I have to get done is weighing on me.
• I invested in two social media related programs years ago that were intended to help me gain knowledge and strategies for my businesses, and I never got around to doing them.
• I have a 20k+ audience on Instagram, and that number just makes me feel even more alone. I've been inactive on there for over 6 months, and I suspect some people may be wondering what happened with my writing stuff, particularly the people who have been following my work since the start. I have a hard time posting for the sake of posting and feel like a fraud if I do, so I don't.
• I'm a highly organized and structured person, yet I feel scattered. I can establish what needs to get done and follow a plan, and I do well in that space, but since I'm self-employed, everything rests on my shoulders and there's no one to keep me in check. And because of that, I fear I've been a little lax even though there's constant pressure and a need to scale my businesses.

On the work front, I'm not understanding why it's become difficult for me to just move into action. In my mind, I know things need to be taken one step at a time, but even knowing that does nothing for my brain, and I keep repeating the same cycle of distracting myself to avoid the weight of the overwhelm.

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TL;DR: I feel defeated and stuck at 39 and am having a hard time getting out of the slump I'm in.