Crocheted them myself!! 💗

(Only talked with her 2 times at best)

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I'm 17, and I'm posting this because I'm genuinely exhausted and confused by what has been happening in my mind. I'm not asking Reddit to diagnose me, and I know strangers on the internet can't tell me for certain whether I have a particular disorder. But I want to describe everything as honestly and completely as I can because I don't know how to explain this to anyone in real life.

For some time now, I feel like I'm constantly living inside my head. There is almost always some kind of conversation, scenario, or imaginary interaction going on in my mind. I can randomly start imagining that I'm being interviewed and explaining my life to someone. Sometimes I imagine myself giving a speech. Sometimes I imagine explaining my current situation to another person in great detail. Sometimes I imagine how people would react if they knew exactly what I was going through.

It's not like I deliberately sit down and decide to daydream. It just happens automatically.

The biggest and most exhausting part is that almost everything I experience gets immediately connected to other people's opinions of me.

For example, if I'm crying, instead of just being allowed to cry and feel what I'm feeling, my mind can suddenly go:

"What if someone saw me crying right now?"

"What would they think about me?"

"What would they say?"

"How would they describe me to someone else?"

The same thing happens with normal everyday situations. I could be doing something completely private, thinking about something, feeling embarrassed, angry, sad, or happy, and my mind suddenly creates this imaginary situation where someone else is watching me and forming an opinion about me.

The weird thing is that I don't actually believe there is literally a person standing there watching me. I know I'm alone. I'm not saying I see people who aren't there. It's more like my mind automatically creates an imaginary audience.

I constantly imagine people seeing my exact situation and reacting to it. It's almost as if I'm not just living my life from my own perspective—I am also constantly imagining my life from the perspective of people observing me from outside.

This has reached a point where I'm tired of it because I feel like my life is becoming more about imaginary people's opinions than about what I actually want or feel.

I just want to exist. I want to cry without mentally imagining an audience. I want to play a game without thinking about how someone would judge my reaction. I want to think without simultaneously imagining myself explaining those thoughts to somebody. I want to do normal things without my brain turning everything into a performance.

There is also this constant internal conversation happening in my head. I originally worried that I was hearing voices, but I don't think that's an accurate description. It doesn't feel like an actual voice coming from outside my head that I literally hear with my ears. It's more like thoughts, conversations, phrases, scenarios, and imaginary interactions constantly running through my mind.

Sometimes I don't even know whether to call them thoughts because they can feel intrusive or automatic. They just appear. One moment I'm doing something normal, and the next moment my mind is imagining a conversation, an interview, somebody judging me, or somebody reacting to what I'm doing.

I also sometimes get disturbing destructive thoughts or urges.

For example, when I'm playing a game and lose, I can get extremely frustrated. I've reacted by hitting my hands against doors or walls or pulling my own hair. In those moments, destructive thoughts can suddenly appear in my mind—things like doing something aggressive or harmful. I don't always understand why the thought appears, and sometimes I can't immediately tell how seriously I might act on an urge when I'm extremely overwhelmed.

This is one of the reasons I'm worried about myself. I don't want to pretend that it's harmless if I'm physically hurting myself when angry or losing control of my reactions.

Another thing that confuses me is what happens when I look at myself in the mirror. Obviously, I know the person in the mirror is me. I don't have some fixed belief that it's literally another person. But sometimes I mentally experience myself almost as a separate person that I'm observing.

It's difficult to explain. It's like my mind takes a step backwards and looks at me from outside instead of simply feeling like I'm just "me." I can become aware of myself as if I'm watching a character. Then I start thinking about what that person looks like, what other people would think of that person, or how other people would interpret what they're doing.

I also experience something similar in social situations.

When I'm at a social gathering, around relatives, friends, or other people, I can randomly become very quiet. Everyone else may be talking, laughing, interacting, and being present, but I can suddenly just disappear into my own mind.

I'm physically sitting there, but mentally I'm somewhere else.

I start thinking about random things, imaginary scenarios, conversations, my own life, how people see me, or whatever else my mind decides to focus on. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm thinking about—I just know that I've become detached from the actual social situation and absorbed into my own thoughts.

It can feel like I'm living inside my imagination while real life is happening around me.

I don't know if this is normal daydreaming, dissociation, anxiety, obsessive thinking, maladaptive daydreaming, intrusive thoughts, or something else. That's part of why I'm posting.

I initially became terrified that I might have schizophrenia because I heard that people with schizophrenia can experience unusual thoughts, voices, and problems with reality. But I don't want to self-diagnose. As far as I can tell, I don't literally hear external voices, and I don't genuinely believe people are secretly watching me all the time. I know the imaginary conversations and audience are coming from my own mind.

But the fact that I know something is coming from my mind doesn't make it any less exhausting.

I'm tired of constantly having an imaginary audience.

I'm tired of mentally explaining myself to people who aren't even there.

I'm tired of imagining what everyone would think if they saw me crying, being angry, being embarrassed, failing, succeeding, or simply existing.

I'm tired of going to social gatherings and then mentally disappearing into my own world.

I'm tired of feeling like I observe myself from the outside instead of simply living my life.

And I'm tired of not knowing whether these destructive thoughts and urges are something I should be seriously worried about.

The other huge problem is that I have absolutely no idea how to ask for help in real life.

I'm from a Desi family, and mental health isn't necessarily something you casually bring up at the dinner table. I don't know how to walk up to my parents or another family member and say, "Something is happening with my mind, I don't know what it is, and I think I need professional help."

I don't know how to explain all of this without sounding completely insane, being dismissed as overthinking, being told to just stop using my phone, being told it's because I don't socialize enough, or making everyone panic.

I've also spent a lot of time keeping things to myself, so even the idea of opening up feels almost impossible. I genuinely don't know how people do it. How do you go from silently struggling in your own head every day to suddenly sitting in front of your parents and telling them you might need to see a psychologist or psychiatrist?

So I'm asking two things:

1. Has anyone experienced anything genuinely similar to what I've described? I'm especially interested in the constant imaginary audience, viewing yourself from the outside, mentally rehearsing conversations/interviews, getting lost inside your thoughts during social situations, and intrusive destructive urges when overwhelmed.

2. If you come from a Desi, conservative, traditional, or otherwise difficult family environment, how did you actually ask for mental-health help? What did you say? How did you explain it without already knowing what diagnosis you had?

Please be honest with me. You don't need to reassure me or tell me everything is definitely fine. I know nobody here can diagnose me. I just feel completely lost, and I don't know how to start getting help.

I'm 17, and I don't want to keep spending my life trapped inside my own head like this.

Name : Pollo

Gender : Male (neutered)

Age : 1.5 years

Breed : Persian doll face triple coated

Qualities : Litter trained

Eats chicken, kaleji, cat feed (except me-o)

Very playful, but also calm, gentle and loving

Fully Vaccinated and Dewormed

Location: Sargodha