Greentext

Yeah, but you gotta make it better. Develop goals and consistently work towards them. If life feels easy you're stagnating. If it's only hard because it sucks, you're stagnating. You should feel like you're pushing and exerting more than you want. That's not to say not resting, more understanding that it's really easy to feel you need to spend all time not dedicated to mandatory things needs spent on rest, and that just easily becomes years of stagnating on the couch.

Every day it gets a little easier… But you gotta do it every day — that’s the hard part. But it does get easier. - Jogging Baboon from BoJack Horseman

So goals. Do you feel lonely? Start looking for community and building social skills. I know I know nobody knows how to people. It's hard to learn. You're going to fuck up. Do it anyways. It gets easier, because you get better. And actually assess your failures and try to learn from them. You're building social skills like a muscle, but you're also learning them like a skill. Have small talk with strangers and coworkers, smile at new people. But there's no community! Have you looked? Look for things you're interested in. Board game nights are a goat for this if they interest you. You're sitting there chatting with new people and have something to focus on and talk about that isn't sensitive. Ttrpgs are also great. But any hobby will do. And you don't have to be skilled, you can just show up and say you're new to the thing. But if you can't find any you can start one. Put up flyers. Tell people nearby. You can just start shit. I ran an organization for over a year because I wanted it to exist in the area and it didn't so I just started holding meetings at a bar. (And yeah be prepared for people to not show up, that's ok, it takes time and you may not have properly gotten the word out, ask around)

Ok but what if you want your mental health to be better? Look into treatments for your issues. I have anxiety and cptsd. I got meds for the anxiety, but they were only part of the solution, because it wasn't just physical (it's also physical). I'd also developed unhealthy thought patterns. Learning to meditate and learning CBT techniques helped with both these issues. My wife likes acceptance therapy for her anxiety. I found that when I understand what the worst realistic scenario is for a situation I can work to cope with it and build a plan to resolve the situation rather than spiral into a panic attack and self harm about it. Regular exercise is also vital.

So yeah, it took a lot of work to go from a terrified and lonely closeted 19 year old who was at risk of failing out of college, was engaged in very disordered habits of all sorts, lived in filth, was deeply uncomfortable going to a grocery store much less a social event, and just generally was a wreck who went weeks without talking to people, to a 30 something married woman who still has plenty of issues, but they're largely under control, whose household is generally doing ok, who doesn't have panic attacks anymore, nor does she go 1 night a month too anxious to sleep (actually the insomnia is totally gone), and who was able to move across her country to a place she'd never been and only had one friend and within a year has a community and friends completely separate from the friend she already had (as well as integrating into that friend's local friends). If a loser like I once was can do it, I believe that most people can too.