Hey, Doris. Thank you for your reply. It has been quite some time since I have been on here, but since then, I have had deep moments of contemplation and have begun to question why I feel this way. I’m not sure if it was therapy or something else, but my mood has been quite good lately, and my self-depreciating thoughts are not quite so strong anymore.

Since attending therapy, I took it upon myself to read or listen to a book for at least 30 minutes a night, and one of the first books that I read/listened to was the Teachings of the Buddha, and then after that, I did the same with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and then further with Man’s Search for Meaning, and now I am listening to Nitchze’s “Beyond Good and Evil,” and as I examine every one that I have listened to/ read, I recognize a pattern, and it is that no one or society can ever tell us our value, what makes us happy, how we find fufillment- we have to find it for ourselves.

One particularly powerful theme I  took away from “Man’s Search for Meaning” is that we should never base our happiness or sense of value on things that are transitory. For when everything is taken away from you, it will be of little consequence. The one and only freedom we have is to choose how we want to perceive our own circumstances and knowing this to be true, I focus on what I can do to make the most of my time in the present moment, rather than fretting over goals or unmet potential.