Dear Ben:

Welcome back!

The plan back in May 2017 was that you were going to get married in three months, that would have been August 2017- did the wedding take place and are you now a married man?

You mentioned on this thread that your health is deteriorating, related to the high  blood pressure you mentioned years ago? Got to lower your stress level, eat a healthy diet, exercise daily, keep a healthy body weight and if needed, take medicine so to keep your blood pressure down.

September 2016 you described your state of mind and life this way: “I feel like I have nothing to be proud of, no achievement and no aspirations. I know I am ambitious and hard working but I have nowhere to aim at right now and at my current job I am wasting away being lazy and bored all the time. I very much wish I could click a button and get a new desire I feel passionate about”= this is depression.

You wrote today: “5 years ago I hit a major crisis in my life after being made redundant”. May 2017 you wrote about that job that you lost:  “I lost my job and due to the economy I couldn’t get another in the same field. That job was my lifelong ambition and my passion and my identity was intertwined around it. Losing it was very much like losing myself.. I feel hopeless and that I have no direction… I have off days but frankly at the moment my off day has turned into an off switch that’s always ‘off’.. at the age of 29 I feel like my best days are far behind me”.

My input today: I think that you are depressed and that you have been depressed for a long, long time. I am thinking that you were depressed as a child growing up in an unhappy home, an unhappy family and the one thing that kept you hopeful regarding a better life experience in the future, was your passion to make a name for yourself in the gaming industry. That was your singular passion, the light in an otherwise dull life.

Having lost that job in the gaming industry, realizing the fierce competition and element of luck (it is well known how very, very difficult, low paying, and luck related the gaming industry really is as far as making good money in it), you lost that singular passion and what was left is the depression.

You may want to consider seeing a medical doctor regarding your depression, and/ or a psychotherapist/ counselor. You have to focus on your physical health first, lower your depression and blood pressure, and do whatever it takes employment wise to experience way less stress at work.

Next, if you get some insight regarding your childhood depression, the depression that was distracted by that singular passion until five years ago, it will help you to feel hopeful again and make the best possible choices for yourself.

anita