Anxiety often presents itself in the way you have described, negative imagination. A person with anxiety tends to ruminate like a cow chewing its cud, there is really no benefit of the thought other than the fact that it is there and it is on a loop until A: It happens, and we say, “See! I knew it all along” or B: We learn to let go of these negative thoughts and seeing them for what they are- Our imaginations run a muck. In a way it is OCD because of the loop, I’m not a psychologist so I don’t know, but it seems people can definitely become obsessed with negative thinking. A beneficial book with good tips on over coming this problem is Dr. Abraham Lowe’s “Mental Health Through Will Training.” I have also read many other good books from non-doctors spiritual leaders, but Dr. Lowe’s technique works very well and presents strategies for overcoming the problems presented. There are ton’s of positive self help gurus out there that you can listen to or read, in my opinion (I have listened to a lot of them) Napoleon Hill is maybe the greatest and I would recommend you listen to “Napoleon Hill in His Own Voice: Rare Recordings of his Lectures.” The self-help book selection is an endless sea of recycled ideas, Napoleon Hill was an original, and sometimes you can find gems. “The Energy Bus” by Jon Gordon is also gave me some needed optimism. Like anything though, self-help books can become temperary band-aides until we unconcsiously forget about them and what they say which is why Dr. Lowe’s book is good it is psychologically based in order to instill a person with the tools they need to maintain their mental health.

It seems true that you don’t love him enough to have a long term relationship or even continuing it with your current boyfriend. However with that said don’t go right back to your ex either without really considering what you are going through. It seems that after a certain amount of time after a breakup we seem to forget all the reasons why the relationship ended and when the situation presents it self to reclaim lost love we jump all over it. Later we say, “what was I thinking? It is all happening all over again.” I had seen on the television show, “how I met your mother” Ted wrote himself a letter to be given to him by his bestfriend if he was considering getting back with his ex. The situation arose and he was love struck again and his friend gave him the letter that he wrote to himself and sadly I can’t remember exactly what happened I think there was a plot twist, but the lesson is a good one we seem to get relationship amnesia. If you went into your current relationship fast then consider taking a break from relationships, that doesn’t mean you can’t talk with your ex maybe you will remember why it didn’t work before getting back into something with him. Give yourself the break and try dating other guys. There is no reason you should feel you need to rush.

I believe there is something bigger than us, whether you want to call it God or not I believe if you sit and listen in a peaceful natural place from everything corrupted by man you will begin to feel it. We humans are ego centric we believe that we are created in God’s image, we call God a he and all that. I think we would be a lot more responsible if we did not see ourselves in this way. Sometimes I think that it is time for us to become the custodians, rather than the forces of destruction we are. The processes and forces to get things to where they are have been precise and according to our time here slow!

There is a driving force behind everything, in fact we are finding that everything is exactly the opposite of we have thought all along. Reality is the product of chaos, whether you want to think of it as the big bang or not, whatever, but something applies force subtly to everything causing things to happen. It is unfathomable for man to ever comprehend exactly how everything came to be, the odds are almost 1 in infinite, but just the fact that Earth and life exists means that the odds are there that there is at least one other, but also that there are no others. I have thought of many scenarios in my head and I have studied many religions some make sense to me, for instance maybe creation and destruction just keep happening over and over and I say that because as we look at the universe we see that it is expanding. There are forces pulling everything in, but also a force pushing everything away from each other. Will it eventually collapse in on itself and again cause another “big bang” and thus everything will happen exactly as it has the last other infinite times. Maybe that explains deja vu? We’ve done this dance before, maybe that is that nirvana state- being released from the ever repetition of things? I don’t think we will ever know! Nor are we supposed to know! If there is a “God” it is not the manmade God we read about, but an entity beyond comprehension that works by pushing things in certain ways that cause events to occur. I often think how when something is sitting untouched in what seems in a state of balance and suddenly an event causes it to move. This is a small scale replica, on the large scale what causes things to happen other than a force that we can not see. In my example it may be a sudden pressure change, but in a vacuum what causes it? We are learning so much about physics and have come far just since Einstein, but think of how ignorant we were in the times when the events that religious texts were written.

I always look at time, Earth time that is and think about if there is a God surely God doesn’t go by Earth time. Human existence compared to the existence of everything is but a fraction of a second, to something timeless like God it wouldn’t even register as time. Yet when we talk of everything coming into being through God we speak through Earthly knowledge, but what is our time besides a set of equations of rotations and revolutions of Earth.

Math is maybe the only way we will ever understand anything. Its crazy how much we can find out through math. Math doesn’t explain much, but it allows us to understand the “laws” that reality and everything abides by. We figure odds, forces, distances, ages, etc… Math is the foundation of the sciences which is why I left out science just because it figures into it.

Next time you find yourself in nature, sit and meditate. The conditions have been just right for everything to be the way it is, I agree with your questions it is awe-inspiring to wonder on such grand things. Like I said Thank you for causing me to think deeply today :).

Mood meds helped me with my anxiety and depression, but they hurt me in some ways as well. Anxiety runs in my family so in all likelyhood there is a predisposed imbalance, and sometimes it is nervousness or sometimes it is temper. The meds helped me with this, but once I got them I felt bad that I needed meds, that I couldn’t through my own will and spirituality fix myself I was after all a health nut and into meditation. The med drugs killed my energy and motivation to workout and do some other stuff and I needed more meds for the side effects. As a person passionate about art and creativity I felt like it killed that as well. Getting off of them is a nightmare, especially Effexor which is an snri. I used to be the type of person that could kick bad habits easily, but I started smoking pot again habitually after not doing it for years and couldn’t quit. The pot seemed like it made me feel again, and as I did some research I found that I was self medicating. The meds were creating chemical imbalances, they were numbing me in order that I wouldn’t feel, thus causing some neurochemicals and receptors to act and some not to do anything to compensate for that, the pot did made me feel and brought some passion and surprisingly motivation to me. It was just one more drug though so I have been quitting off and on and right now has been my longest sober streak. I don’t think anyone wants to feel bad all of the time, but I also don’t think people want to feel numb and right now the drugs for mood disorders aren’t perfect.

The medication though has helped me with depression and anxiety, I can socialize with people and not feel like I am dying and I don’t want to stay in bed all day everyday feeling sorry for myself. Just realize that if you take anti-depressants it is just a bandaid on a dam if you don’t work on your problems. It isn’t like taking an anti-biotic where once the symptoms are gone you stop taking it. Often times a person will be on some form of anti-depressant until they take it upon their self to get off and it can be kind of torturous with feelings of dizziness, headaches, a shock like feeling in your brain, insomnia, mania, depression, anxiety, panic attacks etc… The doctors don’t tell you all of this when they write the script they say, “I think you should be on an anti-depressant for a little while.” It is up to you to ask what exactly the plan is, how long is a little while? How will you be taken off if you will or will you just be put on a different one once that one is ineffective? Tell the doctor your concerns, make it known that you want it to be only for a limited time improvement or not.

Like Joshua above said about exercise, do it research has shown that anti-depressants work best when teamed up with exercise and psychotherapy. When we exercise our bodies naturally balance themselves, like I said anti-depressants can make a person lazy but the thing is that exercise when done can make you more energized it is just doing it that is hard. Find an exercise you can do and is self motivating. In particularly for a person with a mood disorder social team sports are best, get out and be around people. Join a running, tennis, kayaking, yoga or whatever you want to do team or club and socialize while exercising and not only will you be getting healthy but you will be doing the opposite of what mood disorders cause (the retracting of a person back into their shell). Healthy eating is essential especially omega 3 DHA and EPA it has been clinically proven to help with mental function and over all brain health. Stay away from sugars and refined foods, they cause spikes in the chemicals in our bodies. Get your hormones along with vitamin B and D levels checked, especially thyroid if you haven’t yet these imbalances can cause symptoms that look like mood disorders.

Hope this post has helped in some way have a good day!

I think you have a really interesting thing going, I would like to add to. If a person completely detaches themselves from their ego they will do nothing! The ego drives us to fulfill desires, whether or not they are for their own sake. Sometimes our ego causes us to do things that are only meant to prop a weak ego up, othertimes the ego can be the driver of great things. Human’s are indeed driven by Ego, when this is done unknowingly it is dangerous. We look at organized religions and see how many precious egos are involved and we see why there is violence surrounding things that should not be surrounded by egos, yet we see people doing great things and this too is the ego. The ego is like a burning fire, uncontained it consumes everything that is combustible. If the ego though is contained and managed and understood, then a person can do great things, because that fear of being wrong or failing is gone. The ego can be involved in everything a person does through out their day and their life and they may never know. When they are cut off in traffic and must speed up in order to let the person have it, it is their ego. A great work of art that changes the people see the world is done because of the ego, but also in spite of it. Anything we do that is driven by the ego, can also cause us great damage to that ego if it fails. The ego need not be ignored, the ego should be understood. If it is understood then there is no reason to allow another’s judgment cause a person to question their own existence.

The fact that man sees himself above other animals is a testament to his ego. Some think that all that there is was created for man, that is ego of another kind. Creationism is a human ego centric ideal, why must humans have souls that live on forever but other animals do not. Why not do what is right for its own sake? The philosophical question, which is better doing something that is right for its own sake and not needing to be acknowledged for it? Or doing something that is right because it has been labeled as right and there is some type of acknowledgement for it? Should we always be rewarded for doing right? Religion often puts something over a person’s head as to why they should do right, like God is judging. What if God is not watching? My ego drives me to do right, because there is guilt for no doing right, not because of what a religion has told me about God, but because of my own philosophy of life.

If the ego is understood, we can interpret every thought and desire that crosses our minds and make a determination as to what the ego is trying to convey and why. We can understand why others do what they do, why they must judge others. Right now as I type I realize that it is my ego causing me to type, because I have a drive to put my ideas out there. If someone comes along and says what I have written is garbage, I need only detach myself from ego and understand that me feeling hurt is a ego response, but they disagreeing with what I have said in a hurtful way is an ego response as well. People judge others always based on ego, whether or not they are following some religion or not. If someone says that what you are is wrong and that you should change and be something else, then they are saying that you should be like THEM because they are right. It is a strong ego, based a belief they hold that they got from somewhere. I do like some of the things Jesus says in the New testament, I get a sense that he was more aware than anyone else during that time. But if I read various philosophers that were alive before, during or after his time up to now I also see people that have great understandings. I say Jesus because Christianity is a major world religion, but people don’t realize that Jesus didn’t create Christianity those who came after him did in his name thus allowing their Egos to poison the true story. Buddha made great contributions as well. How many possible contributions to our world could there have been had not the human ego destroyed through war and hatred. During war, warriors go through and destroy anything and everything that has cultural or religious value. So how many great philosophers were killed and their ideas burned that we will never know about all in the name of someone’s Ego? Caesar? Genghis Khan? Hitler? Stalin?

If we look out into the world we will see that everything is the way it is, nothing is perfect, yet it is here and it is perfect in that way! I look at a tree growing naturally I do not see perfection I see something perfectly imperfect. Each one being different, yet beautiful. There is nothing in the tree saying that it must be as good or better than the tree next to it, it just does its thing and flourishes if the conditions are right. The universe doesn’t operate on laws of perfection, rather they operate by the laws of chaos. We have finally been able to really see the universe and all around our solar system we see just how chaotic and destructive things are. When we look at things at the atomic level, we see how imperfect and unpredictable things are. With all this imperfection and chaos going on around us, it is a wonder that our egos still hold ourselves, others, and God to such high standards of perfection. If you were to take a deck of cards, shuffle them and throw them up in the air and then looked at how they fell, the odds of them being in order is an almost incomprehensible number. The odds of a universe such as ours existing is an incomprehensible number, why allow our egos to take away from such a beautiful and mysterious event that we are a part of. It is something we will never understand! Why we must be so hard on each other is beyond me to infinite.

I am really sorry if I got off track, just kind of went where my thoughts took me!

I am a bit confused because you started by saying that you are fine with the two roommates, and not with the one who is a she. You explain how she is to you, but then the last sentence you say how they and them use what you say against you. Either way, get out of there. Living with roommates in a campus rental house is not something you want to continue doing once you are out of college. Think about it like this, you graduated from college and you are also graduating from your roommates. If you can only afford to live with roommates then find roommates that have similar values as yourself. Maybe find a rental that features separate living quarters, rather than shared bathrooms and kitchen you get your own if you can afford it. As for what she says, let it go… Who cares unless you find it to be true. You will never have to talk or see her again, so she will have to find someone else to belittle in order to lift herself up. If you let what others say bother you, then to them they have “won.” Some people see life as win/lose and try to figure out who they are beating and in order to make sure they get ahead or bring someone down they use those tactics. Be civil, but if what she says is not true then it requires no response and your brain shouldn’t even register it. This will probably greatly irritate her, but that shouldn’t be your motive your motive should be to get it across to her that you do not care enough of her opinion to listen. And the finale will be you moving out. If you want to be cool with the other roommates tell them that you don’t have a problem with them, but it is time for you to get a new place and that you’d like to keep in touch or don’t, but don’t feel guilty about doing something for yourself when you are in such a situation.

Guilty here, just started making sure I press enter every few sentences.

It is tough coming out of a long term relationship being an introvert. It is so easy to just hide away and forget about the world, but obviously you don’t want to do that because of your post. Many introverts have a creative, artistic side to them. Have you tried getting involved in some sort of art (creative writing, poetry, drawing, painting, etc…?) Sometimes the worst thing you can do is be alone, even if it just means going down to a local cafe and reading a book or being on the computer or people watching just to get out. I have found being in nature is good it has made me realize so much about myself, being an introvert I can sit and watch nature alone all day given the opportunity and never feel lonely. You don’t have to be an extrovert, just be yourself and find that which makes you happy.