Dear  Paul:

I want  to repeat your share in my own words as it helps me process information when I do that:

You used to be a bodybuilder and a boxer, a painter decorator and a taxi driver. You are 49, have a 23 year old son and a granddaughter. You have some history of “anxiety and social anxiety”. When you were about 43 you became very depressed, you got on psychiatric medication, gained weight, and your depression lasted  five years until Oct 2017 you attended counselling (third time). You felt better and came off all medication.  “The darkness has lifted”, but you feel empty, unmotivated, “just existing, joy and happiness is fleeting”, “lost and alone, unhappy and guilty.. selfish… lost and  confused…. empty and numb inside and feel like I am just waking up and starting the  cycle over again day after day”. You stay home a lot and work two days a week. You don’t want to be stuck in this emptiness for the rest of your life, that feels like torture.

My input: the hopes and dreams of youth, these keep us motivated, no matter how difficult life is, how anxious and miserable  we may be, we still have hope, we view the future as open for a different kind of life. We see possibility there. You were a body builder, had  dreams related to that, I assume. Then you got older and that dream ended.

You had other dreams, now they don’t look possible to make  happen.

So you are stuck in the emptiness left when the dreams are gone. No  dreams, no hope for a different kind of  life. The solution is not in resurrecting  the same dreams, that is, getting your body back to the shape it was before, and it is not in resurrecting the other dreams. The solution is in restarting your life at 49, a different attitude, different  understanding of what your life is about.

Your life is your restarting  point, your new  beginning. This time there are no dreams of future  greatness to deliver  you from accepting your life as-is. Your life as-is, this is all that is available for you.

First step,  I would say, is to relax into your life as-is. It  is possible for you to feel much better  about your life  as it is now, if you correct your thinking.

Let me know of what you think so  far about what I wrote, and we can continue to communicate, if you’d like.

anita