Rebecca you are not alone.
Reading your post made me realise how similar our human struggles are. I am a great believer in the duality of life(in other words you cannot know what happiness is if you’ve never experienced unhappiness), and as much as human beings prefer not to experience pain, when we do it is a reminder that we have wandered away from who we truly are. So this lack of joy or motivation is an opportunity for you to find out who you really are.

I am going to tell you what worked for me when I was in the same situation and it got me out of depression, completely. I realised that I had become a slave to my thinking. And I decided that in order to understand how to get back in touch with myself and what moves me I had to make a project of it. At the time I didn’t even want to get out of bed so this was a big ask. But just once a week I set myself the goal of doing something new and the challenge was finding something that did not overwhelm me, because I was good at finding excuses and reasons of why I didn’t want to do anything except just crawl away and wait for death to claim me(and I knew how long that was going to take….so that wasn’t an option). I started small: going out for a walk was a big deal for me but after a few days I started to look forward to it. I started thinking more clearly, and it allowed me to set up an unambitious small plan of action. The point I am making is that set yourself a weekly challenge that you can handle right now. It has to be do-able. Call it “Project getting to know Rebecca” and find activities that will enable you to get to know yourself from scratch. When you relate to others watch yourself and see how you react. Make it a journalistic project in getting to know yourself and what you like and don’t like. Showing an interest in yourself holds great power and if used long term creates amazing results. Just like you, I had issues with creating and maintaining relationships with people and this process allowed me over time to uncover a confident me and this transformed me and how I related to people and how they relate to me. I won’t lie it wasn’t an overnight process it took time, because that is how long it needed to take for me.But what I discovered is that once I allowed for the possibility that I wanted to change and that I could change (and the last one was the tricky part for me) it meant that I started off a process that has surprised me so many times along the way.

Your efforts about being “seen” by others is actually all about the fact that you do not see yourself, you’re not acknowledging yourself.If you set your intention to get to know yourself intimately that alone sets off a process that you never thought possible.I can only speak from my experience, it wasn’t quick and it wasn’t easy….but boy was it worth it.There is no one way of getting back to happiness, you have to try different ways to find a way that works for you.Give it a go….and good luck.

This sounds like me last year, I was that bad i quit my job and sat at home doing nothing…. it did me no good but I had no energy at all…. you get to that point where you can’t even remember the last you had a smile on your face let alone when you last laughed… its no fun at all so I feel for your current position ! but… and this is very important…. realise it is just that, a current position. it will change and you have the power to change it !!!!

I was given pills by my doctor and i tried them for 2 weeks. i became a lot worse. to the point where i was snapping at people i loved and becomming somebody i hated. its very unpleasant and at the time i thought it would never end.

How i got myself out of it was to focus on Nature and helping others.

I went for a walk everyday. no matter if it was the worst weather known to man, i still went for a walk. some days i walked 2 miles. once i did 18. (with my 9 month old son on my back which was a little silly but thats what i needed that day.) I have kept this up even now i am back at work. sometimes i walk in the park at 10pm. nobody is there appart from me and the ducks. The tv / internet / radio / etc… they do not work for me. i need to feel alive, funny thing is, those days I don’t want to go out as the weather is so bad, they are the days i now feel most alive. It keeps me intune with nature whilst getting gentle exersize. i will do this for the rest of my life !!!

i also had a friend who was suffering bad with family life. his mum and dad died within a year of each other and it hit him bad. quite a few days i walked to his house. (7miles) did nothing more than had acup of tea with him and a chat, then walked home. it gave him something to look forward to as he was home alone and it ticked both my boxes… win win !!!

both helping others and exersize outside probably seem like non important side issues to you right now. maybe they are. but maybe there are 1 or 2 little things that you can tweek in your life to help you get back on track. its probably nothing too great and it will probably feel at first like its making no difference……… just try it though, you never know untill you do.

oh… and i just quit another job as i am starting to feel the same…. where are those walking boots again ????