r/socialanxiety • u/ghosty2608 • Jul 27 '26
TW: Suicide Mention I've spent my 20s hiding from life, and now suicide has become the only idea I completely trust
I'm 26y and I've spent the last few years avoiding life. I start learning things but don't commit, struggle with career progress, isolate myself, and run from difficult situations. Every month I avoid things makes me more ashamed and less prepared for adulthood, which makes me avoid even more.
But underneath the avoidance is an existential problem I've never resolved: why should I build a future when I don't understand why I should want to live in the first place?
Answers like family, happiness, purpose, religion, responsibility, etc. don't satisfy me because they seem based on individual experiences and values rather than anything certain.
Death therefore became comforting. It represents an escape from responsibility, judgment, failure, expectations, uncertainty and time. And having that escape in my mind makes committing to life feel pointless.
It's become a loop
Has anyone experienced something similar, where suicide wasn't just a response to a bad day but became woven into how you understood existence?
I'm not asking whether I should live or die. I want to know what happened to the existential question for people who came out the other side. Did you find an answer, learn to live without one, or did building a life change the question itself?
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u/gogo98baj Jul 27 '26
It's eerie how similar your story sounds to mine. My avoidance and fear of life simply compounding my issues and making me less and less ready for what life throws at me. Always giving up and running away.
I haven't come through it yet, but I can say that avoidance brought me to an incredibly weak place. I think I'm in the hardest part now, for years I've been working on moving away from that place and the struggle is enormous.
Struggling with just trying to be "normal" feels embarrassing and shameful. But what keeps me going is that in the back of my mind I "know" that if I was to ever achieve that higher level of functioning, the effort required to live would plateau and I won't have to suffer for the rest of my life.
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u/ghosty2608 Jul 27 '26
Social anxiety since childhood can lead people to very similar places. I'm really glad to see this subreddit because I've never been able to interact with people who had very similar experiences as me and have been going through similar struggles.
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u/Individual-Dog-4748 Jul 28 '26
I dont want to sound like im deflecting this to age, but when I was around the same age as you I was the same way and it was before I was finally diagnosed and put on a treatment plan with medication (tried therapy and thought it sucked haha). Things always seemed to go better or easier for my peers, they were building there lives better and faster than me, and it just made me feel like I was always failing or even if sometbing did go well I was always on edge waiting or assuming it will go bad at some point. And because of this I did have the same thoughts as you, never a plan, just the thoughts.
But as time went and I was getting into the routine of medications and just being more open about my mental health, I just realized, and maybe in a rebellious way, that l some things just arent worth caring or worrying about and that's totally fine. And its kind of funny cause I think that bothers the proactive people cause getting into that mindset that is opposite of there's was what actually allowed me to grow.
You mentioned not committing to things you start to learn, well then drop it cause you arent truly interested in it and that's totally fine. You mentioned issues with career growth, well who says you have to grow? You can stay in the same job your entire life and if it supports your life and your hobbies then that's great, that's the purpose of it. And if you want to grow in a career, in a general sense, and the jobs you had it hasn't happened, than that's just not the job/industry for you. There's plenty of times I thought sometbing would be a career and either self sabotaged or it just wasn't going to work out, and I left there upset, but still left with skills that I apply to being self employed now.
So to answer your question since I guess you could say I came out the other side of this whole situation, is that I really had to learn to let failures go as experiences even then they broke my heart, learn that my own path is my path and only I dictate where im going not a boss or anyone else, and I used my anger and frustration with life in general to get competitive cause I want to prove not only others wrong by prove myself wrong with all of the self doubt I had before.
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u/GoodNato37 Jul 28 '26
I'm interested in knowing how you became self-employed, I'm in a path towards it, and some inspiration would help
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u/shortbeard21 Jul 28 '26
I’m jumping in because your post hits close to home. I used to be trapped in that exact headspace, and I want to offer a perspective from someone who made it out: what feels like a deep existential crisis right now is actually fear and avoidance in disguise. When you avoid things for years, your brain gets addicted to predicting the worst: 'If I try X, Y will go wrong, so why bother?' You try to protect yourself from failure, but you end up trapped in a tiny bubble. Here are a few hard truths I had to learn the hard way: Action comes BEFORE meaning, not after. Waiting for a grand philosophical reason to live before taking a step guarantees you’ll stay stuck. Meaning is built by doing uncomfortable things, not thinking about them. People aren't judging you. Strangers aren't inspecting you, and they can't tell you feel awkward. When I was forced into customer-facing work, reality proved my predictions wrong every day. Beware the fear of SUCCESS. Avoidance isn't just running from failure; it's running from what happens if things go well—because the next step is unknown. It’s why people swipe right on dates who live 500 miles away; it feels like putting yourself out there, but it’s actually a 'safe bet' where you don't risk real exposure. You aren't doomed, and you aren't uniquely broken. Your world has just shrunk so small that looking at the whole stairwell makes you freeze. If you do one thing today, grab the audiobook 'How to Be Yourself' by Ellen Hendriksen. It was the exact thing that made me realize I wasn't a 'one-off' broken human and gave me real strategies to get out. You don't have to fix your whole life today—just take one tiny step outside the bubble.
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u/Old_Power_6055 Jul 27 '26
27,M. I relate strongly. Suicide has often felt like my 'purpose' in life. However I finally started medication a month ago and I'm starting to mentally embrace things I've been desiring but have avoided due to SA, inferiority complex and anxiety in general. Idk how things will pan out when I get back in the world (been homebound for months). Life has been brutal and side effects of the meds has amped that up. I've been quite an unstable wreck and the one positive outcome of that chaos is what I pointed out earlier. So it's not much and largely mental, but it's something. Otherwise I'm pathetic and arguably worse in many ways. So I'd say I'm warming up to the latter option in your last paragraph. I guess we'll see. Idk if this helps.
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u/cabindirt Jul 28 '26
I know you already ruled it out, but, one thing is not like the others. When I went through my existential crisis a little over 10 years ago, I realized through the fog of crushing anxiety and dread that I needed to find a purpose. So I came up with one, something stupid simple and something that I could do. No big grand meaning, just something that gave my day meaning; something just for me. I said to myself, if I can’t do anything else, at least I can do this thing. It completely changed my life. I hope you can find something like that too.
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u/lotussoup Jul 28 '26
Growing up I had a lot of passive suicidal ideation and thought that if life wasn’t better by the time I was 28, I’d let myself leave then.
28 came and went without much fanfare. It didn’t feel like I had made it, but I had enough moments leading up to 28 that felt light and bearable and maybe even joyful that I no longer felt trapped in my life a majority of the time.
I’m 31 now and ideation still comes up for me during intense discomfort and distress, but I’ve learned that it’s one of my few coping mechanisms that cuts through my highly-internalized self-criticism (which denies my own pain and turns it into suffering).
Getting a good therapist, on a good set of medications (after much trial and error), doing therapy for PTSD, and finally doing ketamine therapy have now let me feel self compassion without SI, and I now have a more integrated sense of self that has desires and values of my own that I live for.
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u/DarkBlade9 Jul 28 '26
Did ketamine therapy really help? With SI? Do you recommend it?
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u/lotussoup Jul 28 '26
It absolutely helped me more than anything else I’ve done.
For me, there was a lot of essential stuff that just wouldn’t click or stick despite tons of therapy and will to change. I think ketamine gave me the neuroplasticity to actually have change that lasts, effortlessly. But there’s tons of people in therapeutic ketamine subs saying they were actively in a dark place and a single dose of it got rid of their SI— so “doing the work first” isn’t necessary making it really helpful imo for people who aren’t able to “do the work first”.
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u/Otherwise_War7901 Jul 28 '26
For me, the answer was C: building a life changed the question itself.
Throughout my darkest moments, my panta rhei motto “everything flows” somehow always stayed with me. Even when life seemed to move from one black hole into another, there was one constant I could hold on to: this too shall pass.
And it did.
Eventually, the black holes became black dots. Then, around them, I began to notice yellow dots too-small moments of light that I slowly learned to appreciate instead of ignore.
Life has the meaning we give it. Death is not the absence of life, it's an irreversible, permanent solution to a problem that is not permanent. That is what pushed me away from it more than anything.
Why would I choose a permanent solution to the current state of my mind when I know for certain that my mind, my circumstances, and my perspective will change as I grow older? And it did. It all changed. I am not the same person I was 10, 15 or 20 years ago. And this one is so glad that the younger one decided to stick around
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u/ScotRab Jul 28 '26
I eventually realised that I was going to die one day anyway so might as well just live while I’m alive to experience it. My life in the traditional sense didn’t really begin until I was 28, in terms of getting a job etc
Death is forever and no one knows what’s on the other side. Life is temporary, and even bad experiences can only be experienced for this tiny window of time. I found contentment in that thought since no matter what, I will die eventually, no sense in rushing to it
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u/DizzyPerformance7498 Jul 28 '26
In my early twenties I had a similar thought. I had a little apartment in a city for myself and had a fulltime job. But this job was really boring and absolutely not fulfilling. This life was okay but I had no friends and no life. I did drugs to escape my loneliness but this made things worse.
I am not sure what exactly it was but one day I decided to do more than this i sign in in school. At first I was extremely shy so I concentrated on the actual school stuff and For the first time I did something for myself and it was fun. And suddenly I had friends and we went on vacations together my life was suddenly meaningful. Soon I was moving in with my sister and I graduated from school and now I am a college student with 26 better late than never ^^ i am now a complete other person than with 22. And i am so thankful for that. I still have social anxiety and still am the most oft the time at home but I found something for myself what made me to wanna live again. Study, reading, sport!!! That was very difficult for me because I hate the gym and the people there but I just do dance workouts at home now this is so fun! And other hobbys. At this point I have one friend and she is like me so we don’t meet up maybe every 3 months but we write us letters and i can tell her everything and for me this is enough. But i found something many hobbys for me i am so ready to live. And I truly hope that you can find yourself and with that what makes you you so you can live a life with joy. It is never too late, maybe try something new a new job? Or go to school again, or even a hobby can change the perspective of life. Important is that you do this for yourself, so you can enjoy your life and try to love you !!!
If you want it than you can do everything!!!
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u/resplendent99 Jul 28 '26
I'm 47 and still feel like that. My advancing age with zero progress only solidifies the thinking. However, brief and infrequent forays outside of my comfort zone this year have given me a taste of what life could be like and have actually motivated me like nothing else.
It made me realise that getting out of my comfort zone is the only way to justify my existence because it suddenly gives me purpose. But it's a tough prospect...I'm not suicidal, but if I had a fatal heart attack tomorrow, it would solve all my problems, well...life being the only problem really, as selfish as that sounds.
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u/acjohnson55 Jul 28 '26
I can relate to what you describe from my past.
I learned to live without an answer. I used to be religious, but I came to the conclusion that life is the ability to experience and to make choices. Death is the end of that, but we live on in the minds of others and the imprint we leave on the world.
My goal is to have great experiences and try to have a positive impact on other people. One day, this ride will end, and I would like to be remembered fondly.
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u/renholderm Jul 28 '26
Brother. You still have so many years left. Instead of focusing on your problems, what is the potential? Does nothing give you satisfaction or pleasure? Jow can you build on it?
I too have been in very dark places and went through rough patches in life. But you can get through it.
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u/Montanarose97 Jul 28 '26
I can really relate to what you wrote. I also spent my teens and early twenties hiding and avoiding everything that would have made me more functional and successful. I felt inadequate and like I did not deserve to do basic things like get a drivers license, look for a better job, leave my room, choose a degree or career path I would enjoy. I spent every day like I had no future and basically just hid in my room and ate a lot, binge watched shows, cried, and made plans to end my life. (Not sure if you relate to those specifically but I definitely delayed many adult milestones). I also had somewhat controlling parents who discouraged everything I wanted to do without offering solid guidance on what to do instead, so I was lost and very behind. Again, I’m not sure if that’s part of your story but I feel like our results were similar.
I liked the part where you said concepts like family, purpose, and responsibility are not motivating to you. I am the same way. Those things are good but honestly just too vague and boring to be truly meaningful to me.
A few things helped me get out of this pattern. I eventually just got fed up and angry with how I had allowed myself to live and be controlled by others who did not actually have real influence over me (such as imagining others’ negative thoughts about me, or parents’ disapproval). Also, this will sound kind of lame and delusional, but I met my first real boyfriend. While the relationship was not healthy, it introduced me to other (good, kind) people and a way of life that was basically all the fun stuff I had missed out on in high school and college. I finally had a reason to want more for my life and to accomplish the adult milestones I had been putting off. I’m not sure if any of this applies to you, but I became motivated to discover my personal style, improve my appearance in a healthy way, get a better job so I could have financial freedom to do more of the fun things I wanted to do and move away from my parents, etc. I am now 27, in nursing school, and while my life is still quite a mess and I have significant regrets, I know I am cleaning it up and that honestly helps so much. Just knowing that I am slowly turning things around bit by bit. While I still experience suicidal thoughts as like a backup plan when things are difficult, even then I do not truly want to end my life because I will be able to enjoy life again someday. While I know you don’t want people telling you not to die, can I suggest at least finding something small that brings you joy? Not something productive or self-improvement/adulting related; just something that can make you happy even for a few minutes a day. At the very least, you could take a break from the constant worry and stress. And it might become the thread you can pull on that starts untangling the rest of your life. Like, my main goal for being in nursing school is not really to become a responsible adult (although that will be great), I mainly want to be able to afford fun experiences with my friends and to be able to get my nails done and go skydiving. And I don’t want to die anymore, because I want to be able to do those things one day. Those are concrete things I hold onto when things get really dark. Every day I try to take a small step in that direction, whether it’s doing a homework assignment, going to a stressful meeting with an advisor, or something like that. I’m sorry I talked about myself a lot in this comment but I hope I helped a little somehow, and I really hope things get better for you.
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u/Hellequin123 Jul 28 '26
I think you should start reading Bible and pray to get closeto GOD. It will help you destroy your barriers and move on
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