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Originally Posted by Jennifer
But I never was. I never had to (or was allowed to) do anything real. I can't cook, I can't drive, I don't know how to balance a checkbook, I've never had a job, I don't know how to make or keep friendships outside of my immediate family, I have no real-world experiences. None. In effect, for my whole life so far I've been trained to be thoroughly dependent upon other people for my survival, and now that I'm trying to break free I have no idea where to start. I feel overwhelmed.
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All the more reason to break free! Living with your family is only going to reinforce this pattern. You say you can't cook, can't drive, can't balance a checkbook. But you can
learn. You got a college degree - you're clearly intelligent enough to learn these things. Cooking is nothing more than following directions and learning from trial and error. Driving is a learned skill. Balancing a checkbook is just math, and if you get software like Quicken or something, it's not even that - it's just clicking little boxes.
The answer to your problem of not knowing how to do things and having no real world experiences is not to continue to avoid doing things and having experiences. Get out there! Try stuff! Try and fail, try and succeed, at least you'll be doing something!
Find a job, get a place of your own (with a roommate, if necessary), start thinking about how you want your life to be. Not how your parents want your life to be. So you've been stifled all your life. You can either take the easy way out - continue to be stifled, which is a slow, painful, spirit-dulling road - or you can jump off what looks like a giant cliff but is really just a little step and start living your own life.
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Edit: And I know I'm just making excuses, but I did do exercise on a regular basis one semester when I took an aerobics class. It didn't really do anything for my mood, which is where my lazy, "It doesn't work for me so why bother?" attitude comes from.
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The same way that drugs alone don't work for most people, exercise alone doesn't always work. It might change the brain chemistry to make your thought patterns more malleable, but you still have to work at changing your thought patterns. Hence my recommendation that you go see a cognitive therapist. If you can't do that, find the book "Feeling Good" by David Burns
http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-T.../dp/0380810336
and the accompanying workbook.
You're at a really important crossroads right now, and I encourage you to think HARD about which path you're going to take. One way is safe and depressing, the other way is scary and free. But it's only scary now. Take that path and pretty soon you adapt and it's just...your life. YOUR life.
P.S. If you don't know where to start, ask for help. Ask a friend, ask a counselor, ask a professor. There are no consequences. If they say they don't have time or don't know how to help you, that means NOTHING about you. Move on and ask someone else. You're scared of all this stuff that's totally in your head. People's opinions and thoughts are not knives and bullets. You are safer than you think. And most people really LOVE to be needed and helpful, even if they pretend otherwise.