So things are going pretty well for me right now– I don’t have a job, but I have enough money saved up that it won’t be a problem for a while, my relationship with my boyfriend is going wonderfully, and I recently moved to a new city away from my family (a source of a lot of anxiety). I don’t have many friends here yet, but I wasn’t very social before I moved, so that isn’t really a big deal.

My problem is more that I worry excessively over pretty much everything. I’m restless and I want to get involved in something (trying to get my film career going or really just do something artistic), but I’m too afraid of failure and unsure of myself to even try. My depression is far more in control than it used to be, and while mild depression might be contributing to this, I just can’t get myself motivated to do anything. Even when I want to be productive, I just sit around wasting time because I don’t know where to start and I don’t feel like I’m prepared to do anything.

I’ve also been increasingly neurotic– if someone says the slightest thing indicating I’m a bad person or that makes me feel awkward, I start feeling really bad about myself and shut down. I’ve probably been spending too much time online, as a lot of these moments are on forums where I will say something about myself tangentially related to the topic, and am called out for being narcissistic, self-involved, a bad person (depending on what I share), etc. I feel like I can’t properly communicate things, which leads to what I just described: me sharing something that I felt contributed, but other people see as narcissistic or bad or whatever. This isn’t even all that frequent– just a couple of posts on SomethingAwful where the posters replied in a manner consistent with what you’d expect from those forums; and a question I posted here where people were kind of nasty in their replies, but whenever this happens, I feel like I’m always under attack no matter what I say or do, and that I can’t get people to understand me.

I should probably start journaling or seeing a therapist (I’m going to look into state provided insurance tomorrow, so that’s one step towards that), but what can I do to feel like I have a bigger support network than just my boyfriend? I hate awkward small talk (the kind you make when you first meet a person), but have a hard time connecting with people. I hate how insecure and nervous I feel all the time, but I don’t know where to start in order to go about fixing it, and I find myself getting cranky and even more unhappy when I grow frustrated with my inability to do so.

Advice? (Please be gentle, ha.)

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