Hi,

I am unsure as to whether or not this is the best place to post this, so please recommend me to other subreddits that are more suitable as appropriate.

I have struggled with mental illness for most of my life and have been unable to find a substantive way to feel any better.  I tried therapy: it didn't work.  I tried medication: it also didn't work.  So at this point, I am asking other people who might vaguely understand what they have tried that helped.

To list all my problems would be a foolish exercise: I have too many to actually solve in one post.  When I went through therapy, I found that my therapist didn't really seem to be able to approach my problems: our sessions boiled down to many just telling her the problems in my life and her giving me half-baked "solutions" that didn't really solve anything.  It helped me a bit during a time of crisis but didn't really fix any of my underlying issues.  As it persisted, I found increasingly diminished returns for the sessions until I just quit entirely.  Medications proved even less effective.  I was put on what I think was a medium dose of Prozac by my psychiatrist to help me cope with anxiety.  Ultimately, I quit it.  As of right now, I have found no discernable difference in my life with and without it.  Fundamentally, my experience with mental health professionals is that they don't seem to actually know how to help me: they just offer bandaids to the proverbial wound as opposed to helping me to heal it.  

My problem isn't that I don't know what my issues are, it's that I don't have any will to change them.  For example, I don't exercise -- at all.  I walk a bit to get to my classes (I am a college student on a relatively large campus).  I tried exercising for about 3 months a year or so ago.  However, I found that it didn't make me feel any better, and I didn't appear any healthier.  So I just stopped.  My motivation to better myself in that regard vanished.  This type of rejection of improvement is common throughout all of my various issues.  It ultimately boils down to the fact that I don't want to better myself but also hate myself for not being better.

I am chronically lonely not necessarily because others don't like or attempt to reach out to me but because I don't reach out to them.  The area of my life this is most potent is dating.  I have someone that I would love to ask out but have never been brave enough to.  I rejected myself before I ever even made an attempt -- mostly because I fundamentally believe I am not good enough for her.  I am going to die alone because I am too much of a coward to even try.  I hate myself for that cowardice, but I seem to lack the will to do anything about it.  It doesn't help that this would be my first real relationship \*ever\* -- I am 19 years old and have never even hugged a single person that wasn't in my family.  When I cry, I cry alone.  I am the only person that ever consoles me.  I feel like I don't understand people and so I don't know how to approach dealing with them.  I am terrified of being rejected, and yet I understand that the result of that rejection would be the same as I am now.  

I feel as though I should be better: I should eat better, I should try and make more friends, I should work harder, I should exercise, etc. but I am completely unable to make myself be better.  I assume this is the result of some devilish combination of my various mental illnesses, but I think it might simply be a common, human, struggle that is being amplified by my own lack of self-esteem and self-worth.  

For all my life, the only thing of value I ever thought I had was my intelligence -- that was it.  That was the thing I could hold over everyone who ever looked down on me; that was my winning trait.  And then I got rejected from every single school in my subject that I applied to.  It crushed me and motivated me to consider suicide when the results came back.  Some days, I wish I had.  Now I am in the wrong major (granted, I don't actually dislike what I am studying but still).  I have a trajectory to get where I want to, but it doesn't make the pain hurt any less.  I have always excelled academically, but I have failed in every other aspect of my life.  Every time I get anything less than perfect on an exam or quiz or homework, some part of me is always dissatisfied.  I got a 95% (uncurved) on a midterm and was dissatisfied that I missed 5 points -- in fact, I was even embarrassed to have not been perfect.  I say this not to brag, but to give you a picture of how badly my own self-perception is skewed against me.  I have virtually no friends, no life outside of my personal projects and my classes, and I use fake people in my head as a coping mechanism for my own loneliness.  I have no will to be better but hate myself for not trying.  Please help me.