I am stuck. I have been going through depression cycles for the past 14 years of my life. The causes of this are multiple and complex, but the key ones are severe and prolonged bullying in school, combined with me withdrawing into studying and work as a safe space and ending up putting insane pressure on myself (whilst not developing the best social skills). I have a deep lack of self-esteem and confidence, and it is draining.

Over the last 8 years the depression cycles have been happening every 6-12 months. I am exhausted of going through this. I became better over time at managing them and I thought I've built my resilience enough to be able to cope better and bounce back easier. But the most recent episode feels different. I feel a really deep sadness and lack of pleasure and joy for life. When I am myself, I am usually this cheerful, super active, bubbly person, who tries to be kind to everyone and always smiles. But during these episodes, I turn inward, become really quiet, really emotional and even small things seem to get to me way more than they should. During this recent episode, I've been crying a lot and feeling really really down. Sometimes I don't even know why I cry. It's just this infinite feeling of emptiness, of feeling worthless, feeling like I will never get better, like I will never achieve anything big in my life, feeling really small and unimportant, wanting to disappear off the face of the earth without anyone else noticing and without causing any pain to my loved ones.

I tried therapy and, whilst it helped with short-term management, it's not really addressed the deeper issues. I read quite a bit of philosophy, which has really helped in giving me ways to frame my life and find meaning. I do sport (hugely helpful coping mechanism) and I am trying to be more careful with my sleeping patterns. Even if all of these things help, it's the deeper feeling of emptiness and pain that I feel and I just can't shake off, and it is now completely taking over my life. And I am really tired and just want to move on, and enjoy life, and care for my loved ones, and find beauty in the small things in life again.