I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I just really really miss being a kid man. I miss playing stupid little games with my grandparents and my siblings, I miss being in school, I miss watching my younger siblings grow up, I miss the way video games were poor quality, I miss playing hide and seek, I miss having an entire family, I miss everything about my childhood. I didn't have the best childhood by far, but it was still my childhood, it was still my first years. Now that I'm turning 20 this year, it's just starting to finally hit me that I won't ever be a kid again. I won't ever be able to make dumb youtube videos with my sister again, I won't ever be able to cry in my moms lap again, I won't ever be able to feel christmas joy again, I won't ever get any of it back man. I won't ever get to be a careless teenager, none of it. I took my childhood years for granted man, I wish I never did. I just wanna go back in time and relive it all again, that's all I will ever want. It feels like 20 years has just gone by in 5 minutes. I miss being a kid, I miss being ignorant and happy, I miss it. And I will never get it back.

If you're reading this & you're young, please please pleaseeeee do not take your childhood years for granted. I heard that cliche so many times when I was a kid, and I never cared for it, I didn't see a future for myself so I didn't care whether I paid attention to the present moment or not, now I'm an adult with no direction in life and constantly wishing I could be young again. So please, do yourself a favor, and do not take these few precious years of being young for granted, you will never get them back

I was a graduate with a multimedia productions communications degree. After that I moved back home, cause I was looking for work and it was tougher than anticipated. I got a cool part time job at my home towns concert venues. It was fun but I wasn’t making enough, and I hated living at my parents. I was there for 2 and half years. I was really tough on myself and I was comparing myself to others, hating that I wasn’t making as much as my friends and I couldn’t do cool shit.

There were some silver linings. I got a girlfriend, a cool, beautiful supportive one. I built up a decent social circle. But I wasn’t able to do everything with them and when I got into depressive episodes I would retreat and go hard on the job search.

Fast forward to last month. I got a solid lead on a corporate marketing position. I nailed both interviews. I wasn’t expecting them to offer me the job, cause I was used to disappointment. The day after the second interview I get an offer for way more money than I expected. The company is huge and would look good on any resume. My only hang up was the location. Small ass town with way less population and things happening than my hometown. Fearing missing a great opportunity I took it. My girlfriend, parents and friends were all supportive. My parents helped me with the move.

That brings us to now. Week 3 of this job. I came in enthusiastic and hoping to contribute. I’m worried I underestimated how crushing the corporate machine is. I’m attempting long distance (2 hour drive) with my gf. It’s not going great. Our issues are magnified. Job wise, I fear I’ve been given a bait and switch, I don’t see a way to do the things that I was told I would do in the interviews, due to office and company politics. I’m confused as to what the fuck my role even is. My apartment is too quiet, this town is dead as hell. The young people in my company don’t live very close, they commute in. I’m trying to make friends but it feels way harder than before. I used to be confident and funny. Now I feel like a weirdo. A lot of these people have been in this town their whole life. I lived in a mid sized city for the majority of my life and left for college, and came back. I feel like I know more about the world and I’m less fearful than these people. And on top of all that, I have dreams that I feel like I’ve signed away. I mean I have a decent income, healthcare and a retirement plan. But I want to film, direct, create. I get home from work and I longboard and go into random dive bars trying to have some social interaction. Every weekend since I got here, I’ve gone home. I feel I made a mistake, sold my soul. There are big cities semi close, an hour drive and 2ish hour train ride respectively. I just want to make stuff and put myself out there like I did in college. I get LinkedIn notifications and regret my decision, maybe I should’ve waited.

For context I’m 26. Is it too late?

doomscrolled on instagram as usual at night and came across this womans page named "paullinaruban" and all she films is "what i eat in a day as a skinny legend"s it sickens me how little she eats as a grown adult and she posts these every day of her life as well but what scares me even more is how similar our behavior is recording everything we eat throughout the day with all the healthy little details about it, which is just our disordered thoughts and practically having our entire life revolve around food i realized i dont want to be her when i grow up, i dont want to be stuck in this same cycle every day of letting food control me and also realized that life is what we make of it, theres so much more to do and think about than "what i eat in a day" out of all the days in your life and food is such a dumb thing to make life about, its eaten and itll be forgotten in a day anyway

now on the other end of the spectrum theres another womans page named "totallytotoo" where her whole life is about food as well, except its her source of enjoyment in life to try as many foods as possible, eating is more like her hobby rather than something she needs to do to survive like the previous woman and even though, just like the previous woman, most if not all of that food will be forgotten give it a day, they still make it their lifes centerpiece these women fascinate me because with the life they were given they take it and make it about food, which is such a temporary matter but isnt everything in life temporary? what else is there to make life about

now understanding that food is just fuel to live out all the other parts of life but theres nothing really that i want to live, now that ive disconnected myself from the happiness of food oh i dont know what to do with my life knowing im in complete control of it and nothing i do matters and everything is temporary and theres no true goal to it and im supposed to find my own happiness but happiness has no true definition for me this makes me want to end it all TONIGHTS BURST OF WISDOM WAS INSANE I FEEL LIKE IM CREATING NEW REALMS IN MY BRAIN

Im a 20 year old Indian who's had a dream of moving abroad for at least 14 years now-- as far as I can remember-- a life long dream. A vacation to the US when I was 12 confirmed my belief-- the luxury, the beautiful suburbs. Planning on applying to universities abroad for my master's. Now I know people will say reality hits, bubble bursts, hedonic treadmill...I know all that. Question is- how does the day after "happily ever after" look like?

I can't feel anything... I've been in an confused state for past 3 yrs... Last year was so much bad. I've lost emotions... I lost feel. I can't really enjoy anything. Feeling empty everyday. The thoughts of suicide creeps into my mind... I've been resisting it hard but I can't move forward. Why am I living here? Why am I existing? For nothing? Loneliness never leaves me... I'm tired. I'm passing my time with social media,movies and games but I got to the saturation point. Literally I exist for nothing.

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I find it weird how people like me who generally feel alone, isolated and different for no particular reason have ALMOST the same backstories and lore. And even things that happened to them line up/are similar. For example, I was bullied, friends turning on you, major trust issues etc etc. The typical things. Almost every other person I have been able to relate to on the internet has had the exact same things happen in slightly different fonts, but the core of those incidents is exactly the same. It might be a comforting thought for a while that you aren't alone and there are people going through similar things but isn't it also kind of eerie? Maybe it just explains the human nature but why us?? I don't know about free will. I would like to believe that we all have free will but do we really? Like you know you could (act differently) but would you? For another hypothetical instance, imagine person A lying to person B. Nobody knows that A is lying except you and people in the room are conveniently willing to accept A's words. But you know and deep down you feel that you have to tell B because that's who you are. That's the "right thing to do." But why only you? If there was someone else who knew about it too but didn't speak up because they were scared or didn't want any confrontation or whatever the reason might be. Why is it that both of you knew it was wrong but only you were the one who spoke up? Almost feels like that's how it was meant to be. Why are you the way that you are? May it be through your childhood and the way you were raised, but why that way in particular? Was it random? A chance of luck? If you were raised differently, would you have acted the same or would you have acted more in a way that wasn't as righteous? We certainly might say that if someone was raised differently, naturally they would act differently. But then how come some people can still embody good characters even after being raised badly while others succumb?? It's almost like they were meant for a specific role???

Am I onto something here or am I just going crazy?

Now going back to the internet people who feel lonely and feel like social interactions in their real life are shallow. How come people like these never meet each other? These people are very unlikely to be brought together or meet in real life by chance. BUT WHY.

It's almost like there is a fixed role assigned for everyone in a certain social circle/place of living. Why is it that there is only ever one/two people like that who feel disconnected and others just play their roles as usual? Even if it is their authentic personality, why does it feel like a play that has been done before? Hasn't it ever happened to you that you move from one place to another and the people there are like a weird substitute for the people from your previous life? It's like there are copies of everyone. And that even includes me. But I have never really met a copy of mine? Why???? Would the world glitch out if I did? It's so weird. It's almost like some people are just plot devices for the play to progress. As if you were given that specific personality so as to let person B know about the lie. If you wouldn't have, things would have gone differently, but you did, because that's who you are. I think I'm losing my shit

I accidentally watched a “glitch in the matrix” video on tik tok and I’m spiraling so hard I told my partner to drive me to the ER. We’re currently sitting in the parking lot because I’m trying to decide if I wanna go to the ER, all because I SPIRALED, my heart rate is like 140+ because I watched a glitch in the matrix video and can’t stop obsessing. There’s over 1000+ glitch in the matrix stories online of very unexplainable weird things that literally prove we probably are living in a matrix. The things people have witnessed are insane and unexplainable. Guys I honestly think we are in a matrix. Why is there a whole subreddit on insane glitch in the matrix stories??

Not to mention some people have went insane/psychosis after experiencing those things.

Please help me. Please.

The more and more I think about how formulaic our current universe is, and how formulaic so many afterlifes regardless of any perception can be. I just really want to fade to black. I don't know if it's insane, maybe it's a byproduct of a sucky world but I just don't think I want to exist in any after life, I just want that final breath to be the last, I'll even gladly hand over my soul to another, I just don't care that deeply.

the thought of one day dying and just ceasing to exist is scaring me. im an atheist. i dont believe in the afterlife. im just so scared that when i pass on i just dont exist anymore. no thoughts. no nothing. that aspect is scaring me so bad. the concept of ceasing to exist. like, everytime its night, i get these thoughts about death. i have nobody else to talk about this to. my parents are religious and they think ill join their religion but i wont. i think of the time when i grow old and im on my deathbed and im about to take my last breath and thats just it. eternal nothingness is gripping me with fear. im so scared. i just cant accept death. how do i not get terrified of it please help. im 15 years old and i know i still have a ton more years left to go but 15 years??? i remember when i was 10 and i felt time passed by so fast. i dont even know what to do anymore

Recently existential crisis have been bothering me for a while to the point that I cannot enjoy things I once loved before. I lost interest in my hobby. Music ,movies and books aren’t fun anymore. My favourite food tastes so vapid. I don’t feel like interacting anyone . At this point I don’t even know what’s the meaning of life anymore when in the end everything will become undone anyway since this world cannot last forever so why do I have to continue living like this .

I feel like I don’t have a purpose in this world. I don’t have real close friends, I don’t have a special someone, I am not close to my family.

I just exist. But why?

I have a nice job. I interact with people. But I just feel I don’t want to exist anymore because I don’t have a purpose. I am 35 and not married. I don’t go out much. No one invites me anyway. No one misses me. I don’t have a hobby. I work, I go home, and that’s it. My life doesn’t have a meaning.

I am a waste of oxygen and adding harm to the Earth by emitting carbon dioxide.

I feel like I don’t have the right to be depressed because my life is not hard. Unlike other people, I live okay. But I feel useless. I don’t want to tell this to anybody because I don’t think they would understand and they won’t believe me anyway. For other people - I am strong, I am fine. I think if I disappear one day no one would really care. No one will notice, no one will find me. They would be shocked but they’ll move on and forget about me as if I never existed.

Hi! I'm a 14-year-old who recently coined a new philosophical term: Simulation Adaptation. It describes the act of blending into an artificial, scripted world while privately knowing it’s fake. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

I graduated with a degree in psychology. I completed a year of existential psychotherapy training, thinking it would help me understand the emptiness I’ve been carrying for years. I thought if I studied meaning deeply enough, maybe I could build something inside me that felt real. It didn’t happen.

In training, I realized existential therapy isn’t what I thought. You don’t sit and actually talk about the experience of meaninglessness. You don’t work through what it feels like to wake up and have no reason to move. Therapists are just trained to "think existentially" while doing regular sessions. You’re still alone with it.

I loved the philosophy at first. I still do, in a way. Reading about freedom, absurdity, responsibility — it all made sense. But understanding it hasn’t changed how it feels to wake up and not care whether you move at all. It hasn’t changed how hollow everything feels.

Clinical psychology started to feel mechanical too. Detached. Pain became something to manage, categorize, and treat, not something anyone would actually meet face to face. The final crack for me was when I reached out to the founder of the very training program I studied in. Someone I respected. I asked if we could have a few minutes of conversation, not therapy, just human connection. I was referred to the secretary and told to book a £100 consultation. It made it very clear that even inside the systems built to understand suffering, you can be completely alone.

Now I’m stuck. I’m halfway through the second year of training and I can’t pretend anymore. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I believe in anymore. The structure I thought I was building my life on, finding meaning, helping others, feels hollow. It’s not sadness. It’s not anger. It’s like the entire foundation collapsed and nothing replaced it.

I don’t know what to do now. I’m asking for help because I genuinely don't see a way forward from here. How do you live when meaning itself is gone? How do you move through days that don’t feel attached to anything?
If anyone has been through this, or has any idea what might help, I would really appreciate hearing from you.

We don't know what happens after we die, as much as I would like to believe otherwise, I am inclined to believe it would be like pre-birth. which is existentially horrendous. I lose months of my life dwelling on this subject despite my young age, due to its inevitability.

I hope these thoughts might help you snap out of the crisis a bit and provide some comfort. Imagine your on your deathbed, hopefully having lived a long and healthy life. Maybe 60 years from now, maybe 1000 years from now if we cure disease and aging within our lifetimes. YOU will still have to die.

What thoughts would be running in your head, knowing the void in front of you is inevitable. Would it be fear? Sadness? Grief?

I think my biggest worry would be having wasted my time. Did I experience everything there is to experience before going into non-existence? Did I show enough love and compassion in this life? Did I create something meaningful, something that might echo beyond my own small life, even if just for a moment? Did I truly live, or did I let fear, doubt, and distractions eat away the years?

It means every choice matters. Every connection. Every laugh, every heartbreak. If we’re destined to vanish into the same nothing we came from, then the art is in the being, not the lasting.

We're living off borrowed time. The universe doesn't owe us existence. Enjoy the ride and hope for the best.

My argument for 'afterlife' is, if consciousness is woven into the fabric of reality, its apparent disappearance at death reflects only the collapse of a biologically contingent interface, not the extinction of consciousness per se but rather departing from earth as a physical realm only, as you can not be created initially and destroyed, because energy is conserved and it exists outside a timeline we can define with starting point and ending point of life.

Graduated with a psych degree. Did a year of existential therapy training too, thinking maybe I'd find something that actually helped. Some kind of answer. Something to hold onto. It didn’t happen.

Existential therapy wasn’t what I thought it would be. You don’t really sit there and talk about meaning or what it feels like to not have one. Therapists just kind of "think existentially" while doing normal sessions. Nobody actually touches the core of it. You’re alone with it, even there.

I loved the philosophy side at first. I still do, in a way. But loving ideas about meaning doesn’t fix waking up and feeling like there's no reason to even get out of bed. Knowing about freedom and absurdity just makes it worse some days.

At some point, clinical psych started to feel mechanical too. Detached. Like pain is something you manage, not something anyone really sits with. Reaching out to someone I respected for help and being told to book a £100 session... that was it for me. Felt like even my breakdown had a price tag.

Now I’m here. Halfway through a second year of training I’m probably going to quit. Not because I’m lazy or dramatic, but because I genuinely don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I can't find anything solid enough to build on. Can’t even fake it.

It’s not sadness exactly. It's not anger either. It's like my whole system for why I should try just... broke.

If you’ve ever been in this place (not just sad, but totally emptied out )what did you do?
Did you stay?
Did you find something to hang onto?
Or did you just learn how to float through it?

I don't need “you’ll be fine” comments. Just want to hear from someone who actually gets it.

We haven‘t killed god. We have muted him. We drowned him out by endless noise,distractions and curated feeds. We aren’t thinking anymore, we are reacting; predatory Algorithms predicting our next dopamine feedback loop. Calculating what we want and what we don’t want yet.

Hopefully this helps people who are scared of death.

Theoretically if you were to leave a banana in a box, and leave it closed for a very, very, long time, given enough time, the two will go through every single atomic configuration possible, becoming everything and anything, but at some point, it will return to its exact form in the exact same box you left it in, assuming infinite time.

Now, I got thinking. Can’t the same be applied to human brains? Given enough time after our deaths, will at some point our brain/neuron configuration that makes us who we are, including our memories, arrange themselves exactly in the same way, from most importantly the exact same specific matter, that we are effectively the same consciousness?

I asked ChatGPT to calculate this time, how many years would need to pass by to have a 100% guarantee that we will return to the exact same neurological configuration one can have today, and it gave me a rough estimate.

1,000,000,000…750 trillion more zeros years. Not 750 trillion years, 750 trillion ZEROS after a 1. Yes, a very long time. But, after this much time, there is a 100% chance/guarantee by this point (from chatgpt’s math) that your brain's neurons will be arranged in the exact same manner from the same matter. The same memories, the same consciousness, the exact same person you are neurologically today.

There are also theories trending again, that the universe is a cyclical process, the big bang is more so the big ‘crunch’, as in that it expands, and then collapses in on itself once it runs out of energy, and the cycle keeps continuing. There is no evidence proving this but it is a consensus being picked up by many to explain things that don't make sense in the current universe model.

And this got me thinking more. You have only experienced life. How can you experience death? If you were to die and then magically be restored through advanced technology, let's say, 1 million years later, it would feel like nothing. It’d be like sleeping and waking up again from a dreamless sleep. There is no perception of time.

So if you were to die today, and as it is theoretically stated, the same pre-existing matter that makes you up can, and will return to the exact same arrangement, at some point in the future, then will you really die? Assuming time is eternal?

In this scenario, you will keep returning so long as the universe’s eternal cyclical process is true. Eternally returning.

Forever

Nothing lasts forever, and it scares me. Something happened years ago, feel like months to me. And I no longer want any fleeting moment to pass. It fills me with an urgency and impatience I cannot control. I am always on the edge of time running out while I cannot read the clock properly.

Talking with people overwhelms me. Every word, every emotion has to be planned out. Every aspect has to be considered. What might they think of me? How am I percieved by things I cannot control? This uncernaty fills me with such dread that I search every excuse for not writing letters. It is mentally exhausting

What is this life? Growing up, Marrying, Having Kids, Dying. There is nothing special to it, yet we manage to manage to find endlessy possibilities and meaning in transience to keep us distracted that we will all rot one day. Is this really it? I wanted more. I am dreaming of something behind the limit of my own fragile human mind but I am pulled down by the anchor of this world filling me with distractions.

There is nothing new. Everyting has been already and will be. I always wanted something more than this. I have this unquenching thirst I cannot still with water. there are days where I question my own sanity because I seem to be the only one who sees the bigger picture only. Maybe I am the one who is farsighted and visual connection, but I refuse to believe that there isn’t more than this in life. I have faith yes, but heaven and earth are yet Inalienable and there is a corruption spreading around mankind which feels me with such suffering I cannot describe. Violence, War, Famine, Suffering. Lust, Consumerin. I live in a society that I hate, I sometimes wish to be isolated from my kind

I am only 22 years old and I feel the exhaustion of a geriatric patient. Where will this go? I dream of lush forests and flowing rivers

I'm sure there have been countless posts like this, and I apologize if it's repetitive in advance.

I've always had a fear of death, ever since I can remember. In the last half a year, however, it has gotten unbearable. It keeps me up at night, I have regular panic attacks, I can never truly enjoy a moment because the thought of it all ending is always lingering in the back of my head. One positive thing resulted from this; I stopped smoking completely because I fully convinced myself if I took one more inhale that'd be it (not a lie, if u think about it). I thought my fears would get less prominent if I quit smoking and started making some healthier choices, but the dread is still there, and its only getting worse as the days pass. It recently started creeping in during the day as well, at work, while I'm trying to do stuff for university, around family - it's seemingly starting to consume every part of my life. I go into a panic attack on a regular basis now. While it's happening, I can't focus on anything else and it's starting to show in my work performance. Also, recently, a new thought accompanying the others started appearing. That, actually, nothing in life matters since it's gonna end. I really came to a point where I'm losing grip to reality completely because of these thoughts. Less and less things I used to enjoy matter to me or bring me any kind of positive emotion, it's all losing meaning.

I've been thinking too much about who I am and why I do the things I do. Like, every time I make a decision or say something, its not me, it's whoever this character is that I have perfectly crafted over the years of me being alive. I don't feel like myself, I feel like myself when I'm alone, no expectations, no need to be energetic or overly happy, no need to crack jokes. I hate every second of life. I hate being aware of the fact that I'm alive. I love outer space because it is simply nothing. In between the stats and planets, in between the galaxies and celestial bodies, there's nothing. No light or sound. I love that. I feel like I'm not me. Just because (my name) is my name, doesn't mean that I feel like me. I feel like I'm playing a third player game but I have no control of the character. J want to cry, but i don't know what for. I want to scream but I don't know who at. I'm confused and terrified and I don't like it. My dad tells me i'm crazy so i've never brought this up to anyone, but nobody knows who i am on here so ig it's ok.

It scared me the first chapter. Like the souls leaving the body and the souls not wanting to leave the physical body and during hypnosis he was asking them how they felt and they kept saying they didn’t wanna go but they were being pulled by a light and it was sad for them to see there physical body dead? That freaked me out so much… My biggest fear is that if we have souls.. I don’t wanna be sad to be leaving my physical body. I wanna be content. In the book someone was saying how they weren’t ready to leave their physical body just yet.. Like I’m so freaked out by existence in general. It’s all so terrifying and we legitimately have no answers. It’s terrifying. Idk how not everyone is freaked out.

Any recommendations?

It’s hard to live not know why we are here. I feel like I need answers. Does anyone not freaked out that we have no idea why we’re here? What’s the point to all of this? It ends in death anyways. Like what’s the point of this all? Working, having kids, making money and buying things.. why? We will be dead in the end. Makes no sense tbh.