How do you re-gain your morale after bad times?

Start from the beginning. There’s no need to give up. Be grateful that you can still enjoy your time with your family,do something useful,and still have the chance to recover it.

I don’t know. I hate going out also, but that is because I am anti social and a loner and I am happy like that.

With very small steps. Pick one thing you either like or would like to do that involves socialising. It could be going to the gym, or swimming, or joining a social club of somesort, music, art, whatever appeals. Then do it. This will get you back into society, interacting with people & doing something you enjoy, the rest will follow on from that.

@JeffVader does Fluther count?

@talljasperman Haha, maybe, but only as a testing ground… you’ll only make real progress out in the real world, interacting with real people.

@JeffVader I’m scared of these “real people” but I’LL find something

Just take one step at a time, and one day at a time. Do small things first. Contact someone who was a friend, arrange to meet up with them.
Give yourself one new task per day, and gradually you will start to recover from this lifestyle you are in now.

I would suggest getting out and about. Do things you care about and maybe a few “new” things you have never tried. This will help you get out and away from this rut that has consumed your life. Take up a hobby, or a sport, go to the gym, go for hikes, and I would recommend volunteering somewhere too. You need to put some skin in the game inorder to help you feel connected to the world around you. Good luck!

@talljasperman Thats perfectly normal after you’ve been out of the mix for a while. As I said, look in your local community & find just 1 thing you would enjoy. Reading / book clubs, swimming clubs, whatever it may be. You’ll get to know a small group of local people in a safe environment. From this your confidence will grow & slowly but surely you’ll feel better able to tackle the other things you mentioned. Also, just mixing with people will start to improve your self esteem.

A job (any kind) would be a great first step. It gives you a place to go, a reason to get up and dressed in the morning, something to do, people to meet. As a side benefit it helps with your debts, and maybe even offers medical care.
Don’t waste time responding to me. Go look at want ads right now.
I wish you the best.

Considering all setbacks to be temporary phenomena, while assuming that overall my future does indeed look very bright.

Everyone deals with failure at some point in their lives. The key, DON’T GIVE UP. After all, Sam Walton failed at several businesses before he was successful building Walmart. So, “hitch up the britches” and get back in the game my friend. It ain’t over to until the last out of the game!

You simply have to decide that you love yourself. Once you realize that you do, indeed, love yourself, the rest is easy.

Oh…And, You Gotta Have Heart….Miles and Miles of Heart…

I’m in a similar place, so I can’t give any definitive advice. I can describe how I’m going though. My psychological health has very recently been improving for no obvious reason. I believe it has something to do with psychological development. I’m 21 and all of the hangups of my adolescence are loosening their burdens on me. I’m not happy, by any means, but I’m not depressed either. My problems now are dealing with some unhealthy habits and forgiving those who neglected me when I needed them most, over and over again. As far as getting back into society? I’m in no rush. Society is overrated . . . doomed might be a better word. Better to establish my values for now, so that when I’m ready to leave my little hermitage they’ll be solidified as principles that I can build a purpose with. Being human is a balance, and life is a fucking juggling act. You, like me, and everyone else here are probably as doomed as our unsustainable civilization is. But even if we are, there’s no reason to believe it. If hope for a hope is your only hope, there’s still a reason to press on. Don’t make things too simple, and don’t make things so complex they become simply impossible. There’s more than just logic to human intelligence, try to find your intuition and try to have faith in it when you do. It’s the only thing that can get people like us out of mazes like this.

When I’d been trapped in the house for over 2 years, I couldn’t even stand at the front door if it was open. My heart raced, I felt physically sick, and would be in the grip of an absolute terror I can’t even explain. It honestly was just horrific. It took me such a long time to be able to go outside on my own, but I did it honey and you will too. If you’d asked me back then if I’d ever work again or be able to pull on my coat and go shopping, I’d have cried thinking it was a very cruel taunt but I do that now, all on my own without gripping my husbands arm so tightly I dig my nails into his arm.

As I said it took a long time and was done in very small steps, and was not fun but it worked. I used to sit at the bottom of the stairs staring at the front door, imagining it open, seeing the path outside, seeing the gate at the bottom and the street outside. Even that used to terrifiy me, but I kept doing it, a little at a time. Just the power of imagination. After a while hubby would sit on the bottom of the steps with me, open the door just a little ways, and sit with me holding me, to begin with i cried and just held him, but I swear honey it got easier in time. I remember phoning him at work one morning, excited fit to burst because I’d done it on my own. What followed was months of my, to begin with, standing at the door, standing just outside it, eventually making it to the gate (and even saying good morning to any neighbours I’d see), and then outside the gate. I thought one day “I wonder if I could make it to the lamp post?” which was maybe 10 feet or so away from my gate, I did make it, and kept trying to make the next one along, till I made it round to our local shops in the next street. After I’d made it there, I made a morning routine of walking round there, touching the doorway of one of the shops and walking back to the house.

Good god just typing this is difficult, but I wanted to let you see anything is possible if you want it enough sweetheart. I’m not a very strong person, I wish so much that I was strong like my Gran was, but I survive, and if I can do it, you can for sure honey, I promise. <hugs> I agree with @worriedguy that getting a job, even a part time one is a great help. I know that if I didn’t have my little part time job I would just stop going out again. It gives me a reason to get up, shower, fix my make up and hair and more importantly a reason to smile all day long. I mix with people, I choose retail work for that reason, I have friends at work, people I really enjoy spending time with, can have a laugh with. I’ve never been shy about my depression, I’ve never been secretive about it, why should I be? its a part of me, its changed me, but also allowed me to get to know myself far better than I used to. You’ll do it sweetheart, you will, you have your family behind you, who’ll be able to help, and you’ll do it. A few years from now you’ll look back at now, and be so proud of yourself, I promise.
sending buckets of love and hugs xx

Get outside and enjoy nature.It works for me :)

Small steps. Achievable goals, don’t set the bar so high that you fail then beat yourself up. Does volunteering appeal to you? Could you go into a church during business hours and tell a minister what you just told us and ask for something to do for someone else that might take only a few minutes – 20 or so? Maybe 2 or 3 days a week?
Good luck, keep us posted on your progress, however you decide to get back out there.

I agree with the making a friend route. Preferably – you have a contact that will already care for you and want to see you succeed in this endeavor. But if you’ve been out of the loop for a while, you can always call on your family.

Unless your whole family is as anti-social – see if you can tag along for an activity they do. Yeah sure, you can go grocery shopping and get some outside exposure and start small – or you can immerse yourself.

For example, if your cousin’s going bowling with some friends – ask to join along. And when you get there – don’t stand out, don’t feel pressured to add anything to the group.Just be there for the good time. See how they interact. And if you have something constructive to say – say it. Experiment.

But also @davidbetterman – that’s great advice. Always love yourself. Forgive yourself for all the bad things in your life. Be it your fault or not – forgive yourself. Say you’re ready for a new beginning. Write your goals down. And write them again everyday. It’ll make a difference no matter how stupid it looks in the short run.

Love yourself, and you’ll find it’ll make it alot easier for other people to love you. Remember what they say – don’t sell a product you don’t believe in.

Good luck – and welcome back!

Win a car on the Price is Right…

…and don’t forget always spay and neuter your pets.

@drClaw stole my answer… saying that I like to turn my amp up to 11 and play the Star Spangled Banner with my glass bottle slide.

I can really identify with you. I went through a real “fast and furious all was great” cycle that lasted some eight years. Then I went through a horrendous bad cycle where nothing I did worked out. You name it, job, love, even household appliances. I have never felt so broken. It lasted I think four years.

The only thing I can say is. You will get over this bad cycle. Turn your back on it. Totally. Don’t look back; don’t keep remembering how bad it was. Look ahead. How do you do this? By good solid routine and that is about it. Also understand that cycles are cycles, they start and end. This one has ended.
You might have a bit of low grade reactive depression because of the ‘bad cycle” whether you treat it medically or other ways is up to you.

I’d try manufacturing an obligation to go out. Perhaps a job is too big right now, but maybe volunteering once a week somewhere—maybe at a place that serves children.

Don’t lose your morale in the first place for those relatively petty causes.

Are you healthy? Can you get up out of bed every day? Feed yourself? Walk? Speak? Can you laugh? Can you find anything to laugh about? If the answer to any of those is “yes”, then change your mind: you’re having a good year.

I’ve done all of the things you mentioned (most of them within the same year/s), but I never considered them to be “bad years”. They were “years when more bad things than usual happened”. Yeah, some of those things had me down for awhile, for the specific reason or loss—and the Red Sox were still just losing World Series then, too (if they even got into playoffs). But they were never ‘bad years.’

You must realize that your failures are not the sum of who you are. Every day I live and breathe, I misread things, forget important things, transpose numbers and letters, etc. Sometimes I can’t even remember how to get to a place in the city I grew up in all my life. It’s like the memory bank has just been deleted or something. But these things are NOT all I am.

You have your faults, but you have your assets, too, and those assets are sometimes best realized through the lives of others. By cutting yourself off from everyone, you’ve severed the positive that comes from interracting with people who appreciate those positive things about you, leaving yourself victimized in an endless loop of negative thoughts about yourself. That is part of the reason your self image suffers. You know what to do.