Reader’s Question

I’m going to make this short. I have this problem. Five months ago my girlfriend and I broke up. It wasn’t anything that hasn’t happened to a person before, but every girlfriend I had has left me for my friend. It doesn’t really effect me, but it’s getting really annoying because this is the first time I knew someone who wasn’t my family that cared about me. My old friend is an expert at taking people’s girls, but that’s not the problem. After this happened, it seems that I lost myself. I have been down before, but I never felt this lost before. Even after 5 months I still feel lost. My best friend, who pretty much is my brother, always told me that I had the most heart of anybody he knows. No matter what I was put up against, I would fight it, and I knew that was true because I’ve been through a lot. It’s just that I lost myself and I don’t think the way I used to. I feel alone even more than usual since I left school. It’s kind of strange since for most of my life I have been alone.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

First of all, I’d get another friend. Your self-esteem is so low that you don’t consider your friend’s disloyalty as a problem, especially when it’s happened before.

When you talk about depression and being lonely, I sense you’re experiencing a high level of stress at this point. In your question, you mention leaving school as well as a romantic break-up, both being very stressful events. When we remember that the break-up was five months ago and you’re still having emotional difficulty, you’re not recovering very well from the experience. I suspect the break-up may have moved you from a routine reaction to a clinical depression. With clinical depression we have neurochemical changes in the brain — producing problems with sleep, energy, appetite, sexual interest, motivation, focus, and even thought processes. Depression always amplifies any existing issues we may have — making lonely people feel totally alone, shy people feel intensely shy, and people in physical pain feel overwhelming pain.

I would recommend seeing a counselor/therapist in your community. I’d also read this site’s articles on depression and take a few of the depression screening tests. Finally, if you are experiencing the neurochemical symptoms of depression you may benefit from the use of an antidepressant.