I stumbled upon this sub some days ago, but I've already read much the same things on one non-English blog. However, TRP is much more detailed and extensive, because it's written by many guys, not just one. Also, before I start, please bear in mind that English is not my first language, so excuse me for possible mistakes. My country is in central Europe, if that matters for context.

My question could be considered a bit off-topic, but it's not. It's about SMV; job/university, to be precise.

Some background first. I come from a very fucked up background. When I was about one year old, a war broke out in my country. The first sounds I remember are air raid sirens and shell detonations. A few years after, just when the war ended, my dad destroys our almost perfect family, takes away two of our cars, a two-storey house on the seaside (one-storey for non-US), a big orchard and enough money to buy himself a big-ass vineyard and live the upper middle-class life until he wasted it all away. He breaks into our house a couple of times, drunk as hell, to try and take me away and then proceed to beat up my mom for not letting him. He even tried to kill her one or two times, but, thankfully, was too plastered for that. My mom's family basically disinherited her through her brother's extortion of their mother. For some time her and I were seriously, substantially poor. I was bullied hard through Kindergarten for being fatter than all the other boys, too quiet and non-confrontational (try to be a playful kid after that kind of divorce) and somewhat less hard through Elementary school (but hard nonetheless) for being weak, plump and a nerd.

I have to thank two assholes in my High school class who persistently made fun of me, day after day, for the first six months or so and made me realize some of my social goofiness (the three of us became great friends afterwards). After that, I became hugely popular in the school, while not being a douche. That was a miracle to me. On the other hand, I started hitting the gym and transformed myself from a sea calf to more aesthetic-looking guy (even a meathead, in teenagers' sense). I continued to be an excellent student, was respected by most professors, elected for class-president three years in a row, many of my classmates, male and female, were coming to me for advices (relationships, parents, studying etc.), my high school thesis (something we have in our country) was awarded, by the country's leading cultural institution, as the best thesis in that part of the country etc. All in all, very good. But I still had some major beta traits (naivete, too much openness and similar, so many people exploited me and I wasn't aware of that).

After that I was admitted to the best and hardest Law School in the country and that's where shit hit the fan. My beta ways led me to sustain too much bullshit from some of my closest friends and I erupted and broke contact with them, after they wouldn't admit they did anything wrong or were too ashamed to talk to me after I became aware of some very nasty things they did behind my back. There were also some major shitstorms in the family. That was too much for me in a very short period of time (think a month or two) and, after a couple of breakdowns, I attempted suicide. I failed to finish the first year of Law School. Then again on the next year. That led to depression, video-games 24/7 and binge eating, so I ended gaining around 40 kgs / 90 of fat.

After that I had to return home, recompose myself and start again from the beginning. And here I am. I lost 95% of the fat I gained, switched from fitness to powerlifting 1.5 years ago, look great, dress sharp, have a good sense of humor, great social circle (older than me: engineers, doctors, lawyers, college professors, even a guy working in CERN; my age and younger: very good and great students and athletes and, all in all, high quality people). Sex and relationships is not what I'm very concerned about right now, but since somebody's going to ask anyway - based on the attention I'm getting, I presume I could have a very good sex life, but one-night stands don't interest me. I'm interested only in a quality relationship (still not Unicorn hunt in my country, since our women haven't gone full retard with radical feminism, liberalism and whatnot, unlike the Western ones), but I need to work on myself more for that. To be honest, I still have many psychological scars and traumas from all periods of my life, most of them inflicted by the closest ones in my life (parents, family, friends, teachers) and I have issues with trust, sporadic but usually very hard depressive episodes, problems evaluating myself properly and serious lack of motivation.

Onto the problem at hand

What troubles me the most is the Law School. I'm interested in law. Law School was my first and only real choice. I was among the top 300 students of around a 1000 who were admitted. And still, in the fourth attempt, I can't finish the first year. Obviously, the first two years in University were, objectively, too hard for beta me to handle; the third year was wasted in my attempt to pass the hardest exam first (after 3 years of not being able to study, that was too tough a nut to crack). The curriculum isn't too hard for me. I don't intentionally waste my time on thousand activities - studying and powerlifting only. But when I study, I waste my time.

It's not laziness. But considering that I have some psychological problems because of my upbringing, I assume it has something to do with all the times I've heard that I'm worth nothing and/or didn't get any kind of approval for anything lesser than perfect results (usually from the professors, rarely from my mom) and even then - it was expected of me. Being mocked and bullied from virtually everybody for most of my childhood didn't help it either. I don't have a male role model and, sadly, can't wrap my head around that concept, probably because my father left us when i was 3.5 years old and, even though he and I have good relations now, I still consider him despicable, lying, abusive and manipulative person and don't want to share any traits with such personality.

Until recently, I had big problems with my mom - I'm her fifth and only living child so she was always too protective of me and, later on, downright contemptuous to anything I have shown interest to (making models, wanting to train soccer, training bodybuilding etc.). Now she's very, very supportive, but the deed is done. I subconsciously correlate all of my academic attempts with imminent failure. I subconsciously see myself as a failure, at least in that field of life. This year I managed to stop that bullshit thinking at least in the gym (weightlifting disciplines are about psyche as much as they are about physical training) and my results skyrocketed. This year I could finally pass by or even walk into my Law School without being overwhelmed by fear. I've passed some exams but it's not enough. If I don't pass this first year by the autumn, my mom will probably stop financing it, thus making me abandon it altogether.

I don't see clearly what my problem is and, even less, how to overcome it. My clock is ticking and I'm starting to panic again. I hope I didn't come off as boastful or too immature for my years (23), I just wanted to be objective as much as I could, in as few words as possible (failed at that). Please, direct me. Thanks in advance, TRP.