Hey,

I need help working through the fact that I feel overwhelmed by the circumstances of my life.

I’m a 21-year-old fresh university grad (finance degree), I have Asperger’s, I’m 5’11”, 160 lbs., average facially, skinnyfat, mixed White/Indian, a kissless virgin with no friends, social life, or connections and I work an invoice-pushing job making $33,000 a year after taxes in a suburb of Toronto. I live with my parents because I can’t afford to live on my own. I’m among the lowest of the low SMV-wise.

This wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have sprained ankles right now. I started my job 2 months ago, and was lifting for the first 6 weeks of my job, but I sprained my ankles while playing basketball with my dad, and haven’t lifted since out of fear of re-injury. I feel like I could start lifting again now, but I’m scared of re-injuring myself worse if I do (I can walk, run, and even sprint and jump, but can’t do some of the things I used to on my ankles). There’s also the fact that every time I try to seriously self-improve, something goes horribly wrong and knocks me back down to square one.

I want to be an alpha male, but I just feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work I have to do to fix my life. I also suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and mild ADHD, which when combined with my Asperger’s, make things 100x harder and worse. Sure, I have a 6-month emergency fund and I’m financially responsible with the little I have, but other than that, my life is complete shit.

I also feel overwhelmed by the need to please others. I want to start my own business and/or write this book I’ve been planning for the last 2 years, but I’m scared of the backlash from everybody and/or permanently ruining my career prospects if I fail, which is a death sentence in today’s world. I’m also considering getting professional degrees to advance in my careers so society will think better of me, even though I know it doesn’t care.

I feel totally afraid and frozen and overwhelmed in my life. It’s like I’m subconsciously preventing myself from going all in because I’m scared of catastrophic failure because my parents have convinced me it’ll be the failure I can never emotionally recover from. I’ve been convinced (and fully believe) I’m emotionally fragile.

I spent my entire weekend masturbating and playing video games despite having quit both those habits before. I catastrophize the smallest adversities in life, I’m a natural complainer/whiner, and my procrastination tendencies are coming back, big time. I have to wake up at 4:00 AM tomorrow morning for my job and I haven’t shaved yet. And my parents always complain about me leaving things to the last minute. I can’t organize myself for shit.

I’m running against the problem that I seriously need to monk mode, but I’ve never experienced the pleasures I’d be monking myself against, and the lack of me experiencing those pleasures has made me depressed because I feel like I should have been able to achieve those pleasures by now; depriving myself of those even more will only make me more miserable.

I’m totally overwhelmed and frozen. I don’t know what to do.