This is a bit of rambling post so apologies for that, but I am seriously confused and could do with some help. I feel totally at a loss as to what to do and I don’t really know where else I can post this.

For years I have felt shy and awkward and frustrated, and often people would take the piss out of me for it. But all of my attempts to fix my situation have not only failed, they have just made things worse. In trying to be “cool” I just covered up my real self with this fake façade which pushed most of my friends away and now I have virtually no one. I didn’t really realise this at the time, I thought I was just doing what I was supposed to do to improve my situation, but actually I was trying to live up to some ideal of perfection and be someone that I’m not.

Now I am in an absolutely dire situation and I know that something needs to change but I don’t know what. I don’t know whether to go in the direction of improving myself and becoming a more attractive and outgoing version of myself as RSD/the pickup community suggests, or to accept and own and love who I am as my parents and other books suggest. This is the really frustrating thing, different people tell me different things, like my parents say “there’s nothing wrong with you, you don’t need to change, you just need to get out there and find someone who’s right for you”. And books on overcoming low self-esteem tell me to stop demanding so much of myself and cultivate an acceptance of myself as I am. But that runs polar opposite to what RSD/pickup teaches. They say you should always be improving yourself and striving to become more attractive and outgoing and “cool”. And I feel utterly lost and confused about what to do.

I feel like I can’t talk to anyone about this because of the shady reputation pickup has. My family would just dismiss it out of hand and tell me to “stop reading that stuff” or something like that. I also feel like I couldn’t bring it up to a therapist for the same reason. So this is really the only place I can think of to post this.

It seems either way I am in a difficult bind. If I do keep aiming for that confident self-ideal and it turns out to be impossible or unrealistic, then I have wasted my whole life feeling miserable and chasing something that I’ll never get. On the other hand, if I just accept myself as I am and it turns out that that confident self-ideal was attainable, then I condemn myself to a life of loneliness and throw away the chance to live my social life to the fullest.

I feel like I need to resolve this confusion as soon as possible because time is ticking. I am 25 now, have struggled with low self-esteem and awkwardness for most of my life and almost nothing has worked. In fact I am actually having suicidal thoughts over this issue. Which is not to say I would go through with something like that, but I often feel suicidal if that makes sense. But yeah, something seriously needs to change and I seriously need to figure out what direction to go in to fix my life, because at the moment I feel utterly lost and hopeless. Any help or clarity on this problem would be greatly appreciated.