My mental issues make my life miserable

I can never catch a break from my malfunctioning brain. I am always stressed out, angry, anxious and super depressed because of what my brain forces me to do. I cannot enjoy anything good in my life. Nothing makes me happy or gives me any escape from my own brain or the world in general. I am still expected to act and perform normally, so over the years I have developed coping mechanisms. None of them are perfect however and when stuff goes wrong, it goes really wrong. This might all sound trivial, or like some joke, but I’m serious when I say I cannot control my own mind. I have for example, nearly (knowingly) crashed my car and let a younger cousin climb over a balcony railing (while I was watching) because I was too caught up in my own thoughts to react. My brain basically told me not to react, and I listened. On a side note, things didn’t go wrong in either mentioned cases because of luck.

My brain is just extremely obsessive. I am much more of my brain’s servant than the other way around. It always needs control, reassurance, knowledge and logic. It needs to be 100% certain about and have reasons for every single thing in my entire life.

It needs to be certain that I did not offend the cashier when I thanked them in a slightly lower tone of voice. It needs to be certain that the strange glance someone gave me was not because they are disgusted by me. It needs to be certain that my regrets from the (distant) past don’t matter anymore. It desperately needs to know for sure that everything I am doing right now and observing now won’t negatively impact my future and make me worry even more. It also needs to know that I am “special” and “respectable” as well. It needs to be certain that I am not extremely ugly and I will not be made fun of or alone forever. It needs to be 100% certain that the tapping I hear on the window every night is not someone trying to break in. It even needs to be certain that my house isn’t made out of human flesh and that the shadows I see at night are not monsters. I am an 18 year old guy, so not something you would expect. To put it into perspective, I once spent months, day and night, researching about the monster one to reassure my brain about it, and it’s one of many things that I’ve had to handle that way.

This way of thinking has been lifelong and has just gotten worse over the years. When I was younger (e.g. 9 years old), I would have the exact same worries, but I would forget about them because of my lower attention span and I would not care because i was a kid and didn’t understand as much. This pattern of thinking started getting exponentially worse the older I got.

I have tried so many different medications. I have been to many therapists, since I was 8. None of them were able to make a difference whatsoever. My condition is just going to get worse and worse over time, especially as I learn more about how flawed my life is, and I don’t know what to do. I already have horrible body image issues, self esteem, many types of anxiety and more. I am easily influenced because I don’t know what is real and what is not, but my brain NEEDS to know, so I can’t just “forget about it”.

On top of all of that, I have all the other problems you would expect from someone my age (work, study, family, etc) which I have to do to a really good standard. No one has ever tried to understand me or help me with my problems. Not my “friends”, not health professionals, not even family. I help everyone else in any way I can, but all they ever do is ignore me or bring me down. I am autistic and a weirdo in general, so I was bullied throughout every single year of my time at school. Even some teachers in the past treated me poorly because I wasn’t as “easy” as everyone else and because, when I was a kid, I didn’t speak much English. I remember it all, back in preschool all the way to now. It’s part of the reason why I am not social and very inward. I never ever made real friends and I have always been really lonely. I have missed out on all of the vibrant social life everyone else seems to have.

At the same time I feel really guilty for having the problems that I have. They aren’t “real” problems, which is what everyone tells me. I don’t know if they are right or they just care so little about me that they are giving me a “satisfactory” answer to get me out of their hair. I have tried to convince myself that my way of thinking is wrong, especially using other people’s logic, but I just can’t. It’s too strong. Nothing I do can break me free.

It’s funny how none of my worries are about death at all because I really don’t care at this point if it is never getting better.