Ask HN: Having emotional breakdown

Are you in any clubs/sports? I'm a freshman at university, and I know that I'm incredibly introverted. Most of my friends in high school talked to me first and that's how I made friends. I realized it wouldn't be so easy in university. Now that they're not with me, the first logical thing I did was join a club.

I joined the dragon boat club because on a boat, you're going to need good teamwork or else you're going to sink. And often sports clubs will have teamwork building exercises like learning people's names. It's getting through that first step of knowing the person's name that's the hardest. Once you're at a first-name basis with someone, it's a lot easier to talk to them.

Free yourself from the idea that you "let go" of a few years for the purpose of going to school instead of working on your python programming.

This is the time to learn. Nobody is expecting you to invent the next Google at this point in your life. You've got an entire life ahead of you. The fact that you're in an undergraduate program in your country puts you light-years ahead of your fellow citizens. You've already won a lottery that billions in your country will never have a chance to even enter.

My friend you need professional help. We are not psychologists nor psychiatrists.

For starters the only way to meet friends is to be outgoing, being an introvert makes this very hard, but if you really want to make friends you are going to have to deal with your issues and talk to people. Believe it or not, it gets better with time and as you grow.

On the other part, grades don't mean a thing, and you really need to stop looking at things as if it was the professors fault. If you really feel that college was lacking in some way you need to either change college or make the best of your situation and study by yourself what you think your your classes are missing. In a way is as much your fault as the professors. That being said, the past is the past and there is no point dwelling on it.

The reality of your situation is very simple actually. You want to become more extroverted to make friends? Build something where you have to interact with people. You want to become better at 'python programming'? Buy a few books and build something in python, and when you're done reread the books and build something in python (this is a recursive sentence!). You feel like college is full of people that don't care about you learning? You're right, because the only person that cares about that is yourself, and unless you're Will Hunting you really need to take responsibility for your life.

Also, go see a psychologist, or a psychiatrist if the situation is worse and will require medication.

1. Cognitive therapy-lite : Try to maintain a journal where you divide a page into 2 columns. LHS : negative thought, such as, "I cannot talk to people; no one likes me". RHS : objective assessment, such as, "Actually, I can talk to people at times, especially if I am not feeling depressed, and I approach the situation casually. There are people who like me and try to encourage me such as x and y. I may be subtly making unnecessarily universal statements such as 'I cannot talk to people (AT ALL)'". After some time, you will get good at correcting your excessively-negative thoughts without writing them down on paper. You have to short circuit the mental negative talk quickly, otherwise, it snowballs into a familiar state of depression. Read Burns' "Feeling Good" book if you can get your hands on it in India.

2. Whenever you get some deep, positive insights, write them down in one place. For example, you may be sitting at the college canteen drinking some tea and wallowing in self-pity when suddenly a person with no legs comes over to beg for a rupee, and you suddenly see that life can be much much worse than a temporary lack of social skills! At least you have your legs. This may seem too trivial to be an "insight", but that is just your depression talking again. It can be a jolting thought that forces you to play the best game you can given the cards you were dealt out.

The age of 21 is like that. "This too shall pass", as some wise man said. All the best! :-)

+1 professional help. A good psychiatrist can really help you with social anxiety disorder, or whatever they're calling it these days.

I also recommend the book dying of embarrassment, which has many of the things a good psychiatrist will take you through. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d.html/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/176-...