Reclaiming My Life

[HopePaul]

Just a little warning, I'm actually Italian and not very good at translating, I used Chatgpt, so please forgive me if you don't understand something. I can start by saying that I'm 23 years old and going through a tough period, or at least I hope it's just a period, where I can't live like I used to anymore. I'm not exactly sure what brought me to this state, but I've been trying to figure it out for a while and I think I have, which is why I'm going to talk about it here with you. It started about a year ago, but probably even longer. I just noticed it a bit too late. What I believe I suffer from is anxiety, which didn't allow me to breathe naturally. I was always completely tense, couldn't relax, constantly had pain in my shoulders and back, felt constantly cold, couldn't concentrate, had a constant headache, and couldn't live in the present. Nothing I did brought me satisfaction and I was completely in my thoughts, making me feel constantly tired. All of this then led to complications at work, in my friendships, and I didn't even think I could have a relationship. The only thing that relaxed me and gave me some relief was masturbation. For almost a year I continued to live in this situation, I didn't want to ask anyone for help because it seemed like a "weak" thing to do, and since I had gone through other tough periods when I was younger, and had managed to overcome them, I felt like I could overcome this one without anyone's help. Actually, the tough periods I was able to overcome were thanks to Spirituality. With Spirituality I had managed to overcome my victim mentality, to open my mind more and to have fantastic experiences both in terms of awakening and in daily life. In fact, there was a period in my life of continuous growth, where I slept 7-8 hours, meditated, exercised, read, stopped smoking both weed and cigarettes, was more extroverted and my friendships were growing. When suddenly, for no apparent reason, I became lazy (I think backlash from the ego?) and this led me to lose many positive habits and to resume old habits. From there, I could no longer enter that state where I really felt alive. In the last year, as things started to worsen, I continued on my spiritual path, but without any real practice, only collecting information, thinking that the more I knew, the more "Enlightened" I would be. The opposite was true, and I could now say that I was falling asleep even more. Today I have come to think that the Spirituality that had saved me at the time has become an obsession or a spiritual bypass for many of my shortcomings, such as my relationship with girls, which I continue to avoid, and never being able to create a relationship. In the last 3 months, I resumed positive habits, such as quitting smoking, exercising, limiting masturbation and sweets, but all of this didn't get me anywhere, I still had the same anxiety problems. Since I started to realize that maybe focusing too much on Spirituality and not enough on my daily life was the problem, I tried to eliminate anything related to Spirituality for a while and dedicate myself to the development of my life. It seems that day by day I see some improvements. Reading on the Forum about other similar situations, I felt the desire to write on the forum and I also feel a bit better. I hope some of you can give me some advice if you've been through situations like this. Thank you