How to keep myself stable and calm?

I saw in your other post you think therapy doesn't work for men. I'm a man. I spent about a year in therapy. I went from being a stressed out depressed weirdo to still weird but enjoying life. Both of my best friends, also men, are currently in therapy after my encouragement and have admitted it's done wonders for them. I used to believe the exact same as you and felt how you're describing until I burn out and spent two weeks in a psych ward. I also know several women who have gone through therapy and spoken highly about what they got from it and their therapist.

Studies have shown that up to 80% of people who go through modern psychotherapy treatment improve (modern being key).

From my experience, the big things that most people miss that causes therapy to fail is:

Finding the right therapist. I went through three before finding the one that worked for me. My wife went through I don't know how many. My friend's wife didn't connect with the therapist that work for my wife and needed someone different. Yes there are people out there just greedy for a check. There's also great people who truly care and want to see you succeed. I found checking their qualifications helped me narrow down quicker and find who worked for me. If they just have a single diploma or something from some unknown school, more likely they won't work out (not guaranteed, just my experience). If however they're properly trained in many different techniques like CBT, CPT, EMDR, and so on they're more likely to be good and able to actually find what works for you.
Yes, some people fail therapy. It's not guaranteed to work. Nothing is and if it was that would be suggested instead. If you haven't tried it, try it. Can't be worse than being miserable I've found.
Therapy still requires massive effort from you. A lot of the people I've seen who got nothing from therapy put in zero effort outside of it. They thought seeing a therapist was doing the work. A good therapist often will give you homework and techniques to practice and you actually have to follow through. For me, personally, the thing that I had to work on most but helped most was setting daily goals for myself to do something I wanted to do and not feel guilty about it. Again that was me, in my situation, may not be right for you but a good therapist will help you with things like that. And you need to actually commit to it.
You need to actually dig into what's causing these feelings. Just finding techniques to ground you in the moment only works for so long. If you don't address the root cause, it doesn't go away. A lot of the people I've seen fail in therapy treat it more as a venting session where they just talk about things that annoy them. That's wrong. Instead, dog into why it annoys you. A good therapist will go past "that made me sad" and help you find what the actual problem was. For me, I had been raised with very high expectations, but also nothing was ever good enough, while my brother could do no wrong. In my sessions I didn't just vent about how I angry I was seeing coworkers get promoted, we dug into my personal expectations for myself and how I was failing to relate to others around me because I was judging them as if they were me. I had to dig into letting go of past expectations from my family I'd carried forward that had left me depressed and alone and am outsider, not just vent about being sad and alone.
Meds. A lot of people try therapy but skip even considering meds because of the stigma around them. Sometimes you just need that extra help. My best friend, one of the two mentioned earlier, spent his first month or three in therapy working on getting over that stigma and finally getting on the meds he needed. People will take chemotherapy if they have cancer, take Excedrin or whatever for a headache, but then think that just a little bit more self discipline or a magic calming technique will fix their brain instead of getting medicine for a lack of serotonin production. I've also seen it go the other way, they think the right antidepressant or mood stabilizer will cure them but refuse to go to therapy because "it won't work, they're not crazy". Sometimes, you just need both.
Meds part 2. I've seen a lot of people skip meds and fail at therapy because they don't want to be dependent on a pill for the rest of their life. They want to get better. Well sorry. Some people just need whatever medicine. Again. Diabetics take insulin, but antidepressants for life is often considered a nonstarter. You might not need them, that's great, you might already be on some, nothing wrong there, but also nothing wrong with taking a pill the rest of your life if it makes it a good one.
They drop out early. This one almost got me twice. First I started feeling worse. On top of all the stuff in my life that made me feel terrible my therapist wanted to dig up painful memories? Yeah, didn't feel great. Thankfully my therapist took a step back and we took a different approach at working through things. Still didn't feel the best but I kept with it and trusted the process. The second way I almost dropped out early was after making a large amount of progress. I thought I was doing great. Thought I didn't need a therapist any more. Mine actually strongly argued against me quitting and I wish I'd listened. I was not ready to fully strike out on my own and started falling back into old negative thought patterns. Thankfully I recognized them before it was too late and went back and finished the work.

I'm sure there's more reasons it can fail, those are just what I've seen in my personal experience. It did wonders for me along with meds. I needed both. It's doing wonders for my friends. I wish I could give you grounding techniques and some solid advice to help but it's really situationally dependent. You say your happy memories are eating you alive, without knowing what they are, or why, or what's feeding into your loneliness, then the techniques might be the wrong ones and do more harm than good, and again, that's where a therapist can come in and help you safely find the right things.

8 comments

I saw in your other post you think therapy doesn't work for men. I'm a man. I spent about a year in therapy. I went from being a stressed out depressed weirdo to still weird but enjoying life. Both of my best friends, also men, are currently in therapy after my encouragement and have admitted it's done wonders for them. I used to believe the exact same as you and felt how you're describing until I burn out and spent two weeks in a psych ward. I also know several women who have gone through therapy and spoken highly about what they got from it and their therapist.
Studies have shown that up to 80% of people who go through modern psychotherapy treatment improve (modern being key).
From my experience, the big things that most people miss that causes therapy to fail is:
Finding the right therapist. I went through three before finding the one that worked for me. My wife went through I don't know how many. My friend's wife didn't connect with the therapist that work for my wife and needed someone different. Yes there are people out there just greedy for a check. There's also great people who truly care and want to see you succeed. I found checking their qualifications helped me narrow down quicker and find who worked for me. If they just have a single diploma or something from some unknown school, more likely they won't work out (not guaranteed, just my experience). If however they're properly trained in many different techniques like CBT, CPT, EMDR, and so on they're more likely to be good and able to actually find what works for you.
Yes, some people fail therapy. It's not guaranteed to work. Nothing is and if it was that would be suggested instead. If you haven't tried it, try it. Can't be worse than being miserable I've found.
Therapy still requires massive effort from you. A lot of the people I've seen who got nothing from therapy put in zero effort outside of it. They thought seeing a therapist was doing the work. A good therapist often will give you homework and techniques to practice and you actually have to follow through. For me, personally, the thing that I had to work on most but helped most was setting daily goals for myself to do something I wanted to do and not feel guilty about it. Again that was me, in my situation, may not be right for you but a good therapist will help you with things like that. And you need to actually commit to it.
You need to actually dig into what's causing these feelings. Just finding techniques to ground you in the moment only works for so long. If you don't address the root cause, it doesn't go away. A lot of the people I've seen fail in therapy treat it more as a venting session where they just talk about things that annoy them. That's wrong. Instead, dog into why it annoys you. A good therapist will go past "that made me sad" and help you find what the actual problem was. For me, I had been raised with very high expectations, but also nothing was ever good enough, while my brother could do no wrong. In my sessions I didn't just vent about how I angry I was seeing coworkers get promoted, we dug into my personal expectations for myself and how I was failing to relate to others around me because I was judging them as if they were me. I had to dig into letting go of past expectations from my family I'd carried forward that had left me depressed and alone and am outsider, not just vent about being sad and alone.
Meds. A lot of people try therapy but skip even considering meds because of the stigma around them. Sometimes you just need that extra help. My best friend, one of the two mentioned earlier, spent his first month or three in therapy working on getting over that stigma and finally getting on the meds he needed. People will take chemotherapy if they have cancer, take Excedrin or whatever for a headache, but then think that just a little bit more self discipline or a magic calming technique will fix their brain instead of getting medicine for a lack of serotonin production. I've also seen it go the other way, they think the right antidepressant or mood stabilizer will cure them but refuse to go to therapy because "it won't work, they're not crazy". Sometimes, you just need both.
Meds part 2. I've seen a lot of people skip meds and fail at therapy because they don't want to be dependent on a pill for the rest of their life. They want to get better. Well sorry. Some people just need whatever medicine. Again. Diabetics take insulin, but antidepressants for life is often considered a nonstarter. You might not need them, that's great, you might already be on some, nothing wrong there, but also nothing wrong with taking a pill the rest of your life if it makes it a good one.
They drop out early. This one almost got me twice. First I started feeling worse. On top of all the stuff in my life that made me feel terrible my therapist wanted to dig up painful memories? Yeah, didn't feel great. Thankfully my therapist took a step back and we took a different approach at working through things. Still didn't feel the best but I kept with it and trusted the process. The second way I almost dropped out early was after making a large amount of progress. I thought I was doing great. Thought I didn't need a therapist any more. Mine actually strongly argued against me quitting and I wish I'd listened. I was not ready to fully strike out on my own and started falling back into old negative thought patterns. Thankfully I recognized them before it was too late and went back and finished the work.
I'm sure there's more reasons it can fail, those are just what I've seen in my personal experience. It did wonders for me along with meds. I needed both. It's doing wonders for my friends. I wish I could give you grounding techniques and some solid advice to help but it's really situationally dependent. You say your happy memories are eating you alive, without knowing what they are, or why, or what's feeding into your loneliness, then the techniques might be the wrong ones and do more harm than good, and again, that's where a therapist can come in and help you safely find the right things.
There are more helpful functional replies here than I have energy to provide, I just wanna offer a hug. Shit sucks 🫂
- Thank you.
  
  You're very welcome. Take care my friend, I hope you find your way to a life that is kinder to you
Is seeing a therapist an option? Speaking from experience, they will give you the tools to manage those things.
- Therapists from my experience, suck.
  They are just there to serve themselves(Earn Money), I literally had never seen a person who compliments their therapist. All the people who in my life tried therapy, failed and even public figures who try therapy, fail.
  This is not to say that therapy is pointless, but at least for men it's not as effective as it should be to solve any mental issues.
  
  I have had a bad one, a couple mid ones, and two great ones. The great ones helped me become the person I wanted to be and helped me get myself on track to a very happy life after decades of chronic depression and anxiety.