u/UnusualParticular160

I hate my birthday. My birthday is coming up soon, and the closer that day gets, the worse I feel. The problem isn't that nobody will come or congratulate me. On the contrary, that's actually even a good thing. The main problem is my age.

My age terrifies me. I just can't accept it. I have this strong feeling of rejection toward my own age. I hate my age and my life. Thinking about my age makes me feel scared and miserable at the same time. Fuck, this year flew by so fast. All I did this year was lie in bed, I'm not even joking, and I realize that as I get older, time is only going to pass even faster.

People will judge you based on your age. I'm almost 30, and I haven't achieved anything.

Mentally, I don't feel my age at all. I feel like I'm stuck somewhere around the age of 14. That's roughly the age when I became a hikikomori. Unfortunately, a person can't really develop as an individual without social interaction. On top of that, I've spent all these years deteriorating inside four walls instead of doing something useful with my life. Although I doubt that even that would have helped me much. You simply can't replace genuine communication with other people and personal development by staying at home.

The older I get, the worse I feel, both mentally and physically. With every year, there seem to be more and more problems. And because you're a hikikomori, these problems will only keep piling up.

I hate my birthday. My birthday is coming up soon, and the closer that day gets, the worse I feel. The problem isn't that nobody will come or congratulate me. On the contrary, that's actually even a good thing. The main problem is my age.

My age terrifies me. I just can't accept it. I have this strong feeling of rejection toward my own age. I hate my age and my life. Thinking about my age makes me feel scared and miserable at the same time. Fuck, this year flew by so fast. All I did this year was lie in bed, I'm not even joking, and I realize that as I get older, time is only going to pass even faster.

People will judge you based on your age. I'm almost 30, and I haven't achieved anything.

Mentally, I don't feel my age at all. I feel like I'm stuck somewhere around the age of 14. That's roughly the age when I became a hikikomori. Unfortunately, a person can't really develop as an individual without social interaction. On top of that, I've spent all these years deteriorating inside four walls instead of doing something useful with my life. Although I doubt that even that would have helped me much. You simply can't replace genuine communication with other people and personal development by staying at home.

The older I get, the worse I feel, both mentally and physically. With every year, there seem to be more and more problems. And because you're a hikikomori, these problems will only keep piling up.

All my online connections end the next day. No matter how much I tell myself that I won’t ignore the person and will reply on time, I still stop replying the very next day. It usually goes like this: I meet someone online, and on the first day we talk well. The next day, the person messages me, but I keep putting off replying — I tell myself I’ll do it any minute. Minutes pass, then an hour, a day, two, three, and I still keep postponing it. In the end, the person loses interest in me, and I’m alone again. Because of this, I’ve lost many potentially good friends and acquaintances online. No matter how much I promise myself not to avoid people online, I still do the same thing, as if I’m programmed. It makes me angry at myself. I think it might be because of a fear of rejection, or maybe it’s already just a habit. Does anyone else have a similar problem?

Four walls are another dimension. Time flows differently here: a day feels like an hour, a week like a day, a year like a month. I am a boy who only yesterday, out of cowardice and foolishness, stopped leaving the house, and now I am a grown man in a child’s body. A teenager sat down at the computer, blinked, and ten years flew by at the speed of light. And then you look in the mirror and see a hollow-eyed, balding, exhausted version of yourself, and you do not recognize who you are. You wonder where that teenager from yesterday went.

It is madness. Looking back, I have nothing to remember, no memories except a computer screen and four walls. I hardly even dream anymore. Every new day is no different from the last, a real groundhog day.

I want to say this: being a hikikomori is terrible. You only realize it after years have passed. Ordinary people would have gone insane from such a lifestyle long ago, many cannot even stay at home for a single day.

Surely many people in this subreddit have a job, some have had relationships or have friends. In my case it is a very severe avoidant personality disorder, one of the worst imaginable. In Japan people like this are called hikikomori, although I am not from Japan. I am a virgin over 25, I have never had a relationship, I have barely worked anywhere, I have lost all my friends, and I do not have a higher education. I have lost my health due to a sedentary lifestyle and stress, and because of this I have no hope or prospects. Honestly, now I understand why people commit suicide. What is the point of living if nothing but death awaits you? I am angry at myself and I will never forgive myself for wasting my best years within the four walls of my home instead of developing myself and changing my worthless life. All I have been doing for many years is sitting on the internet, staring at a cold computer screen and degrading. All the people my age that I know have achieved something in life: some have a family, children, a house, a car, a job, and I have nothing. There are many reasons why I ended up like this. I definitely had a predisposition to mental disorders, but I believe one of the main reasons is the internet and video games. As a teenager, when I skipped school because of social anxiety, I was bought a laptop. Later I downloaded a free online shooter, and since then my life has never been the same. I completely immersed myself in that game, played all day long, stopped going to school entirely, and did not notice how time passed. I did not notice how days, months, and even years went by in that game, time flew at the speed of light. My parents, essentially, did not care, they hardly tried to help me, and I do not understand what they were thinking back then. I am an only child, my parents are already quite elderly, and I do not even want to think about the future, it seems bleak, although the frightening future has already arrived and it will only get worse. When I came to my senses and got out of that state around the age of 18 or 19, all my classmates and friends had changed both externally and internally, while I remained stuck in adolescence. While everyone was socializing and developing, I stayed at home and deteriorated. I did not live through my teenage years like others, I have zero communication experience, nothing to remember, nothing to tell. I feel completely lost and empty, even in my dreams I see nothing but games. I felt extremely ashamed to meet familiar people on the street because I had nothing to tell, so I tried to hide my face and avoided looking people in the eyes. Now that I am over 25, the situation, as you understand, has become even worse. I have fallen far behind in life and do not understand why I am living. Every single day feels the same. Despite the fact that the text turned out long, there is still a lot I did not say. I am sorry, I just needed to speak out.

Offline games are not really a problem: you finish a game and forget about it for a while. The worst are competitive online games. They are designed to be addictive and to keep you spending more and more time in them. On top of that, the competitive aspect with other people is very engaging, because we are social beings.

I have spent a lot of nerve cells on competitive games. Every time I lost, I would get very anxious: my hands were sweating, my heart rate increased, and I got angry. Because of nervous system overstimulation, I couldn’t sleep at night. In intense matches, the stress and fear of losing pushed my adrenaline so high that it triggered panic attacks.

I clearly understood that I was destroying myself, but I couldn’t stop. Online games are like a real drug, but unlike actual drugs, they destroy your time and your nerves.

By the way, because of gaming my nervous system still hasn’t fully recovered and probably never will. Take care of your health and your time.

I posted this in other groups, but people dismissed the problem, saying it wasn’t about games. I found this subreddit and I hope that at least here someone will understand me.

As a teenager, I had problems at school because of avoidant personality disorder and social anxiety. I hated school. I started skipping classes, but I still kept going sometimes, no matter how much I didn’t want to, because my homeroom teacher and a psychologist would come for me and literally drag me to school.

Later, my parents bought me a laptop and set up internet access, and that’s when everything started. I immediately began downloading different games and got heavily addicted to one free online shooter. I became a real hikikomori, like Japanese recluses: I stopped leaving the house, stopped talking to friends, and completely stopped attending school. I played day and night without stopping. Games became my way of escaping reality.

Teachers came to see me, the vice principal, the psychologist, even the principal, and I didn’t care. I kept skipping school and became a complete recluse. All I thought about was diving into a virtual world and numbing myself. Sitting at my laptop, I lost touch with reality and time: months passed like days, years like months. Time seemed to speed up, and that’s how I spent several years. I did not leave the house at all until I was 18. Not once. All I did was sleep, wake up, sit at my laptop, and repeat the same routine every day, like Groundhog Day.

Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if I hadn’t had that laptop. I even think it might have been better if I had turned to alcohol instead of games. Because I completely wasted my teenage years and my youth in front of a computer screen. I have zero social skills, I’ve never had a girlfriend, I’m a virgin, and I have a lot of other problems. You could say I destroyed my own life with my own hands, if free will even exists. But I see myself as a victim of modern technology.

I’m hooked on brainrot. By that I mean short-form videos. All I do all day is watch them. They’re real time and life killers,иyou don’t even notice your life passing by. Because of them, I’ve put off a lot of things and never actually started them.

I can spend the whole day just scrolling. I don’t even watch regular YouTube videos or movies anymore. It’s worse than a drug.

It’s one of the worst addictions humanity has created, on par with fast food and banned substances. Who else is rotting on their couch, endlessly scrolling these videos?

Does anyone have a habit of constantly putting things off? I come across an interesting reel, but instead of watching it to the end, I just save it. On YouTube I click “watch later.” I read a post and add it to favorites. Someone messages me, I tell myself I’ll reply later, but in the end I never do. I’ve been putting off watching one movie for almost a year, always telling myself that I’ll watch it today.

Another problem is daydreaming and fantasies. I’m constantly living in my head, thinking about the same things every day.

Basically, I keep postponing everything, living in my head, and eventually I forget about it forever. I think this might be related to my condition — avoidant personality disorder and OCD. Maybe depression also plays a role, because I’ve lost interest in many things. Does anyone else have the same problem?

I am an only child in my family. I am already over 25, and I look at my peers. Many of them already have families and children, some even have several kids. Almost all of my classmates and friends have started families. I am not even talking about sex, I have never had a relationship.I am coming to realize that most likely I will never have a wife or children. I will die alone and may not even live to 30. It is terrible and sad, but for nature it is natural, a kind of natural selection where the weak do not survive and the stronger continue to live.Because of many years spent at home, I have seriously damaged my health. When I was around 22 or 23, I was much healthier, and that was the time I should have changed my lifestyle. Now it feels like I have gone too far. When women choose a partner for relationships and family, they tend to choose the best available option, and health plays a major role. Without it, life becomes much harder.I want to say one thing, take care of your health, it is one of the most important things you have.

Some people here have already given up, and among them, believers hope that there is life after death. But most likely, there is no life after death. Take off the rose-colored glasses and look around. We are biological beings living in a material world, on planet Earth, in the Milky Way galaxy, where there are millions of stars and planets, and there are billions of such galaxies.We, humans, are just dust, and our lives in themselves mean nothing. It is arrogant to think that this dust is meant to have some kind of paradise after death. There is no second life, only harsh reality. Use logic, not magical thinking.If you want to live a “second life,” do it here and now, in this reality, because there will be no other chance. Don’t comfort yourself with illusions.

I don’t want to offend anyone. I became a hikikomori in my teenage years and have remained one for decades since. But, to put it mildly, I don’t like it when young people under 20, who have only been isolated for a few months or a year, act like it’s the end of the world and say their life is over. It causes me anger and envy, because they don’t understand that their whole life is still ahead of them and, with enough effort, they can change. Meanwhile, for those of us who have been in isolation for 5–10+ years, getting out of this hole is extremely difficult.

From my experience, here are the main factors that can lead a person to become a hikikomori (a failure):

1. Mental disorders

2. Personality disorders, most often avoidant personality disorder

3. Lack of socialization during adolescence

4. Lack of friends

5. Poor relationships with parents

6. Overprotective parenting (not always)

7. Parents who are unable to make you leave the house

8. Access to the internet

9. Parents or relatives who support you financially

10. Young age, because over time many people lose their loved ones and are forced to go out into the world and survive

11. Health problems

12. Appearance-related issues

13. Low level of intelligence

14. Weak character

15. A combination of unfavorable circumstances (bad luck)

16. Addictions (substances, the internet, games) but more often these are not the cause, but a consequence; nevertheless, they keep a person in a hikikomori state.

In short, becoming a hikikomori usually requires a combination of several of the factors listed above, especially if a person stays at home for years. We, real hikikomori, are champions of failure. It’s not our choice; we were just unlucky. But that doesn’t mean we should simply rot within four walls and do nothing.

https://preview.redd.it/4jtxw9txmkch1.png?width=896&format=png&auto=webp&s=0aca49e22189a7d7049ac13d91d929bb701dacf5

Удивляет количество лайков поста

Я миллениал и не понимаю, откуда в последнее время появилось так много женщин, которые откровенно ненавидят мужчин. Повсюду куча видео и постов, где мужской пол унижают и обсмеивают. Раньше я такого не замечал: ни 10 лет назад, ни даже 5 лет назад не было такой «войны полов».

Возникает вопрос: это какой-то искусственный тренд, людей специально стравливают, или женщинам «психологи» промыли мозги, а мужчинам тренеры личностного роста вроде Маркаряна?

Посты о том, что «мужчины не умеют заниматься сексом» это вообще бред. Откуда такие выводы? Они что, бывшие проститутки с огромным опытом, чтобы судить обо всех мужчинах? Откуда уверенность, что «90% мужчин в постели ноль»? Что вообще происходит с людьми?

I’m 26 years old. Just two years ago, I was living in my room in my parents' basement. In total, I hadn’t stepped outside for about ten years. I didn’t see sunlight and had almost zero social skills. I ate whatever my parents left outside my door and spent 16 hours a day gaming and on the internet. I was a classic hikikomori: unkempt, pale, and with absolutely zero self-esteem. My entry into the real world didn’t happen because of some great epiphany, but because of a tragedy. My parents were in an accident and could no longer support me. I had to choose between starving or changing something. The first few months were hell. Every trip to the store felt like torture, and I was literally suffocating from panic attacks. But I started small. At first, I just walked at night so I wouldn't have to see anyone. Then I started hitting the gym at 5 a.m. Eventually, I signed up for online coding courses where I didn't have to talk to anyone. Then something strange happened. I wasn’t trying to “catch up” with everyone else. I just stopped being afraid of my own awkwardness. I was so used to being a nobody that I stopped caring what anyone thought of me. I would say weird things and tell jokes at the wrong time, but I did it with the total confidence of a person who has absolutely nothing to lose. It worked. It turns out that modern people are exhausted by social masks and the constant game of "keeping up appearances." Girls started flocking to me because I wasn't trying to "seduce" them in the classic sense. I just acted as if I were their only conversationalist in the world, and I was genuinely curious about them. Over the last six months, I’ve had more women than I ever could have imagined in my entire life. I have a new partner every week. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and don’t even immediately remember who is lying next to me because the flow of women has become almost endless. It’s total surrealism after ten years of living behind a monitor. This isn't bragging; it’s just a surreal dream.>!&#x200B;!<

>!That’s enough made up fairy tales for today. I think this is the dream of many hikikomori🥲🥲!<

I understand that many of us have a positive attitude toward the internet and video games because they are often the only things we have. Without them, it can be easy to lose your mind. They help us escape reality and kill time. But I want to share how addiction to games and the internet destroyed my life. In my teenage years, I developed severe social anxiety. I hated school, felt out of place there, didn’t talk to anyone, and was very closed off. Later, I started occasionally skipping school with a friend. I would never have done it on my own, but that’s how it started. In the eighth grade, I got a laptop, but I didn’t have internet, so I barely used it. One day, I accidentally connected to a neighbor’s WiFi. From that moment, I completely disappeared into the internet and games. I stopped going to school. Teachers and even a psychologist came to my home, but they couldn’t bring me back. Eventually, they just stopped trying. I spent my days at home playing games. I would wake up, sit down at the computer, then go back to sleep, and repeat the cycle. Games completely replaced reality for me. I didn’t notice how months and years were passing. I even stopped feeling like I was growing up. Looking at the calendar was painful because I realized I was simply wasting my time. After a couple of years, I started asking myself who I even was. I felt like I had lost my identity. Only consciousness remained, just observing, not understanding what was happening. This is not surprising, it is the result of long-term isolation. During adolescence, the brain and body develop actively, personality forms, and people socialize. But my brain developed while staring at a black monitor and sitting on my ass, barely moving. Do you understand what irreversible damage I caused to my mental and physical health? Later, my neighbors found out I was using their network and changed the password. And guess what I did? I was so bored and miserable without the internet that a person who had not left the house for years simply took a bicycle and went to the store to buy an internet adapter. This is what I want to say. Whether you accept it or not, most people would never become hikikomori if not for the internet and parents who support them. Good luck getting out of this situation. I might never get out myself. It feels like I’ve gone too far.