Lurker > Mimichan

It's pretty good. My mom who never watched kdramas watched the first ten with me. Then we paused to wait until all the rest of the episodes aired.

Sorry to hear how rough it's been for you. It sounds like maybe you are placing a lot of weight and expectations on yourself which is why you feel like a failure. I'm 37 now, and I think the 30's have been much better than my 20's for the reason that I just stopped trying to care about expectations and focused on more practical things.

I'll give you an example of what I mean. I started a youtube channel in my late 20's that did decently and got up to 30000+ subscribers. I'm a musician and I had all these dreams to write music, earn youtube ad revenue, and get famous. It sounds a bit dumb now, but I remember how excited I was about the possibilities. But eventually, I got exhausted by how much effort it took to make a video and how little views and ad rev I was getting in comparison to the effort. I thought I was failing and that I was a bad musician. I started to get depressed.

Finally, I decided to take a step back for my mental health. I took a hiatus from my youtube and instagram. In that time, I was able to reflect on the fact that while I may be a talented musician, some things are out of my control like online algorithms. I was letting the internet and online strangers define my own self-worth which I didn't realize how ridiculous that was until I took a step back.

I went back to the drawing board and figured out what I wanted to do in life. Instead of focusing on my passions, I looked at what I was good at that was also practical. Throughout this time, I had been teaching music and I realized that I worked well with kids and was a good teacher. So instead of my dreams of being a famous musician, I decided to focus on teaching which turns out to be a decent living in my area. 20-something year old me might look at the me right now and think that I became a failure because I gave up on my dreams. But the me of today is very happy and realized that I discovered new passions that I didn't know that I had. Turns out that I love working with kids.

A lot of people are commenting that you are still young and I think what they mean is that you still have a lot of time to figure out what you want and can do with your life. When you compare yourself with others, there will always be someone who does it better than you so forget that. Find your strengths and try to go from there.

Also, I think you mentioned anxiety. Therapy is always good but a good quick go-to for calming down that I have found is just breathing slowly. Whenever I feel stressed (which can be often when working with kids...), I take a minute or two to do slow breathing. Take a two to three second inhale through the nose, then a slow exhale for as long as you can do so comfortably. Repeat for a min.

I saw someone mention exercising and that's also a good idea. If you can't exercise at your house, take a short walk. Change of environment can help with mood too.

Good luck with everything! I hope you feel better soon.