Living in the U.S. 36F. Borderline, GAD, panic disorder, supposedly ADHD, scores meet criteria for MDD but psychiatrists have had opposing opinions, prone to adjustment disorder, been diagnosed with cPTSD before, former Bipolar II diagnosis that has been called into question.

To those of you who also suffer from chronic feelings of emptiness, caused by BPD, why isn’t there a medication or operation or brain manipulation device to make us CARE and feel MOTIVATED and experience MEANING in life, like other people seem to? I can’t imagine just going on for like 50 more years with just the aim to survive and not become homeless. I’m so apathetic, I don’t even know if that’s enough motivation for me to go to work and be passable. And the job I have now, it won’t pay for rent anywhere. Even when I was working full time (currently out on medical leave), the only reason I wasn’t homeless is my mom, who doesn’t charge me rent to live with her. Someday, my car will stop working and that won’t even be an option of a place for me to live.

Is there a better society for people with very little will to live to live in? This one, like you gotta really want to be alive to survive and live in decent conditions.

I feel like I can’t sit still and focus on anything because of apathy, that could be from BPD, rather than because of my supposed ADHD. I can’t even get through reading job descriptions. I don’t think I can actually do any job. Getting anything done at all just feels like pulling teeth. I don’t know how to get myself to just go through the motions of life enough to get by. Concerta isn’t helping at all.

I have just been faking my way through things my whole life, too, I feel. I never know as much about something as the other people who are doing it with me - that was true for my major, most of my jobs, class discussions in school, conversations. I didn’t even realize I was so full of it. That’s what led to my recent panic breakdown at work. I realized how little I knew and how much I had been doing and saying wrong.

I am like “you just need to find a job where you won’t constantly be worried about being fired and where you can kind of hide and have some privacy and peace and quiet” but I have no idea what that would be and I would probably be so understimulated I couldn’t even DO it.

And I just really want a job that brings me some fulfillment. I know they say you can look for fulfillment outside of work but that means 40 hours per week doing something that doesn’t do anything for you, just drains and scares you. But how can I find something fulfilling when I feel like I don’t care about anything? People are like “get a job helping other people. It will feel meaningful,” but I don’t think it would. I think I’m too selfish or apathetic to find that rewarding.

I don’t have much time left until I have to go back to my current job or quit and be without income (not a real option). I know I’m just going to keep running into communication issues, boundary issues, intense anxiety, and paranoid thoughts when I go back. I’ve applied to some jobs, even though they didn’t sound appealing and I doubted whether I could stomach them, for which I wrote great cover letters and was, on paper, highly qualified. I never heard anything back. In my experience, applying to jobs through job boards doesn’t really work out, unless you do something more specialized. I was looking for admin jobs. I was applying to temp agencies, hoping they’d help find me something palatable to place me in, but they haven’t been doing anything for me at all.

My psychiatrist won’t vouch for long term disability and even if he did, that wouldn’t be enough money for me to live off of in a place that I would feel safe and be able to take care of my basic needs. And it would limit the behavioral health services that are available to me.

What do I do about any of this?