Drama, Surprises, and Setbacks on the Road to Wellness
The path to better health and wellness isn’t always smooth. For many, their journey is filled with unexpected challenges, dramatic failures, and surprising setbacks. These stories highlight the struggles people face when trying to improve their physical or mental well-being, showing that not every attempt at a healthier lifestyle leads to instant success.
Whether it’s a failed fitness routine, an extreme diet that didn’t work out, or a wellness trend gone wrong, many of these health and wellness stories involve frustration, disappointment, and even humorous mishaps. From injuries caused by overambitious exercise programs to emotional burnout from trying to follow unrealistic wellness goals, these tales reflect the drama that can unfold when our best-laid plans don’t go as expected.
Some stories also touch on the darker side of health and wellness, where individuals felt misled by fad diets, ineffective treatments, or expensive wellness regimes that didn’t deliver on their promises. These experiences serve as cautionary tales, reminding us that the pursuit of wellness is often a bumpy road.
If you’re looking for health and wellness stories with a twist, these dramatic, surprising, and sometimes humorous accounts of failure and frustration offer valuable lessons in what it really means to pursue a healthier life.
I am 38, male, and this is just a report, not a poem, not a cry, not a lesson, just a dump like on /vent because that is what this site is for. I wake up, I go to work, I fail quietly, I come back, I eat trash, I sleep, repeat, that is the system. I never had a girlfriend, not once, not even the fake high school one people lie about to seem normal. Women never looked at me like a person, more like furniture or a problem to avoid, and yeah I know you will say “it’s your personality” or “work on yourself” because that is the standard script, quoted endlessly like a broken motivational poster. I am not saying I deserve love, I am saying the data shows I never had it, and after 38 years the trend line is pretty clear. No close friends either, no one texting me first, no one asking how I am unless it is HR pretending to care. At work I suck, not in a dramatic way, just enough to always be behind, always be the guy who “tries” but never advances, and you know what happens to guys like that. People say life is about “small joys” and “gratitude” but that sounds like marketing language invented to sell books to losers like me. Objectively speaking, if you remove romance, social validation, and competence, what is left that makes this worth repeating every day.
I am not writing this to shock you, I am writing it because I am tired of pretending this is some deep mystery. Men like me are told to shut up and improve or die quietly, and women are framed as prizes we failed to unlock, which makes everyone worse. I can be rude about it because honesty is rude now. When you go decades without touch, without being chosen, without even being hated passionately, it does something boring to your brain, not tragic, just empty. People quote Nietzsche or Camus about meaning, like “one must imagine Sisyphus happy”, but Sisyphus at least had a story and an audience. I have a cubicle and a login. Therapy is another quote machine, more phrases like “reframe your narrative” and “challenge your assumptions”, as if this is a creative writing class and not a statistical dead end. Women don’t owe me anything, fine, but reality doesn’t owe me hope either, so why is hope mandatory. This is the part where someone says “it gets better” with zero evidence, or links a study, or tells me to lift weights, as if muscle mass fixes being invisible. I am not angry all the time, I am tired, which is different and more permanent; do you really think repeating an unwinnable routine counts as living.
Here is the clean version, stripped of drama and insults, like a lab note. Subject is 38, male, isolated, underperforming, unloved, future probability of change low based on past behavior. External incentives minimal. Internal motivation degraded. That is it. I am not standing on a bridge, I am sitting at a desk typing because typing fills time. People confuse questioning life with wanting to die, but those are not identical, one is philosophical and one is logistical. I can ask “what is the point of living” the same way someone asks “what is the point of this job” without planning to quit today. Still, if you are reading this, answer honestly, not kindly, not with slogans. If you had my stats, my face, my history, my absence of proof that effort pays off, would you continue out of principle alone. Or is life just something we keep doing because stopping would make other people uncomfortable. I read quotes, I read threads, I read success stories, and they all assume a baseline I never had. Maybe the point is just to run the clock until it ends, maybe there is no point and we are supposed to admit that, maybe meaning is a luxury item. I don’t know, and I am not asking for rescue, I am asking for accuracy. If the answer is “there is no point but you do it anyway”, say that. If the answer is “there is a point and you missed it”, say that too. I am detached enough to hear it.
I've been struggling with my mental health for a long time and despite this I've always tried to keep the most positive outlook I could, but recently I've felt as if that wasn't possible. I've always been weird and avoidant of people due to paranoia, anxiety, OCD, autism symptoms and emotional inconsistency which has made it difficult to maintain relationships. Suffice to say, I've gotten along with people to the point that I could show them an empty side of myself that didn't care whether he was hurt or not, but I feel like now that's the only part of me who can function with others. I like that part of me, and I feel like I'm okay as long as I trust him to take care of things, but I don't know how I'm supposed to live my own life.
I've always had a lot of things that I'd been passionate about but those things like drawing, watching anime, learning languages, learning history and pretty much everything except for math doesn't really have a place in my life anymore since I've started college. I can still enjoy my hobbies but I feel like as a 19 year old male, watching trashy shoujo anime and liking moe stuff is kinda weird. Having obsessions feels like something to be ashamed of as well and every time I get into something I feel like I'm always going to be stereotyped for it. Apart from that, my fascinations with dark things like gore and pain are obviously things I'll have to keep hidden. I've basically abandoned the notion of someone who'd be able to save me or be there for me because I know I just get too attached and mess things up in relationships like that.
I always had the notion that everyone else was in the wrong for making me feel like I had to hide, but now I think I'm at the point where I'm accepting that I don't belong anywhere. I don't want to change and I don't want to die but I can't live in society the way it is being the way I am. I used to want to change the world, but now I feel like someone like me, with all my issues would just make it worse.
Living like this, I feel like I'm slowly disappearing and like I'm giving in. In some ways it feels like losing the parts of myself that make me who I am is just a matter of course, it doesn't matter to me anymore because it's something I should have accepted a long time ago, but if I could I wish I didn't have to change to live.
I’ve been doing pretty well lately I was going though a hard time back in 2022 it started with my breasts being uneven and I noticed it but became very hyper fixated to the point I had to look in the mirror just to convince myself they were fine and not that big of a difference. I went to go see a therapist and a psychiatrist and got put on medication. At first it was still bad but now I barely think about my boobs but this morning I just woke up with this anxiety that I needed to look and I stared at them and now I’m having this worry about them being very uneven and drastic looking..
I have asked my husband and he has told me that you can barely notice but I just don’t know how to accept it and stop worrying about this kind of thing..
Right off the bat, I'll say that I absolutely recognize that I'm delusional and that a lot of this is just my paranoia fueled, nihilistic psychosis but I think I'm genuinely losing it and I'd like to know if anyone has anything to say that could help. Also sry there's no category to tag this with lol.
Ever since I was younger I've been weird and autistic, but for the TLDR I've just never made any close connections with anybody until last year, which went exceedingly badly. I don't speak with my mother, and rarely speak with my family. I might have DID but I've always felt unsure and self-conscious about it/saying it because I don't think I meet the DSM5 criteria for it(no dissociative amnesia), but we basically speak to eachother every night and ever since I was 14 I don't think we've ever referred to eachother as the same person. I think we get along really well and so at points I can't tell who's me and who's her but I don't mind all that much because she's nice. After the 'aforementioned events' of last year we had a psychotic break where she lost her only real friend and I kinda gave up on life. I was able to rediscover a reason to live and wrote down a "rulebook" on the meaning of life, and she was able to accept that giving up on her friend wouldn't inherently mean that she was a bad person or that she desrved to die on the condition that we were both being decieved by a secret evil organization that wanted to control us both by having her kill herself before I could destroy the current world order. This worked for awhile until I discovered "the curse" and she realized that she was just mentally unwell and ended up pushing her only friend away with her desperation which was a lot harder to cope with. "The curse" is my word for a rule that says that most humans will choose to live in an irrational world over a rational world because for most, irrationality doesn't interfere with their ability to live their lives.
This essentially means that I can't pursue the meaning of life which I was able to deduce because whether I'm correct or not, any rational explaination for why I should live will automatically be thrown out by most of the population. My other self seems to be okay now that we've both accepted that we'll still be there for eachother, but in my case I think I'm the version who can't live without reason. I hate this world and I've always wanted to either change it or die trying, but idk I'm just tired and that seems like a lot of effort. I've been letting my other self take the wheel a little more lately. I want her to be happy but I frankly don't care about myself, I don't really remember who I am or what had made life worth living until now but I don't feel like it matters. I've had other versions of myself die before and it's always messed me up. I don't want to leave but I'm not exactly doing anything here. It's just inefficient and it's illogical to try to be logical about everything anyway so there's no need for me to exist. Not in imminent danger cuz I have an "if all else fails" suicide date set 9 years into the future so I'm probably good until then but idk.
Don't exactly know what I'm asking for, but if anyone has any advice, I'd appeciate it.
Lately I just feel like I haven't had much enjoyment, actually that's just been my whole year. I did turn of age this year so that's good. Recently, I've been having bad health anxiety but I've been managing, today is just hard. It's exhausting and I wish i didn't have it, it's been making me have suicidal ideations, I'm constantly worried about every sensation in my body, thinking that I'm about to die. To help myself, I just accept death and see it was comfort so I'm not super scared. I'm not overweight and workout. Sometimes I get scared to workout because I think something bad could happen. Seeing online that active people or athletetic people can still die is also scary. I remind myself that those cases are rare and I'll be fine but even if they do happen, I'd try my best to be calm or accept my fate. I used to be a workout from but now I'm scared to do certain things. Ited helpful to know that I'm not alone tho and that's others go through the same thing. I also hate having veins, well not hate as they are needed but I don't like seeing them and feeling them inside my skin. I also dislike eating unhealthy foods, it's like every bite is closer to a health problem but that's kinda all of what my family buys, even frozen healthy foods can be unhealthy, it's like everything in American foods is trying to kill you which makes me eat less and go to bed hungry by accident. Living like this is tiring. Any help or advice is appreciated.
hey guys, so I've been thinking about this whole "calming brain breaks" thing lately, and let me tell you, it's a freakin' game-changer! I mean, we all know life's just full of stressors, right? Work, family, bills, social media drama; you name it, we've got it. Some days you just feel like you're spinning out of control, ya know? 😅 that's when these little nuggets of peace come into play! imagine just stepping away for a few moments, taking a deep, deliberate breath, and letting your brain chill the heck out. no, really think about it.... ever tried a mini-meditation sesh? it's like hitting a reset button for your noggin'.
seriously, "Calm is the superpower" isn't just a Pinterest quote, it's a truth! even just a couple of minutes can make a world of difference. have you tried it? you're sitting at your desk, all this noise buzzing about, and bam! you just zone out, focus on breathing, and feel tension melting away. it's pretty damn blissful. but here's the kicker, don't just wait for stress to pile up. oh no, make it a habit, y'all! get into the groove of sprinkling these brain breaks throughout your day. it's not rocket science, peeps, it's all about giving your brain the love it deserves. now, I'm nobody's guru, but even I know we gotta look out for our own mental well-being. anyway, beyond breathing, there's also y'know, just standing up, stretching, and moving about like a flexible goddang yoga master. okay, maybe not that intense, but you catch my drift. how about turning up your favorite jam and just dancing like nobody's watching? yeah, it's a classic cliche, but there's a reason it's a feel-good go-to. damn right, music lifts the spirits! and for those fancy word nerds, a little poetry can do the trick. recall Emerson's "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." warms your soul, eh? well, at least mine. now, I won't lie, I'm guilty of indulging in social media spirals when stressed; it's all too tempting. but reality check - it's toxic more often than it is soothing. so, curate your 'conscious unwind time.' maybe doodle cute little pictures, scribble down random thoughts, or even whip up some crazy storylines you've got bubbling in your brain. that's mental detox without the harmful additives, people! ever just gazed up at the blue sky and wondered about life's mysteries? you're damn right, that counts as a calming break too. sure, life's chaotic, but ya know, c'est la vie. don't let it get you down, fight back with positive vibes. well, I guess what I'm getting at is, it's okay to need breaks, it doesn't mean you're weak or incapable. quite the contrary, folks. it means you're human, and hey, humans need nap time too! value these calm valedictions you give to yourself, 'cause heaven knows nobody else will dole 'em out freely. and look, maybe you think "I've got no time for that" or "I'll look silly" or some other excuse. I say, who freakin' cares! life isn't a stage with assigned scripts. do what makes your heart kinda sing, ditch the stiff necked routine! find your rhythm and weave these peaceful pauses into your grind. ain't nobody got time for burning out, we're talking self-preservation here. challenge you: why not try it for a day, see if you feel a spark of difference? if not, pfft, nothing lost. but it might, and I mean like really, might just light that internal glow and inadvertently have the power to spread your sunny disposition to those around you. positivity always pays it forward, don't ya think? alright, that's enough rant from me; just take a thought, and chew on it a while. life's a mishmash of moments, make sure you grab the ones where you pause, breathe, and simply be. peace out!
Umm so today and the day before yesterday i had dreams with something in common with them i had panic attacks out of nowhere in my dream i struggle to breath for 20 to 30 sec and then when i calmed down everyone in that dream looked worried like in the 1st dream my friends which i don't like asked me to show them my diary and my bestie too but then i didn't wanna show it to them and i had a panic attack . In yesterdays dream i was crossing the road and i heard some clicks like someone taking pictures of me then i went to them asked them to show the picture and they weren't taking pics of me i was just in the way and then i had a panic attack like wtf?
I'm concerned for myself. I've been waking up lately attempting to end my life. I've also found different scars and bruises on my body that I didn't have before. I've tried telling people and they just dismiss me. I then started to hear whispering and voices telling me i'm not good enough at midnight. My depression was doing well, but it's getting bad again. I can't stop crying and having panic attacks. My mind is playing tricks on me and no one believes me. My parent doesn't respect anything I say or what's going on.
I went to my school carnival, it was fine, I guess. There were many people, and I only went there to buy some merch and stuff. I saw my classmates, said hi to a few of them, but otherwise I didn't do anything with them because they had their own groups doing their things, but I think I dressed well and I got a strawberry keychain, a small Amazonite tumble, and some stickers of K-Pop Demon Hunters and a chemistry version of "Iconic" with moments captured, to say, "Iconic moments captured". But yeah, it was fine, mom got some magnets, my brother hung out with his friends. Honestly, my loneliness now felt more hollow than sad. I told my mom maybe I was destined to be a hermit, and she said, "Even they live, and stop whining. We need to get something." And when I told her no one really greeted me, not that I expected them anyways since I belong in the garbage, she said, "It'll take time, please." Take time, it took 7 years. When we came home after a nice Oriental meal, it was really filling, mom noticed I end up scratching myself way more due to my eczema, and mom admitted she knew why because it gives relief, but when I told her I also do this because when everything goes to hell, I don't have friends, I score low in exams, I stop drawing, scratching is the only thing I'm good at. Mom looked at me weird, told me I live a privileged life, and that when her parents split she was worse off for a while, but weirdly, after I told her "Maybe my problems aren't real." And she said, "You think I said that? Try to think positively for once. It's a slow process." It has been 7 years already, I've given up the search for friendship and love, because to me, it's now a sin my body still wants. In fact, why bother with people? Love and friends are a risk, a liability, and scratching and thinking of doomsday is the only reason I'm alive. It's the only way I'm not getting into bad situations, because I don't trust people. I have eczema, I do get a relief, mom knows. You may say, "Oh stop this self-harm!" But this is from eczema, I've always had this. I have! It's just gotten slightly worse over the years in terms of skin. But it doesn't matter, because as long as I'm not getting an infection or at risk of dying, I'm just suffering a skin disorder. Even mom doesn't get it, because she's an idiot! Why do I even trust her!? She deserves to leave, and so does dad, and my brother who rubs salt in my wound by calling me "friendless", "ugly", "short", "stupid because you scored low marks" on a daily basis thinking it's a joke. I get it, you have more success than me! I'm a flopped movie! But one man who I forgot the name of was right, "People is hell". Hell is other people. That one author of "No Exit" was right. People are disgusting creatures. I may have yelled at mom today, but that's the freest I've felt. Hurting disgusting creatures is easier than living with them, considering I'm a warrior in a world of Hell. Making them feel bad with my harsh words. Hell is other people. Mom is delusional for wanting hope. I've hoped long enough, and it's a mere childish thing. We humans perceive things in our own ways, we may not share the same sights at all, and maybe the real world is just nothing, and we projected ourselves onto it like beings orbiting a mass in nothingness. It's some physics theory I heard somewhere. Her perception that it'll get somewhere is her being a human. My mom is forcing it down my throat because she's another mass of life my poor brain created wanting me to suffer. I'm right, aren't I? Isn't the theory correct? Isn't Sartre correct? Aren't I intelligent? Isn't my perception theory correctly recollected? Me being smarter than my peers, even the guy who told me the perception theory as a joke, I reflected and made it make sense. Guts thrived in being alone, he left Casca for 2 years to help himself after she got trauma, and he lived. He reflected so much, all when being isolated. From his team, his girlfriend, to beat Griffith! At least he had a reason to fight, what am I doing? People are anyways uncultured, stupid, mean, ugly pigs who deserve nothing, anyways. I'm really starting to get Dio and Kat from Euphoria more, people are trash! No wonder Dio became a vampire and Kat became who she is, people are trash and he's rightfully ashamed to be human. People are pigs because I'm better than them. Even my classmates are pigs. And you may also say again, "Oh but try therapy!" Enough with the therapist talk! My dad will never let me go to one ever again! I can never ever go to one because it's a fantasy dream! It's just a life I can never have, so the best I can do is just move on or trust mom, which she's already labelled "pig" in my head because parents slow down their children. I'm no longer hating myself, I hate everyone else for thinking I'm a freak for seeing the truth. Nothing matters because nothing exists. I'm a god in a world of pigs. I was only born as a girl unfortunately. Not that I feel gender dysphoria whatsoever, but people are pigs.
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
PEOPLE ARE PIGS
WE FIGHT TO SURVIVE.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT FOR THOSE WE LOVE.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT FOR THE "LORD" ABOVE.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO SPEAK.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WE KEEP.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT TO WAKE UP EVERYDAY.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT TO KEEP OURSELVES SANE.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT FOR THINGS, THINGS ONE, THINGS ALL.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT FOR THE TIME THEY'LL CALL.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT AND FIGHT WITH NO END IN SIGHT.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT AND FIGHT DAY UNTIL NIGHT.
BUT WHY?
WE FIGHT BECAUSE WE CAN.
WE FIGHT UNTIL THE END.
WE FIGHT WITHOUT A POINT.
WE FIGHT, BUT DISAPPOINT.
I FIGHT FOR ALL THESE REASONS.
BECAUSE I HAVE TO KEEP BELIEVING.
BECAUSE IF I STOP BELIEVING
I WON'T HAVE A REASON.
Can you hear me? Or am I mute? Can you see me? Or am I gone? Do you know me? Or have I changed? Can you find me? Or is it too late?
It’s too late. I can’t find myself. I have changed. I don’t know me. I am gone. I can’t see myself anymore. I am mute. I cannot scream.
GET ME OUT OF HERE GET ME OUT OF HERE GET ME OUT OF HERE GET ME OUT OF HERE GET ME OUT OF HERE GET ME OUT OF HERE GET ME OUT OF HERE
There is no escape.
This has been my fate from the beginning.
I am gone.
Who am I?
Do you know?
Am I who I was?
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I’m scared.
Who am I?
nothing left nothing left nothing left nothing left nothing left nothing left nothing left nothing left nothing left nothing left nothing left nothing left
I don’t know you.
Do you know me?
Was I ever ok?
This body isn’t mine.
It isn’t theirs.
It isn’t ourse.
It doesn’t belong to us.
I prob look insane rn but can i argue with that i literally am lolz
There is nothing left.
I am ruined.
You are the reason.
You are the cure.
I feel like I’m on the verge of a whole medical mental breakdown, I’ve had horrible panic attacks recently , death thoughts, even attempting suicide, and I don’t wanna live anymore, I’m only eating half a cucumber a day, and one glass of water and I feel like every single time I cry people find me annoying, and just want me to die.
I used to be a happy and loving person, always smiling, always happy to work my job. But ever since gambling was introduced to my life, all of that Changed. Work has been getting hard to do, I hate seeing other people, I hate doing anything. I just want to die.
I've lost faith in God, i've lost faith in friendship, relationships, even parents. Because nothing has ever helped me.
I Know it's mostly my fault, I don't blame anyone or anything. But I'm sick of living this way.
someone please, I want to stop, Please.
My therapist told me that it's pretty possible that I have some traits of autism, and I don't know a lot about it.
Yes, I know, "google it". But I wanna know if someone have some resources as books, movies, docs, or something about it.
Thanks.