Yes I’m sad, but am I a bad person?

TWo weeks after you sent this email, another came telling me you had lost your job and been dumped by your girlfriend. In it, you express irritation with your ‘family [for] hounding me to get another job or apply for unemploy-ment [benefit]’ and admit you ‘drank your sorrows away’.

Then your best friend texted you ‘and told me how much of an idiot I am, and a terrible friend and that I should never be happy’. Your solution, you tell me, is maybe ‘to move away and cut my ties and start a new life’. This question is at the end of that second email: ‘Is there some-thing wrong with me, am I a bad person and would moving away be a bad idea?’

Well, you are 19 and so my instinct is to be more gentle than if you were older. I can sympathise with the fact that you had a bad childhood and clearly lacked love and guidance, until you were taken in by a generous family who did so much for you.

But (to start with them) your first letter reveals you treat them with a curious lack of consideration and affection, and your second expresses real irritation that they are encouraging you to find another job. What a heinous crime!

I’m sorry, but I suggest you should treat them with more respect. Whatever sorrows you have suffered, their generosity and support must have set the balance of the universe right. Please think about that.

Had you just written the first letter, I’d have suggested you may be suffering from depression. But I’d like you to reflect that there may be a link between getting ‘sacked’ by your employer, your girl and your best friend, all at the same time. It could be your mood or attitude or both.

Therefore moving to where you know nobody is certainly not going to help you at all. Instead, what you need to do is take a long look at who you are and how you behave and how/why you may be treating others in a way you would not want to be treated. For example, is a girlfriend really ‘for all my emotional wants’? Is that all?

It would surely benefit you to talk to somebody who could help you unpick your ‘issues’. I’d start with your GP to see what might be on offer. It sounds as if cognitive behavioural therapy could be helpful.

Believe me, I feel sympathetic to any young man in a state of confusion, nega-tivity and hurt — but it’s good to start by considering what you can offer the people around you. Don’t look in the mirror and ask (with mournful self-indulgence): ‘Am I a bad person?’ Instead, smile boldly at yourself and say aloud: ‘Right mate, how are you going to make things better?’