Suicidal thoughts ... Feeling down alot

Hi guys,

I've never really talked about this but I saw an ex that sparked all these feelings inside of me that I just need help with to. Be honest ... I've felt like this and bottled it for to long. Ever since I was around 16 ive hated myself, literally everything about me - family life sucked, social life sucked but I created this persona of not caring which helped me so much in dealing with everything in my life. I never felt like I belonged to anything, I just feel void and empty, even with my long term girlfriend who was honestly the only thing that made me feel slightly happy - we split not long ago and I've recently seen her with someone else and it just made feel like  . I'm not saying that this is sole reason I hate myself because it's such a small part of it, but regardless of what I do in my life where. Gym,fk random girls, go out with mates I just never feel a connection with anything at all and it's slowly driving me mentally insane - my depression is all I think about and how it drove the only thing I loved away from me ... I'm not exactly sure how I'm supposed to ask for help on something I can't fully explain but I can't take living anymore and the only reason I haven't killed myself is because the old me perceived it as weak minded and I can't go through with it ... Have any of you been to a therapist and does it help?

Therapist can help if it's a decent one. Talking, keeping urself busy helps.
You are after breakup so it's obvious you will feel down. I know it's a bit cliché but give urself some time.

If you want to talk about stuff feel free to pm me.

The path will be long and difficult, but if you are willing to continue through it, you can have the life you deserve. It is not wrong to seek help even if you don't understand your feelings yourself. Sometimes, we need others to help us figure it out.

Seek professional help and know that this is something you can't solve from night to morning. You need to work for it for months! Take care man, you have much to offer in the world as we all do.

Depression really sucks! But there is a way out. I know because I have gotten myself out using several techniques.
I will post some of them hear and you can see if any of them help you.

1 Eat a healthy diet & Omega-3
1.1 Importance of nutrition
All emotions are produced by brain chemicals, and all of these brain chemicals are somehow derived from what our body has taken in, i.e. our nutrition. Thus, it is clear that our nutrition is essential in influencing our brain chemicals and thereby our emotions.
1.2 General guidelines for a happy, healthy diet
Generally, a healthy diet is a diet that leads to happiness, and a diet that leads to happiness will most likely be healthy one. That said there are many different opinions on what constitutes a healthy diet. Here is what I do for myself:
Eat at least 25% vegetables and 35% fruits.
Eat some red meat including the animal fat, which is important in testosterone production, but eat at least as much fish as meat.
No coffee, very little alcohol, very little chocolate or other candies, no junk food.
Supplement with certain amino acids (Arginine, Ornithine, BCAA) and with Omega-3.
1.3 Omega-3
Especially important to a diet that makes us happy is a healthy ratio of two essential fatty acids, the Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio. A healthy ratio, and one that makes us happy, is between 1:1 and 1:2. Unfortunately, in today’s western society most people eat far more Omega-6 rich food and thus often have a ratio of 1:10 or higher! This can be changed by either changing our diet completely, or just by supplementing with Omega-3 to balance out the large amount of Omega-6.
You can hear more about the importance of Omega-3 and its function as an antidepressant in the Ted talk of Steve Ilardi: 
Therefore, apart from eating a lot of fish, including the fatty skin of fish, I supplement with 2 Omega-3 pills per day.

2 Do enough exercise
2.1 Importance of exercise
Exercise has been shown to be a very effective remedy against depression:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/for-depression-prescribing-exercise-before-medication/284587/
Generally, people that do a lot of exercise are rarely depressive, while people that lead a sedentary lifestyle are often depressive.
You can also see this in the importance of exercise in this Ted talk by Steve Ilardi:

2.2 Strategies for becoming happy by exercise
In order to become happier you need to have an exercise routine, a routine whereby you do physical activity for at least 30 minutes minutes, 3 times a week.
My personal exercise routine looks like this:
I do not go to the gym, as I am too busy to spend time on commuting to and working out at a gym and as a gym work-out is quite solitary.
Rather than going to the gym, I do sports with my friends, which including running, tennis, basketball, football. When doing sports with friends, I can combine physical activity with socializing and it is thus more fun.
Beyond that, I commute to work every day via running or biking.
Furthermore, every day during work I get out of the office at least twice for 10-15 minutes. In this time I will run to a park and do a 5-7 minute high intensity training that brings me to the limit of my physical capability, and then run back.

3 Make a happy body posture, gestures, facial expression
Our body posture, gestures and facial expressions influence the way we feel!
3.1 Physiology <-> Emotion
For most of us it is clear what a depressed person looks like in terms of body posture, gestures and facial expression or even how he sounds like. Also, it seems clear how a happy person looks and sound like. This is because our emotions translate into a certain body posture, gestures, facial expression and even voice tonality and speed.
What many of us do not know, is that not only does our mood influence the way we act, look and sound like but also the other way around: our body posture, gestures, facial expressions and the way we talk influence the way we feel.
We can imagine this as follows: Our brain observes our behavior. If we are behaving as if we were happy, even though we are not, we are able to trick our brain into thinking that in fact we are happy, and thus our brain makes us happy.
3.2 Using our physiology to be happier
So in order to feel good, we should act like if we would feel good:
Talk loud and fast
Stand upright
Open up your shoulders
Make big movements
Smile
Anthony Robbins sums it up here in 2 minutes:

In another inspiring Ted talk by Amy Cuddy, you see that just by changing your body posture to appear more powerful, you will actually become more confident and less stressed and thus also happier:

There are also certain movements, like for example dance movements, that have an antidepressant effect, as you can see in the Ted talk of Tal Shafir:

4 Get enough sunlight
4.1 Importance of sunlight
Sunlight has the power to immediately improve our mood. On the contrary, too little sun exposure is unhealthy and can lead to depression. One evidence is the rise in suicide rates during the dark winter months, especially in Scandinavian countries, where sunlight gets very scarce in the winter.

4.2 Strategies for using the sun to become happier
Here are several strategies to make use of the sunlight to become healthier:
We should get up with the sun early in the morning, especially at times of little sun exposure.
If our workplace has no direct sun exposure, we should leave the office regularly for short stints of sunlight exposure. Also, we should avoid at all costs spending more than 2 hours continuously in a room without windows.
If we cannot avoid scarce sun light because of our office space or because of the winter, we can use a special light that simulates the light of the sun, as a sun substitute.

5 Get enough sleep
5.1 Importance of sleep
In the very short term sleep deprivation can actually help you reduce depression. But if we consistently get less sleep than we need, which for most people is 7-8 hours, then our brain and body cannot restore itself fully, which has been shown to make us less happy and worsen depression.
5.2 Strategies for better sleep
Not only is the amount of sleep important but also the quality of sleep. And as we spend 8 hours per day, we spend 1/3rd of our lives sleeping! So improving the quality of our sleep is really important.
Some strategies for improving our sleep are:
Make sure you sleep in silence and do not get woken up by noise. If there is noise, try to use earplugs to block the noise out.
Make sure your room is completely dark. If you cannot, get a comfortable eye mask.
Sleep position
Invest in a quality mattress or a quality topper and make sure your pillow is not too low nor too high, so that your column is in one straight line.
Sleep on your left side or on your back. Avoid sleeping on your right side or on the stomach.
Supplement with the sleep hormone melatonin.
Do not use any caffeine or other stimulants during 8 hours before bedtime.
Make sure that you are physically exhausted by doing exercise during the day. However, do not do any exhaustive physical or mental activity during at least one hour prior to bedtime.
Try to eliminate negative thoughts like anger and worry before going to bed. For that you can use several techniques like meditation, or using a journal to write down your thoughts. Once you have written down your thoughts you will ruminate less on them.
Get into a regular sleep rhythm.

11 Stay in the moment and anti-ruminating activity
11.1 Avoid rumination
Stay in the moment by working on things you are engaged with and passionate about and avoid too much “free” time without activity. Because if you are working on something that you are not engaged with or have free time without doing anything, you will start ruminating and ruminating generally makes people unhappy.
This is very well explained in the Ted talk by Matt Killingsworth:
http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_killingsworth_want_to_be_happier_stay_in_the_moment
11.2 Thought awareness
I have found for myself that the best antidote to ruminating is getting more thought awareness, as described under thought awareness, below. This meant that when I am ruminating or day dreaming I can catch myself and stop it at least if it is a negative thought.