I'm currently in a depressive episode and I've recently found myself reverting back to old modes

of behavior like binge, stress eating, and procrastination.

Whenever there's a feeling of pain, I resort to an outside fix, like social media, food,

or some other distraction to lessen it.

I think this is due to not fully emotionally processing what happened to me in childhood.

I believe this depressive episode came to the forefront when I considered going to a bachelor

party of my old friends and came to a rational conclusion that they are not virtuous.

Despite me knowing that they are not virtuous, I'm still torn on seeing them.

How do I know these friends are not virtuous?

First, they're self-professed Christians, and I've had this, just to elaborate more, I've

had this change recently where I've become an atheist.

Since they denounce rationality for faith, there's no, to me, I couldn't see how there was a basis for honesty for them. And they're just not pursuing that. So some of these friends will take two to three days to respond to my text. And while in the past,

I had some annoyance with this last week when one of them did this, I was incredibly sad and angry

from it. How can I respect myself if I allow people who I call friends who we say that we love

each other to treat me in this way? They live in other states from me, but we still stay in contact through a group text chat.

I have no other friends than these.

I have not seen them in person in several months.

I am in the process of billing through your old podcast consecutively and currently in the 900s.

Despite having gone through so much of your material in the past three to four months, I still have this resistance about leaving my old friend.

And one of the recent episodes I was listening to, you talk about there's always one parent that gets away.

I know my mother's definitely this.

Could this have something to do with my current depressive episode?

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