It is great that you have come to a place of taking responsibility for making your life work. People who get addicted mostly do not recognize their own self sabotage and keep blaming their luck and the lack of support in their life. Whilst it may be true that a person has had a tough destiny, it does not mean that one needs to abandon oneself which is the path that an addictive person takes. They abandon their life responsibility escaping into drugs or substances and thereby abandon themselves. Naturally things don’t work and one’s own health suffers then one feels worse and needs more of the drug to escape this reality.

To turn this situation around you may need to daily follow a routine of spending a few moments in the morning on waking up and before sleeping to recognize what you appreciate and feel thankful for about yourself, and your life and the people in it without taking anything for granted. It works to put faith in prayer which is nothing other than seeing the divinity or spirit or morale or power within oneself and knowing with full faith this divinity exists. Turn to it and intend and pray to live that day well doing the right things as a responsible and fair person to yourself and others.

To keep yourself on task you need to keep expectations from life and yourself smaller. Though you may want big things focus on keeping the discipline in small chunks such as the next two hours and then the next two hours. Be sure to appreciate each two hours that you spend well. Coping doesn’t happen with big bites, trying to get bigger results without first getting the small steps done. So reduce your larger goals to the present moment next two hours. For example if your accounts are not in order, list out all the steps you would need to take and then work on the one you will do for next two hours. In this way you can see yourself as a coping person.

You will also benefit from strengthening your emotional management, and communication skills and approaches that can help restore your relationships. Mainly everywhere you may need a slowing down in concluding that something is not working by focusing on getting more information about the person, task or relationship at hand and then thinking not ‘who’s to blame and who’s failing” but thinking “what’s possible here? What can I do different and what else can I do? Whatever I choose to do, how should I do it so it works out?” Give yourself this time to think through and problem solve without judgment. We can either judge or focus on possibilities. The judgments may be true but they are immaterial compared to focusing on doing what can give possibility in an ongoing manner.

Counselling can give you support in all these steps and using therapies for sub conscious mind programming for yourself away from drugs and towards more positive activities can definitely help you become drugfree.

It is always a difficult situation when there are stresses of not being accepted and not being included. Since you have mentioned call logs it seems they are not living with you in the same home. That may at least give you some possibility of space of your own with your husband. In a home where the son is close knit with the family the daughter in law is treated as the outsider. Each person does not want the new person to displace their importance in the life of their family member.

In any case you have to accept you can’t fight this. Ignore this part where they exclude you and tell your husband that you are leaving it to him to share conversations he wants and others he can delete or hide. You focus on having a good time with him without bringing in this issue. Though you may not like these secrets, by accepting and not bothering and allowing them to feel they are closer to your husband you can actually have your own private close moments with him. At the same time accept that you are outsider for their relationship and it does not matter too much as you have some goodwill with each individually.

You are trying to get your husband to speak up to them to be better with you. You are also trying to get your in laws to make your husband behave better with you. Both these are a mistake, as neither your in- laws or husband are going to go against each other. Even if you may be logically trying to point out things to this family or your husband they are not going to accept your point of view. Don’t expect them to solve your problems with him or him to solve your problems with them either. With both your in laws and husband, you need to tactfully manage your way without needing the other party to manage them for you. Don’t expect your husband to speak up to your in laws on your behalf or vice versa. It makes it a visible competition where if they think you are winning in getting your husband to your side they will do double to get him on their side. Naturally they will win as theirs is a 20 or 30 year relationship – yours is only 3 years.

In fact you can tell your husband and your in-laws of the difficult behaviours of the other but you can let them know not to worry as you are coping with the situation yourself and that overall you are happy with them. In fact let them know you want them to keep their good will and not speak up for you which could spoil their relationship. Use non blaming communications yourself even with the unfair behaviours of theirs with you. This way you keep each person informed of the unfairness of the other or their unfairness with you without sounding blaming or like you are creating a disturbance. When they see you want them to keep their relationship and you are not stopping it they can be relaxed about your presence as non-threatening.

You need to create your own way of setting limits with your husband or in laws and at the same time creating rapport and goodwill. In any relationship we need to do both – be assertive and be friendly. Working in this paradoxical way of not fighting to be included you may have more harmony and possibility. You may need support to manage this. Consult a family therapist if necessary.

This is a tough predicament and a very high stress situation. It would benefit from healing for the relationship and for both of you. Since there is so much emotional overload trying to communicate your regret becomes difficult. It can be useful to write a letter expressing your regret over your actions, the fact that you immediately realized you had slipped and so came forthright about it and you desire to re build the relationship. You will slowly need to re build trust and often be patient with the cross questioning she may put you through. You could demonstrate that you are cutting all contact with that girl. Also instead of asking for forgiveness and insisting she comes back to the relationship you may instead respect her anger, rejection and let her know this. You can let her know you are ready to wait till she thinks through and will accept her response. If she does after this reject the relationship, you may let her know that you are still waiting for her and will wait for a 2 or 3 month period in case she is able to put it beyond her. Meanwhile taking therapy will help and if she is open you can do couple counselling. This often helps to bridge the gap created and heal and release all the intense emotions and feelings that have come up. Therapy can help exploring how to eventually strengthen and restore the relationship. Both can introspect how an outside relationship can be a symptom of a disturbed relationship and how to handle such disturbances in future so they never lead to such a situation. People betray their relationships in different ways be it by an outside relationship or by threats or cut offs. All these point to needing to sort out the patterns that are destructive in the relationship. Even if she is not ready for the therapy, you will still benefit from it for both personal peace and to be able to communicate more clearly your feelings to her.

Your social aptitude can definitely change and be strengthened. Observe people and you may get clues. Sometimes ask a few people who know you for honest feedback. They can give you some small tips. Socializing and connecting needs us to keep up with the times and keep ourselves well groomed and neat in dressing, have skills of conversation that are a mix of taking interest in the other and listening, knowing about current topics by reading about these and having some opinions to share and also being a person with their own interests and hobbies. Each person is social in a different way. Some are social by being more listeners, others by being more jovial and talkative. You can be comfortable with your own style. People will accept you for a variety of reasons – either because you listen well or you are jolly or you are creative in your life and they like to hear about that. So you can work on developing a little of all of these. Making eye contact, smiling, or matching one’s facial expressions to what is being shared helps the other know you are paying attention. Yes I can definitely help in individual sessions or when you attend courses I conduct. You can read books that share with how to bond and mix with people. A well known name through the years on this is Dale Carnegie and his book “How to win friends and influence people” gives many insights and ideas. You may also benefit from psychotherapy and healing as issues such as this indicate some past episodes contributing to the issue.

It is most disheartening when one thing does not work out, we adjust with so much hurt towards life and then the next thing does not work out. A sense of hopelessness takes over and we feel like we have failed. We forget that failure or a closed door is a stepping stone in our life’s ongoing journey. At one step there is a success and at the next step a failure and then at a next step some success. Some experiences are mixed – part failure and part success. We have a choice what to focus on and keep ourselves motivated. Feel your grief, and frustration, then let it go and focus on learning and possibilities. Don’t let one phase in this journey of life define you in a way that you need to give up or lose value of yourself. Every person is valuable and a support system for many others around them and suicide can become in a way a selfish act without consideration for what others have done for us. So keep hope alive by have mental strategies for handling these loss phases of one’s life. Believe me every person goes through such moments and staying the course slowly comes out a winner. I do not know your financial condition. However if you have basic financial support then you must remember you have time to find the job that surely exists for you. However you may need to do a few things in the meanwhile till we reach there.

We need setback strategies. These are nothing other than how to think of this failure. One such strategy is to see it not as final but as a temporary step in the forward direction only.. The success step is the one getting us rewards of money and recognition and the failure step is the one showing us that we need to do something differently. We may think through - Is our resume well written, are we good with interview skills, are we applying to jobs in many places, where are we being choosy and can we be more flexible or do we need to add any other skill to get a job. The second step is to discover what the marketplace in our field needs. Sometimes places that have refused you may let you know why they did not choose you when you ask. That will give you an idea what you should train in and what is missing. You can now work to add to your knowledge, skills or attitude or presentation of yourself – you may find many books, workshops or courses or online information that you can do these through. When one does not get a job don’t waste time, see it as a time to add more skills to yourself through self study, online study, by volunteering or through doing short or long courses.

Sometimes start with the smallest thing to keep yourself productive though you may not get the job. This means being useful around the home, helping your parent, or volunteering at an NGO or using your hobby to create. This though it may not give you livelihood, will give you satisfaction and people around you can be supportive as you are not staying sad and instead being helpful. Read philosophy and read how others have coped with their down times. This will give you ideas.

Nothing stops us from enjoying nature keeping ourselves healthy and keeping ourselves loving in our behaviour to others. Then our next step is to get creative. To get the job or the income a person needs to think of some creative applications of their knowledge and skills. Where else are my skills needed other than an engineering job, in which sectors? Open up to people in a constructive way not in a helpless way. Ask for ideas and meet lots of people. This networking helps. Sometimes consult a life coach or a therapist to brainstorm such possibilities. One person, who could not get a job, did a voluntary job in his field and that experience and the contacts through it gave him a job opening almost 6 months later. He had to keep his spirits through this phase. Another person was not getting a job and did a short course on project management. She still did not get a job so she met people to get ideas of what she could do, started getting pocket money with tuitions and then eventually whilst doing a part time MBA got a good job. Sometimes we may shift our field too and a few years later return to our field of study. Keep your spirits and focus, continue on the journey without giving up till you reach the goal, persist with learning and creativity.