I took a look (paid members can see a questioner's history, but nothing else about them), and from what I can see almost every one of your questions has had at least one answer. That's a pretty great track record!

Here's the thing: if you ask a complicated question, we might not have the answer. Believe it or not, we're not all geniuses here who know everything. If you're asking a really specific question that's out of the area of our expertise, we won't answer.

Would you rather get no answer or an "LOL I dunno XD hope I helped"? We actually tend to take our positions pretty seriously and don't give out advice when we're not confident in it. This isn't Yahoo Answers. You get less responses on average than you do there, but they're much higher quality, in my humble opinion.

Nobody's making you post here. Nobody's making us answer. Heck, it's not like we get paid here or anything. We do this out of the goodness of our hearts. We hold ourselves to a high standard. If you don't like that, you're welcome to look elsewhere for your advice.

You can if you want to. It's all up to personal preference.

Thongs aren't as uncomfortable as you might think. I tend to wear them when I'm wearing yoga pants, so you can't see my underwear outline. It's not like you're aware of a bunch of fabric up your bum all the time... you get used to it eventually.

That said, if you don't see a reason to wear them, then don't! Your friends are being silly. You wear whatever underpants keep you happy and comfortable.

The pathetic part is that you're willing to sell yourself for booze and clothes, not that you're a virgin at 16. That you have that little self-worth is mind-boggling. I can understand a woman being driven to prostitution by homelessness, addiction or extreme poverty, but not by a desire for new clothes!

Sex work is dangerous. It's really dangerous. Being beaten, killed, raped or robbed is a real possibility. Having a pimp doesn't make any of that better, either. It's also dangerous because it's illegal. Think you can call the cops if a guy beats you within an inch of your life? Think again. Because you'll be arrested. If you get caught, you've got a permanent record. If you get caught with someone, they're charged with soliciting a minor for sex.

Not only that, but you run the risk of STI infection. Some of those stay with you for life, some of them can kill you.

The consequences of joining the sex work industry stay with you forever. You can't take it back. Even if you stop and become a successful adult, you'll still be an ex-prostitute. And you'll hate yourself for having done it over a pair of shoes or a night out on the town with the girls. It's a shallow reason to put yourself at so much risk.

As said below, try babysitting or get a part time job. When I was 16 I worked at a vet clinic and a retail store after school and on weekends. I gained valuable skills that I've been able to put to use as I grow older. Try that route.

I'm going to second Zane, but add another possibility: OCD.

I know, everyone knows OCD as the "counting" problem. Touching things even numbers of times, turning the lights on and off, washing your hands. It's not just that.

My main symptom of OCD was extreme perfectionism in myself. Example: it takes me forever to do homework by hand because if I make a mistake and have to erase it I need to start over on a new piece of paper because it's already "too messed up". A mistake can be anything from sloppy writing to an incorrect answer to untidy arrangement of the answer. Another example: even as a child, I wouldn't hand in homework. My mother said that she once went into my desk and saw dozens of completed homework assignments that weren't handed in. Why? Because I didn't think they were good enough. I still do the same thing today, although with counselling I'm getting better. It comes across as procrastinating, but it's more than that.

So yeah, OCD is definitely something to look into. Treatment varies from medication to cognitive behavioural therapy, which teaches you to practice mindful thinking. They get you to think before acting each time, and eventually it gets easier to make decisions. You can even try looking it up and working on it at home!

Your analogy is flawed.

If an overweight person eats chocolate, sure, that's a self-harming behaviour. But if the next day they eat healthier, or they go for a jog later to make up for it, the action could be undone. Heck, it could be undone years later.

Same goes for smoking. Smoking can kill you. The damage done by smoking can be largely undone after quitting, though.

Suicide is a permanent self-harm, if you're successful. Nobody's going to die instantly from that last chocolate bar or cigarette. When you make a decision to kill yourself, that is the last decision you'll ever make.

What the Bible says on the subject is irrelevant. Does the Bible tell us how to use the internet? How to treat the mentally ill? It was written by stone-age people with different customs and knowledge. Most of the guidelines are outdated, just like many of our old laws are outdated.

If you don't like your life or yourself, that's your responsibility. Make yourself into the person you want to be. You'll have roadblocks along the way. Things will be tough. But when you come out the other side as a better person, it's worth it. Same with your life. Any situation can be temporary. Make goals, plan for the future. If you die now, you die without having fulfilled your potential. You skip out on the millions of decisions you would have had an opportunity to make, for the sake of one.

I've been there. Death has seemed like the easy way out. But it's not. If you feel like a loser, how will you feel knowing that that's all you ever ended up being? Don't you want a chance to change?

I have... my mother was one of them! She didn't even know she was pregnant until 7 months.

You might ask how a woman doesn't notice... well, she had just recovered from a bout of mono and her cycle was irregular. She was on birth control, but she was put on penicillin at the same time by her doctor (because of the mono and all). She was still worried and took a lot of home tests and went to the doctor's. They said that she was gaining weight because of a thyroid condition (which she does have). All tests came up negative. Then she was sent in for an ultrasound, and surprise! She never looked pregnant until right before I was born. She got married at 8 months and didn't even have to wear a maternity dress.

I love healthy food. I also hate plain baked chicken, canned tuna, health shakes and vegetables if they're done the wrong way.

There's no point in eating 'healthy' food if you hate it. You'll just go right back to eating junk if you carry on like this. I also disagree with the "eat to live, not live to eat" saying. It's all fine and dandy if you don't love eating. I love to eat. It's one of my favourite things to do. I love to cook and I love to eat. So don't feel like you have to give up your love of food in the name of health.

Chicken IS bland and boring if it's not seasoned properly. Try marinading it and grilling it, or making skewers basted in a tasty sauce (like satay or tandoori). If you like spicy food, jerk chicken is fantastic too. I also love curried chicken. You can also sprinkle some Italian herb mix and garlic powder over it, or cover it with lemon slices before you bake it. Yum!

Canned tuna isn't all that great for you. It's high in sodium, and pretty boring. Try going for baked fish instead.

Ditch the health shakes too. If they're the meal replacement type, they'll just leave you wishing you'd eaten. You're much better off just eating! For breakfast, try some quick oats (not instant oatmeal) with blueberries, raspberries, cinnamon and raisins or even a spoonful of maple syrup. It's delicious, low-cal and filling.

Something I didn't see you mention was legumes. Do you like beans, chickpeas and lentils? Because now is a great time to try them. I use (well-rinsed) canned lentils in place of ground beef. They make great taco salad topping when you simmer them in taco spices! Chickpeas go great in a curry sauce with vegetables served over some brown rice.

Veggies are one of my favourite foods. Really. You just have to prepare them right. For instance, a lot of people steam plain veggies and call it a day. I hate steamed vegetables. Try eating raw carrots, broccoli, pepper slices or zucchini with hummus or a little tzatziki. Sprinkle asparagus with a little olive oil, sea salt and pepper and grill for a delicious side dish that makes excellent omelets the next morning! Zucchini can be sliced thin and sprinkled with a little cajun spice and baked. I make my own spaghetti sauce with canned crushed tomatoes, green pepper, jalapenos, onion, spinach and mushrooms. Try experimenting and find out what you like.

As for craving soda, chips and candy, that's pretty normal. My advice is to go the counterintuitive route: eat that stuff. Really! You have to learn how to live with that sort of food. Are you really going to go the rest of your life without eating a slice of birthday cake guilt-free? That's no way to live. Try learning how to take small servings of the things you love. I've balanced it out for myself by taking a serving of something healthy to eat with a small serving of junk food. A serving (by the back of the bag) of chips with a handful of baby carrots. A few spoonfuls of ice cream with a cup of frozen blueberries (they taste just like Dippin' Dots!) or a half banana. You get the idea.

Dieting is not the way to be healthy. You'll resent it and backslide the moment you so much as look at a bag of Lay's. Learn to love healthy foods as well as your old standbys.

Not at all.

If you look up head shrinking, they didn't actually shrink the whole head. The process involved taking the skin off of the head and treating it so that it shrinks to around the size of a softball. There's no way that anyone could live through that!

You'll want to find out exactly what this entails, but I can tell you what it means at my husband's company.

His company matches contributions up to 3% of his annual income towards a retirement savings plan. A lot of companies are opting to do this instead of a full-on pension (where they pay you a guaranteed income for a set amount of time). When you retire, you get access to this money.

Masturbation is sex with the person you love most!

It's basically using either your hands or an object to touch yourself for purposes of feeling good.

If you're looking for a work of art (and not something specific that has special value to you), the person you should be talking to is your tattoo artist.

Any tattoo artist worth their salt will be able to look at your tattoo's placement, size and style and be able to come up with sketches for expanding it. They'll be the best person to talk to, because they really are artists... at least the good ones are!

Some people might say it is. Personally, I'd say that can be rather judgmental, so try to keep an open mind if you really like this girl.

If she takes good care of herself, gets tested between partners and uses protection, I'd say the number doesn't matter. If she's being irresponsible about it, it doesn't matter if the number is 1 or 100... there's still a problem there. It's more about making sure that both partners are safe than it is about "Eew, she's a gross skank".

That said, she's with you now. It shouldn't really matter how many are in her past so long as you're the only one in her future!

Don't ever, ever say "You're the doctor" when it comes to your health.

I'm not saying that you should use Google to diagnose yourself, but if you don't agree with a diagnosis and have real reasoning to back it up, fight until your doctor will listen to you.

I have bipolar disorder. I was misdiagnosed as having depression when I was a young teenager and subjected to years of antidepressants that did nothing but make me manic and miserable. It took until I was 20 or so before I had the guts to stand up to my doctor (thanks to a great counselor I had!) and tell him that I don't think I have depression. The problem is, rapid cycling bipolar disorder is easily mistaken for depression. The main question they'll ask is if you've had a mania lasting longer than a few weeks. Mine don't, usually, so my complaints of days of insomnia and high-flying were mostly ignored.

Chart your symptoms day by day in a journal. Take note of how much you sleep and when, what your activity levels are and what your mood is like. Don't just use the 1-10 scale. Are you happy, sad, agitated, euphoric, depressed? Did you experience anything like paranoia, hallucinations, etc? I'm not sure if you're female or not, but if you are keep track of your menstrual cycle in the same place, because hormones can affect your mood cycles as well. Keeping track of all of this can help your doctor in figuring out how best to treat you. If there's clear evidence that you're suffering from something other than depression and your doctor won't listen to you, find one who will.

Whatever you do, make sure you keep taking the medication, even if you don't feel it's working. The withdrawal from antidepressants is killer and can make you extremely ill.

Don't get in a situation where you can obsess over bad thoughts. If you get stuck in a loop, go do something else. Read a book, play a video game, knit a sweater, cook a dozen loaves of banana bread. Go for a walk and listen to music so loud that you don't get a chance to think.

If you're really struggling, open up to someone near you. Stay with a friend or family if you normally live alone. Avoid being in a situation where you are alone and suicidal in a house with anything that can harm you. Find a safe place, even if it's just a coffee house.

I know it's hard sometimes to keep living life when you're depressed. Even little things like getting in the shower can be a huge chore. So celebrate those little accomplishments. Be proud of yourself for getting out of bed, for showering, for putting on clothes. Every tiny step you take gets you closer to being better.

Most of all, don't lose track of the fact that you are not your depression. You are still yourself, and as soon as you're out of the fog you will be back to normal (mostly). Depression can make us miserable, awful people to be around, but that is always temporary.

I'm going to be blunt.

No, nobody is going to want a relationship with someone who could just up and kill themselves any day. It's exhausting to be relied upon 24/7 to keep someone alive. Why should anyone get into a long-term relationship not knowing if there is a long term?

As someone who suffers from mental illness, I'm well aware of how selfish it makes us when we're at our worst. I need help. I need you to keep me living. I need, I need, I need. We can only see our own needs, and not those of the people around us. Instead of being equal partners, we can become burdens.

Nobody is going to want to be with you if you don't show signs of helping yourself. My husband gave me an ultimatum: either I start using the resources I had access to and get some help or he leaves. Until that point, I had been depending on him for everything. He couldn't so much as go out with friends for a few hours without returning to me sobbing and telling him that if he didn't want me, I might as well kill myself. Sounds like a party, right?

You've been suicidal for over 5 years, right? What have you done about it? You can't depend on another person to make you feel like living forever. It can be a good temporary fix, but eventually you need to learn to stand on your own two feet. If you show that you're trying, people will be more open to relationships AND you won't need a relationship, you'll just want them.

Find a counselor, find a psychiatrist, talk to your family doctor. If you're on medication, it's clearly not working, so get it changed. If you're not, see about getting on it and take it. Find things to keep you going. Get a part time job, start volunteering or pick up a new hobby. It's a lot harder to commit suicide when that sweater you're knitting is only half-done (I'm not even joking, I used that as a reason not to once). Take care of yourself.

I'm not saying that you can't lean on people from time to time. Seeking help can be difficult, and you'll need support from family and friends. They just can't be the help that you need. That's putting them in an awful position. So lean, but don't insist that they carry you.

Ah, that makes a lot more sense!

Trust me when I say that you should be having this test. It sounds like you had urinary reflux, which means that urine is going the wrong way, from your bladder to your kidneys. That can seriously mess up your kidneys, so it's good that it's being taken care of.

I'm not sure what the second procedure was. Since they put you fully to sleep, was it a surgery? People who suffer from urinary reflux often get scarring and tissue damage in their kidneys.

So just to clarify the test that they're doing, they're putting a catheter in your urinary tract to fill your bladder with a solution that will show on the x-ray. Then they have you release the solution into a bedpan and make sure that everything is moving the way it's supposed to.

I guess the part that you're worried about is the catheter being inserted. Let the person inserting it know that you've experienced pain with it before, and they may be able to use a topical anaesthetic. Deep breathing also makes it easier to insert, because it relaxes your muscles.

You can also, if you're still worried, ask your doctor for a full explanation. It sounds like everyone's kept you in the dark so far, and you're definitely old enough to understand medical procedures that are being performed on you. I always hated it when doctors would explain to my parents and not me!

It's good that they're doing this now, because otherwise there could be much more painful medical problems down the road. It'll only take an hour, then it will be over. You could always bring a stress ball to squeeze, or a stuffed animal for comfort :)

It makes you a normal young woman who had an experience that you may or may not have enjoyed (you don't mention if you did or not).

Lots of people experiment sexually during their lifetime. It doesn't make you one orientation or another, just like eating hummus for dinner one night doesn't make you a vegetarian. If you did enjoy it, that doesn't mean you're a lesbian. It means you had fun with a cute girl, making her happy.

As for clearing the air, she is your best friend. Mention it when you two are alone, and tell her what you feel about it. If she's uncomfortable with it, leave it at that.

I get it. Salt is like a flavour party in your mouth! High sodium foods have been proven to be addictive, so it's not surprising that once you start eating salt on everything, you have trouble stopping.

I would go cold turkey. No more salt on anything. It will take a few days, possibly more, but you will start to taste the flavours of food as it is. Try pepper, crushed chilis or other spices on your food instead. It will suck, but it would be a lot easier to monitor than trying to wean yourself off of it. Drink lots of water, too, to make sure that the salt in your body isn't out of whack.

If you've both been tested and have been monogamous for a long time, there's not a huge amount of risk STI-wise.

The main reason why they'd suggest using a condom would be because bacteria from the rectum could make its way up your urethra, giving you a pretty nasty UTI. Not fun.

If you're not ready to do either, then don't do either.

I can hear you saying "But I love him and I want him to stay!" I know, I know. But wanting to keep a guy interested is no reason to become sexually active.

When you become sexually active, you open yourself up to all sorts of emotions and risks. Even with just oral sex, there's the risk of STI infection, which can last forever. If you're having sex, you risk both STI infection and pregnancy.

I'm not saying that you need to wait until marriage to have sex. Just wait until you know that you're with the right guy and that you're ready. If he's not willing to wait for sex, or if he keeps pressuring you, he's not worth dating no matter how wonderful he is in other ways. By caring more about when he gets a little action than he does about you being happy and comfortable, he's showing that he doesn't respect and care about you. That's not the right person to share a gift like sex with.

So if he won't back off, find someone who will be willing to wait, because you're worth it :)

Not at 10 years old and not at any age.

In fact, masturbation is the safest possible sexual activity you can engage in! No risk of STI, no risk of pregnancy. It's perfectly normal and healthy.

My Personal Forum

My name is Amanda and I'm 26 years old. I'm currently studying electrical engineering. Armed with a fairly odd sense of humour and a sunny outlook on life, I'll take on just about anything. I'm also cussedly stubborn, which has its ups and downs. Things get tough sometimes, and I've never been one to run from it.

In my last 8 years with Advicenators, I've gone from honours student to failing out of university (and getting back on top again!), from single to married, from tenant to homeowner.

Until lately, I have been struggling with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and OCD, which had basically ruined my life and taken just about everything from me. I'm thankful every day for every experience I've had because of this ordeal, because it's helped to make me who I am today. Things like that really make you appreciate what you do have. Now that I'm back in work and school and starting to become myself again, I couldn't be happier. I credit Advicenators with saving my life back when I was a teenager, which is a big part of why I'm still here.

I won't necessarily give you the answers you want to hear, but I'll always be honest and do my best to help.

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