Lemonade Money
Les Medley
Yeah, I thought bike. Get a mountain bike and get out in the wilderness; little or no people, good exercise, great scenery, woodland bathing, and time away from the bottle.
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Does anyone suffer from mental illness on here?
- Thread starter Danishfurniturelover
- Start date
glasgowspur
Andy Thompson
Really sorry to hear about your tribulations.
I think i have similar issues, but on a much smaller scale.
The last two years has been hell, and its not going to get any better I'm sorry to say.
Many people with even slight mental health issues are struggling and to be honest have been abandoned, this will turn out to be the true health catastrophe, not covid.
I'm not going to offer advice, because what works for one won't work for another.
My way of coping with it all was contol and routine, but a lot of that went during covid. My work life never altered, but everything else did. I lived in a surreal world of 8-5 was perfectly normal, everything outside that was just nuts. It was like two worlds.
If I'd been furloughed i think i would have had a breakdown. All my coping mechanisms would have been destroyed.
Now I'm finding it a struggle to restart my old coping mechanisms, socialise and engage, my experience of the last two years has been so different from most and for reasons that i won't repeat that I just don't want to relive that trauma. I've retreated into a shell, and I'm not the only one.
Until the Ukraine crisis and the cost of living increases i tried to focus on what i enjoyed the most, travel. I bought a notebook and wrote down all the places I want to visit when the world returned to normal. The way the world is now GHod knows when that will be.
I've always avoided posting in this thread, i know i have issues, even though I have never been diagnosed. They are relatively minor and I can cope with them most of the time.
I can relate to what you are saying and i hope you can find a way through this, you're not alone in this hell. It is hell, it's your hell and we all have our own, don't be down on yourself about that.
Good luck.
Bullet
Colin Calderwood
I don't know what to suggest, but perhaps try imgur to find people in similar situations
Just type in the search bar at the top for whatever situation you feel you are in e.g. depression, alcoholism, loneliness or whatever as there are thousands of posts on similar topics
Click the parrot
Just type in the search bar at the top for whatever situation you feel you are in e.g. depression, alcoholism, loneliness or whatever as there are thousands of posts on similar topics
Click the parrot
spurspinter1
Pat van den Hauwe
Thanks for your reply mate.
On how I felt after posting it - I’ll often look back at things I’ve written (with friends / family or on here) and disagree with it, or just not know what I was talking about or be a bit embarrassed..It has made me less inclined to communicate at all but the alcohol definitely lowers those inhibitions which then leads to the floodgates opening with no filter. That’s an unhealthy use of drinking and doesn’t lead to effective communication.
I’ll do that thing where I’m asking questions and answering them at the same time making it difficult for anyone to offer input. I get told a lot by various mental health professionals that I have a solid understanding and awareness of my problems which almost makes it worse as then I’m just knowingly making the wrong decisions time and time again.
It’s a good shout on the bike but I lived in shared housing and there’s nowhere to safely store it, but I do need to get back in to the walking / fresh air routine for reasons you mentioned!
spurspinter1
Pat van den Hauwe
@glasgowspur
I really appreciate you sharing all that and also fwiw I hope everything is as good as it can be with what you didn’t want to go in to full detail on.
Interesting what you said about routine and control and it sounds like you have a positive handle on both. I’ve sort of slumped in to having control of my environment by minimising variables (other than the unpredictability of Spurs’ form!) and a horrendous routine and evidently need to improve on both sides of that.
I don’t want bi polar to be an excuse but I find it a hard balance of being aware of how I feel but also being able to go against it ie How many people wake up feeling like brick and still manage to drag themselves in to work each day ? Appreciate that is just a part of being an adult and how the world works but things can go a bit wrong if I don’t feel like i’m in the right state of mind for something and do it anyway
I really appreciate you sharing all that and also fwiw I hope everything is as good as it can be with what you didn’t want to go in to full detail on.
Interesting what you said about routine and control and it sounds like you have a positive handle on both. I’ve sort of slumped in to having control of my environment by minimising variables (other than the unpredictability of Spurs’ form!) and a horrendous routine and evidently need to improve on both sides of that.
I don’t want bi polar to be an excuse but I find it a hard balance of being aware of how I feel but also being able to go against it ie How many people wake up feeling like brick and still manage to drag themselves in to work each day ? Appreciate that is just a part of being an adult and how the world works but things can go a bit wrong if I don’t feel like i’m in the right state of mind for something and do it anyway
glasgowspur
Andy Thompson
Being bi polar isn't an excuse, its a justifiable reason for how you feel and why you maybe make bad choices, sometimes.
Only piece of advice i would give anyone is don't beat yourself up over it, and find something positive that works for you. And accept that you'll have bad days, we all do, they pass. Don't make yourself do something you don't want to do, it creates a negative attitude. Even if its your happy thing, don't force yourself to do it if you're not in the right frame of mind, postpone it, but look forward to it. Build up your next session of it in your mind, relish it. You'll find yourself wanting to get back to it pretty quickly and get a bigger kick out of it.
I'm in my mid 50s and I am what I am. I' ve leant to by and large cope and accept it. Thankfully so have most of my friends and family. So much so that they can actually see positives and upsides to our relationships now, it wasn't always so. They didn't understand me because i hid it away, now they understand me and appreciate what i go through.
Don’t ever feel this is all your fault, if only you can change or that you're a bad person.
Thats not how it works and only makes it worse, find something you enjoy, something you can lose yourself in few for a couple of hours every few days and give it your all. Something to look forward forward to on the bad days, that makes dragging your backside out of bed to face the world worthwhile.
As daft as it sounds go in with low expectations, experiment and have fun.
Do what makes you smile.
Sorry if this is jumping all over the place, last thing for, what ive said works for me , might not work for you, don't think that's your fault, we are all different and one thing I've learnt about this is that not only is each person's experience of it different, but it can be different day to day.
Hope you can take something from my ramblings
Best of luck.
spurspinter1
Pat van den Hauwe
Being bi polar isn't an excuse, its a justifiable reason for how you feel and why you maybe make bad choices, sometimes.
Only piece of advice i would give anyone is don't beat yourself up over it, and find something positive that works for you. And accept that you'll have bad days, we all do, they pass. Don't make yourself do something you don't want to do, it creates a negative attitude. Even if its your happy thing, don't force yourself to do it if you're not in the right frame of mind, postpone it, but look forward to it. Build up your next session of it in your mind, relish it. You'll find yourself wanting to get back to it pretty quickly and get a bigger kick out of it.
I'm in my mid 50s and I am what I am. I' ve leant to by and large cope and accept it. Thankfully so have most of my friends and family. So much so that they can actually see positives and upsides to our relationships now, it wasn't always so. They didn't understand me because i hid it away, now they understand me and appreciate what i go through.
Don’t ever feel this is all your fault, if only you can change or that you're a bad person.
Thats not how it works and only makes it worse, find something you enjoy, something you can lose yourself in few for a couple of hours every few days and give it your all. Something to look forward forward to on the bad days, that makes dragging your backside out of bed to face the world worthwhile.
As daft as it sounds go in with low expectations, experiment and have fun.
Do what makes you smile.
Sorry if this is jumping all over the place, last thing for, what ive said works for me , might not work for you, don't think that's your fault, we are all different and one thing I've learnt about this is that not only is each person's experience of it different, but it can be different day to day.
Hope you can take something from my ramblings
Best of luck.
I don’t won’t to over-simplify it as I love what you’ve proposed.
However, I do feel unemployable as I understand when it comes to business and the grown up life you have to be able to rely on people. For example they don’t have firefighters on a zero hour contract for good reason. The premise of searching for a job tends to be based in advertising yourself, which I wouldn’t do as I certainly wouldn’t hire myself.
The tricky thing is that time is not a commodity in my world, it is precious for some but for me it’s regrettably an inconvenience as privileged as that may sound. If I could give it to someone who’d appreciate it, I definitely would.
This isn’t to put to in you in a difficult place for an answer but if I can get away with only doing things when I feel like it then why shouldn’t everybody else? I adore your “don’t beat yourself up” attitude but it doesn’t stop the guilt when everyone else seems to turn up. If some Spurs player suddenly feels incapable to function upon waking up i’d probably be raging if it were upon the eve of a major game, but this may be about my hypocrisy more than anything else.
As an aside, my memory isn’t the best, but didn’t we bump into each other in Bordeaux a couple of years back? Not like it’s a bad thing to seem mid fifties but you seemed younger than that! It’s odd that i’d Misremember something as distinct as that.
glasgowspur
Andy Thompson
Sorry for the delay in replying, my longer posts aren't always easy to follow, so i think you've maybe picked me up wrong.
I was following on from the exercise/bike discussion, not employment.
I read a lot of people recommend exercise, and Im sure its great for them and loads of others, but it does little for.
For me mental exercise is better, creative stuff, making plans, building models and even a little writing. None of which im particularly good at, but that doesn't matter, it picks me up.
I love my job, I just hate the people I work with
.Never been to bordeaux, though ive drank my fair share of it.
ricky2tricky4city
Steffen Freund
Is the people you work with contributors to your mental health issues?Sorry for the delay in replying, my longer posts aren't always easy to follow, so i think you've maybe picked me up wrong.
I was following on from the exercise/bike discussion, not employment.
I read a lot of people recommend exercise, and Im sure its great for them and loads of others, but it does little for.
For me mental exercise is better, creative stuff, making plans, building models and even a little writing. None of which im particularly good at, but that doesn't matter, it picks me up.
I love my job, I just hate the people I work with
Never been to bordeaux, though ive drank my fair share of it.
glasgowspur
Andy Thompson
Yes and no, ive always had issues, educating them into accepting that was a problem for a long time, but now they realise that its best for everyone life is much easier for everybody.
I'm lucky that I'm the factory manager, been thete 29 years and the staff have all been there a long time as well, so they know and to an extent understand me.
The owners don't get involved, we make them too much money to interfere, but it took a long while to get here.
ricky2tricky4city
Steffen Freund
I was going to suggest considering moving jobs but it's sounds like it's been a long road to get where you are so to risk the near equilibrium you've engineered would, as I say, be risky.
Did the greater openess around mental health issues (especially with men) help you in the workplace, in say the last 5-10 years?...and have you had to self manage the situation or has your employer helped?
glasgowspur
Andy Thompson
I will retire from job in 8 years, there is a shares incentive to keep me.
Sounds really conceited but once they all accepted that im almost always right, that i have the best interests of the company at heart then it was easier.
My manner doesn't help, i get very frustrated and exasperated because I'm not the best communicator. It frustrates the hell out of me that what I see as simple and sensible no one else can understand.
Apologies for the bluntness here, but that's horsebrick.
As both an employer and someone who is married to a person who is bi polar, I can tell you categorically that this isn't being unreliable, it's a disability. We have employment laws to protect people with disabilities for very good reasons.
You wouldn't (I hope) refuse to employ someone because they were in a wheelchair, because of their race or gender.
Day in, day out reliability is one of many factors I would consider when looking to employ someone. But it is just one of them. It's also an aspect that doesn't always correlate with intelligent and dedicated people - it's quite a beige attribute.
spurspinter1
Pat van den Hauwe
I didn’t want what i’ve said to come off as “You can’t rely on bi polar people”, how it’s come across that way i’m not really sure.
Nowhere in my posts have I stated I’m unreliable because I am bi polar. It’s more about self confidence and looking at the reality of my past more than letting a diagnosis define me. No disrespect intended to your wife (who we have spoken about before) or anyone with the condition.
Despite my previous point, It’s a disability (as you call it, I hadn’t really considered myself disabled previously but if so then so be it) that often leads to manic mood swings that can render someone unable to do something which has been previously agreed that made sense at the time. Explain to me if that’s misguided or accept that there is an element of unreliability associated when choosing who to hire for a real job that requires what is expected of every other employee.
In your analogy of wheelchair users (bringing race and gender in to it is entirely horsebrick to use your term but i’ll disregard those), there’ll be a physically evident reason that the person is in a wheelchair. The difficulty is with mental health is that as far as I can see it through my experience, it’s solely based on behaviour/actions taken, which could be perceived as a choice (i’m not saying it is).
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ricky2tricky4city
Steffen Freund
Thanks for giving your view.
I know you can't empathise with what @spurspinter1 is saying and the view from his position. I can't see how you've married everything hes revealed in that paragraph to bi-polar? And I'm sure he's not in a place to think 'employment laws got my back, let's line up the interviews' ....but hey, I don't want to speak for him.
spurspinter1
Pat van den Hauwe
Thanks for this, it was the last of my intentions to come across as slandering all people with a diagnosed mental health problem (just being alive and well in this world is hard enough as it is!!!) so it’s reassuring to hear someone back that point up.
I wish I was in a position to be ever so aware of employee law and whatnot but I feel it works differently within the respective worlds we inhabit. The real world still exists nonetheless (and for what it’s worth i’ll get tinkley if a decent response isn’t offered from @scaramanga - who kindly offers to explain my own condition to me - in the near future but I am earnestly certain that he does have more responsibilities to attend to beyond online discussion so will wait patiently).
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thfcsteff
Garth Crooks
In my opinion, no-one should be defining anyone’s issues or predicaments in definitive terms. Certainly many will have been with, or are with, people who have the same conditions by definition, but as we know, context and circumstance change the situation for everyone individually.
Perspectives and helpful suggestions are brilliant; absolutes are not helpful.
Good luck spurspinter1, and as always, keep the salt cellar close by as the experts show up.
We really need a dislike button.
I think Scara made that post with the best of intentions.
I think he was trying to express a persons value is not determined by their own perception of their reliability.
that’s how I read it anyway.