Mental Health Thread

[Black Abyss Babe]

I’m stuck in a self-destructive cycle and feel my lifeforce withering away day by day. Sometimes I think I don’t even want to be well anymore.

I've been feeling like this quite a lot lately - I think the pandemic and lockdowns hit me harder than I realised at the time and some days now I feel like I'm trapped inside my own mind. Everything seems worse than it really is.

I think what we need to do is keep looking to make small positive changes that will stack up over time. Getting therapy is a good first step if that's available to you and I'm really glad you've managed to procure that for yourself - hopefully this will be the turning point for you.

But also this is spot on:

you can fail and start again and fail and start again and again and again

You don't need to find one "magic bullet" that will solve the whole thing in one go - I'm not sure such a thing exists for many of us. But I really believe that the small changes will stack up over time. I understand it's hard in the meantime though. Stick with us!

 

[JudasMyGuide]

I've already said the serious stuff (and I'm really happy that you happened to get help so soon, really!), let me say the more lightweight as well - if from software games and Catholicism taught me anything, it was "Don't you dare go hollow".

You can and will fail, you can feel it's hopeless, you can be in a really bad place... but the only way to lose the game is to quit playing altogether.

I'm not kidding, there's an actual connotation between fromsoft and fighting mental health issues, if someone was interested, you may check this video out -

But yes, don't you dare go hollow. You can win. If you won't give up, you will win.

 

[Dr. Eddies Wingman]

And I feel so damn alone that it’s killing me. Sure, there are people around me, but they don’t understand. No one understands the conflict.

You should know that there are many out there that would understand at least parts of it. There are many who carry burdens, light or heavy, that they don't want to talk about - just because they think that noone around them will understand.

But burdens are lighter when shared.

I wish you the best @Saapanael - good call to seek professional advice, if only to talk to someone who has seen it all before.

 

[Saapanael]

I appreciate what every one of you has said and will do my best to get better!

 

[Black Abyss Babe]

I appreciate what every one of you has said and will do my best to get better!

That's the spirit!

 

[Brigantium]

But also be kind to yourself. You have feelings for a reason, and you have emotional needs, that's totally natural. You can get overloaded with feelings and you can be left with patterns of unhelpful thoughts and perspectives, but you still have completely natural emotional needs. Talking treatments at best help you reorder thoughts and perspectives.

 

[Brigantium]

I've finally had a couple of sessions with a counsellor via my work, and I think it's making real progress. I was ideally wanting a female counsellor, because I thought she might have better understanding of my experience of life, but I ended up with a male counsellor who's like a breath of fresh air. He's Polish, and I think that adds a lot, because he has an outside perspective of British culture and social conventions, that maybe other counsellors wouldn't see.

I was expecting to be fobbed off with superficial sticking-plaster-effect CBT, but the sessions are more thorough, going into my upbringing and reasons for thinking and reacting a particular way. I've also been getting Zoom group therapy sessions, which are more general and have a bit of education about psychology in them, and found they haven't gone straight for the 'think of a recent unhelpful thought - now train yourself to argue with it' approach either. They were introducing the idea of adopting roles and psychologically functioning as a helpful or oppressive adult, or a vulnerable or healthy child. Definitely more technical stuff, and aimed more at helping people figure out their own situation rather than reacting to crises.

 

[Saapanael]

I don’t see the point. I’m walking on some road that’s not my own and it keeps leading deeper into the forest. The light barely reaches these parts. I want back on the right path.

 

[Saapanael]

Sometimes there is so much anger insire me I don’t know how to deal with it. I try to keep myself occupied but it keeps pressing out of me, threatening to explode.

 

[The_7th_one]

Sometimes there is so much anger insire me I don’t know how to deal with it. I try to keep myself occupied but it keeps pressing out of me, threatening to explode.

Try physical exercise. It's a good and healthy habit for mind and body that keeps you away from anxiety, anger, boredom, depression and other issues. Try to analyze when the anger and these moments are happening to you.

 

[Saapanael]

Try physical exercise. It's a good and healthy habit for mind and body that keeps you away from anxiety, anger, boredom, depression and other issues. Try to analyze when the anger and these moments are happening to you.

I have started to be more physically active lately and it helps to a certain extent. All of this is very confusing, let me explain further. Yesterday was a very productive day, I went to work for a couple of hours in the morning, in the afternoon my brother came over and we fixed some broken stairs together. Then I drove around with my brother’s car (I’m currently in the middle of getting my driver’s license), and went to the gym. After the gym, at the bus stop a woman was having a seizure and I called her an ambulance. Most people just passed by and didn’t even care, I bet they wouldn’t have done anything. The ambulance arrived a little while later, took her into the van and I hopped on the bus. Watched some TV late at night and went to sleep. Woke up at 1 pm today, immediately feeling anxious. Gradually started to feel some frustration sneaking in. Having the impulse to curse loudly at very minor mishaps, etc. Decided to go to the store to get some new clothes and to the cinema afterwards. By the time I was on the train to the city, the frustration was already very obvious. I couldn’t stay calm in my seat, something was disturbing me, but I don’t know what. The store and cinema went as planned, except I caught a friend on the street. He told me one of our mutual friends is getting married in summer. More reason to be concerned about myself, hearing about others advancing in life. I’m home now, having a beer to calm down. The frustration and anger eventually turned to sadness and now I’m just tired and confused.

Another thing I must add is the ongoing war in Ukraine. I cannot come to terms with the fact that Ukrainians are fighting on the frontlines, living in hellish conditions, freezing, starving, facing the fear of death and having to kill others, all that fucking stuff, and then the rest of us are living our comfortable lives, yet it’s so meaningless when you don’t have anyone to fight for. I can’t work out this paradox in my head. And then there’s wars elsewhere in the world, poverty, disease, oppression, suffering, and somehow we have to go on living in a world filled with such horrible shit. How to find warmth and joy within that?

 

[The_7th_one]

Well, I think when you felt anxious in the morning is because you have to go to the city to buy things and maybe you're not comfortable and you don't enjoy yourself doing these kind of things alone. This is happening to me sometimes. You're not the only one.

About the hearing of a friend that will marry. It could be that the annoying thing is that you heard your friend about that and the person who will marry don't told you. Anyway It's a frustration thing when you hear about others how advance in life. Try to not compare with others and how they're managing their lives. It hurts you. Follow your path, Go to work, find hobbies to do with others. This will allow to make friends and do projects together, maybe you can find a partner and make plans together, who knows… You can always ask for a therapist who can help you with anger and frustration.

 

[Brigantium]

That does sound like multiple stressors building up rather than one thing setting it off. Could it be the come-down from a productive and more enjoyable day yesterday too?

 

[Saapanael]

Well, I think when you felt anxious in the morning is because you have to go to the city to buy things and maybe you're not comfortable and you don't enjoy yourself doing these kind of things alone. This is happening to me sometimes. You're not the only one.

About the hearing of a friend that will marry. It could be that the annoying thing is that you heard your friend about that and the person who will marry don't told you. Anyway It's a frustration thing when you hear about others how advance in life. Try to not compare with others and how they're managing their lives. It hurts you. Follow your path, Go to work, find hobbies to do with others. This will allow to make friends and do projects together, maybe you can find a partner and make plans together, who knows… You can always ask for a therapist who can help you with anger and frustration.

About the morning anxiety, I didn’t have anything planned when I woke up. I only made those plans afterwards, that’s why the anxiety was strange.

You’re right about the marriage. I shouldn’t compare my life with others, I know that. I have an obsession with other people’s lives that I’m slowly learning to let go of.

I’m doing my best now to pursue new interests and make my life more diverse. It’s just that some days everything seems impossible. Working to become a better person one day at a time.

That does sound like multiple stressors building up rather than one thing setting it off. Could it be the come-down from a productive and more enjoyable day yesterday too?

It’s definitely many things in combination. Stress from work also plays a part in it. Not the work itself as much as dealing with coworkers’ attitudes. Again, learning to focus on myself so that I wouldn’t be so easily frustrated by others.
About yesterday, the thing is that I was feeling quite depressed in the first half of the day because I had been drinking the previous night. The mornings after drinking have become hard lately, I mean mentally. I think it’s about hating myself for feeling weak and tired. Then the stair-fixing and gym made me feel better but late in the evening I got this creeping anxiety again, I think partly due to the ambulance episode. So as much as the day was productive, it wasn’t really one I enjoyed that much.

There’s something else of possible importance. I do mostly everything alone. I live alone, go to concerts and movies alone, commute alone, and I spend a lot of time talking to myself when I’m home. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that on the surface, but there’s a lot of time to get wound up in my own thoughts and worries. I think talking to a real person during those moments of frustration would help me calm down.

 

[Brigantium]

I think talking to a real person during those moments of frustration would help me calm down.

^ This!

I never realised how much physically speaking to another person made such a difference until lockdown happened. My team meetings were such a relief.

Probably goes without saying, but anxiety can really kick in in the wake of alcohol too. That's a major reason I'm careful with it - it can reduce anxiety/depression very temporarily, but the after effects are brutal.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

Why, these past weeks have been... toiling.

First about a week before my wife gave birth I had to be home and take care of the family, then for about a week while she was in the hospital after delivery, then about a week after they came back into the chaos of our home - consisting of three children, two cats, a house and everything.

Then I found out a collegue at work is going to be missing for several weeks, if not months, so we're overworked and don't know what to do first.

Tonight, I had my first anxiety attack in, like, 3 years or so. It didn't go to the complete full paralysis, but it shook me all the same.

The last time before this was after my second son was born - we went to the hospital at night, he was born in the early morning hours, then I took care of the elder one for the rest of the day and then - being stupid - I accepted my friends' offer to come over and do me company. It was just too much and it showed in the night.

So, guys, don't underestimate stress. Even the "invisible" one. Like being present at your wife's labor - you may take it well, like I do, and manage, but it is stressfull and it's good to take it easy afterwards.

Same goes for this overdrive I've had lately - I'm not a workoholic, I have a good work-free time balance, my spiritual and emotional needs are met... and yet, it can be just too much.

 

[____no5]

Underestimate stress? Stress is the mother of all evils in human life. Generated by the fear, mother of all negative feelings.
I’m reading a nice book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle who argues that fear/stress are generated by not being in the present tense.

One simple way to practice being in the present tense is meditation. Mediation doesn’t mean you don’t think anything. You have thousands of thoughts as usually. But you are not carried by them.
You concentrate in your breath. Like if you are sitting at the side of a road and have your regard fixed on a tree. The cars on the road (your thoughts) come and go from left and right, but your attention is in your breath (tree). The cars pass but do not carry your attention as you are fixed in your breath.

I used to do meditation first thing after waking up last thing before I sleep for years and that plus my running (which is kind of meditation in moving) have helped me a lot to eliminate stress.

Two of my closest people have suffered from panic attacks this is something deeper than your everyday stress and it requires some internal work or therapy to overcome.

 

[Saapanael]

Isn’t it weird how there’s always a rift between what we’d like life to be like and what it’s really like?

 

[Eddie620]

Nature is driven by the strive to be better and the need to improve. That's just how evolution is. Even religion tries to push us to be better, though it sometimes brings out the worst.

 

[Night Prowler]

I feel like everything is getting worse and worse. I don't mean my mental health (although this is the mental health thread). I mean the world and the people.