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Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (September 2024)
This is a monthly thread for those who need it. Vent, share your experiences, ask for advice, talk about how you are doing. Let's make this a compassionate space for all who may need one.
August was off to a pretty good start as I visited @X08 and since we met on Tildes, I wondered if maybe we actually did the first Tildes meetup? In any case it was great to get a tour of her country and just hang out, and she is making a return trip hopefully soon. It had been 5 years since my last travels so it was a pretty significant week - despite us both getting sick and also despite the plans that we had to cancel because one of her cats pissed in my luggage lol
I completely crashed after the travels though. I was not doing well before the trip and it just kind of continued when I got back home, as though that one week of traveling was a break and now I'm back to real life again. My nephew also died (which I posted about here) which only served to make me spiral even further and the idea of it made my self harm get out of control for a few weeks.
I'd been in group therapy since February but my nephew's death and another awful thing that happened in July was too much, meaning I hadn't been able to do the work in therapy for months. So my therapist told me this week that it does not make sense for me to continue therapy.. so I feel abandoned and neglected by her and the rest of the team at the psych facility and I just truly do not understand how you can't try and catch your patient when they are in the middle of traumatic events. I am going to try to go on mood stabilizers which I guess is something but that's it for therapy for now. They have no more treatment to offer me, she said. I am going to bring these things up to the doctor when I go in for my appointment about getting the prescription but that's where I'm at.
I'm only just managing to eat a meal a day, I'm behind on every other chore, I only leave my apartment when I absolutely have to, which means I don't get out of here more than maybe twice per week - and that's a giant problem because I live in a small studio of 20 sqm.. I'm barely hanging on. I'm really struggling to cope. I guess it's an existential crisis because I don't know what will become of me.
I'm so sorry to hear that you are struggling.
I have also done a couple of Tildes meetups and I hope to do more!
Therapists can be great or mediocre or terrible.
Thank you for the empathy. I feel like my therapist has been mostly mediocre but since she was the one assigned to me, I just accepted it for a long time - and I actually believe she started disliking me, and therefore became a pretty bad therapist (to me)? I am not blind to how biased I am, it just felt that way.
How did your meetups go?
They went well! One person was visiting a city near me and I reached out to possibly meet. We had a great time. I did tourist things I might have otherwise never tried.
I also actually made a post some while back about travel options for me and in light of information gathered through that post I went to Bath and Bristol in the UK. I was given a local tour of downtown Bristol by a tildes user. It was beautiful and I had a lot of fun. My planned excursion into Wales was blocked by local flooding but I still had an amazing trip. Many thanks to that user. (If they want to identify themselves, great, but I'm not going to just assume)
I sort of feel like a person for the first time in .. over a year? Not a fully functional put together person, but a person none the less.
It's sort of relieving. And it's makes me feel functional at work and home again. I think I'm still sleeping too little but in bed too much and not quite there on taking care of myself but progress is happening.
Recovering from Work. Tried to apply to a technology position for my local school district, thought I did decent enough with the interview, but they decided to go with someone out of district with a better degree. It would have been nice, with better insurance and room to grow and be a an actual hire, but it would have been a pay cut. I took a good chunk of my available PTO out for this week just in case I had to make an exit. But I guess I get some time this week to put off cleaning and getting my ducks in a row.
I got diagnosed with mild depression and anxiety. Hurray.
The social worker I spoke with had me start off with mindfulness meditation and I hated it. I hated it because I used to do it sporadically but I haven’t done it in a while and I was surprised at how difficult it was because of all the negative thoughts going through my head. Self-reflection is something I tend to advocate for so I feel like I have become a hypocrite on top of all of this. So after more than a decade of being what I thought was a fairly self-actualized person to needing to rediscover myself.
You're not a hypocrite, you were protecting yourself from something(s). You got to a place of self-actualization once, and when the danger has been sufficiently mitigated you will find your way back again.... Be patient with yourself, you're doing the best you can.
I really hated mindfulness at first too. I was given a little stack of papers with hundreds of ways to practice it and 95% of them were outright silly to me. It took a while to find the ones that worked for me: More simple ones like breathing exercises and ones about registering sensory inputs, for example looking around and taking your time to describe what you look at, or try to name colours of things you see, name the sounds you hear, things you smell, etc. Not gonna attempt to convince you that it's the end all, be all of.. anything. But maybe it's useful - however I do totally get the dislike for it as well. Most days, I really hate it.
I thought I was doing fine, then I just completely melted down over the weekend. I feel better for it, though? It dragged out a lot of things I was refusing to think about, and I'm trying to put together a game plan to start dealing with some of the mess.
I'm flailing with work, feeling like I don't know how to keep up in my field (the crunchy parts of web dev). I ordered a hundred bucks worth of the best-rated books for what I really want to work in, and I've spent the last two days learning the rudiments of Docker, so that's something. It's going to be a long road.
Family is a nightmare. My elderly/ill parents and health-challenged sib are mostly alone on the other side of the country from me, and our relationship's messed up enough that even the idea of visiting gives me a simultaneous massive load of guilt and enormous dread. They have no support system that isn't also struggling or needing their support more, but I feel empty and useless--it'd kill me to go back there, and there's almost nothing I can do from here.
Most of my nearest and dearest friends are having health problems, and when I stop pretending, I'm really terrified about it. My best friend is having major surgery next week and I'm holding it together so he doesn't see how scared I am, but I'm collapsing inside. Other close friends have just gotten through surgery or have more scheduled, mysterious health conditions--it feels like always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And I don't even want to think about dealing with my own health, which is Schroedinger-style--if I don't get anything checked out maybe it'll all be in my head. But I've got to get the belated physical and other regular crap done, and dental stuff I can't afford, and test for a condition I might or might not have that wouldn't show any real symptoms until my organs fail. And I've got an ADHD workbook on the way because maybe that's a thing and maybe it'll help and I sure can't afford a shrink or meds.
It's a lot. But damnit, one step at a time.
Back to Docker.
These months just fly by. I feel like a lot of days feel similar. Despite that I do feel there is some semblance of structure in my life right now. Twice weekly therapy, getting up from bed. I get to ride my motorcycle again which is a solid boon. And I do feel I get my head wrapped around my triggers and I do get to decide instead of them.
Sorry for the probably unrelated question but every time I see this thread I wonder if the title is a Daniel Johnston reference?