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Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (March 2025)
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.
Pretty much snapped yesterday. To which, I don't remember the last time that happened. I'm fortunate enough to be in a country where it's unlikely to completely turn south immediately but nothing feels certain anymore.
I will fight on, but man. How did we end up in this mess? I grew up in a time of optimism, and now I wonder if I'll ever see a time with even cautious optimism again in my lifetime.
I'm so sorry. It feels like such a heavy, uncertain time geopolitically right now.
I'm Canadian. My big 'snap', if I may commiserate, was last month around the (first) threat of tariffs against Canada. Between the stress and anger, I felt like I had tunnel vision for days.
Now facing tariff deadline #2 and I at least feel much steadier; more resolved to whatever may come. For me yesterday's news was repulsive, but not shocking.
I'm doing my little part to try and support Canadian (or, well, not US) and my community, which feels nice and realistically it's all that's in my control. It can't really shake the sadness I feel over the state of things.
I know and I understand. I actually joined a political party recently. Which is something I never thought I would do. Yet somehow I cannot sit still, but like you, I experience this deep sadness that's akin to mourning the world I grew up in. Like a dusk of what seemed to be a world where we could slowly get more peaceful.
My existential dread is high.
I feel paralyzed by fear.
I’m tired of continuously trying and existing(not suicidal, just exhausted).
It’s a sad state to be in :(
I'm sorry that I don't know what to say. I've been there a lot. I'm still looking for answers there. I am rooting for you though.
Just broke up with my partner of 5 years. I'm actually writing this in the back of an Uber on my way to the airport. I'm sad, they're devastated. Unlike previous relationships, this one didn't have a clear reason to end. We were great partners, we never fought, we made each other laugh. In the rare times when we would disagree/argue, we did it well and communicated well. But there was something missing. I cant explain it. I don't know if it was them, me, or us. Part of me felt it from the start and there were times when my love for them would wax and wane, but I spent the past five years trying to get over that missing piece because everything else was as close to perfect as it can get.
Unfortunately, after spending a good chunk of our 30s together, it came time to shit or get off the pot. I told them last night and it was awful. I know it's for the best, but it sucks.
All my condolences. I had a similar situation last summer where I told my partner of 9 years we were breaking up after like 5 years of trying to fix things with couples counseling. The image of her coming to grips with it is seared into my memory. We ended up taking a break and getting back together, but I still have some of the feelings you're talking about. It's a really hard place to be. All I can say is it's time for your community to be there for you, take some time to sit in the grief, and be easy on yourself.
I'm dealing surprisingly well with the very obvious divorce stress, which is probably a good sign. I'm honestly less depressed day-to-day than I was before the divorce stuff officially started, which is probably a sign it'll end up ultimately being a good thing that it happened.
That said, I'm really homesick. I miss my family and I want to move home in the next couple years. If I don't get a job in the next several months I'll have to anyway, borrowing money from my parents to do it rather than being able to do it with prep on my own terms. But with the way US politics are going right now... I'm scared that I won't be able to. Or that I will have to and things will get so, so bad.
I'd be scared about some parts of it even if US politics were more stable, but with how things are right now... I don't want to be far away from my family forever. I want to watch my niece grow up. I want to hang out with my friends back home and play ttrpgs and watch movies together and be happy. But right now I'm scared that even in the best case scenario for me, personally, I won't be able to. That I'll have to watch my queer friends back home scatter or suffer or worse from abroad. Or worse.
I'm just so sorry, I can't imagine having to deal with that. I already have a lot of American friends who I'm worried sick over - and your case must be a whole lot more. Take care mate.
February mood chart
I have ok-ish days once in a while but it's mostly bad to awful days this month. I'm still feeling the effects and consequences of last summer when my treatment was abruptly ended at the psych facility. A best friend attempted suicide and only barely survived. One month after this, my nephew died. 3 weeks after this, my discharge was finalized.
You would think my treatment would be intensified after two very traumatic events like that, but no.. end of treatment. Beneath is part of what they wrote when they closed my case however I didn't see it until a couple of weeks ago or so. The wording is odd so it was really hard to translate but I hope it makes sense.
For context there are 115 entries in my medical record since I moved here less than 3 years ago, a few of them are administrative, but still easily at least 100 appointments here. So almost weekly for nearly 3 years. Before here, I also been at another probably 150-200 appointments/sessions when I lived in and around Copenhagen, not sure across how years though. So after all that, with those hundreds of hours of treatment in mind, it does makes sense that there is no further help.
Nonetheless, it hit real fucking hard. I think I still can't fully wrap my head around it. Like it blows my mind that they would even write something so damning in the first place. And these things are not exaggerated by the way because this is the conclusion that a full team of mental health professionals arrived at. This is based on a meeting with about half a dozen of them - therapists, psychologists, doctors. Consensus and agreement that I am untreatable and it will not change. I try to read it differently and see it from different perspectives but I really can't come to any other interpretation of what they wrote than that I am just a broken human and that that is how they see it too.
I can't remember the last time I felt so much apathy for such a prolonged period of time. I can't off myself because people would be sad, but I also just don't know what's going to become of me. I have no realistic goals or plans or dreams, nothing that I want is at all feasible and I feel like the rest of my life will be one of just taking it day by day and trying to keep existing.
The only thing that I believe would help is finding a partner with whom I could live in a small house or something. But considering I'm queer and unemployed and severely mentally ill, like I am entirely fucked up, my dating pool is impossibly tiny. "There's plenty of fish in the sea". No, there really isn't. I am also damaged goods to say the least, so even if someone liked me despite all these objectively undesirable qualities, even if they somehow liked my personality (which is diagnosed as severely disordered lol).. I would still just not be a good partner. I can't take care of myself, so how could I take care of someone else and a relationship too? My only hope is that the friends I have are here to stay, and that I can continue to see glimpses of good when I am with them because other than that.. just, fuck my life.
Wow... just, wow. The fact that they would end the treatment like that in this part of your life when you arguably need it the most. I'm not sure what to say, I'm just so sorry.
Thank you. I sometimes have a hard time finding the words too.
I have repeatedly asked for other options for more than ½ a year too, since they stopped the therapy in August. Can I get other diagnoses, can I get treatment for anxiety or depression, can I get treatment for this personality disorder, can I get treatment for that personality disorder, why won't you explore it, can I get treatment for my other traumas, how is there nothing at all, why in the fuck won't you diagnose it when my file clearly states I fulfill the diagnostic criteria for all these things.. always the same answer: no.
By the way this is by far the most accessible, largest, and most in depth provider here. I am now exploring other much slower avenues and I have asked my GP to refer me elsewhere but this has waiting lists of 12-18 months, she says. And the place that deals with CSA where despite already being approved has a waiting list of 3 years. Well, I've already waited ½ a year so 2½ years wait now. Either way, considering what they said at the psych facility, I have zero hope for anything working. Nothing has worked so far anyway.
An ok-ish day now is at best because of distractions where I use enough time on other things that I don't sit alone for too long to start spiraling. I am trying to improve in the smallest of things that I can manage to find the energy for, but even that is difficult. And it really is small things, so tiny in fact that it seems that to most people what is extremely difficult for me is taken for granted by the average person who probably have not even once in their life eaten chips and candy as their sole meal in a day. But it's all I can manage. I feel like me life is objectively awful now. I don't see how anybody would say it isn't just a fact that it's awful. There is no way to spin any of it into a positive note. Maybe that I should be grateful that I have shelter, food, and entertainment. But who doesn't in western countries, short of homeless people? It's like that time my mom said "at least you're not a drug addict". If that's where the bar is set, if that's what I am supposed to be grateful for, then I don't really know what to think. But apparently that's where the expectations of me are.
I just don't really have anything to look forward to at the moment. No goals in life, no aims, no way to really change things around. I guess I already mentioned that above though.. sorry, apparently I needed to vent even more. No worries or need to reply or anything. Just a lot going on in my mind lately.
Yeah I understand. Sometimes that's just what we need. You were also dealt such a blow that I'm actually kind of glad you're venting here. Keeping that shit inside just eats you up, well, inside.
Wow, so, you haven't been treated at the specialised care you need and they think they can judge you for being untreatable? Maybe they have done good things as well, so I don't want to completely smack them for only hearing this part of the story - but boy does it have 'we've tried nothing and nothing works'-vibes. I hope you can actually get in there man, that's horrid. I've been so lucky that I got into specialised care through the loopholes by accident - the Netherlands also has notoriously difficult treatment where some patients get caught in loops of 'you need treatment here instead of here'. Bureaucracy in welfare is hell.
Definitely only one side of the story and I do know that they see it differently but what's difficult is how differently they see it. And no, I did not receive that specialized care - it's called the Team for Personality Disorders and Trauma. But apparently they don't know how to help people with the last part of their name lol
I did have some takeaways like a small handful of coping strategies. Maybe 5-10% of the DBT group therapy was beneficial. The rest was either meaningless to me, or I felt it was patronizing. But, those few things I took with me are maybe why I have now been clean from self harm for the longest time since 2021. Last time was in September after therapy stopped.. so I'm tempted to say that maybe it was more than meaningless/patronizing. Maybe it was outright harmful to me. Maybe they just didn't have a clue how to treat me. The woman at the place for CSA said in the 2-hour interview I had (to be accepted/rejected to go there in 3 years) that my case is extremely complex - that's the first time I ever heard those words. It was validating. And I think something they didn't recognize at the psych facility.
I have sadly heard about the system in the Netherlands too. Psychiatric and welfare both. It's sad to think that yours and my countries, despite how shit it still is, are still among the top 10 or even 5 in the world for both.
I know. It feels like mental health being properly taken of is also the last step in an actual succesful healthcare system in a way. But it's not nearly being successful enough at the tasks it ought to be doing.
Went back to looking at news again, which has left me unable to look away. I just keep returning to the doom scroll (mostly reading comments here) and I can't stop myself, which has left me extremely anxious. It's been pretty miserable over here.
Might I suggest unsubscribing from ~society and/or adding
politicsto your topic tag filters? IMO, your mental health is far more important than staying totally up-to-date on all the latest political BS.I know it might feel wrong to do that. Like you're "giving up" or sticking your head in the sand. I struggle with feelings of guilt when doing that too... but the way I ultimately look at it is, what good am I to anyone if I am too depressed and anxious to function? And constantly being pissed off at the state of things also makes me start to behave in ways that make me feel even worse too; I'm meaner to everyone around me, far more judgemental of people that probably don't deserve it, assume the worst of what people are saying, and I can't think as clearly either which makes matters worse. So, at least for me, "staying informed" to that degree is just not worth it. I can only handle reading so much bad news per day.
p.s. This advice goes out to @Raspcoffee (and @Carrie, if I'm reading their situation right) as well.
Appreciated. I may do that at some point. Not today or tomorrow, but we do all need to take care of ourselves. Especially if we want to improve the world.
I've definitely taken breaks from Tildes in the past couple of weeks (I think I was gone for a week or two after inauguration) and I'm still not really reading much of my own news feed for this reason. It certainly helped considerably to step back and just focus on my hobbies and my own life for many weeks and I ought to get back to it, as the anxiety is just too much to handle right now.
The other thing is, I haven't really been able to get filters to work and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I've got one thing filtered out, but I still see topics from it, so I'm not sure what I've done.
I guess the other issue is just that now my life is changing due to what's going on with my government right now. My life was always going to change this year regardless of who was elected, but it's been kicked forward now and it has both myself and my wife stressed out. She was supposed to have her student loans forgiven this year due to 10-years in a non-profit and now that's off the table and the payments have doubled. I'm angry with the people in my life that voted for this and it's causing me to look at news, which is just helping feed that.
If the student loan payments are crippling, it can be worth talking to a bankruptcy lawyer and filing chapter 13. A court administered payment plan can cut those payments, although the debt itself will not be discharged in most circumstances under current law. (The exception is demonstrating disability and is a can of worms)
Source, have practiced consumer bankruptcy.
Thankfully, we're not at that point yet. I've been a stay at home parent for 7 years and have been able to make that work on my wife's salary. So, theoretically, once I get back to work, it should be trivial to afford the increase in our costs; it's just frustrating because while I had planned to begin looking once my youngest was in Kindergarten later this year, I'll have to begin now and we'll need to figure out what to do with the kids for the rest of the semester and the summer.
Hmm.. do you see
?unfiltered=truein the URL? That disables the filters. To undo it you can just delete that line, or clickBack to normal viewat the top of the page.If not, then I don't know for sure. If you take a screenshot of your filter page and share it with me, I can try to figure out why it's not working.
p.s. Being angry with the people in your life that voted for this is totally understandable. And you're definitely not alone, I have several American friends that are going through similar right now with friends/family that voted for Trump. :(
I don't see it in the URL and as far as my filters page goes, it seems like I've done what I'm supposed to?
Oh, that explains it. 'sports' is a topic tag, but we only ever apply it to sports related content outside the ~sports group. And the filter only works on topic tags. So by putting
sportsin your filters you're filtering out all the sports related content outside the ~sports group, but you're still seeing all the contents from the actual ~sports group itself. So if you don't want to see anything from that group, just click ~sports then click unsubscribe in the right sidebar there. :)Ahhh, ok. Much thanks, didn't realize I needed to do that. Will be nice not to have to manually ignore topics!
YVW! :)
I know feelings like this are not wholly rational, but I want to emphasize explicitly -- you have not done anything wrong that merits feelings of guilt. You deserve to have support from people you love in this incredibly difficult time. Accepting help from others isn't wrong.
I totally understand where those feelings are coming from! I just want to give you some validation that help like this is something you do deserve right now. You're in one of the roughest periods from what I understand, and you deserve kindness and support through it.
Content Warning: Pet Loss
Fuuuuck!
Two of them. I lost two feline family members in a week.
The one that has been in my daily life for about a year was in the hospital while I got a call from my ex that one of our cats had to be euthanized. A couple of days later my girlfriend and I had to euthanize the little lady that had been in the hospital. That little kitty was so funny and quirky. She brought me a ton of love and comfort during some serious bouts with depression last year. She was also my girlfriend's closest family member for 13 years. This cat was her child and is the most significant loss she's experienced. My girlfriend at least got to hold her in her arms as she made her transition. The vet cried with us as she administered the anesthesia and euthanasia drugs.
Last week was really fucking difficult.
And of course I'm a tad freaked out about everything going on with my country.
So far, 2025 is sucking hard.
Sorry for all of the cussing.
I'm really not well tbh. I'm 45. Useless, no real accomplishments.
No social life anymore. I'm the kind of person people avoid on the street, and get profiled at stores as I look like the type, to I don't know, steal and murder people.
I'm not that person, but society deems me to be, and I have to live in their world.
I try and not let it get to me, and some days a better than others...but it's hard not to resent people at times.
It's hard. It's hard living amongst people who despise me for the way I look and move. I get angry. But I try and let it slide.
I have family, and they are there for me, but it's hard to talk about how I am feeling. I've gone the doctor route, and talking helps, but only gets me so far.
Have tried various meds. Some work for a while. Others, like Effexor, made things worse, so I have sworn off medication for life. Currently seeking approval for TMS, but haven't heard back yet.
I have joined a gym, and try to eat well. Going to the gym is hard, becuase I have to be around people who look at me like I'm a freakshow. But I'll go anyway. I need to excercise to stave off the creeping old age pains.
Just spent 2 weeks recovering from covid, or something, so haven't done a lot lately.
My grandmother died 2 days ago. She was 106, and had been suffering from dementia. She's no longer in pain so that's the upside I'm taking away from this.
I don't know why I continue to wake up every day. I don't want to be here. I would gladly give up my life for her to spend another day here to say goodbye to the family (preferably in a lucid state). Hell I'd give my life up for anyone who needs it. There's just no point in any of this otherwise.
But it goes, an on.
I know you've said you've sworn off medications for life after the bad experience with Effexor. You're not alone in how difficult it can be to find a medication that's genuinely useful for chronic depression. I went through about a dozen different drugs before I found something (vortioxetine) that has remained consistently effective with tolerable side effects. You haven't mentioned whether you're getting specialist mental health care or just whatever drugs a GP can throw at you, but if you feel like you're not getting any benefit, it's time to seek another doctor.
You mentioned that you feel people despise you, that you haven't accomplished anything. It's a common feature of depression that everything pleasant, self-affirming, reassuring, comforting, or in any way positive gets filtered out of your perceptions and the memories you're able to recall. This distorted awareness is usually helped with cognitive-behavioral therapy - not just talking. I found vipassana (mindfulness) meditation helpful in stepping back from the relentless onslaught of negative thoughts, but was also seeing a CBT therapist.
The COVID infection and the death of your grandmother are genuinely painful events, taxing for anyone even with the most bountiful mental resilience. Viral infections are particularly vicious - the normal antibody response causes neurological effects that include feelings of exhaustion, social withdrawal, and depression. [There's research which suggests many cases of depression are due to neuroinflammation. SSRIs and related drugs turn out to be anti-inflammatory in the brain, and that may be how they actually work.]
It sounds like you may need a pause to recover physically and mentally, spending time with family and friends who can help support you emotionally in a time of distress. It may seem like the only thing you can do is keep going through the motions of life, but you still have options to feel better. Please hold on and keep trying.
Thank you for your valuable input. I have spoken to several doctors over the years. Some have been great, others not so... At this stage, I am seriously over explaining myself to new medical professionals and not really getting anywhere with it. It's either try this new SSRI or here's a referral to an expensive physiatrist, good luck.. Just tired of it all.
I have spoken to a phycologist for CBT in the past, which has helped with some underlying trauma, but inevitably life finds a way to bring me back down in to a deep depressive state. I know I need to do more to combat this, which is the reason why I’m trying to eat well and exercise more. There's always more I can do.
I have tried mindfulness, be it via apps or even by going to a Buddhist talk and a community centre. I do like and appreciate the practice, but when I'm down this low it doesn't cross my mind to start even a quick session - probably because I haven't developed the necessary skills for it to be of true benefit yet.. That's on me. I should be practicing every day.
I should be doing lots of things every day. I tend to start a routine, only to have it fall away after a few weeks. This has been a pattern in my life. It has been suggested by a Physiologist that I have ADHD, though it hasn't been formally diagnosed. I don't know..
Getting sick really has drained my energy levels. It really does get harder to recover with age. It's been 2 weeks and the thing is still lingering, which is unusual for me...but this is to be expected with COVID I suppose. I need to try and be kind to myself, let myself heal, pick myself up and try this again. And again.
The funeral is tomorrow. It will be good to be with the family and say goodbye. Step 1 then.
Thanks again for your advice, and even listening, Appreciate it.
While I know getting formally diagnosed is its own huge can of worms, especially when you're dealing with so much, I do recommend following up on this when you have a bit more bandwidth to do so. It is not uncommon for adults with untreated ADHD to get treated for depression and struggle with it, because even if there is comorbid depression, treating it without addressing the ADHD symptoms can prevent a lot of the treatment from being effective. And while it's not necessarily their main purpose, I find that my mood is a lot better and more balanced on days when I take my ADHD medication. It doesn't "cure" my depression, but a lot of the steps that I need to take on my own to improve my depression symptoms were borderline impossible when my ADHD wasn't being treated.
Stimulant medication for ADHD also has the advantage of getting in and out of your system pretty quickly (even the longer-lasting "extended release" stuff) so if a particular med doesn't work or has unwanted side effects, you don't have to wait weeks to see if it'll go away or spend a week weaning off of it the way you do with an SSRI. It's out of your system well before bedtime if you take it in the morning.
Noted. Thanks. It has always been something in the back of mind to check out. I think I’ve been resisting due to the resulting medication if diagnosed, or the need to ask even more questions of doctors if not. I should probably just bite the bullet once I’ve fully recovered from the events of the last couple of weeks. Glad the meds have helped you.
Hey. Dementia is the worst. I'm sorry your grandmother had to go through it. I'm sorry you had to bear witness.
I'm a couple decades younger than you, and fortunate enough not to be in the immediate fallout of grief, but otherwise, what you say here is true for myself as well.
Beyond any other hopeful platitudes that I'd otherwise say (earnestly): you are grieving, and you are recovering from covid. It took months for my brain to recover fully. Regardless of any grander hopes, this is almost certainly a local minimum in the graph of your capacity to cope with respect to time. This is the hardest it will be for a while, in other words. Please hold on.
You are loved.
Hey, just wanted to say thanks for your kind and thoughtful words.
It’s going to be a day to day battle. I will need some time to regain my strength, though I wonder what for..
All the best to you.
Thank you for sharing your pain.
I'm so sorry to hear about your grandmother. I have lived in the past with crippling depression. I was fortunate that it eventually lifted but I hear you about how bad things suck.
A book about non medication interventions that have been shown to have some impact helping depression is Johan Hari's book Lost Connections. I don't know if anything in it can help but it might be worth exploring.
I am a lot less busy than I used to be, this month and possibly for the next several months. If you want to exchange private messages or you think phone conversations might be of interest, I'm happy to talk to you.
Thank you. It's good to hear that you have managed to pull yourself out of your depression. Good on you.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I'm tired, but still have some fight left in me. Just picked it up for the Kindle, so I'll check out what he has to say.
I'm happy to send and receive DM's if you aren't bothered by them. I don't really have a lot to say, but I am willing to have a chat if you're keen. Thanks again for reaching out.
I‘m just venting.
Today was really rough. Despite my outspoken views on the now infamous Oval Office Exchange I woke up feeling deeply ashamed of how a guest of my home country was treated and how it comes off to the world.
A colleague and I talked about it and he agreed with my assessment of the news then came by so we could grab a coffee together. He’s also American so of course we were speaking English and I confided in him that this is the first time in my life that I not only felt shame for my nationality but also that it’s the first time since living in Germany that I actively didn’t want anyone to know that I was American. We had a hard conversation about the uncertainty of it all and our place here in our host country, of course all of it done in hushed tones so as not to draw attention. The mood was pretty dour, I think I understand now how my Russian friends felt in the aftermath of the invasion.
I had to run some errands and it was all done in a daze, I came home and called two friends in the States and we had hours long conversations - that helped.
On a tangentially related note, i’m exasperated. Everywhere I go I’m expected to answer for my country, it’s been like this for years. Friends and strangers alike ask me all sorts of questions from poignant to completely asinine as if this were a mini UN and I were the American ambassador. I haven’t lived in the US for over a decade now, of course I’m a citizen but stop shitting on my country and asking me to answer for it - I am so disconnected from what’s going on there and the lives of everyday people, and that’s its own separate form of torture.
The other week a random store employee discovered I was American and asked me how I liked Germany, I quickly realized she was leading me into a conversation about how dangerous the US is compared to here. I was like, the US is a gigantic country you can’t just generalize like that. Is it objectively more dangerous on a one to one comparison? Yes. Does it also depend on where you’re talking about? Yes. Where I come from in the US it’s actually quite nice and not notably more dangerous than here. And wasn’t there literally another car attack in Munich just yesterday? Of course the second half of that was all taking place in my head, the truth is I just wanted to shop and not be the American target/ambassador yet again.
I told a couple close European friends once about how tough it is sometimes being singled out on by others, friends and total strangers alike, just because of my nationality and they made fake crying noises and laughed. These are not bad people at all but that’s just the level of bigotry I have to deal with on a regular basis. Boo hoo, you’re getting picked on for being American, get over it. Sure, others nationalities have it worse but I always keep in mind what a therapist once told me, no one has a monopoly on suffering.
And I’m trying not to be completely unfair, I understand that most people are just excited to talk about very consequential things with an actual live American but the baggage is just frustrating when you play such a small part in it and you’re just trying to live your life in a foreign land. I’m sure once the dust settles things will be fine again. I hope.
I didn't know they did small talk in other parts of Germany! Here in Berlin, at least, I don't think I've ever gotten that much engagement from a store clerk. Granted, Americans aren't in short supply here, and if the alternative is constantly having to answer the "how do you like Germany" question, perhaps the Berliner Schnauze's a blessing.
I'm lucky in that my German friends are all very kind and sympathetic and supportive, but I went to a "grief session" with a bunch of other Americans here in Berlin and it really did help to be able to express our fear and frustrations together with other people who get it. How accessible something like that is for you depends where you are, but I highly recommend it if it's possible for you. At the very least, if you're ever near Berlin, DM me.
Haha small talk is also very non-existent here! The store clerk was Iranian and found out I was American because she wasn’t comfortable in German and wanted to switch to English. It is always refreshing to meet other cultures who do appreciate a little small talk, even when the subject may be something I don’t want to talk about. Have to find the positives I guess :)
Edit: Just saw your edit. It’s not really so bad as I’ve portrayed it, I think the frustration has just reached a new high and it’s the first time I’ve ever voiced something like this. Even a good German friend mentioned something about how often I’m asked to answer for the US and stopped bringing up the subject, so at least I know I’m not crazy. My friends are good people, I think they just can’t take my frustrations seriously when they probably imagine I’m very privileged as an American and I can acknowledge that. And thanks for offer, it is nice to commiserate with people who understand where you’re coming from. I may take you up if I ever find myself near Berlin
Ahhh yeah that makes sense. When a store clerk even smiles at me I tend to immediately assume they aren't natively German 😅
February's been a mostly shit month for me. Valentines Day was the highlight where I went on a lovely date night with my (now) partner and finally lost my virginity at 33.
I found out two days before V-Day that I was being made redundant (basically my job doesn't justify a full time role and they want to absorb my duties into the greater team.) Since then it's been a rush to find a new job since this now risks jeopardising the apartment purchase I had in the pipeline.
The two busy days I did have went disastrously because of system fuck-ups. Like, I legitimately had to skip a friend's wedding reception because I knew I couldn't get the Monday off, and they thanked me with three days where I had to work substantial overtime to get Business Review presentations out. Oh well, won't be my problem soon. I've pretty much mentally tuned out.
Maybe it's the amount of time I've been out at the pub (mainly for karaoke eves) but I've felt really anxious and guilty for the past few weeks
Congratulations on the partner! Is this the same person you have talked about in previous posts some months ago?
Sucks about being let go. Sounds like a pretty terrible place to work anyways.. but I hope that having a partner can cushion the landing from this fall at least a little bit.
The one with ME/CFS? Not her.
I've been somewhat low-contact with her for the last few months to the point where she's been the one reaching out to me a lot out of concern that she hurt me badly (she did), and even though we have somewhat reconciled, she's been a lot more quiet since she found out I'm with someone now. Even if she wasn't perpetually exhausted and in a low mood, our lifestyle choices may have clashed.
Oh, I haven't even gone into what my experience was like before I got promoted into my current role.
I used to work as a Senior Purchase Ledger Clerk. At the time I started working for this company (not gonna directly name my employer nor the sector, but they're a big multinational), they had already started shackling new hires to lengthier notice periods as a staff retention strategy. My notice period once I passed probation was six weeks (some were 3 months), which is utterly absurd for the kind of work I was employed to do. Unsurprisingly, the notice period was one of many big sticking points that made new hires not last long.
Combine this with biblically high workloads, flawed accountancy software packages that weren't really fit for purpose, low pay, office in a shitty out-of-town location that's hell to drive to, and them hiring a new executive who had a raging boner for office working and RTO mandates, and it's easy to see why our department had a 95% employee turnover rate. Things got so bad that they ended up having to outsource nearly all their transactional finance roles to India and lay off hundreds of staff. They did this not necessarily as a cost-saving measure but because they had mismanaged their purchase ledger, credit control, takings and banking teams to the point where they were burning out of new people to hire.
I stayed, not because I liked it there, but because my notice period made it practically impossible to secure another purchase ledger job. I got to final stage interviews with multiple companies (including a supervisor job that paid substantially higher) only to be passed over for candidates at the last second purely on the basis that they could start sooner. Plus I didn't want to give my notice because they at least offered a retention bonus for people who stayed during the transition period.
I used to look after a subledger of specialist contractors who provided essential work to us. Some of them absolutely took the piss with their payment terms, and it was a mess of overdue invoices and late fees. Nothing is more soul-destroying than having a whiny entitled asshole who earns 5 times more than you hound you to the point of harassment because their invoice wasn't paid within a week.
One contractor even had the most egregious example of late fees I had ever seen, billing us on 5 day payment terms and charging 8% compound interest per day on any overdue balances. A roughly £2,000 invoice for a week of work had ballooned into over £50k of late fees because it took us nearly a month to approve and pay it, and last I heard, it got escalated straight to legal...
I formally raised burnout issues with my line manager a few months in. Their solution was to bring someone in with no accounts experience who would rather spend all day on their phone, make me train my job to them, and then move me to another team. And then they had the gall to start hiring for a team leader position after they made me mentor a new hire who frankly should never have been employed in the first place. My plan was to go for the TL role and quit if they didn't give it to me. I didn't get it, but they had offered me a different role which just about placated me enough to not immediately quit and go scorched earth on that place.
When I left Purchase Ledger entirely (internal promotion), going into Commercial Finance was like a culture shock. Unfortunately, the work has dried up and that's the reason I'm being laid off now.
As much as I'd love to spill the beans in an exit interview (which I likely won't get offered) or in a Glassdoor review, I cannot afford to burn bridges in a profession where reputation is paramount.
After nearly 2 years, I finally found a job! I am very thankful and know that this is a very good thing.
I've also gotten very far physically. From being bed ridden to now being able to go about as normal (with some painkillers).
But somehow I've just remained depressed. I still have debts and am so far from getting back to where I was before I got sick. This step forward is great and I appreciate it. But there's still so much more to go, and that's the sad and frustrating part.
I will focus on the present and I do make steps and plans for what to do next. But for now, I'm allowing myself to feel before I start being in "fixing my life" mode again.
Hey, I'm pretty much in the same position as you have been but half a year in the future, and:
That's pretty much what I'm doing right now, and it's nice. Especially in a world this unstable, sometimes you simply need to take things one day at a time. We aren't exactly build for planning years into the future, and regulating that takes effort. But worth it if you ask me :)
Thank you! I hope to be in the same position you are in in the future.
I don't want details but depending on how extreme the debt burden is, if you are in the US, bankruptcy can be an option. Only a specialized attorney can give an accurate assessment based on location and circumstances, but it might be worth exploring.
Thank you! But I don't live in the US. My debts are moderate? They're big but not bankruptcy big.
I'm involuntarily unemployed and it sucks hard. I'm doing what I can but I am an extreme introvert and we are building up to a likely recession. My good marriage helps, but financial stress adds stress.
Politics is of course another stressor. And Musk is busy making more people unemployed who would be direct competitors in my job market. And I feel for those competitors and want them to find places.
As a non-EU citizen, I was working in Estonia. The job was not bad but then I got offered an overseas sales position in Japan and moved here thinking my life would be better. Now I regret coming here so much due to working culture being so bad and seeing no future in Japan's economy...
I want to return back to Europe to my previous job but I ended up spending most of my savings for coming to Japan and I don't have enough money to restart a new life there in Europe. Everyday is like hell to me here in Japan for 4 months. I feel like I messed up with my career at the age of 29. I feel really stuck here.
Hello,
Long time lurker, new member[0] and this is my first post
I'm quite fine, stressed out as normal, with the all too familiar feeling of "that it is a bit too much, right now", but ofc it's never just right now, or rather this particular now has been stretching out for a few decades.
I'm dealing with my mothers death, in the literal way... Arranging a funeral, a memorial service and all the bureaucracy.
She was ready to go, had a great life. I was able to be with her in a way that lets me live the rest of my life being content with how she got to die (despite our severely lacking relationship). I did what I could to let her live her last months with dignity, and facing her death with dignity. It is not hard for me to let her go.
(I'm trying to write something about dignity and think about what it actually means and if it as useful concept for building society. We'll have to see if I manage.)
What is truly hard and difficult is realising how much of a lid she has been on my life. This, I will have to deal with in time, but now is not the time for that.
Now is the time to gather her people and make sure they get to give her a good send off .
Now is the time to gather my people and let them protect me from everyone that assumes how I feel about anything.
/fnulare
[0] I finally decided to ask for an invite to tildes after reading a beautiful post - https://tildes.net/~health.mental/1mhj/sleep_in_spite_of_the_ever_churning_mind_spiral - that was later removed by the author. I want to let that person know that post made me cry, ugly cry, out of connectedness, what the kids a decade ago called "being seen". It was like reading my own diary if I was a better writer. To whoever wrote it: know that I read it and felt really moved by it. You're not alone!
A few days ago I was reading some of my old diary entries and I saw one that said how I'd like to do some simple things. And how I will definitely change my name if I don't change my mind in a year. It has now been 4 years since I wrote that. I still didn't do the simple things, and I also still didn't change my name. It felt so, so, so, so, so, so bad to realize that. What am I even doing with my life? It's like I intentionally want to be miserable just because I think way too much about what others think.
But at the same time I am somewhat hopeful. I started going to therapy a few weeks ago, the therapist I have seems super good, I already feel like I made some small progress with anxiety.