Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (June 2025)

This past year has been a seemingly never ending stream of bad news and this month was no different. 3 weeks ago surgeon said that he cannot help me as any further surgeries would likely only cause further damage (this is about a surgery 2+ years ago that had and still has a lot of complications which are still tough to deal with - I cannot chew on a fully functional level for example). Being given this message elicited the same feelings as the one I received in January from the psych team that said they also cannot help me anymore. So now it's not just my mental health, but also physical health, that is incurable. I have relapsed after 7½ months, it feels like I may as well have been given a death sentence because I have barely been able to cope these past 3 weeks. Everything else is affected by it too, from family relationships to friendships to daily functioning. I can't be social without killing the vibe and bringing everyone around me down too, so I just isolate even more. With some friends I just pretend or mask, but with others I am just brutally honest because I desperately need someone to be there for me and support me, but I'm just pushing them away instead through this behavior because despite how close we were/are, it seems like it's not something they're capable of dealing with since they have their own problems to deal with. It's understandable of course but I am left to my own devices. I just don't know how I'm supposed to go on after being told twice - about the biggest problems I have - that I cannot be helped. I spiral further and further down and it seems like there is no end to this hole I'm in. I've never been worse in my entire life and there is just no hope for me as I see it, like, objectively, life is just fucking shit and I think most people would have a similar reaction as me, so at least I don't feel like I'm overreacting or whatever, like I usually feel. Nobody worry too much though. I will commit myself if I feel like I have to.

Edit: small update. Multiple people around me have been telling me in no uncertain terms to indeed seek help. It's a small-ish thing but I messaged my doctor. Got the ball rolling though.

I was listening to some music the other day and playing the opening theme from an anime. I like the song. Its upbeat and bouncy and I like how the instrumentals sound. But I also felt a sense of melancholy. After thinking it over I realized what it was.

When I was younger I would sometimes hear a song like that and think "I can't really relate to the emotion this song is trying to evoke, but some day when I have some friends or get a girlfriend or get out of high school or something, my life will be better and this is what I will feel like. Someday this is going to be the standard for how I feel."

Listening to a song like that today, it just struck me that it evoked a nostalgic feeling of when I thought that. I haven't thought like that in years. At some point I settled into a resigned state where my dreams are no longer "Someday I will be happy" and are instead "Someday my life will be somewhat less tedious and depressing".

I miss the time in my life when I still felt like the future was something to look forward to.

I was burnt out and overwhelmed for years trying to run a business my mom had abandoned. I did little but try to keep money coming in, at a cost to every other relationship I had, including with myself and my own needs. After a complete burnout and physical collapse 18 months ago, I'm starting to recover and be aware of myself and the world around me in a way I couldn't handle when I was so stressed.

And as I was mentally and emotionally paralyzed by the burden, the world kept moving. I'm waking up in my mid forties to a marriage that hasn't ended purely because it's cheaper to live together, a lack of friends, a body that's a little less spry than it was, and very little to show for it. Now I'm left trying to reconcile my dreams and desires for the future with how things actually are around me and trying to figure out which desires I can and want to fulfill if I put in the world and which ones are a lost cause.

My wife told me today that she's gotten used to me just being a human-shaped object in the house and has routed everything around me to keep things moving. I look around and absolutely see that, and I hate it. It's not how I want to be. I need to change, and am struggling to do so. I'm just starting to unstick myself, and it's scary.

The hate is getting to me

I'm still on Facebook because family and long distance friends, so I'm seeing my university and a number of other schools, sports teams, etc share their Happy Pride posts (not corporate pride this year so much.)

They're all full of the most hateful comments. Like I'm used to Facebook trolls, I'm 41, but fuck if it doesn't feel like everyone has nothing better to do with their time than bitch about a pride post - plus everyone is on a fucking "it's veterans month" kick which seems to have a been from a Trump Deepfake and not even a real thing? It's just five different angles parroted over and over, Veterans, Bible Verse, delusions, shoving down my throat, hetero pride month, over and over and over and fucking over.

And it's so exhausting. I have to live near some of these people, they aren't all bots or assholes in Florida who can't let go. Facebook literally recommended me a hate page to follow, bragging about stopping a drag storytime for toddlers. So the algorithm is just fucking broken and all they want is hate engagement. And it's not just there, it's everywhere, it's harassing trans girls while pretending to care about girls sports, and queer women being asaaulted and everything and it's overwhelming and it hurts and I'm so tired of all of it.

And then, on a more micro level, I had finally encouraged my partner to open up to the home health social worker, who promptly accused me of neglecting my partner's care, my partner of lying to protect me, told my partner to accept Jesus/higher power, told my partner I'd leave him eventually when I got burnout, and violated multiple ethical standards. They were pressing him to go to a nursing home. He's not going to, but now we're both in our heads about it.

So everyone hates me as part of a group, and personally thinks I'm failing and I know it isn't everyone but it's so so many people. Things were going better for me, I didn't expect Pride month to hurt so much this year.

I'm doing better than I thought I would be, but still anxious regarding what's to come.

In my immediate sphere of influence, I'm still looking for a more fulfilling job, haven't been accepted to any but that's nothing new.

Outside of that sphere, I'm taking a cautious approach to interacting with the circumstances of the greater geo/sociopolitical setting that I have no ability to control at this point but which still has great capability with which to control me.

So it goes.

It feels like I’ve spiralled beyond the point of no return.
Totally letting myself go now…haven’t exercised in months, eating garbage, and only go outside of necessary. No friends, and have been staying away from family.
Broke. Play games to pass the time. Not much else..
Constantly tired, and my head just feels different…puffy, floaty..most of the time. I don’t want to improve, I just want to go away.
Age has caught up with me, and I don’t care anymore.
I don’t know if I have the energy to do anything about this.

The NHS therapist I waited almost three months to talk to (fasttracked(!)) and the reason I couldn't be referred to the perinatal mental health team has decided that she probably can't help me. She's going to refer me to the perinatal mental health team.

I'm scared that now it's too late and I can't come back from this burnout.

Since positive stories are allowed, I'll share mine. (Context: I'm single and has been for years and I work ~40 hours a week, monday-friday)

I rekindled the relationships with my brother and sister at the beginning of the year and I couldn't be happier about it. It took some great deal of effort (mostly because they live 1hour+ away from me) and some restructuring of my time, but I'm glad I'm able to take the time to spend it with them.

I stopped one of my dnd group in early September and the other in January. At the same time, my closest friend kinda stopped talking with me and I went from seeing him almost every week to pretty much never. We had a talk where he was super critical of me and it made me realize how much pain I had caused him. I changed and we still talk and see each other, but the rift is still there. I realized how much time I devoted to spending with him, even if he has wife and a lot of work, I kinda forced myself to see him as often because I really like spending time with him (I still do!).

...still you can see reading that how toxic that could become. Having the "break" gave me time to reflect on how much I neglected myself and others around me just to spend time with him. I figured: why not spend the time where I want, instead of saving some time for him. Does he do that for me? Nope. So I thought about how I should spend my time elsewhere and realized I really wanted to see more of my family.

I have a sister who's 2 years older and a brother who's 2 years younger. They both smoke a lot of pot and it has been tough on me for years (10+) because I didn't smoke and I never got the sense that I could connect with them.

Now that we're all adults with careers and we all smoke, we had some very good conversations at the beginning of the year and I thought "hey, I guess I want to get to know them more, now that I can talk with them freely". Long story short, I see them every other weekend and we spend time doing stuff around my new (very old) sister's house. We do yardwork, painting, cleaning, cooking, talking. It's so much fun!

It's like... I'm beginning an actual friendship with my sister and my brother. I used to see them 1-2 times a year where we pretty much just did small talk. Now, I get to understand them, know their struggles, their successes, their failures, their projects, and I get to be a part of their life and they get to be a part of mine. It's weird saying that about your family, but it's really true. I was a stranger to them and they were strangers to me. When I listed the closest people in my life, they weren't even in the top 10. Now, I could never think about not including them.

I actually start to miss them now! I used to be like "alright... I guess I need to go see my family now" (like twice a year). Now I'm like "oh, I can't wait to see them again in two weeks!". It's wonderful. They are good people and it's so fun to see the little progress they do and how I can share mine too. :)

Anyways, all that to say that it did wonders to my mental health. Sharing past traumas with them definitely help me in a positive way.

"asking for a friend"

When is it (if ever) okay to file for disability status for mental functions?

The government of Canada's criteria is

But friend can't get over the stigma of "if you've got limbs you make your own living" and "people like you are exactly the abusers breaking the system making genuinely disabled people suffer, and going forward every time you hear about someone on disability not making ends meet, you must feel personally responsible for it". Friend 130% believes everyone else has the right to file and make no judgement on them receiving help even/especially if they don't "look" like they need it. In fact, friend firmly believes the representation is necessary, and that less limited persons are sometimes in a better position to fight for better resource allocation for everyone because their limitations still allow them to do more than others who have more limitations. But friend is having a hard time feeling like the same grace applies to themselves. Everyone rightfully deserves this but not them.

I guess the gist of my ask is, when it comes to mental health assistance, how does one combat the hurdle of I'm surviving fine I don't need help yet because I don't deserve it, or how to distinguish from that being actually real they don't deserve help they can manage fine on their own?

Anxiety has been really getting to me lately. Still no real outlook to live on my own, and I've been coming to terms that having a 'normal' social circle is just very difficult for me due to being overwhelmed easily with autism/ADHD. This has been coming pretty late in my life which is probably because I needed to process so many other trauma's first which is just... urgh.

Despite knowing it's not true as the world is not made for anyone, it sometimes feels like I'm just not made for this world. I suspect that has to do with struggling to find any relationship whatsoever though, as well as bad experiences in the past on that effect.

I'm on the rise, on some level I know that I will be alright this time too... It feels like I'm trying to locate my work gear before heading out to work.

It's very tempting to try and find the absolutely best gear and tools before heading out, and even if I know that's a common mistake (for me, I mean), I will remain in this state for a bit (at least until the next 10-day break from my income-bringing-work which starts in about a 10 days).

Stuff is happening that's new and old stuff emerges to keep it company, and then there is ongoing stuff to do outside myself...

A little list might help:

• I broke up with my soon-to-become-a-life-partner-woman (adult girlfriend). It is heartbreaking for me and it really reminds of everything I couldn't manage before in my life because I'm inadequate. She was heartbroken and I don't like to hurt people, especially people I care about, which I do... But it just wasn't possible for us to become life partners in any meaningful way for both of us.
• The bureaucracy after my mothers death remains to be done... I've done a lot and I don't have a clear view if what's left so it's really scary to deal with. I'm always terrified around bureaucracy and government agencies... It feels like if I do a mistake I'm fucked for life... I do know how to deal with it once I manage to take steps: my trick is to call (or write) and be nice, helpless and a little dumb - people will help!
• The practicality after my mothers death is not done either... Besides emptying and selling an apartment (yay, financial security for me and my child!) I still have to deal with some people around it, which I dread and the dread gets bigger and bigger for every day (like a balloon, that might pop at any moment! Not sure if the metaphor is that it gets done when it pops or something else happens, we'll see I guess)
• I'm trying, slowly, to exchange my rental apartment to two smaller ones (one for me + one for kid)... It is quite exhausting to deal with people and not knowing if it will be possible (as the landlords have to approve and they have become stricter lately) at all. Hopefully it works out and if not there are back-up plans.
• I'm not as worried that I will miss out on summer, I've fixed my new bike and yesterday I went to my favourite spot in the world with a friend to hang out during their lunch and take a little swim. It's magic! But it still doesn't feel certain, I think I have to go there a couple times alone and start cleaning it up a bit, that grounds me well in the place and the season.
• I have a few projects that I want to get started with, in my life and also here on tildes, but it's difficult to assess if doing so would bring joy and energy or be a way to avoid doing other "more important stuff!!":
  • I have a model of pants that I want to sew from freesewing
  • I want to figure out a distributed self-hosting system that I can force my friends and family to join so we can have a local streaming service, some e2e encrypted communications services, private distributed encrypted clouds and a few other tidbits like password manager and calendar/contacts stuff.
  • I want access to a portable sauna tent and the knowledge to use it in summer as well as winter. To be able to bring a sauna to any lake (frozen or not)
  • I'd like to get a few tildians to listen to a podcast together (like one episode a week) and discuss it. I have one in mind.
  • I have ~5 knitting projects I'd like to finish before fall so I'll feel great starting new ones when the dampness and darkness creeps up on me rather than having to finish the old ones.

I'm very sad... Every time I stand up I have tears welling up in my eyes... Its OK to be sad and I enjoy crying, but it still takes me by surprise. I think I'm griefing both "everything I couldn't manage" and "not really having a mother" (which I've felt for over 30 years but not really had access to until now when she is actually dead)

Anyway... Thanks for reading. It feels weird to vent and dump to strangers but it's also good, I think. <3

Not good.

Still unemployed and the job hunt is honestly pissing me off. I spent the better part of 7 weeks scheduling next stage interviews with a property management company that's not only paying less than my previous employer but is offering no leeway whatsoever with hybrid working and is expecting full office attendance. I have already done a first stage screening interview via phone and a second stage Teams interview where I've been grilled with competency based questions for an hour, and now I have a third stage in-person interview which will just be another hour with a different set of competency questions. And scheduling all this has been a nightmare when they've sometimes taken weeks to respond to my emails when I've tried to schedule the next stage interviews.

These are all the hoops I'm expected to jump through for a role paying between £25k - £29k (very unlikely I'll be paid in the top bracket), and this is likely my last chance to actually land a job before I ultimately have to withdraw my offer to lease an apartment...

I did interview for a Purchase Ledger Assistant role on Friday and I honestly felt like that interview went well, despite some gaps in my knowledge about the entire function (specifically supplier onboarding.) And they may offer me temp work if I'm not successful for the permanent role. But when talking to them, I kinda realised my old employer has set me up to fail elsewhere. They didn't train me on more aspects of the AP function when I did purchase ledger with them, and they certainly didn't train me beyond refreshing pivot tables and applying filters to Power BI apps as an end-user when I was an Assistant Commercial Reporting Analyst, and I can't go into another one of those roles because I don't know how to actually build reports and apps in Power BI (we had specialist teams for that.) Also, having been laid off from a Commercial Finance role, everyone is just going to look at my CV and question why the fuck I'm applying for positions I'm overqualified for.

Three years ago I was being constantly pigeonholed into Purchase Ledger roles, but now the job market is so shit that nobody wants to hire me.

I have an ACCA (Audit & Assurance) exam later today which I feel woefully underprepared for, and the last attempt I failed (got about 25%) to the point where I'm questioning whether to give up. My shitty job situation has honestly drained my motivation to study and it's just made me think why am I chasing accountancy when nobody wants to hire me?

My (now ex) partner broke up with me two weeks ago. It was an amicable break and we still talk each day as friends. She had an ex come back into her life, and I think we both realized our feelings for each other have changed.

The only thing going well for me right now is the karaoke. But I feel like I've been going out too much lately and I need a rest.

I've bounced back from my post in last month's thread, thanks again to everyone who replied to my post.

While I'm still not 100% again, I am feeling a lot better. Part of this is helped by the fact that I am currently the "developer on support" (DoS) for my team so my main focus is just to help anyone that comes to my team's Slack channel and asks for help. This relieved a lot of the pressure of needing to push out more and more code so that's nice. The other thing helping is that my manager is currently out of office and not breathing down my back. They will be back in a week or so and I'll finish my rotation of being the DoS so it'll be business as usual again so I'm not looking forward to that. On the side, I have been making some progress on polishing up my resume and I think I'm going to start applying to jobs this weekend. I am pretty picky about where I want to work but I'm hopeful that my resume is strong enough to allow me to be a bit picky. I also have some more time off planned with my family at the end of the month as we wrap up this performance review cycle and wait for July 4th so I'm looking forward to that to also help with getting myself back on track.

While I was busy spiraling out, I did also start dropping the ball on self care. I didn't do my laundry when I should've, stopped cooking, and just let garbage pile up instead of promptly taking it out. However, for the past week, I've slowly returned to normalcy. I did my laundry when I needed to, cooked a few times just to get back into the rhythm, and I'm starting to be more disciplined again about taking out the trash. It feels good to return to this rhythm of things.

I'm still very pessimistic about work and I do struggle to get out of bed in the morning to start working but I'm feeling better.

All things considered I'm doing well. And life has been improving albeit slowly. Very slowly. Burnout + cptsd + narcolepsy has been rough but since I've stopped working 6 months ago, I've been able to spend what little energy I have to exercise more, cook sometimes, and try to rediscover joy. I've also started to physically recover from what long term stress has done to my body. Years of phys therapy graduated to strength training 3x a week + cardio. Last week I was able to hike through moderately difficult terrain and that is such a milestone considering a year ago there were days I could barely walk. I still struggle with back pain though, and can only be at a computer for a few hours a day if I spread it out. The computer has always been a huge part of my life, so it's hard. I lay on the couch instead, which can also hurt my back. Stupid back.. I mean.. my wonderful back is doing its best 💖 (my therapist has drilled into me to appreciate and love myself especially when it hurts). Grumble. Self hug.

My burnout + exhaustion has led to me isolate over the years. Since I've recovered some, I've felt ready to slowly start rejoining the world of ppl. I've started using Bumble BFF to hopefully find friends. I've made one friend so far. Just trying ease back into it.

My body is still in survival mode but it relaxes at times. I know this because my stomach is starting to hurt less. My hair has almost finished growing back in. It used to be long but I cut it so the lengths are a little more even. Sometimes I sleep ok (with help of meds, but even meds wasn't enough in the past). I've regained all the weight I mysteriously lost. Actually I weigh a little more - I even got some muscle now.

Things are still hard sometimes, but progress is progress. Slow change is stable change. "Positive direction is perfection" is what a psychologist once told me. I'm grateful for having access to many years of therapy.

Badly.

I've been hurting a lot since my autism diagnosis a few months ago. I suspect people are tired of hearing me say it.

This will sound a bit unhinged but so much of the hurt is ... I guess it's trauma. It's all of these hurts that somehow I masked from myself. I struggle to find a metaphor that most will get. I had no way of knowing that I was sowing the wind yet here I am now, reaping the whirlwind. CPTSD, evidently, is easier to come by when you're wired to be more sensitive than the general population.

I'm so burnt out on failing at human connection, over and over. I'm experiencing this in my marriage now. My wife gets upset in a new that neurotypicals (she's ADHD) probably do but, for me, and I'm not exaggerating, it's traumatizing. We switched from a brilliant couples counselor who knows nothing about autism to a new one who is extremely versed in autism but she's still new to us. Yet, here I am, so fucking tired of failing at connection that, in this moment, it'd be so easy to just give up on trying --even with my marriage.

I'm just tired of trying to connect with people and getting hurt again and again and again. I don't see how it gets better any time soon without just giving up.

I see my therapist tomorrow morning, who is AuDHD herself. Maybe she'll have some wisdom for me. Here's to hoping... ?

It’s been a little difficult. My job has changed from vehicle testing to a lot of highway driving. I’m honestly not a fan of driving and put up with it if I’m going somewhere or running an errand, so it’s starting to bristle a little to be out a couple hours at a time, maybe more. I have a relatively easy job all things considered, as I can take notes on whatever pops up on the drive for someone else, and more often than not I find someone willing to drive, but there’s always the chance that I have to do it, if I’m not I have nothing to do but run all the stuff that could happen to someone on the highway, and the element of if they rather not drive either, I’m not that big a fan of putting someone on the spot just because I’m nervous about driving cars that I don’t own.

I also have a doctor physical this week and I’m probably going to get chewed out for not putting enough effort into weight loss or mental health. I’m not interested in paying for wegovy out of pocket and see driving job and stress levels for how I’m doing right now on diet and exercise, and also the mental health clinic he referred me to won’t take work insurance, so that’s fun.

Been a bit down, I’m doing pay by the month classes at Study.com, because I had a promo offer on the first couple months, but I kinda got in a bit of a rut on working on it because of see above. I appreciate that I could in theory pivot at any point and I wouldn’t have wasted as much money as doing courses in an actual classroom, but it still feels like I’m throwing money away just to have the option of a class that I’m not taking.

So that’s the immediate stuff, putting effort into finding a new job, as I don’t want to quit without another source of income (yet), back on my putting off classes bullshit, and on the recovery and downbeat of an anxiety episode. We’ll see how this next week goes.

I've got general anxiety. I have my good days and my bad days. My cure so far is just watching films & TV shows on Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Apple TV.

Thanks to counselling, I'm realising that I put a lot of myself in my work, and I don't really leave a lot outside that. I seem to have trouble maintaining friendships and I have absolutely no relationships after a failed earlier stint at online dating (I absolutely hate modern online dating). I think I need other avenues.

I think the other big issue is that I don't go outside all that often. I often feel like I'm trapped in a daily cycle of repetition.

Well, my ADHD medication (probable) double dosis two days ago has not been nice. For whatever reason, after the dopamine crashed my brain decided to bring back some of the worst memories of my life. Now, thankfully, I've processed them with EMDR before and I know it'll go away. I can feel that they won't hang around and will leave - it's not like the past that I'm still traumatized by them and kind of hijack my brain. But it still brings back some pretty intense emotions and I don't really have someone like a partner, friend or pet near me at this point in time where I can like, have the hugs and snuggles I need at times.

It'll go away, but in the mean time, I'll have a few episodes of hell every now and then.