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Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (October 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.
Trying to hang in there. One a day at a time.
The only thing that seems consistent to my life is struggling. Always have and always will: sleep disorder, mood disorders, anxiety disorder, self harming, dysphoria, physical ailments, financial problems.. just highly depressed and I'm at a point that the term existential crisis applies and has for months probably. I see no way that my life could ever improve and as much as I want to say that that's the depression and all the dark thoughts talking, it's becoming very difficult to convince myself that it is.
I've been in this survival mode all year long. I never have anything to really look forward to and I'm not capable of creating things for myself to do. I spend all my time on my pc mindlessly scrolling social media to make time pass. Watching large amounts of movies or tv shows, sometimes gaming but it's difficult to engage with others and put on that mask, I mean I can enjoy all these things but ultimately as soon as credits roll, it's a sinking feeling that now I'm back to reality. But that's the best I can do - try to distract myself from real life and stay alive as long as I can.
smoontjes, I hope the last couple months of your year are a turning turn. You do sound quite burned out, so at least I am hoping to send vibes of peaceful rest your way, that you'll wake up more refreshed. Even if nothing else changes yet, having good sleep might give you the strength to keep going until they do.
As always, you are too kind. Thank you <3
Not great. Wtf USA. I hate it here. I feel very depressed and hopeless. I didn't realize how bad the anti-intellectualism was in this country. I feel stuck and trapped.
I know I read a post today about how we’re already living under a dictatorship and a lot of us middle class folks wont ever experience the effects that the less privileged people do.
Russia still has grocery stores. People still have jobs. They travel, they talk politics, they “vote” in elections. They even have a space program.
Kinda made me wonder when exactly we stopped being free, cause it kinda feels like its been a while, longer than Trumps been in office.
eggpl4nt, I saw your comment last night but I didn't know how to respond, because as a Canadian we're very highly steeped in your politics. I thought about it some more, and I hope you take some solace in this: don't give them the benefit of despair -- live long enough to outlive the regime. They've taken a lot yes, but don't let them take you away from us either, neighbour. As for the masses, people side with power; when the power collapses they'll quiet down again.
I've long worried about the possibility of the capture of our democracy by the uneducated, uninformed, ignorant masses—the idiots—in this country. And it seems to have happened.
Gaining power is one thing. Keeping it is another. If they overshoot their mandate, things could turn around very quickly.
Anecdotal but today I had a conversation with a relative about a conservative friend who is a military veteran. The recent speech to the generals really annoyed that friend.
Honestly, not doing great.
It's gotten to a point where I am embarrassed to tell people I have ADHD due to the stigma attached to it because of all the online romanticization.
In reality, it is such a crippling disorder, at least if you have it as severely as I do. I completely wasted all of my 20s not even knowing I had it. No education, no job, no nothing. I can barely function on a day to day basis, I'm starting new medication tomorrow and I am hoping that it can make me function like a normal person for at least half the day to try and make something of this time I got left.
The worst part is, this is just one of the many health related issues I have, and most people just don't understand it.
This is the first time I've vented in quite a while, I pretty much bottle it all up and, I don't know, try to get on with my day.
Thanks for listening to my TEDx Talk.
I hope this new medication works for you, friend. It's rough out there.
I think that life used to ask much less of individuals, so that many of us get by well enough. Forgot milk on counter again? That's okay, wages are higher, housing costs low, and groceries cheap and obtainable by a short walk. Take a bit longer to focus at work? That's okay the company is satisfied with low rate of growth, only want to stay within the community, and anyway other places are always hiring, or else a different job or waiting tables still pays living wage. Fidget or space out a lot? Eh, everyone smokes, and people like to stay home and read, nothing wrong with that at all.
We're all squeezed too hard and strung too tightly these days.
Thank you.
It is indeed borderline impossible to live these days with how much society asks of a person. I assume you're in the US so I can't comment on what life is like there, but where I am in Europe it's a disaster, it isn't as rosy as the internet makes it out to be on this side of the Atlantic.
I appreciate your kind words!
Canadian :') we're the ones living above the lab and lately there's been more thugs shouting at us and more mysterious banging at night....
I too am suffering from undiagnosed ADHD. It feels so cringe, you’re not alone. Every single bad thing that has ever happened in my life can be traced to it as a very likely cause.
The last time I talked to a psychiatrist they would not prescribe me medication and I’m scared to try again. Just thinking about how much more I could have accomplished in life with proper treatment from a young age makes me depressed in ways I have never felt before. As I get farther into my 30s the trench of hopelessness I feel in regards to the possibility of turning my life and career around gets deeper and deeper.
I hope medication helps you, from what I’ve read it’s very responsive to medication.
A good while ago, I read an article by a psychiatrist where they discussed their thoughts on how to determine when to prescribe stimulants. They came to the following conclusions:
By their estimates, 1 out of 4 psychiatrists (or other prescribers) will give stimulants to someone who provides the right ADHD "keywords" without batting an eye.
While they could attempt to screen more rigorously for ADHD criteria, that comes with the risk of someone with ADHD not getting the help they need. So they started to view their job a bit differently, and land somewhere in the middle.
I would recommend seeing another psychiatrist or prescriber.
Hey bud
I'm sorry to hear that, I feel you. Literally the same here, my whole life is fucked up because of it and in some shape or another can be traced back to ADHD itself. Of course, as a kid and where I come from, ADHD was non-existant and I was just "a lazy kid".
I second ShroudedScribe and you should seek a new psychiatrist, it took me roughly 4 years to get diagnosis and the first one didn't give a rat's ass to listen to me.
I've read that as well, medication can help a lot of people, this is the second one I will try, the first one made me a hell of a lot worse, my emotional dysregulation was out of control on the first medication I tried, literally came close to physical harm cause of it, it was scary.
Just got to stick it out and hope one of the many meds available will help.
Thank you for your words.
Same here, also wasted me 20s. I even had a suspicion that I had it, but I had a therapist and psychiatrist who didn't take it seriously, so I didn't want to spend the money I didn't have, until I coincidentally found a psychiatrist who is very competent and understanding.
My education is fine, even though it took very long which makes finding a job difficult and I'm starting to feel ashamed. There are fortunately people who get it and know about my ADHD, but I don't feel safe around others. And even if I get a job, I don't know if I can handle it.
You're not alone. We'll figure it out. I hope your medication will work well!
Love, love, LOVE!!! The x near the end, chefs kiss!
At least you can boast having the superpower: attention to detail!
No other support to give atm, sorry :)
Hahah glad to hear that, and no worries, your message was support enough <3
Yesterday, I resigned from my job, and next week I start a new job that is remote and a significant pay bump. I had a lot of identity invested in the previous job and I enjoyed working with the people at the previous position, but the job morphed into a lot more on the job highway travel that I wasn't comfortable with, and I didn't want to stick it out on the off chance that things go back to the way they were when a new opportunity dropped into my lap. I'm not sure how this new position is going to turn out, but I know I made the right decision for me.
I'm happy for you, and I hope this new job works out better for you.
I don't think I have commented before about your struggles at work because I didn't really know how.
Anyhow: cheers on your new job!
That's fantastic to hear, I bet you're jumping over the moon at this opportunity ;-) no commute best commute
I'm so nervous about finishing up an official diagnosis with the psychologist this week, I may or may not have booked a short flight trip to literally get away from thinking too hard about it. I won't speculate here just yet before the results are in, but man, some of those (many) questions are bringing up many side thoughts of "oh no this probably isn't normal...."
The 2 "agree/disagree" questions that hit me the hardest were:
My immediate reaction was "of course not". But if I consider my circumstances as someone else I know, I would not hesitate to say this person is dealing with a lot and is having a hard time
This was after a bunch of questions about having negative flashbacks, uncontrollable emotional responses, involuntary memories, and panic episodes etc, to which I reported none whatsoever. Then questions about if I have trouble recalling certain parts of my life (yes). Then mysteries aches and pains (yes). I explained that I don't experience memories aurally, visually or tactily, I recall facts then reconstruct memories with them. I always thought this was a "fun" quirk, but seeing it bundled with the neighbouring questions is making me question if this is [ guessing redacted] sign of something more troubling.
I had already been diagnosed with ADHD years ago. Want to place fun bets on what else is going on with chocobean?
Whatever the result, the fact that you're committed enough to therapy to await and roll with the diagnosis is pretty impressive. In fact, what's most impressive here is that you took time to respond to everybody else in the thread. That's an impressive amount of compassion and concern for others.
No matter what diagnosis the therapist throws at you following that sweet impromptu vacation (did I read that right?), I'm inclined to believe that your sense for resilience and perseverance will see you through it gracefully.
Godspeed
Thank you :) I'm fairly optimistic that at least I'm learning more about myself
I'm of the opinion that learning more about ourselves is the best thing we could do for future us. The greasier and more gnarly the learnings, the more that future us will benefit.
But that's just my twisted view 😜
Not in the context of questions. But after gaining radical self-love last summer I've had a whole lot of horrid realizations myself. So yeah, I feel you there. It's really hard to learn that you've been struggling for far more for far longer than you thought.
No matter what the outcome, I wish you best of luck with processing that. Just the emotional blow of recognizing you have more problems than you thought you had is something to process at times.
Thank you, that's most kind :)
Overall it's been a really mixed month of ups and (mostly) downs.
I finally have a temporary purchase ledger job after six months of unemployment which I started on Monday, and which should tide me over until the end of the month, unless this place decides there is money in the budget to hire me permanently, and even then I'm not sure yet if I would take that.
The downside is that I work longer hours (8pm - 5pm), am dealing with the horrors of working with Oracle Fusion, and have to commute to another office 50 miles away from home on office days, which is an almost two-hour journey each way regardless of if I take the bus/train or drive there, and that is a pain point for me. I also unfortunately had to call in sick this morning because the stress of this commute (which I would have done for three days straight due to my training), my dad being a selfish arsehole and keeping me awake by watching TV very loudly in his room, and a really nasty sunburn on my neck had been leaving me sleep-deprived and genuinely unable to function. I also nearly crashed my car on the motorway yesterday morning when I almost missed a turning and that has spooked me.
My social life hasn't exactly been great either and it feels like I'm either being dragged into unnecessary drama or being forced to choose between people. I won't elaborate too much on this...
Last Tuesday I was kicked out, possibly even banned from my local pub by the landlord's daughter when I went there for a few drinks. For context, they have a large dog who is technically registered as an American bulldog, but may come under the UK's XL Bully ban due to how it's defined. That may also be a lie and that he may actually be an XL Bully due to the argument that later ensued. I showed my ex-girlfriend (she wasn't physically present, and I'm on great terms with her) a picture of him that the pub posted on their Facebook page a few weeks back and she mentioned that his nails seemed ridiculously long and urged me to raise it with his owners, because long nails can be really uncomfortable for a dog. I did exactly that, not to criticize them but to just point that out. She did not take things well, pretty much vowing she'd kick the shit out of my girlfriend if she ever saw her, and then telling me to "get the fuck out."
Even if I'm not barred. I'm very apprehensive about going back there for karaoke or open mic. Her response was way out of line and as far as I'm concerned I'm not coming back unless somebody apologizes, and that person isn't going to be me. Some of my karaoke friends are blaming my ex for this and telling me I should cut all contact with her, but in my eyes she did absolutely nothing wrong. Some of my other friends agree that the dog's nails are too long and really need clipping.
It's a shame because I met that dog and I really like him. Staffies and American bulldogs are like huge muscly and highly affectionate babies in terms of their temperament around people and this one is no exception.
Maybe this is a very delusional way of looking at things, but I've gone back into studying Neville Goddard and the Law of Assumption again (been reading through At Your Command and watching a lot of Be Something Wonderful videos.) A large part of me does genuinely believe in the Law and that I have manifested certain events into my life over the years, i.e. COVID, being gifted a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita, meeting people who also believe in the Law, the purchase of my flat falling through (and by extension my job loss), improving my singing voice, even a lady who I was attracted to snogging me six weeks ago. But it isn't something I have figured out how to control. If I could do that and live in the end with the life I want, I would be well and truly happy.
That's a long commute and an even longer day total; safe roads
It sure is. But the job market is so bad that even someone who has full AAT membership and is ACCA part-qualified like me is desperate enough to take crap like this.
I took up running again to alleviate my stress / anxiety and I think it's working! It's not perfect but I'm happy to say I've kept with it (+at home pilates/yoga every other day) for about 3 months now.
Unfortunately a big stressor in my life right now is work, but I'm getting good advice from the people around me and I'm thinking it's good practice of swallowing my pride sort of thing.
:) glad to hear you're doing well and working out, and sounds like you're on top of the work thing. And thanks for the mental imagery of a cute tanuki running, doing Pilates and Yoga.
As a “Go Me!” present for getting back into running, I got myself a Tannuki brand running shirt, so I literally am a cute tanuki running. :D
It's crazy cute and I've not heard of the brand before. It sounds like they're a a Japanese Patagonia with a cuter mascot
I’ve been dealing with medical issues for about a month now and I’ve been miserable. In early September I went to urgent care with a suspected infection. They didn’t find anything and referred me to the hospital so they could make sure I wasn’t having a major health issue. I seemed to check out, but then had several health episodes that sent me back to the hospital two more times (and again, all my vitals were fine). Within the last week, my symptoms have lessened, but I’ve had pretty constant lightheadedness for 3 weeks now and my quality of life is poor, I haven’t been able to do much more than get groceries or take a walk down the block and back. I was getting multiple migraines (different from my usual ones), heart palpitations, and random pains kind of everywhere (though none are long lasting).
I’ve seen my Dr multiple times in addition to the hospital trips and we’re still not sure what it is. I’ve had a brain MRI, Lyme disease antibody tests (my symptoms line up with it partially, but I was negative), I’m currently wearing a heart monitor for another week, and I’m getting a heart ultrasound. We don’t think it’s heart issues, but we’re kind of trying to test a bunch of stuff as I’m still sick a month later.
It’s possible I have a disease rather than a condition, but I haven’t had a fever, been stuffed up, or anything like that all month and all my blood work has thus far checked out (I had even more blood tests done this morning I’m still waiting for results on). We are doing some testing for auto-immune stuff, iron levels, and electrolytes to see if it’s that. I did also lose 15lbs in the first 3 weeks of whatever this is, but have held my weight since then. We also did a thyroid cascade and nothing funny was found.
I’ve been trying to educate myself on a bunch of different health issues so that I can accurately describe to my doctors what I’m feeling. I’m trying to not self diagnose and as far as I know, there wasn’t anything specific that prompted all of this. The only thing close is that I bonked my head on the fridge door a week before this started, I was wondering if I had post concussion syndrome, though my doctor was doubtful as I haven’t had cognitive issues and while that bonk hurt, I was seemingly fine after a few minutes. As far as I was reading, there isn’t really treatment for that anyways if that is what happened.
At this point I just want to go back to normal. We’re trying various medications to see what helps with symptoms (trying duloxetine next as I do have at least some level of anxiety which could be making this worse).
Normal is nice indeed, I hope we make it back there soon
I was pretty good and pretty stable for the past few months to the point of boredom and seeking to do fun things.
I met a person recently and went on a date.
I have issues with romantic relationships because I can't get far enough before my brain and body reacts badly. So I've never been in a proper relationship.
I'm a lot better now, but I constantly have this feeling of fear deep in my chest and it's getting worse as the the days go on. I don't know how to handle it.
I've got headaches now. I tried meditating for an hour and it helped a little bit.
I don't know what to do.
Hey, I don't know if I can offer much actionable advice, but I can say that you're not the only one. I similarly got into a very stable period of life and started to go out and meet people, only to find that when it comes to anything romantic my brain and body don't really know what to do or how to feel, which causes a fear response.
I'm still working it out but what's been helping me has been to do my best to try and pick apart why and what I'm scared of. Do I worry that people won't like me? Do I not want to "lead someone on" only to disappoint them when I don't develop feelings? Etc.
Most importantly, hang in there and be kind to yourself! This kind of stuff is hard but it's worth the effort and the pain to get through.
Hey! Thank you for the reply. It does feel better knowing someone else has a similar problem.
I've been doing IFS in therapy. So when I meditated, I tried to observe the feeling in my body and figure out what I might get from it. But it just kept running to different parts of my body. So I don't know what the fear is yet! But I'm trying to listen.
You hang in there too! Thank you for being kind to me and I hope you're as kind to yourself.
Have you ever managed to get past it to get into a relationship?
In today's episode of 'RaspCoffee is learning how to deal with radical self-love' we present to you: regulating positive emotions.
What? Positive emotions? Really? But they're good right? Well, as it turns out. Not necessarily. For one thing, my brain really isn't used to so many of them which is tiring to learn. But also, I noticed that unregulated it can lead to judgement, arrogance, and a few other things that, while it's not really happening as of yet because I catch it in advance, it's tiring to learn in your early 30s. Some of them are, I think, things people learn to regulate as a kid or teenager.
Paired with the occasional mourning of my previous 'life'(which happens much less now but still does from time to time), this has also caused a few emotional waves. Not quite like mood swings, but still, I'm less stable again. Oh, and I failed my drivers exam yesterday. Blergh.
Then there is one more thing. sigh I'm pretty sure I'm developing a crush on someone when I'm not sure yet whether it'd be even a good idea if we'd ever become a couple. I also recently learned that my last date(it didn't become a relationship but pretty close) affected me more negatively than I thought it did.
Fortunately I have a therapy session next week. While I was hoping for some EMDR I think I have enough on my plate for some other things because, man.
I'm one of the "lucky" US government employees to get furloughed. In some sense, that's actually not bad. I don't have to work without pay, like many of my other coworkers. Plus, it's basically free vacation time since I'll get guaranteed back-pay once the shutdown is over, yet I don't "owe" any vacation time.
But that doesn't mean that the lack of paychecks isn't near the top of my mind. I do actually have one more paycheck that should arrive Friday. But it's just a partial paycheck, accounting for approximately 70% of what I'd normally receive biweekly. But after that? Who knows when I'll receive another.
I doubt this will last two months or longer. And I can last two, maybe three months based on current savings, if it came to that. Beyond that, I still have options, but it does get very worrisome.
Right now, it's just a light worry. But I've been fortunate to not have had to worry about money in quite awhile. Like 10+ years probably. Even though I've been jobless for about two or three months during that time, I've always something already lined up. I knew when a check would arrive. Technically, a check will arrive this time too, since I do have a job. It's just that I don't know when this time. Maybe this shutdown goes on for a week. Maybe it goes on for a month. Maybe longer.
It's the uncertainty that's annoying here.
Though politically, I'm not exactly mad that this is happening.