16
votes
Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (August 2026)
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.
I am facing redundancy at the age of 63 and I am not sure that I will get another job in my field(computing).
However, I am being hopeful, and I have a plan. It will be hard for me and the Missus but we will make it.
I have had depression in the past, so I have to watch myself but I am not seeing any negativity in my head and the blackness isn't there.
So in the end to answer the question I am feeling upbeat and hopeful and I have a positive attitude.
Want to share the plan?
I'm a developer and have been worried about what happens after 50. Where I've worked before, most people were 40 and below so I've been wondering what my future as a dev will be like after 50. In my current workplace there are older devs. I've even seen some retire at 65 so that's at least a good sign it does exist. Still, I worry about my future and if I will need to transition to another line of work at some point.
I have been slowly getting back into old habits after the forced 80 day isolation i had because of being lucky enough to be in Iran, one of the most fun things i've been trying to get back to is online gaming and interacting more with online friends,
Since it's summer and i don't have a job yet i thought this might be a good time to be with streamers and American groups some more, i can afford to break my sleep schedule and for some reason Americans are so much easier to find.
I've been having fun, i've tried to bring fun and whimsy whenever i do join in and i feel i've been successful.
But i have had moments where i get punched in the gut, nights where no matter what VPN with whatever ISP i try it's unstable and i disconnect at max 5 minutes, or a night where my entire city's power went out for 30 minutes and i thought that the USA has finally attacked the powerplants. Moments like that demolish my joy and happiness and i lapse into the same horrible feeling i used to have in the middle of the 80 day forced isolation.
I also know my sense of scale for things is broken, like why does something so small like a VR social gathering mean so much to me? but i fear that if i put less weight on them, less hope on them, the amount of joy will decrease with it.
So, so anxious and sad. I gave notice at work this week after being there for 14 years. I absolutely love my team and my manager, and I like what we do. How many people can say that? I consider myself extremely lucky in that respect. But I know the long term goals for our department and, along with automation, there will be major job cuts in the next 5 years for us. I'm going to miss my team so, so much. They are genuinely wonderful people and I hope we can stay in touch.
So I'm going back to school to change my career: UBCO for my BSN. It's intimidating, but after the years of therapy and getting my medication sorted out, I feel ready for it. I just hope I can get transfer credit for the classes I've taken over the past 1.5 years, and maybe even my previous degree. My study permit was approved super quickly, and due to the program I'm going to, my spouse also qualifies for a work permit. I've lived and worked in another country before, but not like this. It's been a dream of mine to move out of the US since high school, and I'm so grateful to finally be making that happen. My spouse is very excited (and anxious) for it too.
Here's a recap of the last update if you didn't read any of my other posts:
The Bad
I'm still recovering from my previous relationship, I'm aware I'm not over my ex yet. The emotions there and the residual feelings are extremely weird. I mean the relationship was extremely weird and I've thought about it enough that I'm getting sick of it. This week I've felt better and found that she (and the relationship) have sprung to my mind less often, but it's still there and I suspect it will be a while before I get to enjoy that blissful moment where I realise "Oh I haven't thought about my ex in ages!".
My life is still not settled yet and it bothers me sometimes. I get that it's early, but I'm still trying to find a routine that suites me and I'm keeping myself busy. Sometimes I feel rushed/out of energy and I end up frustrated at myself for pushing myself so hard. I've not yet achieved the balance and I know it will come.
Last month I contacted 2 therapists during the holiday period and I'm waiting for them to come back. I think it should be this week or next week. I really want to start talking to someone professionally and it feels like it's been years with the density of the last 2 months.
Work has been terrible, I honestly don't want to talk about it because it's depressing. But it's turning into a lot of work for not much reward. There is some light on the horizon next year, but it's looking to be at least 4 months of misery before then.
The Good
The best thing about all of this is finding a good social circle. It feels like it's genuinely putting me back together. Out of pure luck I stumbled into a reasonably large group of people who, by extension, have their own friends. Obviously I don't get on with every single person there, but the vast majority are really nice and I feel like I fit in too! I genuinely don't think I've had such a strong social circle ever which is crazy to think I just landed here and these were the first people I met. It's a nice, reasonably diverse group too which I love. I've now got 4 people's direct phone numbers and I feel totally good arranging things with them. Plus I've been invited to stuff too! I got invited to a Birthday party last Friday and it was a really fun evening.
Medication for ADHD has been honestly life changing, I said I would write about it in full at some point and I will. The short version is that day to day I now have the motivation to actually start and complete all the things I've always wanted to do. My social anxiety has also gone from baseline 8/10 to 2/10, which is completely incredible. The sequence of: "I would like to see my friend and chat over a beer", pick up the phone, arrange it, then go. Has gone from getting stuck at step 2, because of anxiety, I forget or get distracted to just doing it every time and it's wonderful.
While there is a lot going on in my life, and there's a lot of messy emotions, it's triggered a real sense of change. I've realised I don't know myself well enough. My sense of "self" is quite muddy. So I've given myself a short list of tasks/questions to answer as a goal. I feel good about it! It's something that I know I've been missing for a long time but I was never sure how to answer. Now I've sat down and I've given myself some direction (and I want to talk to a professional about it too) I expect to start being able to answer those questions in the coming weeks/months.
The Confusing
Knowing myself better and what I need/want is really important. And not knowing these things has caused me so many problems in my life.
I tried having a one night stand (for the first time!) 2 weeks ago and it was... fine! I'm really glad I went but I had a lot of thought and feelings to shift through afterwards. It's left me thinking about my emotional needs, my physical needs... I helped answer some questions then raised a few more lol. I've taken myself off the market for now though. I need a clear head before I start having any kind of interaction with anyone like that TBH.
Another new thing that's on my mind which is quite difficult is trying to imagine myself from another person's point of view. My look, style, vibes, energy, way I talk. When someone meets me, what is their first impression? I want to understand that aspect better. It's easy to change look and style if what I'm doing now is giving off the wrong message. I don't plan to change or mask "myself" but if I do identify problematic things, then I can think about if I do want to do something about it or not.
One thing I've already identified is when I am stressed or nervous (like a date!) I become EXTREMELY intense. Becoming aware of this makes it so clear why I can get a first date, then not a second date. So part of my checklist is to chill the fuck out! More exposure, less pressure on social interactions like dates and interviews and more focus on the fun. All good shit.
Working on myself has made me really consider my passions. I'm not passionate about anything really and it sucks. I'm searching for that. Likewise I'm also being much more open minded and re-testing sexuality. I've done it before, though the landscape of sexuality is different again in 2026. I have found that I like putting a label on people as much any more and the idea of considering each individual on a case by case basis feels quite liberating.
Conclusion
There is a lot going on right now. I have a long way to go! But right now things are mostly good, I'm pretty happy! My life goal is still to find a long term partner and I can see myself in the medium/long term finding a really great/compatible partner. At least sitting writing this just now, I feel like I have the patience to wait for the right person. Something I have not had before, I was deathly frightened about dying alone!
Instead, I'm going to have a really cool life and I'm going to work to be happy alone. Like genuinely. THEN I can open the door to let another person into my life long term.
Slowly self destructing with my head comfortably in the sand.
I've got a bit of a vent, as I've chatted about this with some friends but want to get it all out in one spot and figured maybe someone one here may have dealt with similar people before.
Edit: TLDR: dealt with some crappy tenants over the weekend who we found out trashed our house when we wouldn't agree to give them their security deposit back.
My wife and I decided to rent out our house as we needed to move states for her new job, and due to capital gains laws here if we sold our house we would be hit with some massive penalties. My wife did some advertising and found a family from Canada who had been living in SE Asia and were considering Malaysia as a potential long term residence location. They originally wanted a 6-month lease, but we explained to them that they weren't comfortable with that short of a lease, and so we all agreed on a 1-year lease with standard (for this country) terms. We did our best to be accommodating landlords and addressing anything that they encountered while getting settled in.
A few weeks ago they mentioned that they had their visa applications denied (not uncommon here, it can take a few appeals and the country isn't actually that strict on tourism visas as I know a few people who lived here on a tourism visa for years whenever they were in between work sponsorships or working for foreign companies), and they had something come up that would cause them to return to Canada so they would need to break their lease. They asked us if we would be willing to give them any of their security deposit back. After discussing it, my wife and I agreed that we would like to help them out as we would want our landlord to be understanding as well if something like this happened to us, but we'd have to see what we could do and let them know as much.
After a bit I checked in with them to see when they were leaving the country as we needed to coordinate going back to do a walk through. They said they wanted to know in writing how much we would give them back, so there wouldn't be any confusion. I explained to them that we couldn't give a number without seeing the property, and in the lease they signed it showed that they would forfeit their security deposit and pay a number of months of rent to allow us to find new tenants (leases here can be strict). We wouldn't try to pursue the remaining rent payments, and would be happy to work with them on giving some money back, but we couldn't commit to anything in advance.
We got a hand off date from them, and when we had to follow up about some specifics they mentioned they took a holiday to a popular destination in the country that is also incredibly expensive and would be back to do the walk through. On the day of we showed up at the agreed upon time and waited half an hour, and after texting them multiple times they let us know they'd actually had their visa expiring days before and left the country before their visa expired, and they didn't tell us this because we wouldn't "work out a deal to give them money back".
After getting our spare set of keys, we entered the property to find the place trashed, thankfully the actual property damage isn't major, but there was some absolute petty moves. To give you an idea of things that they did:
I ended up spending ~6 hours with gloves and a mask on over the 2-day weekend waking up early before the family stuff we had planned since we were in town just picking up trash and sweeping stuff up. I filled ~25 bags of trash (10 large bags and ~15 smaller bags). We're having to get the house professionally deep cleaned and then having a contractor come to deal with all the areas that need addressed.
My wife and I are planning to put the house up for sale/rent again if we don't find a buyer at the price we want since it is a bit of a buyers market right now. We honestly want to be done with the house, it sucks as we had made renovations with the idea of it being a long term home. We had thought we may live in our current state for a year or two and then move back to that house to be near family, but it felt violating in a way to see our house in that state. Thankfully it was looking better with all the trash cleared out.
To add the cherry on top, once we got back from a long drive with kids being a bit crazy we came home to find that our power had tripped, and our fridge had been off for ~2 days with a good chunk of our food having spoiled, including stuff we just bought that was on a good sale that is more expensive that we planned to use this week. My car door handle also broke for seemingly no reason this morning, and I've been slammed at work all day, so I took a break to type this out.
Thankfully, life is still good overall and sometimes things suck. Just been a crappy weekend and hopefully this next weekend we can have some family fun and move past this.
Too much going on right now, I have a parent dealing with career stuff, one brother is moving across the country for school, and my other brother is dealing with a housing issue. I'm trying to be a bit of an island of stability right now, but it's a lot to take in and time is only going in one direction.