Mental Health Awareness

[MG]

I don’t know if I have any of the disorders, but I couldn’t find a better place for writing what I feel.

Starting with the beginning. I used to be a normal child, at least I believe so, until I went to school. It all went good in the primary school but in the middle school all of the mess started. The biggest problem was at that time - I couldn't open to people and make friends. There were times when some subjects were hard to study and I couldn’t focus on getting great grades at every subject, and I was afraid to tell my parents about this, so I was hiding my grades so nobody will find out. I started to tell myself that I am stupid and that I am not good for anything, while others can get better marks than me. Probably the fear of my parents made me become anti-social because the more I was hiding and running away from my problem, the less I used to talk with people. I don’t know how is this related but I guess this is where it started. Going in the classroom was usually a nightmare for me. Like in every class, there were groups of friends. As I couldn’t make friends, I was never part of any of these groups, they used to call me the loner of the class. At the beginning I enjoyed being alone but later I felt that something is not alright concerning the way how people threat me. Different rumors were spread and people keep talking behind my back. I am the kind of person who gets angry really fast, and they seeing me getting angry, kept doing things which annoyed me, just to enjoy how I am getting angry. Sometimes they passed the limits and they even used to touch me, to hit me with the pens, to kick me from my place and tell me to go to sit to another place just because they wanted to sit there. I handled it in my own way, I tried to not say anything because I was afraid of someone fighting with me.

In the 9th grade I got braces, but all that was in my mind is how would people from my class react if they see me. I tried to hide my teeth all the time when I tried to speak or to laugh but that was hard to not notice anyway. They never mocked me about that but I personally felt complexed about this, I even started telling myself that I am ugly and nobody needs me. At home I kept telling my parents that everything is alright at school, but everything was burning inside me, but I didn’t want to upset them. Or probably my fear was that I never wanted them to come to school to do something. Since I never had friends and no siblings, I handled everything alone. At school I felt like an alien, I was always sitting alone, teachers were sometimes making jokes about how I am always alone. Eventually that led to me skipping classes because at one point I couldn’t handle all that pressure. In one semester of my last school year I probably didn’t appear at school for like 1 month, but my parents never knew about it. They eventually found out but it was at the end of the school year. What I am trying to say is that something really affected me and I don’t know where it exactly started.

Today I passed through the “fear” of talking with new people, at least I am trying to be more open, the only thing which kinda makes it complicated is that I am shy, but after some time I can really get along with almost everyone.

My actual problem is my family. I’ve been lying to them for so long during school, that they probably don’t trust me anymore. Also, my parents being a bit severe to me since I was little made me get some fear which I cannot control. if I had any problem I would rather hide it and try to solve it on my own than letting them know. But everything ended up the other way around and I only messed it up more, which led me to another lie... and so on, a chain of lies. I simply didn’t want them to “punish” me. Although they never really did it except a few times when I was a child, I still had this fear. This bring us to lack of communication, and nowadays this problem still exists. I am 23 years old, I am already living away from my parents, I am coming home only during my holidays, but I still can’t find a way to simply communicate with my parents like a family is supposed to be. I just go in my room, and do my things. I can stay there all day, only go to the kitchen sometimes to eat when my mother calls me. I am trying but I just can’t. Even when we sit in the same room for a few minutes nobody says a word and it feels really awkward. My parents being the kind of conversative parents who always disagree with the youth’s lifestyle, and here is me disagreeing with whatever they say. I don’t want this to happen, I really love them despite all these difficulties, but I don’t know what to do to fix it. I blame myself all the time, I am feeling depressive, sometimes I want to leave this planet because I cannot handle all the thoughts which come to my mind. I manage to open myself very easy to my friends but I can never such personal things with my parents. Although it should rather be the other way around.

The fear that someday they’ll be gone and i’ll regret everything is haunting me more often and I do realize this is inevitable, however I still can’t control myself and to talk openly with them. I also feel useless and I look at other people my age who had obtained way more things than me and here I am acting like a teenager who only now got freedom and starts exploring the life. I am thinking what to do with my life after I will graduate, because it’s just one year left. Maybe the world would been better and easier without me, especially for my family who I probably hurt the most during my lifetime. Not intentionally of course but when I start realizing it I just think it’s better if I die before them so I won’t need to cry and imagine my life without them. I guess I won’t handle it if something like this happens.

I’ll probably regret that I wrote this tomorrow but right now I really needed to do it.

[nijat]

First of all, I would like to thank to the creator of the thread and people involved in discussions. My comment could not directly be related to raising awareness on mental health, but I want to touch upon the way people with mental health problems are approached. In this thread, and many other places, I have seen people with mental health problems, those who fail to communicate with others, asocial people, etc. being worried about not being "normal" or not being like other people. It is, therefore, I have felt the great need in me to concentrate on the subject with my comment.

Everyone holds different views about the life, and I personally believe that world is socially (or discursively, to further complicate it) constructed. The constructions are produced over the passage of time through traditions and practices (or discourses), in my opinion. (Perhaps, those studying political sociology, philosophy or historiography will understand me better) There is nothing meaningful inherent to life, rather us human beings "invent" social/philosophical phenomena to keep on living in a meaningless world. I, therefore, believe that "normal" is also a social construction, drawing on the above-mentioned. To put it simply, "normal" does not exist independently, but rather societies "invent" it for certain purposes.

Starting with the "problem" of not talking to other people much. A number of theoretical frameworks in social psychology classify people based on their psychological needs: some people have greater individual psychological needs (e.g. independency from others), others have prevailing social psychological needs (e.g. recognition from others). Every person is unique in his/her psychological needs: some might have these two categories balanced, some might have one slightly higher, some might have one dramatically higher, etc. Yet, in different societies, from the childhood, more or less we all are taught that we must socialize. While socialization has obviously great benefits, for some people such an action of integrating into society much could produce negative results, due to their different psychological needs. I think this example illustrates a very problematic aspect of humanity excellently: That, us human beings, instead of recognizing each other's different needs, invent constructions, believe that people should act in line with them, recognize the constructions as an absolute truth, make divisons between "normal" and "abnormal" people and judge people based on that. If you want to communicate with people, but can not, then try to develop your communication skills: you can get help from the closest persons, for instance. If you do not enjoy communicating with people much, then do what makes you feel better. In any case, there is nothing wrong.

A similar message I would also like to convey for people undergoing mental health problems. For people who are interested: people with mental health issues have not always been considered "sick" or "mad". There is actually a great book written on this topic called "Madness and Civilization", in which French philosopher Michel Foucault explains how and why the "mad" was reacted to differently in the different historical periods. Apparently, people with mental health issues were described as representing wisdom in arts in the Renaissance. Yet, this depiction of such people changed over the passage of time. Foucault, in the book, concludes that construction of people with mental health issues as "mad" was realized by the power authorities to serve specific purposes, such as governing the population. What does this say about people with mental health issues? - That, you should not feel like "abnormal", "mad", "sick", etc. if you are undergoing such issues - these attributions are nothing more than mere constructions which people, in many cases, blindly believe in.

I believe that the best gift any human being can give to himself/herself is to free himself/herself from constructions, living as a free human being. Society tells us to act in certain ways, our "family values" define how we should behave, our nation and religion determine what we should or should not do. This list can be extended. And it raises a serious question: Do we actually have life as individuals or we are just mere projection of these constructions?

To sum up, I believe that you should never be ashamed of yourself for who you are. You are not "abnormal" or "normal", you are just "you". And us human beings, need to build empathy towards each other in order to understand and accept ourselves. Hope my message helps certain people reading this comment.

P.S. In case you are interested, Foucault is also an author of the book analysing the different reactions to the sexuality over the time, the book is called "History of Sexuality" and conveys similar ideas.

[ROBERT 💙]

Although I had mentioned in an earlier post, I had said that this was being questioned or unsure by Doctors.

But it's now official, after my first session with a pschiatrist last week, I got the phone call today and it is now officially diagnosed.

I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which most likely (they predict) led to the onset of clinical depression

[Eke]

Everything in this post is primarily 'self-diagnosis' through visits with my psychologist, I have yet to see a psychiatrist about all of this, therefore this might change and I might end up deleting this post.

There are several disorders that I most likely have or have had that I've become more and more aware of over the years. I've always known that I had anxiety of some sort, but based on visits with my psychologist and a test I took, it seems I score high in generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and near maximum in social anxiety disorder (SAD). These are things that affect my everyday life a lot, I worry excessively about anything and everything, but especially social interaction and I always am under the impression that I am being judged by someone: whether it be friends, strangers, people walking down the street or even my own parents. I definitely believe I've had GAD for as long as I can remember, but SAD is a more 'recent development' in my life, which I'll get to explaining shortly.

This is something I've never properly opened up about on the forums, because I don't feel entirely comfortable talking about it to anyone, even though many people in real life know about my struggles with this topic, but I just avoid making conversation over it. When I hit puberty around 10-11, I started struggling a lot with what seemed like a persistent sickness that didn't really ever go away. I would get sick all the time, most commonly I'd just be stuck at home with a cold, or worse, flu and throughout the years I've had pneumonia I think 5 or 6 times. It would be either that or severe stomach pains, which later turned out to be because of my lactose intolerance. Over time, staying at home for long periods of a time, normally up to a week at a time, really started taking a toll on me. Of course I had contact with people over the internet, but it wasn't the same as real life social interaction. This is where I believe my major depressive disorder (MDD) got its roots from. As time went on, once I was around 13, I could no longer distinguish between whether I was actually sick or just wanted to be sick. At this point in time I definitely felt depressed, but I didn't understand the feeling. I started hating school, because I started dreading social interaction due to being isolated for most of the time, and because I was missing so much, things like tests kept building up to the point that I could no longer keep up with them, which made me want to go to school even less. This is also where my SAD originates from.

When my grandma died in the summer of 2013, things got even worse for me. That summer I also got stuck in the hospital twice for stomach pains because of lactose intolerance. I felt extremely down about her death, and the worst thing was that I was trying to suppress my emotions, because I was scared of someone seeing me cry, which again, links back to my SAD. We also didn't immediately do all of the tests required to find out if I had lactose intolerance, therefore my stomach pains were getting exponentially worse throughout this entire time, and it made me feel even worse than I already had been feeling. The schoolyear that followed (7th grade) was my most difficult year up until that point. I probably missed a good 50-60% of the entire year, if all the days I missed were to be added up. In March of 2014, I once again got pneumonia and had to miss 5 weeks in a row. That was the longest period of time I had missed until that point, and during that time, things got really bad for me. March and April 2014 were a period when I wasn't even active on the forums, and this was effectively the reason why. I shut myself out of life completely. The only thing I did from morning till evening was play video games, primarily The Sims at the time. I avoided any and all social contact, including with my parents as much as I could. I cried myself to sleep, probably at least every other night. I probably took one or two showers during this entire time period, which made me feel even worse about myself. I had zero energy to do anything and I didn't want to do anything. Then I had to pick myself up, my pneumonia went away and I had tens of assignments and tests I had to do at school. I had to do them, there was no other option. Things did slightly improve once I took control of my life again, but because of all of this, my parents started looking into getting me moved to another school which would accommodate my needs better.

Thus, in the autumn of 2014, for 8th grade, I changed schools. I had been scared of this. Extremely. But in retrospect, it was for the better, though that was not apparent immediately. I went to school for exactly 2 days at the beginning of the year, before coming home an emotional mess. I caught a cough after that and then didn't go to school again for 2 weeks, though not entirely because of the cough, but because I really did not want to go. My parents still encouraged me to at least try out a week, and so I did, but I really did not enjoy that week and I really did not enjoy the two other 'classmates' I had. (Yes, including me, there were 3 people in my 'class'.) I decided I wouldn't go to school again after that. I didn't go to school for half a year after that. Throughout this time I felt very alone. It felt like I had lost all of my friends, that no one cared for me and that the world honestly wouldn't be any different without me in it. And I couldn't bring myself to even talk to people online at this point, that's how scared I was of social interaction. This forum and another chatroom I had been visiting for a few years before all of this were the only places where I would even dare to show face and talk about things, but never how I felt. Because in all honesty I did not understand how I felt, I just knew I felt bad, lonely, and like nothing mattered.

It's really surprising that I have never had to repeat a year, and I did not even have to repeat 8th grade, despite missing literally half of it. What made me go back to school? Around November of that year my school decided that if I couldn't come, they'd organise lessons for me through Skype, which I honestly hated even more than having to go to school, because I'd spend effectively an entire schoolday in front of my desk on Skype. So in January of 2015 I took the conscious decision to give school another shot, and in all honesty, that did change things for the better again. I still didn't enjoy school, but being there in person was still more enjoyable than having to be there through Skype.

From there on out, things definitely went uphill. Of course, I was still missing school a lot, and I still am to this day (though these days my reasons for missing are different). But I definitely got out of the worst and things haven't necessarily been as bad since. I'd also like to think that the forums played a big role in helping me get through all of this, especially once I started interacting with the community a lot more from the summer of 2015. I've learned from the mistakes I made in the past and I've begun to understand my mental state as well as mental disorders a lot better than I did at the time. Recently though, I've felt things going downhill a lot more, which is why I've started visiting my psychologist, who has also helped me organise all of these thoughts about my past and understand them better as well and helped me put a finger on the causes of my mental issues. Though just a few days ago, I once again felt extremely depressed and for what I think was the first time in my life, had suicidal thoughts...

In addition to all of this, I also believe that I may have some level of insomnia as well as some kind of borderline superiority complex, which may also root from depression (as depression also causes feelings of inferiority, and thus I'm possibly attempting to make up for that feeling of inferiority?). These are purely self-diagnosed, which I really do want to avoid doing without at least talking it through with my psychologist (though we have discussed insomnia already), therefore I wouldn't say that I for sure have them.

I am going to be visiting a psychiatrist soon and talking about all of this as well, again, might delete this post and possibly write a new one once I've got a proper diagnosis.

[kastrix89]

Hey guys im not sure if I am allowed to promote this but this year I'm running a eurovision song contest sweepstake for mind (a UK mental health charity) in memory to 2 members of my family who left this year. If anyone wants to enter pm me. I know this is mostly for other UK members but mental health is no joke

[Chante™]

Yes, this is how I'm basically going to start off all the posts about my IRL wellbeing just because of how much this song means to me.

My mental health has been a mess for years, and I know that it primarily started back when I was ten. The school district I am in has this "math placement test" that basically says hey, this is what math you have to take in fifth grade. The options are fifth grade, sixth grade, and seventh grade. Guess which one I got put in (spoilers: it was seventh). I had to essentially cram two years worth of instruction into three months. It was disgustingly difficult and insane for ten year old me. I was the literal definition of a teacher's pet. I really liked school, and I looked forward to going to class. Then, in 2015, one of the teachers of the school I was at was charged with the sexual assault of an eleven year old. One of my good friends was the "class president" of the class, and recently confided in me about how it could have been her in that situation. When that news came out, I started to get distrustful of teachers. It didn't help that I had the two shittiest teachers I've ever had (one was an all around asshole, and the other could care less if a student got injured in his pe class). The further I've gone in school, the worse my mental state has been. I constantly worry about my grades, no matter if they are an A. I fear for myself when I get a B or less because of how I've been before, and how horrifically competitive my school is about grades (if you are considered a nerd at my school, you are essentially a prodigy. even if you aren't a nerd by our standards, if you are in the school, you are comparatively a nerd). A common phrase I hear in my classes is "I got a B. I guess I am a disappointment and/or going to get yelled at back home". This competitivity trickles down to everyone. Our administration refuses to acknowledge how toxic the culture is at my school. I've actually had to explain to my principal about this. It's horrendously harmful, and I've been trying to explain to my parents that I can't keep up straight A's while not wanting to kill myself, but they clearly don't give a shit. My parents have been pushing college on me, and I have no idea what the hell I want to do with my life. I have two years left in high school, and I have no clue what to do. I've also been pushed to get an AP diploma, and for you all who have no idea what it means, AP classes are essentially college classes, and you need to pass four AP classes and do AP Seminar/Research, which is just thesis writing. I know that as much as I hate to say it, two of them will be calculus classes so I don't have to do it later. I really just continue struggling along, and I just don't feel like existence is worth it some days. I've tried to explain to my parents about this, but they don't seem to care. I know I need to see a therapist or something along those lines, but it is hard to do so when my parents refuse to acknowledge that their "perfect child" is imperfect. They also keep demanding I get a part time job, but it is also super difficult when I have at least three hours of homework a night. Joining my school's color guard team was really beneficial to my mental state, as now there's a group of people whom I can talk with about this sort of shit.

On top of this, I was forced to play basketball for my school against my will, since I was ten as well. In a span of two weeks last year, I hyperextended my elbow, sprained my ankle, and took off one of the panels of a gym with my back. I snapped at the assholes who willingly let me literally throw myself into a wall without getting shit from them (that game we lost 72-31). I quit that sport last year, and I am so fucking grateful for that. That sport gave me tendonitis in both of my shoulders, which sucks, but that's a story for later. These people snapped at me for not passing the ball to them, even though those assholes never gave me anything in terms of passing the ball to me or help defensively. I was the only one who gave a remote shit on that end. 

I still just am dragging myself along, and I hope that I can get better sooner as opposed to later. That's all for now, and I know that there will be an update sooner or later. Hopefully, everything gets better for me. I really have to thank you all here for being so welcoming and accepting, and Alpharad for being someone I can turn to for comedic relief. 

[kastrix89]

I woukd just like to mention the sad passing of Caroline flack through her mental health (kinda). She was found dead today by suicide. She had her problems but i personally believe due to the vultures that are the uk medis demonising her like they have done othet the last couple of months and idiots sending her abuse on twitter from behind the screen as they think it dont matter.... Shame on them. Caroline was the commentator for the semi finals for the uk at eurovision in 2008. I think she may have been the points giver one year to but not sure.

Lets just give our thoughts to Carolines family and i hope the government tighten there grips on these disgusting ppl in the media.

[Josh's Tattoo (Inactive)]

Feb 16, 2020 0:15:21 GMT 1 kastrix89 said:

I woukd just like to mention the sad passing of Caroline flack through her mental health (kinda). She was found dead today by suicide. She had her problems but i personally believe due to the vultures that are the uk medis demonising her like they have done othet the last couple of months and idiots sending her abuse on twitter from behind the screen as they think it dont matter.... Shame on them. Caroline was the commentator for the semi finals for the uk at eurovision in 2008. I think she may have been the points giver one year to but not sure.

Lets just give our thoughts to Carolines family and i hope the government tighten there grips on these disgusting ppl in the media.

It truely is a sad time. When I came across the news online I was shocked and thought at first that can't be true. But to find like it was. It was shocking.
The fact that it took suicide to stop her from feeling the pain from the media shows how bad her situation was. Not having the full support from everyone asking if she was ok and feeling alone and pressured by the media. Her only way out was for her to leave the world in the worse possible way.

The lesson here is to always speak to each other. And most importantly be kind as your words impact everyone. Even the littlest bad thing you say can impact someone immensely.

#bekind

[Ｂ３ＳＴＢＥＡＴＳ]

Thank you, Covid-19

Thanks you because my mental health got worse. In May I developed anxiety, in June I didn't feet it so much. But, in July, this returned very strong. Now I have anxiety and, I think, anorexia because I'm having disregulation of appetite and I lost like 6kg on last 2 weeks.

This make me don't sleep at night and take naps. When the episode starts, I usually finish liying on my bed between part of the afternoon until the night. And this increased the posibility of thrombosis.

Anyway, I'm finally ready and brave for ask for help now. I'm going to try sleep, go outside, try to eat, etc.

[Deleted]

mental health advice: leave


it's not worth giving away your life energy to a handful of people who play the rest like marionettes in their power games.

i've been a victim of cyberbullying and have done the same to others for years. none of it was persecuted. it never will be.

embrace your own truth. live authentically, not in the shadow of others.


if you are being abused & bullied, don't accept it. state the truth, then walk away.

if you witness someone being abused, don't stay silent. it makes you a co-belligerent.


be kind, always. empathy wins in the end.