To be embarrassed about my mental illness?

Depression is a physical illness. One of the parts of it is that your inner critical voice is unreasonably hard on you. You will I’m sure find it hard to be as kind to yourself as you would be to a good friend in the same position. Can you try to speak to yourself the way you would speak to her? As for work, a supportive manager goes a long way towards ensuring a welcoming and supportive environment for your return to work.

unlike the manager I had who made me chair her direct reports meeting my first day back.

OP ignore the utter cuntery from that ignorant poster.

It’s quite normal and understandable to feel as you do, but you were ILL. Having mental ill health is no more your fault nor anything to be embarrassed or apologetic about than having a physical illness.

Focus on getting well, then you can soon work at your full capacity again.

Surprisingly people with cancer are never told "look at those poor people in Africa. They might also have cancer, no hospitals and nothing to eat. How dare you complain!"

So your suggestion is OP should just continue as normal, risking her health and possibly not be able to work in the future?
How does that help?

Fucking hell. Do you think that about people with other illnesses they can’t help either? Cancer. MS. Parkinson’s. Heart failure. Should they all worry about the burden they are placing on their colleagues with their inconvenient illnesses? Or is your shocking lack of empathy reserved for mental health issues?

That only works if you can think though.
If I am in my depressed phase I literally can not think or concentrate on anything. Hence I would not be able to work because I could not read more than a few sentences or solve the simplest math equations. It would sometimes take me about an hour to get dressed and get showered. That is how serious mental health problems can get.

I get how you feel OP. I have struggled with mental health and addiction problems for more than 20 years and even as a child I was always the "weird one".

What helps is to celebrate the little things. You are going back to work, that is amazing.
Doing that is more important than anybody elses judgement.

Do you attend a self help group? I've found talking to others that have the same problems helps.

I now have the attitude "at least I am not dead" (which actually happens to people with depression) so everybody judging can fuck themselves.

And concerning work, worrying about it is not your job it's your managers or HR. That is literally why they're in the position they are in.

I do understand. Dh didn’t tell most of his employees because it’s feels like a weakness. It is different to physical illness because there really isn’t a cure, you “get better” by a combination of talking therapy, medication, lifestyle changes and self help techniques. The only thing that has really made a big difference to dh was retiring because ultimately it was work that was making him ill

Ah, an operational issue - because for a company spending money is not a problem, right? Just hire more people. I see. What a load of tosh.

That’s part of the reason my MH declined so much because I put others before me for far too long.

Precisely the reason the OP feels shame - tits like you. The failure in work for you having had an increased workload is not somebody off on mat leave or at a concert or off with poor mental health. It’s an operational issue where the missing person is not replaced.

Can I just say you do raise a good point about distraction because it has worked for me at times BUT you really are just avoiding issues deep down.
I know people who do this and they dont look any happier or relieved, infact they are dam right miserable and unhealthy in other ways and fight with their families!
Please dont call people with MH issues selfish or they only think of themselves. Its so , so complex! Sometimes people are depressed because they are burnt out from caring ALOT about others and never putting themselves first.
Depression has all kinds of scores in how bad... same with cancer etc ... people go through shit that gets them down, but you surely know the difference between a sad event thats normal and you'll get over in time, compared to something that has gutted the life out of you!?
There is also chemical imbalances in the brain etc.
Can we just be gentle here? Im sorry you feel your only way to cope is to avoid. I hope you feel better too

My depression was better when I had a terminally ill live-in parent, plus my own family and a full-time job. I did not have the time to have a piss in peace, never mind debating if it was difficult to get out of bed or not.

With respect, your depression wasn’t mild/better because you had a terminally ill live in parent (my condolences), family, and full time job and therefore no time.

You were still able to do those things because your depression was mild.

So you kept busy in an effort to ignore it. Then when your parent died, your depression got worse.

The depression getting worse is due to both ignoring the signs of mild depression and the loss of your parent.

If you’d actively taken care of your own mental health sooner, you might not have had to grieve the death of a parent while also depressed.

On a side note, yes people in Africa also get depression.

Your “advice” is way too simplistic. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Depression is on a spectrum. I agree that being busy, having a strong purpose and important responsibilities is good for your mental health. However that only works (sometimes) if your depression is mild to moderate. Severe depression and social anxiety can be absolutely crippling and no amount of “being busy and thinking about others” is going to fix it. It’s a disease. It needs to be treated like a disease, not a character defect. You’re speaking from a place of privilege as someone who has never experienced severe depression. If you had you wouldn’t be suggesting such simplistic, outdated “cures”

And when you run out of people to think about / care for and are left without that purpose in a void, with a fragmented sense of self and irrevocably altered circumstances in a world that is increasingly cold towards the struggling, what then?

"It could be worse" is a relative exercise. On the surface being in a position of "freedom" from the things that distract one from self care might look enviable to those still in those trenches, however it comes with a whole can of worms that take time to unravel.

OP sending solidarity to you and a hug. Many of us identify with your feelings I think. I wish every good thing to help you x it's a day by day thing xxx

I am in exactly the same position and am preparing to leave the job because I literally don’t know how to go back there and not get ill again. Part of the reason is how embarrassed I am, I know it’s my own projection a lot of the time… but it doesn’t help, I feel very vulnerable and frightened and just not able to put on the professional face required for any corporate job… sorry I can’t offer advice, but I can say your not alone.

People like you are the reason why the stigma against mental health still exists. It’s pure ignorance and lack of understanding about MH conditions as diseases rather than laziness and weakness. The “people are starving in Africa” comment sounds like something my grandparents would have said in the 90s! How can people still be this uneducated? 🙄

I don't know you, but I know myself. My depression was better when I had a terminally ill live-in parent, plus my own family and a full-time job. I did not have the time to have a piss in peace, never mind debating if it was difficult to get out of bed or not. Since the parent died, depression got worse, but I know that thinking of others more than you think of yourself and your mental illness is an excellent coping strategy.

OP,
The shame and embarrassment is something everyone with a mental illness feels at least during the early days. It’s due to the stigma of it and the current political hate speech rhetoric is only adding to the stigma of any disability that isn’t physical (and some that are). The way I was treated when I needed time off due to PTSD versus breast cancer were night and day.

I felt the way you did for years. Like why wasn’t I resilient enough? Why is this having such an effect on me? Why are things that were as easy as breathing now impossible to do?

Please fight these feelings of shame and embarrassment, they’re what our ableist, sexist, very flawed society thinks you should feel. Feel proud of yourself for how far you have come and don’t be ashamed to place boundaries and seek further therapy.

Please try not to feel shame OP. Easier said than done I know. I’ve suffered from depression since I was a teenager. When I was younger I wouldn’t tell a soul. I also felt deep shame - being open about it is making yourself vulnerable because the stigma surrounding MH is still so huge. Yes, there’s much more awareness about it now than there was 20 years ago but that hasn’t translated to a shift in people’s attitudes IME sadly. They maybe just don’t voice those attitudes anymore. But the fact is 1 in 4 people have suffered from depression/anxiety so there are likely going to be many people around you and in your workplace who know how you feel. It’s so sad that many people still feel too ashamed to voice that though. You should be proud of yourself for getting yourself back to a place where you’re able to work again. That’s not easy. You’re very strong. I used to think my depression meant I was mentally weak, until I slowly learned that that was what had been drummed into me by society, and was in fact, total bollocks. Getting myself well again was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. You’re battling a disease. People who manage to drag themselves out of severe depression are the most mentally strong people in the world. So just remember that

I appreciate you don’t know me but if you did you’d know that I have very little time to think of myself, and have in fact been encouraged by my GP , counselling, family etc to think of myself a bit more often and put myself first occasionally!

Tried that. It’s essentially distract your mind with a look over there! To pretend you’re not really ill. It’s only a plaster and underneath the illness festers.

Your advice doesn’t alleviate mental illness, it’s how to bury and deny mental illness until you have a break down.

Hi OP, I have bipolar, and definitely do feel shame. However over the years, I slowly tested the water. I told one colleague, and the sky didn't fall in, so I told another. Now all my direct colleagues know. They have all been supportive and several younger colleagues have said how my honesty has changed the culture at work and helped them be more honest about their struggles. And in many ways, this helps the team and the employer. If we can talk about our difficulties before we get too sick, we can support each other and medical help before we can so poorly we can't work. Better than suppressing it until we're so sick we feel we can't keep going. So maybe you can find one colleague you can talk to? And take it from there. I think you will find every day you go into work it will get a bit easier. You could also look up doing a wellness recovery action plan (templates available on the MIND website). It helps your employer know what to do if you get sick again so you don't have to remember it all when you are feeling ill.

I did not say you could 'cure' it - you can alleviate it by thinking less about yourself, that is all.

Do you want a medal or something?

Hi OP. I completely understand how you’re feeling. I’ve suffered from depression on and off since being a teenager, and it’s taken me to my mid 40s to reduce the shame I feel, particularly feeling like I am soft/weak. It takes a lot of bloody strength to get up some days I tell you! Sadly some people will judge, even employers that bleat on about being supportive (and I’ve found law firms are the worst culprits). It’s really tough. I found a book called The Happiness Trap really helpful by Russ Harris, but otherwise counselling and meditation. (Also basic things like enough sleep, exercise, not drinking alcohol etc). These helped for me anyway to keep things on an even keel.

I am scared I’ll feel like that again and I’d have a bad day and then fear I was heading into a depression again (rather than it just being a bad day). It’s exhausting honestly x