What is an experience you never want to experience again in your lifetime?

[sooo4455]

The most stressful time in my life started about 7 years ago and went on for 2 years and my mental health took an absolute battering and im still not over it. And now im super paranoid about it happening again.

I had bedbugs and a rat problem under the bath at the same time and pest control were useless.
i had a toddler at the time and their was 7 of us and I was advise to put everything we owned (twice) in the garden while they tried to get the bedbugs under control. I had to wash every soft furnishing and beds, draws, wardrobes had to be emptied and placed outside in bags in the sun. Only thing that was allowed in the house was furniture. I had postnatal depression at the time and I just remember sitting in the garden with everything we owned (twice). With the rats they were running around under the bath and were huge. My bathroom is downstairs and they’d chewed from the outside in, the smell was not normal and the noise all day from them scurrying around 🤮
It finally got resolved after 2 years but at that point I was shot to bits. I don’t think people realise how traumatic it is the live with a bedbugs. I’m so paranoid about getting them again I try and stay away from public transport and hotels or I will research the shit out of them before booking and even then I’m hyper vigilant and can’t sleep.

What is something you never want to go though again?

A vegan buffet.

Dealing with a medical emergency at work. I worked in a nursery baby room at the time, an 18 month old just stopped breathing. Thankfully they began breathing again and ultimately they were perfectly fine- they would be about 7 or 8 years old now. It really knocked me, I spent my days at work on edge for a very long time and it can still get to me now.

Glad I will only go through losing my mum once but it was the most awful experience ever. Also never want sepsis again and I can’t think of anything worse than getting married again.

My husbands poor mental health. He does all the right things (gym, talking therapy, medication) but he’s not getting better. We’ve been like this for 2 years now. Being happy for the children, doing everything because he forgets and constantly walking on eggshells. I miss the people we were and the happiness we had. It only shows up in fleeting seconds now. I feel it’s slowly killing me as well as him.

Being bereaved by suicide. It is the worst thing I have ever ever experienced, and I’d say I’m somebody who has experienced a lot. Cheated on, divorced, single parent, dirt poor as a child, dirt poor as a parent, faced homelessness, difficult pregnancies.
being bereaved by suicide is quite frankly sole destroying, I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. The grief is debilitating, and comes with different anguish to normal grief with the questions, what ifs etc that there are no answers to. What if I’d listened properly, what if I’d responded quicker to that message, what if they’d felt able to call me, what if I’d acted differently, what if what if what if.
the pain is so severe I can’t breathe through it. 😢losing someone you love in this manner is horrific. And if anyone reading this is contemplating suicide, please see this. Read it, properly believe it. People do care if you are here, and the devastation is so so severe when you’re not. Please don’t do it. Please seek help, and believe when they say it’s not the answer ❤️

Not so great for those dying in hospital, whose loved ones weren't allowed in to say goodbye. Are you even able to imagine what that would be like?

I could have wrote this exact post too. It’s a daily struggle and it makes you feel unwell yourself as well as burnt out. Make sure you’re looking after yourself too!

DS being sectioned age 15 with major depression after a suicide attempt. Looking back ten years on, I am thankful that he was taken seriously and received the in-patient care he needed. He was in hospital for the best part of a year. Life has never been the same, but he came out the other side and has recovered.

I've been thinking about this thread a lot and I did post about a recent bereavement, but to add context to that I simply could not go through another year like 2025 plus the first few months of this year. It has included two deaths from suicide, two deaths from cancer, a family member being the victim of a violent crime, a health scare,a dear friend having a breakdown and neighours who have been so appalling I have had to call the police out three times. I feel triggered every time I hear my phone ping, it never seems to be good news these days. I try to take pleasure in very small things, for example it is lovely to see the sun today

I feel you. Also brought up in poverty, also experienced it as an adult as a parent. Thankfully doing much better now and have a secure roof over our heads. But it’s scary and I found it very humbling experiencing it myself as the parent, knowing what it had been like for my mum ❤️

Appendicitis. Fortunately not gonna happen again. Phew!

Ectopic pregnancy rupture which nearly ended my life.

March through to May 2016 when my hormones crashed out due to the perimenopause. It was unspeakable.

Never understood how anyone could feel so hopeless and despairing that death would be a relief. I do now.

Being told by my husband of 35 years that he wanted to divorce me. Still living day by day…

Oh come on. Nothing in the post minimised any of that, but merely spoke from the posters own perspective. Some people did enjoy lockdown (for example people with severe anxiety who no longer had to leave the house and go to a job that was slowly killing them) but that doesn’t mean they didn’t care about those who were severely ill or dying. People are able to have different perspectives on the same event and remain empathetic.

If you had a shred of decency you would know that for many it was a horrific experience.

Thank you so much to the people who responded/reacted to my post. I am very touched that anyone would bother - so many posters have been through much worse.

My mother was at the root of the abuse - she would lie to our father about us, and ‘tell tales’ on the rare occasions we did something she deemed to be wrong. And sometimes he punished us. She punished us too, all the time.
I have little memory of the things that happened to me, but I remember vividly what happened to my siblings. It’s hard to be a child and have no power at all. Once I was old enough, I began to fight back, deflect and get between my parents and my siblings.

My brother and I are estranged now. He is an alcoholic (he has been charged with driving under the influence many times), misogynist and verbally abusive - I understand that’s because of what he suffered as a child, I just couldn’t keep acting like it was okay.

I am estranged from my mother since 2020, and am LC with my father. My sister and I are in infrequent contact (she is the normal one - married with children, she does not remember the abuse). My other brother and I are very close - he is also estranged from our brother and both parents. I made a decision when I was a teenager that I would never have kids - I couldn’t risk turning out like my mother, and at least I know that I’m not perpetuating the cycle. When I was a child, I longed to grow up so that I could be in charge of my own life - make my own money, decisions and mistakes. I think of that every day and I’m so grateful that my life is my own now.

And I’m sorry that so many of us have had all of these life experiences that we would never want to repeat. Here in Ireland we say ‘you’re some woman for one woman’ - that’s what I thought over and over, reading all of the posts in this thread. ❤️

Having an endoscopy without any sedation 😝

My divorce. It took me 8 years to recover from it and i am not fully myself yet but since i can't trust any man and will never ever live with a man again. If i ever meet someone else it will living each in our own home

I posted earlier about my husband and his behaviour when my mother died.
He also grew up in a home where the mother would encourage the father to beat the children when she was frustrated or angry. My husband and one of his brothers grew up to be alcoholics who ruined their marriages with increasingly abusive behaviour.
I think that seeing your siblings been beaten is incredibly traumatic for children.
Anyone who grows up in a family like that and breaks the cycle is totally heroic. You should always be proud of yourself for doing that.

I loved it too. MY grandbairns came to stay (DIL an ICU nurse) and we had the hottest driest summer for many years . We live on the edge of woods and a few minutes from the beach so we did break the one hour exercise rule and wandered for hours with the dogs keeping completely away from people. RAiny days were baking days and jigsaws. I know I was lucky and can’t imagine the hell of being cooped up with toddlers and kids in a small flat or multi storey . I do know many people though who enjoyed that time

I am truly sorry for your loss. 💐

This thread isn’t really for people to share their happy memories of lockdown. Despite the fact that so many have shared these kinds of stories on it already

For me it was my dad's death. Not the fact that he died itself (he was 95 and suffering severe dementia - it was definitely his time) but the nature of it.

After several traumatic hospital admissions for an infection he could not recover from we made the choice, with the approval of HCPs, to withdraw all forms of care apart from palliative, and to let him die at home.

As he was no longer eating or drinking I imagined it would be pretty quick. It lasted about 10 days. Watching someone you love die slowly in front of you like that is almost unbearable.

I was very close to my father, especially towards the end - after my mom I was his main carer, and because my mom is elderly herself (though heroic!) it was me who ended up sleeping the night on the floor of A and E etc etc towards the end. So it was me he generally wanted when he was most distressed/confused.

But on the last morning, my presence did nothing to calm him - nor did the dose of morphine and valium he had been given (we had to phone up and ask when we wanted him to get pain relief - it was injection only. And then it could take up to two hours for someone to come).

Lying on the bed with him and watching him writhe in pain and being unable to do anything to help him, was by far the worst experience of my life.

In the end, we managed to beg the district nurse to send someone, a lovely guy who agreed that dad needed more medication, and gave him a much larger dose of both morphine and valium, which helped him to finally slip away calmly that afternoon, with me, my mom and brother all in the room with him, holding him/his hand and telling him we would be ok and that it was ok for him to go.

A beautiful death, in the end, if any death can be said to be beautiful. But what led up to it, I found frankly unbearable.

It's had a positive impact on my life in a way though - I have stopped giving a shit about minor troubles/annoyances. And I have realised I am stronger than I thought - if you had asked me before, I would have said there is no way I could have stayed with him through that.

It’s absolutely none of those things. We all experienced it differently. Am I not allowed to say how much I enjoyed being a mum because other women have had stillbirths??? Or to say we enjoy good health because other people are sick and dying.?? WE all know it was a horrendous time for the world and so many people but some of us were able to navigate it without that trauma and you have no right to try to shame us for that. . fuck off with your judgement.