To despair at how helpless some people are

[ThankYouVeryMuch]

You see it on here all the time, poster says they’re in a difficult situation and lots of people respond with sensible advice and details of organisations they can call for help and there’s always a reason why they can’t ask for help.

I saw a job at a local hair salon advertised on Facebook, 1 person posted “interested” underneath so the salon owner responds with their contact details (that were in the ad) and asks for a cv and the person responds “I don’t have a cv, nevermind” or someone else put on my local Facebook group saying she was new to the area and asking if there were any new mums in the local area, so I responded that there was a lovely, free mum and baby group in her village the next day and I knew the organiser so if she wanted to go along I’d make sure she got a warm welcome, and the response was “I can’t go to a baby group, what if none of the other mums speak to me”

Some people just seem as if the world owes them something and they should get what they want without putting in any effort.

I think the poster is referring to those capable.

For example, most able bodied people should be able to train to do a 10km run. Let's face it, disability doesn't hold back a lot of para athletes, does it? Although clearly there's some people who cannot.

But there's that, and there's a defeatist attitude which is entirely different

I'm not convinced that poster is only referring to those capable. The ability to run 10k isn't just dependent upon physical ability to run 10k so someone being capable is subjective anyway.

My aunt, born in 1918, was what my DF, born in 1920, called "haundless". She would wait for him to come for his weekly visit to get a light bulb changed, even in a table light. She also laughed at any suggestions for practical changes.

Dad was extremely capable at work but had severe social anxiety, hermit tendencies and depression; I've inherited those. To PP up thread who said that crying in the street isn't a good look - I've been there, fixed my make up and gone into interview trying not to throw up. I hate, hate, hate social 'events' but I go to please people I care about. I had to get my degree result on 7 papers, not 8 because I had the one and only migraine of my life with stress in my best paper; I still attempted the paper until my scrawl and out of this world feeling got so bad that a word took up the entire page. I hate public speaking but I get through the nausea and do it, and people tell me I'm good at it.

I'm dyspraxic, with depression and suspected ADHD but I do what I have to, even if it is at the last minute due to procrastination and hatred/fear. I try not to be haundless.

I absolutely agree that some people want everything handed to them on a plate, OP. In the example you gave of the hairdressing job, the person who replied may not have had a CV, or have known where to start, but they didn't have to give up at that point. They could have said "Ok, I'll get my CV to you this week" and then at least tried to put something together. Or they could have said "I don't have an up-to-date CV, but could I come in for a chat with you and tell you about my experience?". Ok, that doesn't sound very professional, but it's better than just giving up.

Likewise, the lady who wanted to make friends could have said "I'm a bit intimidated by baby groups. I'll see if I can work myself up to it over the next couple of weeks".

With regards to anxiety, I have a friend with very severe anxiety, which manifests as agoraphobia. She cannot leave the house, has to have people bring her shopping etc. However, she WANTS to beat it, so she does everything she can to help herself. She's currently completing an online CBT course, with a view to getting enough confidence to be able to go for face-to-face therapy. That, to me, shows initiative. She could easily give up and just stay in, feeling miserable.

A number of years ago, I was made redundant while off work with severe anxiety and depression. I was so anxious I physically couldn't go to a job interview, let alone managing a full day at work. But I needed to do something, so I looked around to see what I could offer, and decided I could type things up, proofread documents, and scan photos into digital files. I didn't have tons of equipment, but I had an old, slow desktop PC and a scanner. So, I created some Gumtree ads offering my services, and gradually got some work in. It built up over time and actually became quite a successful business - certainly enough to keep me ticking over, paying bills etc while I recovered. It would have been easy to say "I can't work, I'm too ill", but I figured I had options that I could explore.

I can't stand when people insist on everything having to be exactly right before they can do something. My student SIL was recently compla

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My student SIL was recently complaining that she couldn't do her essays because she "needed" a MacBook, and her own laptop was too slow. She was amazed when I suggested she just allow a bit of extra time to type them up..

I was recently in a first floor cafe above a supermarket.
A young mother with her friend and a toddler in a pushchair was almost hysterical and getting really aggressive with the staff after being told the lift was out of order so she would have to either fold the pushchair and go down the one flight of stairs with toddler or leave the pushchair up and a member of staff would carry it down whilst she or friend carried /helped child down stairs.
She seemed horrified at any such practical solutions which involved any effort from her.
You would have thought she had been dropped on top of Everest and abandoned without any survival equipment the way she was carrying on!!

This is particularly bad with some university students. For example. Once I received an email from a student asking what bus they should get to the location on their exam... 🤔

Yes, I believe everyone can do anything. You can't lose a disability, but I have seen disabled people achieve amazing things that people thought they shouldn't be able to. I saw a lot of people doing tough mudder in wheelchairs, for example. Don't underestimate people

Bahhhhhumbug If you'd said this happened 20 years ago I'd be dying -again of embarrassment. That was my mother again when she was out one day with me and my then baby ds. I suggested her taking the baby down while I managed the pram - it did stop her in midflow of going off at the poor waitress who'd broken the news about the lift to us but only so she could start going off at me! God, I could write a fucking triple trilogy book!

someone else put on my local Facebook group saying she was new to the area and asking if there were any new mums in the local area, so I responded that there was a lovely, free mum and baby group in her village the next day and I knew the organiser so if she wanted to go along I’d make sure she got a warm welcome, and the response was “I can’t go to a baby group, what if none of the other mums speak to me”

She was only new. She probably wanted to think about it, it's not so easy to just suddenly put yourself out there. There out people out there who find it all easy, and people who have to think about things or work themselves up to it. It's not necessarily laziness and it doesn't make them pathetic and tbh I don't see why it should affect you. (YABU)

ThePencil

Sometimes there are employment agencies that will HELP you put a CV together if you're having trouble.

@agnurse Exactly. There are options, rather than just saying "I don't have a CV, I won't bother".

There are working class kids who are over protected and helicoptered. I come across their parents as part of my job despairing how they get their 30 year old kid to love out of the family home and be more independent.

I agree there is general anxiety about doing things, which everyone has, and more severe anxiety. But it is common for people to have experienced the latter at some stage in their lives. Most people have had a panic attack at some stage. Most people have had times in their life when they have struggled with very simple everyday things. And things have improved.

The worst thing you can do with any anxiety is to give into it totally. You do have to push yourself with support. That pushing yourself might mean you make yourself get dressed, or that you go out to the local shop, or that you give that presentation in front of a 100 people. But without that, anxiety gets worse and peoples lives get smaller.

I always worry when I read advice to parents of an anxious DC, just to let the DC avoid what they are very anxious about. It is the worse thing you can do.

ThePlatypusAlwaysTriumphs, some people being able to do amazing things is different from everyone can do anything.
Yes don't underestimate people but don't tell severely disabled people that their inability to do something is because they or their families didn't try hard enough and remember disability isn't just physical.

I think the job ones are probably people on jsa who don't want to come off it, but need to show they've applied. Saw that happen a lot when I worked in a job centre. Not for all of course, most were actually desperate for work, but for every 10 you've got at 1 that doesnt want to work and has every excuse for why they can't. Pretty stupid excuses too, I had one where she couldn't possibly travel to the other side of the city (it's a very small city, maybe about 3-4 miles distance from one end to the other with regular buses) and she refused to work with Polish people because they steal all jobs. She was a horrible woman.

The example in your OP about the cv could be my SIL!

When her eldest left school she was given guidance about writing a cv and I took a look at it for her. SIL sat and watched misersbly saying she’d never be able to change her (dead end) job because she “never got a cv at school” (left early as she was pregnant and never went back).

Huh?

I offered to do it for her if she gave me the details. That was four years ago, she never bothered!

Agree and disagree

I look at some of my DC's school friends and I think some of them are going to end up in real trouble when they are older because they are quite pathetic. They all have one thing in common which is either permissive or over protective parenting.

Also, anxiety and depression does play a massive part in doing something or not doing it. I have had A& a bit of D due to a hormone deficiency (peri-menopause is a bitch) and it has impacted on my mood and confidence. Where once I would have been happy to sky dive out of a plane, now simple things give me anxiety such as sitting on a plane and in a hairdressers chair sends me into a claustrophocic panic.

I can see where some of these posters are coming from re: when someone has been given a thousand solutions to a problem & still, none of them are good enough.

However, in the field of work I do, there are the genuine ones, who haven't been able to get out of the house and just go to the shop because of their anxiety, crippling anxiety.

That's a lot different to someone who is given solutions, and still wants to moan.

A close friend of mine is like this re boyfriends.

They treat her like crap. She asks what she should do, so you tell her that maybe she can do better and doesn't need to put up with this crap. She wholeheartedly agrees, decides to finish him...only for her to tell you, a week later, they are back 'together', working things out and he's not that bad.

He gets up to his old tricks, again - usually cheating/ignoring for weeks/showing her up, and she is again, ringing me for advice; asking me what I would do and acknowledging that she needs to finish it.

It's tiresome. Especially as these phonecalls last for hours.

After this happening with various boyfriends; I now have changed response and just ask her if she's ringing for a whinge or if she is looking for a genuine solution.

Then I'm not investing too much into a situation that she doesn't really want to change and can respond accordingly.

It's the last of challenging yourself, by people that are perfectly capable of doing so.
So I have SEVERAL people in my team at work, who announce they can't go to XYZ meeting because they don't drive places they don't know. I mean WTF! And they're not even embarrassed about it. One person doesn't put petrol in her own car as she doesn't know how to do it.

In my experience it’s the older generation!! Family members expecting us to do things for them that they are more than capable of doing.
I think in their heads it’s a form of payback for raising us; we now have the responsibility of sorting stuff out for them and it bugs the hell out of me.
For example yesterday my DM lost my DC’s favourite soft toy (I wasn’t there at the time). I had to listen to the plaintive ‘well we had it in x y z shop’ for ages until I snapped that speculation wasn’t going to help look for it. So now I’ve got to phone round everywhere they could have been, because of course it’s beyond her to do it...

There are a lot of different issues here. Some people have genuine mental health issues (and separately others just get a bit anxious and if they want to get on with life and on in life they need to suck it up). I haven't ever had a panic attack (I hardly even know what they are) and I am very lucky.

So what makes a robust, stoic child/teenager who grows into the adult who can tackle whatever life throws at them. It will have at its core being loved so you have a sense of self worth inside; then it will be having had parents who help show you how to do practical things; how to speak in public, fill a car with petrol and have an expectation that you will get on with things whatever life might throw at you; then I suspect it also involves doing things that are good for your mental health like enough sleep, not drinking too much, getting outside, bit of exercise, healthy foods. Perhaps we are also just born with it - looking on the bright side, being optimistic and happy, expecting things will work out okay.

Agree that the key problem is the relatively new expectation that no one should have to challenge their anxiety or get beyond it in any way.

Xenia, my depressed, anxious, autistic dd was never a robust, stoic child. But she's a determined bugger who knows that if she wants to move out, buy a house, etc. she has to get on with it and work hard. We deal with the anxiety. I talk her down from the 'I can't do this x might happen' mindset. That's my contribution. The rest she does herself. I suppose she is lucky to have someone to sound her out when blind panic hits. Some people don't have that.

I am sorrry about the daughter. It sounds like she has good support at home. There are lots of different kinds of issues on the thread so it's hard to generalise but my questions were just so we could get at why there may be less ability to cope (for those who are not ill or disabled) than may be there used to be and I suspect too many "kidults" around into their 20s (although not quite as bad as Italy with adult sons in their 30s and 40s suing parents who run out of patience and try to kick them out of home).

One of my sons yesterday said he wondered if he didn't have some of the issues of some others because of my generally telling them to get on with stuff (although they all know I would be incredibly supportive if there were real need) or may be it's just because he thinks he is better than I am at doing some things so chooses not to involve me to avoid my useless interfering and fuss.

I talk her down from the 'I can't do this x might happen' mindset. That's my contribution. The rest she does herself. I suppose she is lucky to have someone to sound her out when blind panic hits. Some people don't have that.

Over time you might want to start working on encouraging her to talk herself down, in case she comes to rely on you there to do it. You won’t always be there/available and it could end up being a crutch/safety behaviour ‘I can do this but only if I speak to mum first to calm me down’.