To ask what the last 5 years has done to your mental health?

[Wouldloveanother]

Mines ruined to be honest.

I feel like a lot of my naivety about life has been stripped away and I’ve been left with a feeling of exhaustion and dread. My life is basically unrecognisable since March 2020.

I thought I would be ‘over it now’ but I’m not.

not looking for anything in particular, just a solidarity moan.

For me it’s been anxiety. The lack of stability has let to struggling to manage anxiety. In scenarios where I was an assertive career woman I’ve become someone who can be triggered to anxiety by something I would’ve laughed at before.
The pandemic changed me then I also had a massive reconnecting with relatives in Ukraine who I suddenly was help up as owing responsibility to. They had it worse than me I know, but I was the emotional dumping ground.
I lose perspective and spiral and imagine worse case scenarios, for example energy bills of 1000s, loss of the home etc. I’m always worried about something unfolding.
Just solidarity really. It’s hard to find space to not be ok, or not to have a solution held up that you should have found. To recognise that you’re burnt out and not really fixable with a logical response.
I hope everyone finds an up curve now.

Life is hard for everyone, its your attitude, not your circumstances that makes all the difference."Don' t wait for the storm to pass, learn to dance in the rain" is one of my favourite quotes. Focus on whats going right, not wrong, makes hell of a difference.

The country has gone down the shitter - it's depressing

Brexit and covid have had no effect on my mental health. It's not that I'm immune to mental health issues - I had pretty serious post-natal anxiety after dc2 14 years ago. I'm a remainer and certainly no covid denier, and it's absolutely been a weird time... but I'm fine mental-health-wise tbh.

I think this attitude is hard for some people particularly those who have lost jobs, are struggling with employment & the rising living costs, have lost people through covid, & whose family have separated because of the stresses of lockdown. Just a few thoughts on what the changes of the last few years may have brought.

For me, local & national government is run by sneaky liars ( probably always has been) but the last few years this has really brought it alive for me - personal & wider experience has brought this home. I am really pissed off about this power imbalance & I think about it a lot.

A few involuntary stays in acute psychiatrac wards, including one straight jacket incident and 6 weeks completely removed from reality, one voluntary stay, 15 medication changes. 2 diagnosis'. Its been a ride.

A few involuntary stays in acute psychiatrac wards, including one straight jacket incident and 6 weeks completely removed from reality, one voluntary stay, 15 medication changes. 2 diagnosis'. Its been a ride.

Pretty quotes and a positive attitude are next to useless if things aren't ok. The suggestion we can all just 'fix' things is really quite distasteful.

The best quote reply I heard to that is ‘remember whilst we are in the same storm, we are not in the same boat’

Those with capita may have done fine in the pandemic. Some lost people. Some danced in the rain, others drowned.

I know for example some things I haven’t have coped with pat pandemic I’ve probably have been creating whole community solutions to. I’ll probably do better in the future too, but right now being burnt out I’m making a hash of the most simple things.

My ex husband ruined my MH, I have never been the same since. Honestly Covid and lockdown was a walk in the park compared to life with him and I never stopped being grateful we were long split as I wouldn't have survived lockdown with him.

I'm very much able to shrug even the most awful and scary stuff off, I was brought up in Germany during The Cold War, my Dad was a soldier regularly in conflict zones, we grew up knowing there was a real chance we could lose one of our parents, life expectancy for soldiers on the East/West border, if war was declared and they were the first force in, was a matter of hours back than and we all knew it even is youngsters. These days though, the main thing I struggle with is the creeping control mainly via SM of Required Right Think, the iron fist nudging us to think and act in the The Right Way. I am scared for my children, who I worry will have a limited, colourless life where they are too scared to say what they really think - already I say "you're safe to talk here but don't say this outside of the family/at school/college etc". I never could have imagined that I would see this kind of open authoritarianism in the UK and we are doing it to each other!

LondonWolf I live in a big block of flats with many residents having lived under authoritarian regimes. They immediately understood my feelings about lockdown, not surprisingly.

Working in the NHS during covid, mine will never be the same again.

I will never forget having to deliver the news that a much loved and wanted baby had sadly died in the uterus and caring for that mother while she birthed, met and said goodbye to her baby, completely alone.

The pandemic was beyond cruel in many areas and I know hoards of staff left with PTSD as a result. But I’m sure those claps we got will make it all better.

That resonated. Yes. The creeping fear, yet looking like a conspiracy nut.
It was the ‘reporting’ and curtain spying and person on person state monitoring. Here it sounds crazy, but I am reactive to authoritative coercion and particularly propaganda style behaviour management of the public. I don’t so much have a particular fear, just a creeping feeling it’s going wrong and a lose of control.

Plodding through as usual.
Brexit was at the time we moved house and I swear it was a bad omen about living here. Never felt settled.
Covid was fine as I'm a lone parent with no social life who likes running.

Don' t wait for the storm to pass, learn to dance in the rain

Fuck that shit

@LondonWolf i often used to say that it felt like ‘The Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ at the beginning of covid. People I thought were sensible suddenly started talking nonsense!

I also think that human rights went out of the window and the cruelty of people being alone in hospital will never be addressed because we’ve been silenced. I hate how people were so hostile towards each other and so judgemental and just so willing to bow to authority.

Oh really?

Sorry but please go away with your 'life affirming' quotes and save it for your cushion covers. This is the last thing people need to read currently. It is lazy preaching at best and in fact this sort of constantly spouted cliche makes people feel worse. Thanks.

In the last 6 years many things have trashed my mental health:

•Brexit
•Having two children with disabilities
•Diagnosis of a chronic illness
•Husband walking out and leaving me with two babies
•Divorce
•Ex-H doing something so horrific that we can no longer co-parent and he can never see the children again so becoming a lone parent with no family help at all
•Resulting investigation of me by SS to ensure I am safeguarding them and not allowing contact
•Resulting distress to DCs and refusal by NHS to provide therapy
•Resulting financial difficulties, particularly as normal childcare settings can't accommodate DCs' disabilities
•Having Covid 3 times, each time making my chronic illness more severe
•Moving house
•Work stress
•Lockdowns and having to work full time with two pre-schoolers at home
•4 year pay freeze and bills now becoming unaffordable, exacerbated by massive overtaxing of single parents compared to households with the same income but two adults to share childcare.

And that's the short version. Not been great, has it? And I can't see things improving any time soon, not for a decade or more and even then only if we had a competent Government (🤣🤣🤣).

So sorry that OP decided to railroad your lived experience, I hear you and appreciate your perspective.

This is so, so sad. It's appalling that nobody was allowed to be there with her. I can't imagine how traumatised she must be. And am very sorry to hear the trauma it caused to you as well. Some things no amount of time will ever heal.

Dogwhistle propaganda of the most insidious kind, and utterly distasteful to wield it in a thread where people are sharing their trauma and vulnerabilities.

Bacchus but that is the trauma for many people who have lived under authoritarian regimes.

why is everything a dog whistle online?!

I think a big factor in our collectively growing anxiety was the realisation that our lives and livelihoods were in the hands of complete fuckwits. Trumps comment about washing our insides with disinfectant for example. It was clear no-onehad a clue. Thank the lord for the real life common sense working people on the ground keeping everything running. I think we're all still in shock with what a shit show it all was.

It’s been amazing for me. I had no idea I was clinically depressed and so anxious until it came to a head during the start of Covid, where I was having crying fits over windy days imagining the tree outside might crash in our house and begging my husband to come home so I wouldn’t have to deal with it alone. The doctor told me it wasn’t normal and prescribed citalopram for the mood stabilizing and anxiety, and a small dose of quetiapine fumerate for sleep. I still don’t sleep well, but my temper is so even now and my stress levels so low! I barely ever raise my voice at my kids, and best of all it gave me the confidence to start writing again after 16 years unable to write. Since then I am having successes with contests and a few short stories published, and working on my novel. I can’t believe what a change it is from a few years ago!

Brexit referendum was 2016 wasn't it? So six years? Personally I've been on a downward spiral for 7!

In 2015 I had an accident and relatively minor injury that should have healed in 6 weeks. Guess what, it's still here! The same year I was severely anaemic, had serotonin syndrome and struggled to find new ADs. I need a big orthopaedic surgery which is going to be difficult to get through because of my other health problems. If I have it, I could be more fucked up, or I could have a chance at being better. My MH depends a lot on my physical health, because my physical health is so limiting. I also have trauma in my past which I'm trying to work through but stuff keeps happening that gets in the way.

DH will be out of work again end of October... he's a contractor who took a permanent job and a pay cut for some stability. Hollow laugh. He was out of work for 8 months during 2020 and we were close to not being able to pay our mortgage by the end.

And Brexit... we didn't even get a vote, but we are in the middle of it because we live in Europe - so it's already caused loads of administrative headaches, and makes it harder for us to move country to go where the work is. And the little headache of import duty on everything we buy from the U.K., not being able to send/receive gifts (there is no duty free gift allowance here). And the fact that I may never eat Wensleydale cheese again...

Costs of things like flights home and car hire have exploded so trips to visit family are expensive and stressful.

Only plus is that we probably chose the right time to buy an electric car when we got one a year ago!

Some days I wake up and think, what's the point?