People who work have anxiety too

[Fedupandgrump]

Anyone else on the verge of a breakdown with work, kids, mortgage and cost of living?

I’ve read a lot of threads recently about people with mental health conditions worried about being forced into employment when they feel as though they would not be able to cope. Whilst I sympathise, it’s come at a time where I am completely overwhelmed, burnt out and wonder how the fuck I’m going to get through the week. I treat myself to a half hour sob in Sainsburys car park every couple of days and I wake up every morning with dread, fear and anxiety about what the day will hold. However, I go and work because I. Have. No. Choice. I have two kids and a mad dog that relies on me and my husband to keep our shit together and a roof over our heads. Every day I can feel my heart racing and I feel permanently like I’m in fight or flight mode and I wonder if this is going to lead to a premature heart attack in my 30’s.

I sometimes feel like people who don’t work due to poor mental health thinks those of us who do work, are suffering less than them. I know IAMBU but I can’t help the way I feel at the minute.

I empathise OP. I have a diagnosed and medicated mental illness but we simply wouldn’t survive without my well paid job. Every day is an unbearable struggle. The only thing that potentially would help my specific mental illness is weekly talking therapy but I can’t afford it and the NHS doesn’t offer it on an ongoing basis (for me, anyway).

I haven’t walked in anyone else’s shoes so I am not judging their situation, just empathising that there are so many days I feel like I can’t do it but I have to or we wouldn’t be able to cope financially.

But that’s not true if we keep being told young adults can’t work due to mental health issues. Most of them haven’t had long term employment and are allowed to rot in their bedrooms.

I don’t know many people who enjoy going to work but the majority of us have to to pay our bills.

OP I think you need to make an appointment with your GP. You sound like you're barely coping especially if you feel jealous of people without jobs. This is not sustainable - like a pp said, what would you do if you hit an actual crisis? Could you guarantee you would be safe to be around?

You say you're working full time. Are you a permanent employee? If so presumably your employer has some kind of contractual sick leave policy. I wonder why you are refusing it given how unwell you are and the multiple ways this must be impacting you and your family.

Taking those benefits away is not going to suddenly make them able to work

Not for everyone. For a decent percentage though I suspect if benefits were stopped they'd suddenly be able to work.

Op yanbu at all.

I think anyone suffering with their mental health should get treatment and help, I don't think anybody here can judge whether your mental health problems are better or worse than the average person signed off on mental health grounds.

I worked with anxiety for years.

I had no choice. Myself and my DD had left my ExH after violence. I was fighting a divorce. I needed the money.
I was as constantly on the verge of a breakdown.

Then I had the breakdown. I started having what looked like epileptic fits only they weren't epileptic they were due to anxiety and stress. I was a teacher and my school called an ambulance at one point because I collapsed and had (what looked like) a massive epileptic fit in front of a load of students.

www.cedars-sinai.org/health-library/diseases-and-conditions/n/non-epileptic-seizures.html

I began to dissociate and also developed selective mutism, my body would go into fight or flight and I would be literally unable to talk, it happened while I was in a very important meeting with someone who was accrediting our school for a particular award. I couldn't talk.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_mutism

Severe anxiety can impact your body and mind so badly that your workplace don't want to have you any more because you are literally unable to do your job.

You might think that sobbing before work every day is as bad as anxiety can get. Believe me, it can get much much worse.

I found work so appallingly stressful that it certainly contributed to my breakdown. I have great sympathy for you. Working with severe MH is a real struggle sometimes, and I admire anyone he can manage a decent career alongside these issues.
In terms of PIP, it's not means tested and you can claim it if you are working. So if your illness is impeding your life you should apply. I hope you can seek out some counselling maybe, through the GP? Also do you have any work based support, like occupational therapy you could get through employer? I really hope things improve for you.

OP if you need support with your mental health and your situation (and it sounds like you do) then you need to take some action to help yourself, rather than resenting other people who have already done so. This line of thinking will get you nowhere.

I hope you get the help you need soon.

I think your anger is misplaced. Get help for your own issues. Being jealous of those who are too unwell to work. Really??

Why are you so ignorant and can't accept that some people may feel worse than you? Mental health issues vary from person to person. Only because you could cope with something it doesn't mean everyone else in the same situation should cope!

Are you sure you really move on? Or you shut down all your emotions in order to move on? Because you can do it for a while, but not forever, also as a result a person starts having a lack of empathy, becomes angry, moody etc.

"We keep being told" implies you don't think it's actually true. Our current generation of young people are experiencing the largest mental health crisis that the UK has ever seen.

Until mental health starts being recognised as important and valid as physical health, this problem will only increase.

The genius of an unfair system which serves to crush ordinary people and make the rich even richer is that often these people turn against each other instead of looking to the real enemy.

I don't think you are unreasonable but I do think you are being a little unfair. People who get to the point where they can't work are often just a few steps down the path from the rest of us when the chips are down and stresses high. It's okay and healthy to recognise that you are overwhelmed and struggling to hold it together, it's not okay to judge others in their lowest moments

I worked through severe anxiety for years till I had a breakdown last year.

I have no opinion either way wrt to people claiming. My doctor wanted me to go off sick for long term many times but I didn't see it as an option. I didn't think I was ill enough. I could still put on a show, as it were.

I'm so confused about PIP. It was only a few days last year I couldn't get up and washed and fed without help, so I think that rules me out anyway.

OP I would suggest trying meds if you haven't already. I'm not on anything now but they saved my life. Please don't direct ire at others. We're all struggling in a crappy world. 💐

This.

Does it always work that way? At my place of work it appears like, anecdata, that people who are physically unwell get signed off for a finite amount of time, come back. People who are mentally unwell get signed off for a finite amount of time, get worse, take longer off, eventually feel completely unable to return.

I know when I couldn't work I felt worse and worse and felt agoraphobia starting.

I'm not sure 'resting' is curative in many cases.

YANBU

Agree@ringoffiire

My dh worked full time for over 40 years. Mainly as a secondary school teacher. He suffered from anxiety and depression but just "soldiered on". There were warning signs we missed, changes in behavior, more anxiety etc Then, one day, it all became too much, he had a major psychotic episode that resulted in him almost accidentally killing me. He was hospitalised and sadly, that was the first of many incidents and many hospital stays, crisis team intervention, psychosis team intervention etc Obviously, the school didn't want him back and who could blame them? Many times I didn't want him back myself! He's currently under mental health services and on a load of anti psychotic meds, he no longer leaves the house and I'm now his full time carer. After what he's been through he would never think that people who work and hold down full time jobs, look after family, run a household etc can't possibly have mental health issues like him and that they are all coping just fine. He understands completely what a struggle day to day life is for a lot of people and how it can tip them over the edge, because that's exactly what he went through. Mentally ill people who claim benefits and can't work aren't another species, they all have their own story and it can happen anyone. It just feels that at the moment everyone is bashing people who are in receipt of mental health benefits and can't work. He didn't just give up his job and let the mental illness overtake him, he had no control over it. People who knew him, family, work colleagues etc couldn't believe what happened to him, he wore a mask at work and everyone thought he was coping fine. If anyone is struggling I beg them to get help before it escalates. Contrary to what everyone seems to be thinking at the moment, a life without a job, living off disability benefits isn't the easy option.

YANBU OP. I completely see your side and I have moments like this too, but ultimately we need to remember that the system has been created to turn regular people against each other and place blame on certain groups so that those who created the system just benefit from it, rather than having to take accountability and fix things.

I also see the side of all the comments saying ‘visit your GP, get signed off’ but, like OP, I think ‘to what end?’. Some people do have to keep soldiering on and go to work. It’s a problem with the system, not the people.

I agree OP.
I have such severe general and health anxiety, agoraphobia and panic disorder. All diagnosed and I’m in high intensity therapy for. But I HAVE to go to work. I have two young children and a mortgage. I cannot afford life as it is let alone being off work.

"We keep being told" implies you don't think it's actually true. Our current generation of young people are experiencing the largest mental health crisis that the UK has ever seen.

Why is this?
I think we need robust research into the cause of this and high quality treatment.
Previous generations lived through wars, saw their children dying in infancy ( both my grandparents lost a child). Why is the mental health of young people so much worse now?
As a society we need to enable people to live healthy lives and, for some reason, we're getting this very wrong

I'm sorry you've been through so much.

Your story is very telling, and more people should know it and get educated that mental health issues is a very serious disease.

All these benefit applicants that have somehow managed to trick doctors, specialists and gov't appointed health assessors should all take up acting if they are so good at faking it!