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 completely agree with you OP. It's almost as if because have to push through it and get on with life, that your anxiety isn't bad. I bloody hear you, it's hard just carrying on. I just tell myself to "just keep swimming " like Dory, but it is so blooming hard

Agree with you ....but what can we actually do about it? NHS is not fit for purpose and not paying their workers a decent wage ......and actually lots of NHS staff are off sick due to work related stress too. In what way should the workforce recognise mental health issues and what does this look like? How do you help someone who is anxious about work in general do their work? If work is the thing making them anxious then how practically can we get them back to work? I think mental health is very recognised as important as physical health much more so than previous generations as there are a record amount of people off sick due to mental health issues. There are numerous helpful support guidelines and advice re: mental health online and ways to cope with my issues...... the problem is people want a quick fix and in mh there is no quick fix

I say this as an established feminist, the problem is we removed the (vital) housewife role from society and didn’t fill that gap. Be it childcare (cost and flex to fit around working hours and patterns), aging parents, cleaning and household organisation, mental support to family and friends. Instead, women are increasingly expected to be superwoman and without support at home our kids are entering society without a work ethic in general!

^

Yup. We're doing it all, not having it all.

Just sending you some supportive vibes.

i don’t think OP should be shamed for sharing her feelings about being overwhelmed. Bit of compassion people.

I suffer from severe Deppression cause of traumatic childhood shit experinces

I am on sick at the moment cause of physical health disorders Rumertoid and OestoAthritis,

I do want to go back to doing some paid work and volunteering
So i am utilising my time off to better myself to enable that,

I do feel controversial to say

that the benefits system has become far too much co dependency dynamic system which is dysfunctional and unhealthy way of looking at things
needs tweaking to a certain extant

I am going to actively do volunteering work again to improve my cofindence and Cv etc
Something different this time,

Also benefit system should have staggered mental health support package to help people go back to work,

Which includes the conditions of volunteering experince of their choice to improve people's cofindence and Cv,

Funny enough i did do volunteering of my choice for a while working at nature conservation in uk
I enjoyed it

I couldn't do everything cause of my health issues,
however i did do some things with support as team work...

It helped my mental health issues too

and i still had full benefit obviously i had to still attend job centre..

I think many of the best questions are asked rhetorically, and why is it higher in the UK is a valid question.
The relative value of labour has gone down, meaning less equality and escalating the rat race. At the same time, there is less safety net.
We can worship other places too much. Greece is a depressing place for young people to try and make a living.

The idea that we would all be working shorter hours relied on really, really wealthy people deciding they had enough money and did not need anymore.

I might get shredded for saying this but I will anyway. A former colleague in my last job had severe anxiety and she could barely function. She spent most of her time hiding in the loos or stationary cupboard crying.

She was very behind in her work so we had to pick up the slack & I wished she went to her GP & got signed off. Whilst I had every sympathy for her situation, the mental impact on the team was huge. So I left for another job in the end.

I wish people got the right sipport for the MH and that taking sickleave wasn't so demonised. The Tories have a lot to answer for here, they've run down services, pressurised people to breaking point & are now hounding them for being ill.

I feel for you, sounds like you are going through a very tough time. And it’s no way to live, I hope you find a way through it. I am a parent of a teen with severe anxiety and she struggles into school as much as she possibly can, but there have been periods in the past when the school told me she was too ill to be there and she couldn’t attend. During those periods, it is hard to describe how much it affected her but some of the symptoms were very physical. Strange tics, a lot of shaking. Like another poster said, she can really struggle to speak. She gets intrusive thoughts that overtake her mind and OCD that can stop her from being able to do a simple task. For example one time I found her sobbing in the bathroom as she had been trying to hang a towel up for 20 minutes but her OCD was tricking her into thinking she wasn’t doing it right and she couldn’t leave the room. In fact fairly often I have to talk her through situations where she is stuck due to her OCD. I really hope she will be able to work one day, but I have seen her in a position where it just wouldn’t be possible unfortunately and I have a horrible feeling this will reoccur despite her already being on medication and having therapy etc. I also wonder why so many teens are neurodiverse and ill though. I struggled with depression in my teens but still got through school so was functional, but her problems are much more severe.

Couldn’t agree more. Doesn’t have to be a housewife, could be a househusband. I think the teen mental health crisis is not something we can solve medication and understanding employers. It’s no access to social media till 16, time outside for kids and teens, teens been allowed and encouraged to get part time jobs and start taking responsibility for themselves.

OP I hear you and agree with you. I think there’s a world of difference between people on here who’ve had relatives be sectioned etc. Their situation is bad and on a different scale. There are also a lot of people for whom going to work and having regular routines and incomes would be an essential first step.

Agree with cox. All the care women did. Unpaid unthanked unrecognised. Well we stopped doing it because we are now forced into the labour market. Result? Generation of anxious and depressed young people and a care crisis for the elderly with people using their whole estates to pay staff to do what the women of the family used to do at home. The men in charge didn’t think this one through did they?

You might be surprised by what you find there. They have lower corporation tax and lower employer social security contributions than we do. This makes the conditions for starting, growing or introducing a business to their markets more favourable in those countries than in the U.K.

We have the highest level of personal taxation since the Second World War, but with more inflationary pressure on the cost of living, more stealth taxes and bizarre disincentives like sharp lines at which people end up worse off if they earn a penny more because they lose access to child tax credits, lose their tax free allowance, lose funded childcare and lose access to pensions savings incentives. Some of these hit on very modest incomes, others on good incomes and some hit people who are clearly well off. You will find a lot less means testing if this sort in Scandinavian countries. E.g. Childcare is provided to everyone, regardless of income. No one ends up as they do in the U.K. paying the equivalent of a marginal rate of over 100% tax, which is what happens here if a parent of young children earns c.£120K a year and needs preschool childcare for two children, having already paid a marginal rate of 67% by losing the tax free allowance.

We are also not them. We have a larger economy that needs people in work and we have a much larger, sicker population. With rising demands on our welfare budget, the implications are stark. It is more than clear that our tax paying population cannot afford to support a growing tax-receiving population at the current rate. It sucks money away from other areas of government spending that support economic activity and national prosperity and creates a tax burden that causes businesses to leave.

Yeah, because disabled people should just be happy to live in squalor. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Why on earth should a disabled person not be deserving of a clean home and tidy garden?

Completely agree with you op, and looks like a lot of people do too. I’ve suffered with (diagnosed) depression and anxiety for many years, I self harmed through my teens and as a young adult, and had suicide attempts. I’ve always worked, I had no choice.
I think the governments new proposals for benefits will be popular with lots of people, although many won’t want to admit it.

Suicide is a much bigger risk for neuro diverse people who collectively are more likely to struggle with anxiety. It isn’t something you can just get on with or switch off for many hence Autism being a protected disability.

I think we are on very dodgy ground if we’re going to start dismissing disability and those not working because they can’t by saying others struggle just as much but get on with it better.

The proposals are stupid.
If the recipients are undeserving, why give them vouchers at all?
If they are deserving, why not cash which is more efficient and cheaper to give and better to receive?
And if treatment is easily available to help people back to work, why not just supply that anyway.

Exactly this. It will be insanely expensive to organise and time costly keeping more people out of work. Every case is hugely different with all manner of evidence. Differing needs will change, going backwards and forwards saying I need a voucher for this instead of this now instead of that. Half the care isn’t there anyway. A pretty paper voucher isn’t house to rustle up specialised therapists and treatment that people are in 2 year waiting lists for.

They know it won’t work and they’re scaremongering because they know they have no reality of getting into power and thus no necessity to make it work. They know it would go the same way as many of their other ludicrous schemes and declarations.

I’ve always worked, I had no choice.

It's not usually a 'choice' not to work. Many people just get to the point where they can't function or participate in the workplace, or anywhere else for that matter. I understand that there are those who manage to keep working despite all their mental health struggles. But continually ramming it home that you've kept right on working sounds as though you think others should be able to do the same. We are all different.

I also think there seems to be serious amount of ignorance around the difference between stress and anxiety.

I'm away back to the tea and biscuit thread. It is lovely.

Work was causing me anxiety to the point where I had picked out a place on the way home to smash my car into. Every morning I would drive past it thinking that tomorrow would be the day I would have the guts to do it - even if it just got me a few days off. Then I made one small mistake at work - as in I didn’t have written planning for that week small - and I was made to wait a week (where my line manager kept making remarks about how “she wouldn’t want to be in my shoes on Friday”) before being pulled into a meeting where I was verbally ripped apart and told how shit I was. After that I just fell apart. I was signed off for a month and then two more weeks before I handed my notice in and worked my 6 week notice. During that time the managers ignored me completely- never even said good morning. It was horrendous. I left into agency work, and I realised on my last day at that place that I no longer thought longingly about crashing my car and knew I’d made the right decision. Was it hard? Yes. Did I end up in debt that it took me 5 years of full time work to get out of? Yes. But now I recognise the signs that things are getting too much and know what to do to try and alleviate that anxiety. This time, when I felt the same feelings I didn’t need the time off work, I knew it was time to move on, so I have. Back to agency work, but this time with savings and a plan behind me so I don’t end up in debt. Sometime people need that complete separation from work to see what they need to do to alleviate or at least ameliorate their symptoms.

Yes, I see what OP is saying but framing being so anxious you are literally unable to function as an indulgence is a bit unpleasant.

You would be better off asking why there isn't sufficient support for you and your mental health rather than taking what others have.
Mumsnet will always become a hive of benefit bashing whenever there's an election looming. You can set your watch by it oddly it disappears once the election is over.

I was like this. Just kept going.

Then I had three family members in three different hospitals during covid (my mum in icu, my 5yo nephew with a burst appendix and my best friend in after a terrible car accident). Was coping until they were all released and then I had a breakdown. Physically couldn't get out of bed, couldn't eat, felt like I couldn't get a breath. Scariest period of my life and I'm just getting back on track now three years later. Diagnosed with anxiety and CPTSD.

I was thinking about jumping off a bridge. I mean I would never have done it (decided to give in and take meds instead) but I really wanted to. It’s not great.
And yes being treated like shit at work wasn’t helping. I got lucky in the end and was sent away on a secondment but if that hadn’t happened I may of ended up a gibbering wreck.

I wasn't going to kill myself, I was going to run away. Had a bag of essentials in the car, and money in my savings account for a hotel. I planned in just leaving and never going back!