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.

Sorry but this is so insulting and ignorant If you suffer a breakdown the mental illness takes charge and why people can end up suicidal. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep for weeks . Every time my body began to drift into sleep I suffered panic attacks. This went on for months until I went missing. I wanted to jump in a canal.

@Funnywonder, well said. It is notable how many on this thread write about how they "have to work" as though it is remarkable that a Princess like them should have to work. Of course, they are resentful.

Sorry apologies for my above post .i am half asleep.

Marriage, kids, a dog, & a mortgage, are self inflicted, you choose that lifestyle. The majority of you can’t tell me that you don’t claim tax credits, child allowance or childcare. These, are all benefits.

Yep. It is no coincidence that Sunak's announcement of the green paper and the uptick of benefits bashing have occurred this week.

The run up to the GE will be grim on MN.

With the hoops I had to jump through while fully psychotic in order to get PIP I really doubt anyone with normal levels of anxiety or mental health rumbles could qualify. I faintly remember writing all sorts of paranoid gibberish on my PIP forms because that was all I was capable of. It certainly wasn't a case of crying before work in the car, actually I loved going to work while psychotic. I could put my hands through the walls and saw the best hallucinations there, my Dr was the one who made me stay off. Which was the right call, I couldn't safely do my job while in that state.

People will say oh but your case is different, you had 'proper' and severe enough MH issues that what OP is saying doesn't apply. Not realising pretty much all the people claiming PIP for MH issues are the 'proper' and severe cases. The few that could manage work can't access the support they'd need to work anyway. It's a case of throwing the most vulnerable under the bus.

Very interesting discussion and useful to read of all the different experiences. It's a shame that people will turn on each other over it.
My experience is one of burnout. A stressful though NMW job coupled with awkward elderly parents, DH dealing with a life-limiting illness and an adult child who's finally had adhd/autism diagnosis after years of trying to get her help for self harming/suicide ideation/deep black depression and the inability to hold down a job for very long. I asked for time off, very clearly very stressed, because I struggled on right up until I simply couldn't, and promptly got the sack. Because it was a zero hours job and they could do that.
Benefits don't compare with a decent wage at all, so nobody will live a life on benefits unless they really believe that is their only option. The ones who look like they are living the high life on benefits are abusing the system, and clampdowns hurt the people who do need the benefits.
I'm finding it hard to get another job that doesn't have insane pressure as I know already that I won't cope with that. Confidence also takes a knock after being sacked.

I think the real issue is that MH needs to be treated like a broken leg.
Treatment as / when it occurs not waiting for ever letting things fester and getting gradually worse...

I also think there is a lot of pressure on women particularly to work while raising kids. Some are better equipped dealing with the pressures than others. No judgement, its just how things are.
I remember a time when I just wanted all to stop. Luckily for me lockdown happened. It gave ne a chance to step back, evaluate and change a few things.

Without lockdown, I would have been a candidate for burn out/ breakdown as the workload was unsustainable.

Can't believe the pile on I was getting for suggesting a poster doesn't worry about the cleaning. If people read back I have never once objected to the money people get or suggested anyone pull themselves together or some such thing. The only thing I have criticised modern life and the society we have built and how that is to blame for some of the anxiety/depression so many people now suffer from. I was serious, lower the bar on stuff. There was a thread on here a while ago about 'dream floors' and somebody being 'devastated and heartbroken' that a floor had got damaged. Ffs, give up on pointless shit that doesn't matter.

I totally agree OP you are not being unreasonable.

Seen it time and time again so many want to not work and claim benefits…especially those in social housing as they get their rent paid it’s a choice they have no interest in working…it’s wrong.

It needs a shake up big time!!

Yes & No

I have severe anxiety - like didnt complete secondary/no real friends/poor memory & planning skills but I work because I can..... I got into a job I'm capable of doing & would be completely screwed if I had to start from scratch doing interviews with multiple companys/competing against other applicants/having to travel to another place ect.

Being employed in a job already & finding a job job are 2 so totally different ballgames for people with mental health problems

I actually think we could really do with a basic national income. Money paid to everyone, enough, just, to live on and that people get whether they work or not. That and a massive council house building programme (and I say that as a private LL myself). I would not be surprised at all if a BNI actually resulted in more people with mental health problems going to work. The stress and pressure of the benefit system would be removed, the need to 'stay sick' (and I don't say that flippantly, I mean the knowledge that if people get better the pressures on modern life will be piled back onto them makes them ill).

Here's an idea. basic national income for everyone whether you work or don't work. Just enough to cover all bills, not enough for 'luxuries'. If they want more than that they can get a job without losing their BNI.

Bollocks Kendodd. At least own what you said to arseinthecoopwindow. You said:

Why do you need a cleaner or gardener?
Genuine question and not being goady.
I asume you must live alone, otherwise other family member could do it. If you live alone you wouldn't make much mess

That statement shows you have very little understanding of the day to day lives of disabled people and their carers. You rightly got your arse handed to you.

I do own it.
If you live alone, your not going to make much mess, so don't worry about it.
Or are you saying she should worry about it?

OP I have had this with my family. I suffered very badly a few years ago with a panic disorder. It was horrendous, I couldnt eat very much and what I did eat went straight through me, I lost a good bit of weight very quickly. I wasnt sleeping, was suicidal because I was in a constant state of panic, like about 50 panic attacks every day. It was honestly the worst period of my life and I understood why people kill themselves.

My BIL suffered a similar illness a couple of years later and "took to the bed" for weeks. Basically moved to his parents house, didnt go into work (family business), everyone rallied around him and he was allowed the time and space to lie in bed. My sister asked me about panic attacks as she knew I had them. When I tried to explain what things were like for me at that time, she was very dismissive as I continued on with life while her DH was so bad he had to completely withdraw from life.
She said I couldnt have been as bad as him. It was difficult to hear. I didnt judge him for the way he coped but I was definitely dismissed because I struggled on. I had no choice by the way.

YABU for drinking the Tory koolaid

Proof propaganda works right here

What if someone can't empty bins, clean the loo, mop a floor, change sheets? What about a garden becoming totally overgrown? I think you're making an assumption that everyone is able to clear up as they go along, but not everybody is.

I'm not overly sure all that is true. I am from a previous generation, so gen X and both my parents worked as did the majority of my friends parents. I have other siblings some classed as genx like me and some the generation after. We had the same parents, same home, difference was consumerism was more prevalent for my younger siblings and the advent of mobile phones and child centric approach towards children and expectations of going to university for almost everyone at school, are things that do spring to mind as differences, and no doubt because of the age differences my parents were more exhausted or maybe expectations in parenting had changed with the younger siblings, so possibly more permissive.
I recognise that this is anecdotal, but I can say that genx in our family appear to be mentally more resilient than the younger siblings.

But it wouldn’t be the same amount. My bills are very low. No pets. Children grown up, left home and working full time. So a basic national income would suit me fine.

if the same amount were paid to someone with 6 kids, in a high rent area with a ton of pets they would be in poverty.

Oh God are you still going with your opinions on how disabled people should live in a house for 20 years that's never been cleaned because you don't clean as often as you think you should

Never mind the being adamant that people who are disabled and live alone shouldn't dare make too much mess because they shouldn't have a cleaner

You might say you weren't trying to be goady but if that was true you would have listened to the disabled people's explanations on here and either stopped or owned your error

But here you still are as an able bodied person still telling disabled people they are doing it wrong.

Yes, this.

I've no idea why that poster is still digging.

Being thoughtless once is one thing. Continuing to blether on after the obvious has been pointed out to you, is quite another.

That's a longstanding poster, and they're completely crashing themselves in my estimation.

I’m a widow, a pensioner and disabled.

I doubt my neighbours would be too impressed if I let the home descend into smelly squalor, and the garden a jungle🙄

So, I employ a gardener, and I employ other people if I can’t do certain things.

Why should disabled people have to live in a tip, simply because they can’t manage?

Or what @dimllaishebiaith said, much more eloquently than me.

They don’t have to live in a tip. They just have to find a way to solve their own issues sometimes. A garden isn’t a human right, plenty of people live in flats and a garden isn’t an option for them. There has to be a line somewhere between what is a human right and what is a luxury.