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.

The government caused this confusion - they know that most people don’t understand different payments for sickness/disability, so they’ve thrown PIP forward as an “out of work benefit”.

Which it’s not, and never has been.🙄.

ESA is the “out of work benefit.”

A horrible story but thank you.
Mild depression has been accepted in the modern day and PTSD gets sympathy. For others, the stigma is massive.

I was widowed suddenly two years go - well 25 months to be exact.

I did all the necessary admin. I organised the funeral. I had help of course but I had to be the driving force.

I was jollied back into my retail business after two months. The support drifted away. Custom dropped. I funded everything on credit because I listened to people telling me everything was fine, it was just the effects of bereavement not that actually it all coincide with the COL crisis. Everybody cheerleader me at a distance.

I finally had to throw in the towel around this New Year. I did steps to well being. All the counselling could do was say "oh, that's alot - practise self care".

I am in the process of being evicted from my rented home. I may have secured a tiny one bed flat but it hinges on speedy expedition of admin from the council because I have to borrow the deposit. And councils don't do speedy.

Currently my Dad has come to stay because my elderly step mother attacked him. Long story. Services are dithering around trying to get her back on track but my Dad has multiple physical health issues that could kill him at any moment.

I am currently on UC and have just managed to convince them I'm broken and can't look for work at the moment. Three separate UC advisors have encouraged me to apply for PIP. Bizarre eh?

I have lost / am in the process of losing everything. I'm medicated for high blood pressure. I am 55 and simultaneously mutinous and terrified.

I have tried every avenue to access practical help fir my Dad as the wait and see if SM gets better approach doesn't address the fact he's likely to be completely homeless in two weeks. He has no assets - she owns the house outright. Plenty of platitudes no practical help. Do not, I repeat, do not attempt to offer me sage advice because I have tried EVERYTHING. And of course services are so stretched and underfunded that until SM burns the house down (she has fluctuating capacity before you ask) no-one can compel her to do anything.

So, I'm an object lesson in how a series of unfortunate events in modern society is detrimental to mental health. I'm a whisker away from going postal most of the time. My big girl pants are all too small. I feel worthless and pathetic and only the needs of my cat, my Dad and concerns for my adult son stop me from doing stupid things. But I have done stupid things. I'm lucky the consequences haven't been worse.

Most irksome are people telling me my late DP would hate to see me like this, still sad, angry, traumatised. No shit. But he's dead unfortunately. I've got this apparently. At 55 I feel like a scared toddler.

So, crack on and kick me while I'm down? I'll just take it. I'm used to it.

100 % agree!

It’s almost “Well I go to work with my limbs falling off!”

None of this is okay!

Not easy is it? The trouble is bereavement doesn’t happen in isolation. At the worst time, other life problems/stresses have to be dealt with.

A year on, I’m sort of coping without DH, but if anything else stresses me, I go into freefall.

I’ve got no sage words of advice, I suppose we plough through doing the best we can.

💐

Please see the post "Octavia64 · Today 10:38" she explained very well that there's no such thing as "MANY people from multiple generations of non-workers on benefits". It's a planted seed in your head either by the media, government, your own family, friends, society with no proofs or real data.

"We no longer live in a society where enough people want to contribute" - again it's a planted seed in your head by someone, no real proof or data. Why do you think people don't want to work and have a good lifestyle? What's wrong with working? I like working, everyone likes to work as long as they can do it.

Why do you think someone on purpose will stop working, claim the benefits, live counting pennies and in poverty? Instead of working and feeling good about yourself, being proud of the job you do and being proud of being able to have the lifestyle you want? Why do you talk about work like something what should be avoided at all cost?

I'm happy you never experienced severe mental health issues. But you shouldn't dismiss other people's experience who as a result of severe mental health issues couldn't work for a while. You shouldn't dismiss the GP professionalism when they give sick note to sick to people who experience severe mental health issues. It's not an imaginary illness, it's real.

OP is on the edge of a breakdown now, I know it because I experienced it. It's better for OP now to ask for help, from her GP and not wait until it will happen. I didn't tell her she needs to be signed off work straight away, because I'm not a GP. But it's obvious for me OP is on the edge of a breakdown now.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/may/01/mental-health-services-key-to-preventing-violent-crimes-says-khan

Just chucking this here. Yes, it's extreme situations, and no, most mentally ill people are not a risk to anyone but themselves. But this highlights things rather well I feel.

I’m a millennial, my older sister is genX and I can tell you for a fact the last thing she is, is resilient.

there, our anecdotes even each other out

I'm so, so sorry. That sounds awful and so hurtful.

The highest suicide rate has always been in middle aged people.

@NoisySnail, yes, but the peak age has drifted up recently suggesting there is some generation effect as well as age.
As a young Gen X, young people seem to have it together better than we did.

So where's @Fedupandgrump gone? The brave and worthy OP who only joined (or name changed) on 29th April? Who has posted this inflammatory race-to-the-bottom then fucked off?

I don't want to share my DD20's story, how her life has been destroyed by anxiety disorders, because I think certain people on MN get off on it - maybe the OP for example? But it seems that with a large majority (84% of respondents) on here agreeing with her, Rishi was not wrong to think his attack on disabled people (esp with mental illness) was a big vote winner. Seems to have gone down very well. I'd love the OP to come back so they can be given the big pat on the back they deserve.

Or maybe there is better support?
Because for all the complaints about mental health services, there used to only be pills for nearly everyone.

Yes. It is all a reflection of circumstances.

No it hasn’t. Gen X has had the highest suicide rate since they became adults. They are a unique spike in the demographics that has carried through year after year and is still there now.

”A generation of people born in the 1960s and 1970s, known as Generation X, are dying from suicide or drug poisoning in greater numbers.
ONS data for England and Wales has shown that in the late 1980s to early 1990s, the age at which most people died by taking their own lives or drug poisoning was concentrated around this generation, when they were in their 20s.
Since that time, deaths from these two causes have continued to affect the same generation, who are currently in their 40s and 50s to a higher degree than any other.
This effect has also been seen in the USA and Canada.”
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandwellbeing/articles/middleagedgenerationmostlikelytodiebysuicideanddrugpoisoning/2019-08-13

I've been on both sides.

I quit a job once because of anxiety - it was caused by the job, I was treated like shit by my line manager and supervisor. I was lucky, I was in a financial position to be able to do that. I'd started to fantasise about injuring myself so I'd have a good excuse not to go in, thought I should get out before I actually did anything.

It worked out for the best really, found a job I liked, that paid more, that treated me better.

Now I have horrendous anxiety again - not work related this time, peri-menopause related, having a child with ASD related... not enough sleep, no exercise, little time to do things that might help because I work and I look after my son, and I'm constantly stressed, constantly contacting services, the school, etc etc.

I don't think work is the thing that will help everyone. Sometimes work will cause or exacerbate mental illness. And just because one person can plough through, doesn't mean another person can - severity of symptoms, ability to cope can vary. Effects of medication can vary - and the side effects, some people cannot work because of the side effects of their medication, but without the medication they'd be in hospital.

With respect, it really does seem like you have no idea what severe, debilitating anxiety and MH issues are like to live with. Take a couple of weeks off, indeed…. Give, not just your head, but your whole body a wobble.

Interviewing for jobs can be like working in a high paced/high flying/high paid career though.

Your litterally travelling around city/area meeting with managers, supervisors, business owners & competing against other workers for the same finances & budget

...... except your not being paid, you don't always have support or reliable transport you don't have a stand in if your unavailble like with a team or any garuntee of 'winning' the position & its 100% worst if your unemployed with mental health problems + very few workers in most industry's will ever do that sort of thing for a living....

It's a ridiculous system & 100% believe their should be a 2 tier system for jobs advertised 1 where people can compete for (qualification/experiance necessary) & one that can be done by training or provide work experiance to anybody where jobs available are simply given to people who apply first as I do believe that would encourage alot of people into work

@SummerFeverVenice That is interesting, I did not realise. This is the generation who lived through the destruction of traditional communities.

@QueenAnn
Really sorry to hear of how you and your DH have been treated. You certainly deserve support 🌹 xx

@Automaticforthepeople Thank you for your kindness x

It is an anomaly. Your post was the general rule, but Gen X is the exception.

I think this might have been a wind 'em up and watch 'em go thread. I wish I hadn't fallen for it.

I am sorry your daughter is suffering. The cruelty of this government and its willingness to use vulnerable people as political pawns is sickening.

I'm not that surprised the OP hasn't been back today, it has been a bit of a pile on for someone who openly was saying they are not having the best time

I'm confused, I didn't provide an anecdote?