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.

@GoingDownLikeBHS I need you to explain like I’ve not been at brunch 🤪

She might not want to get off work as you put it. Then what stay at home moaning about your depression etc. it’s much better to get up and get on.

Mental illness doesn't fucking work like that. It doesn't care if you have time for it or not. I went from being employed full time, caring for my mum and finishing my MA to totally unable to get out of bed.

I don't normally ill wish but I hope you find how awful it is for yourself.

Bravo.

Yanbu

i couldn’t not work. I’ve been on both sides of not working due to mental health and always being employed. I was so bad at one point that I was signed off for the best part of a year. It did me absolutely no favours. I couldn’t and didn’t get out of bed and the shame just made it all worse. I have always suffered with my mental health but the game changer for me was to be honest about it. Everyone I work with has suffered with something. My manager who seems to have their life together suffers with panic attacks for no apparent reason. My colleagues have all been through something that has knocked them and most of us take medication. I decided that I wanted to be honest about my experiences and it opened up a whole conversation and a lot of support. I go to work because it helps me to have a purpose and when I started looking at it as a way to help me it made all the difference. You will be surprised how many people are feeling the same and I’m now a big advocate for talking about mental health. It made my job a life saver and I cannot see how not working would be beneficial. I would suggest that anyone who is suffering find a way to get out of the four walls that surround them. Not everyone can work but even when it seems impossible there are ways to stay engaged with society. My mum cannot work due to having stage 4 cancer and it’s been bringing her down massively but I’ve told her she needs to find some purpose and I get that it’s so hard to make yourself do it but it really does have huge benefits to do something. Anything. You should be proud of yourself for putting one foot in front of the other even when it’s hard. But just be honest about how you feel and I reckon you’ll find that most people are struggling too.

🙄

Fair enough. I call a truce!

Poor OP, clearly struggling a lot, and then a massive pile on. Be better
The OP doesn’t have much sympathy for other people struggling if she’s genuinely angry they take time out for their mental health/to get treatment but ok.

Are you actually serious? You're suggesting work, healthy eating and exercise to someone with severe mental illness? When I was at my worst, all my family could do was try to keep me alive. I wasn't aware of anything going on around me for most of the time. The time that I was aware, I wanted to jump off a cliff to escape the physical panic.

How would you suggest I could have gone to work if I didn't even know who or where I was? How could I have eaten healthy food when I wasn't aware what food was, let alone felt like eating it? How could I exercise when I physically could not move? I was a danger to myself and could not function. I'm genuinely surprised I'm still here now.

It's really, really shit to think that people actually believe that a "bit of discipline" can cure an imbalance in brain chemistry. Especially those who claim to have mental illness themselves.

Agree, although regarding the person I know they work for the NHS and have been off sick on full pay for the past 6 months, on and off previous to this. Now their salary will be reduced there’s talk of returning.

I often believe that public sector vs private sector benefits also have an impact. I used to work in the public sector and sick pay was extremely generous compared to where I work now in the private sector with no HR/Union as a back up!

I’ve HAD to drag myself out of the house during pretty awful times both mentally and physically, (while working in the private sector) to get to work, knowing that there would be no real support, no months of sick pay, whereas if I’d worked in the public sector, I would have felt supported and cushioned and would most likely have needed more time, purely because the incentive is to stay at home, being supported.

Is that such a bad thing? I really do think it is.

The people comparing their brush with mental illness that inconveniences to serious mental illness that incapacitates are like people comparing a sniffly head cold to hospital level double pneumonia.

There is a distinct theme of well I had a respiratory infection too and I ran a marathon, why are you in a hospital bed on a ventilator?!!

Total lack of awareness that however ill they were, it can be and is for some sufferers much much worse.

Bit like after the 2012 Olympics with physically disabled people. There really were people that had watched the Paralympics and then expressed the view that everyone disabled could do as well as they had.🙄

So, disablist abuse was flying in all directions.🤷‍♀️

It never seemed to occur to them that the able bodied could not all run like Usain Bolt. So, pointless to assume that all wheelchair users and amputees could all be like those in the Olympics.

Olympians are exceptional - they are not a yardstick to measure others by.

Any more than how infections affect people are.

Your story really resonated with me. May I ask how you managed to return to work? Did you start PT or go straight to FT? How long did it take to adjust? Did you have any wobbles? Did you disclose your illness to your employer?

Please ignore me if it’s too personal, it’s just that I’m in the process of applying for FT work having spent several years recovering from a breakdown not dissimilar to yours and I have to learn to live fully despite my illness. Although I’m optimistic, I’m also feeling very scared.

Stay at home moaning about your depression

Luxury! I was too busy with things like having a manic episode where I lost my mind and thought I could control time, culminating in me trying to kill myself, being sectioned, having ECT and being forced to take medication that made me drool.

But I suppose I should’ve just powered through.

@Boomer55 we're the wrong kind of disabled. Proper disabled people wouldn't be able to sign up to mumsnet! We're just not trying hard enough and a drain on the taxpayers, sitting in our free houses with our all our generous benefit money and undeserved pip.

Some of the comments on here are disgusting

YANBU.

Because I really meant you didn’t I 🙄. Always one knowing who we mean but thought you’d put your case forward as being the norm.

You know the people that we mean, do there was no need for your dramatic description. People don’t mind the real people in need but there’s a lot of grifters.

No, we don’t know the people you mean. Do enlighten us as to who these grifters are, and how you know they are grifters.

Because in my line of work I see many of them every day. They are all on pip but always have their faces made up, lips done and nails of perfection. When I suffered mentally I couldn’t get out of bed unless I was going to work.

How do you know they are on PIP?

Because it’s part of my job like I’ve already stated.

I couldn't agree more. Also my own mental health took a dive during my maternity with my daughter. It took a lot to go back to work but I needed the money and slowly but steadily my mental health is improving. Not being stuck in the house all day, having a bit of extra money to treat me and my daughter and talking to fellow colleagues has helped improve it.

People forget, don't they, that back when our industries like mining and steel works were shut down, the government actively shunted alot of the newly unemployed onto the sickness benefits of the time to massage unemployment figures, and make them more palatable to the electorate. Alot of those workers were physically worn out by a lifetime of hard physical graft. Retraining and attracting new business ventures into areas where those industries had existed was not going to happen overnight.

So forgive me being very cynical about government figures and statistics.

There have been a couple of well researched posts put up already challenging the assertion that the figures bandied about by the media and politicians are being misunderstood at best, and misrepresented at worst.

If you consider numbers of claims are down on real terms due to tighter restrictions on qualifying for claims, and then get told but but it's the amount of money we're having to spend to meet even those claims consider that costs are continually being driven upwards to reap more and more profit for a small number of powerful people.

No magic money tree -unless you're a bank facing collapse or a company suddenly able to profit from PPE. There is alot that is rotten in our state and institutions but it's not the fault of people on PIP, a good number of whom use it to support them working.

Honestly this is the most venal, ridiculous bit of political point scoring I've seen in a long time.