Revelling in the misery?!

[RainyDaze4]

I’ve made the mistake of reading some of the threads on here and I’m just fed up of seeing people seemingly enjoying bringing doom and gloom to every discussion.

I don’t mean people feeling sad/hopeless, I mean the people who seem to enjoy telling others ‘If you think Christmas will be better you’re naive!’, ‘we’ll be in lockdown for another year yet!’, ‘ha! No vaccine until 2022 I reckon..’ etc etc

Do you feel better by writing that sort of stuff, is it genuinely what you think? I just find it unnecessary in a lot of cases, particularly when the OP is clearly struggling.

It’s like earlier in the year when it seemed like some people almost wanted the death toll to rise so they could be even more bitter about the government and take an air of ‘Told you so!!!’ about needing an earlier lockdown etc.

I think maybe I need to avoid this board in future...

Sometimes the ‘calling out’ is aggressive, with people ganging up in an unpleasant manner. It probably has the opposite effect to what the person challenging wants.

I personally try not to worry about Christmas because I work in a school in a lockdown area and right now day to day stuff is chaotic enough as it is. We have stressed kids, attendance and absences all over the place, constantly changing lessons last minute as year groups get sent home or have absences extended, teaching online lessons after very limited training on the software, unable to spend breaks with colleagues or have a cup of tea etc. .

I suppose the problem is that there is very clearly the potential for cases to be pretty high at Christmas if Steps we take now are too relaxed and after all cases fell slowly in the uk compared to stricter lockdowns in France and Spain etc so some people want stricter measures sooner rather than later.

On the other hand Xmas will also be shit for people losing jobs due to steps taken to suppress transmission so it is a tricky balancing act

So we’ve decided to plan things we can do as a 4 without going anywhere.
ie buy a fire pit, sparklers and marshmallow for bonfire night
Halloween tea party - lots of cupcake ideas online, pumpkin carving

Decorate garden for Christmas etc

All things we can do despite any restrictions- cheered us all up a bit.
Sorry off topic.

Ah, you've found the Dementors! You know, the floaty black things in Harry Potter who have the job of sucking all of the joy out of life.

Dementors love nothing more than a good scaremonger about corpses piling up in the streets, or speculating gleefully that the Army might be out on the streets soon. They want a PROPER LOCKDOWN, the longer the better. None of this leaving your house nonsense. And wearing a mask isn't enough, you have to ENJOY IT.

:) If it helps I've had the opportunity to talk about this with a real proper counsellor (for.. other reasons. The last few years have been a bit shit.)

She called it "closing the book". Basically you can think you're a really awesome listener but everyone has things that they don't even know about that trigger them. For me, I very much struggle with people in the 'denial' stage of grief, because I've lived through some fairly traumatic things where we all had to pretend that actually there might be a miracle and things would be fine and now I just.. can't. Physically can't. It triggers massive anxiety attacks. I'm much calmer descending into work mode, listing out risks and working out mitigation because once I've done that I know I've done everything I can do. But it means I'm not a good person to comfort someone who wants to be told everything is going to be fine. Shut the book, don't make me tell those lies, can't you see you're hurting me? So my 'denial' phase for bad news is a matter of hours and then I'm telling myself things like "you will survive this because you have survived worse" and moving on.

Right now I'm telling myself it's possible schools will close. Because yes, the idea is tremendously upsetting but if I feed it to myself bit by bit maybe I'll cry less when it happens.

You on the other hand are not me. You didn't start summer with gritted teeth and "OK, what do I need to get done before the second wave". You told yourself (because for your mental health you needed to tell yourself) that it was over, because you needed to believe it was over. Because the last few months hurt you. And now people talking as though the next few months are going to be like that or worse are hurting you because you're not ready for that yet. Shut the book, you're hurting me, I don't want to think like this any more.

Neither of these responses are wrong. They're human. But if you put those two people together even if they start with the best intents they are going to end up hurting each other because they are at very different stages.

It's difficult to interpret words on a screen without the body language or expression you would get in real life.
Perhaps they aren't revelling in it that is just your own interpretation. Perhaps they are very worried about it.

What a miserable post.

As you openly admit, your mistake was in reading the Coronavirus board and expecting everyone to always have a positive attitude.

People discuss Coronavirus on the Coronavirus board. If you find it too negative and it's affecting your MH feel free to hide this forum and seek solice over on the AD thread.

@swg1 excellent post and excellent counsellor 🙂

You sure these 'dementors' you're seeing aren't just goths? One of my friends at college had some lovely floaty black outfits. She looked great actually.

wearing a mask isn't enough, you have to ENJOY IT
Or perhaps a non-dementor like looking on the bright side? I've seen some fab masks. I particularly like the animal face ones. It's also great for saving on the cost of new lipstick and helps when it's an ugly day (or us it just me that has those?).

How do we hide this board? I'm struggling to do it and I honestly can't keep coming across these posts, as they show up in active. It's like some sort of misery porn for some posters

@FelicityFisher

www.mumsnet.com/Talk?call=Preferences

@BrazenlyDefying Perfect, thank you for that! I just can't take any more of these damn threads and now ... yay! I don't need to. Thanks again

Yep, some people are thriving on all this and loving it. Quite why I don’t get. Also presenting their no more informed than anyone else opinion as fact “we won’t get a vaccine”, “this is life forever now, get used to it. Just fuck off.

There's room for everyone, we don't have to agree, but if it upsets a person to the point it's making your MH worse then definitely avoid reading it.

Life's too short to be unhappy. By the same token, I would expect someone who wanted in depth worst case scenario discussions to avoid the AD threads.

Ahh still can't do it . Why do they make it so bloody difficult to hide topics?

We will get a vaccine I think and life will go pretty much back to normal before long, but I'm still concerned about the next few months.

It's shit, I'm not enjoying it, but I cope better if I am up to date with current information and am prepared for whatever it throws at me. If I didn't I wouldn't cope very well at all.

God forbid anyone should mention facts during a pandemic about said pandemic. And God forbid anyone point out such facts to people who repeatedly say inane and easily disproven things, simply because they don't like restrictions and they imagine having a small tantie about it will make it all stop, or they've picked up the usual tosh on their SM or from some lunatic on YouTube and just keep regurgitating it in a whiny tone, as if they are far more advanced thinkers than all the virologists and epidemiologists and economists worldwide.

I don't think the posters trying to stem the flow of disinformation are 'doom and gloom mongers'.

Sometimes the repeater causes a mass brain explosion - to the point one starts to wonder if that wasn't the intention all along.

I also really don't see how dying with your lungs turned to unrecognisable mush (oops! it's the goth in me!) is anything one can put a genuinely positive spin on. But, hey ho! It's only a (here's a golden opportunity for a repeater to pull an incorrect fact about percentages and R rates and IFRs and Sweden out of their arse) a small number of fairly disposable humans apparently and it definitely won't be you!

When you're even more of a eugenicist than the Tories bumbling their way through this thing, you should also not be surprised that others point this out.

Ugh and here comes someone to prove the point. Must hide this post at least

You're welcome! Fark.

I have seen zero evidence, meanwhile, and I do mean zero, of anyone pointing out the downside of this pandemic in a 'gleeful' tone. I have seen great patience exerted by many, and some calm, practical and wise advice, as well as the requisite setting straight. How gloomy!

@FelicityFisher For someone who claims not to want to see this thread, you do seem to be posting quite a lot on it!

@MadameBlobby

Yep, some people are thriving on all this and loving it. Quite why I don’t get. Also presenting their no more informed than anyone else opinion as fact “we won’t get a vaccine”, “this is life forever now, get used to it. Just fuck off.

... Yep. Those

They are 2 diffferent flavours of extremists

• those who want to abandon all SD and let it rip
• those who want masks and pt schools for the forseeable

Fuck off, this shit is TEMPORARY

There will be a vaccine, in fact several different vaccines next year
The virus doesn't change clinically, so the following years scientists will be improving it to give ever better immunity

There will be better treatments too
We've already seen O2 makes a big difference, then 2 cheap steroids reduce deaths too
There will be more

@cbt944

You're welcome! Fark.

I have seen zero evidence, meanwhile, and I do mean zero, of anyone pointing out the downside of this pandemic in a 'gleeful' tone. I have seen great patience exerted by many, and some calm, practical and wise advice, as well as the requisite setting straight. How gloomy!

Couldn't have put it better myself - so tired of them putting everyone down (except those that agree with them, of course). I had one tell me I had made COVID my religion - because I questioned a few of them.

@swg1

You see, different people react in different ways.

I find it tremendously stressful when I know something is going badly and we have to pretend it's not. It's one of the worst things for my anxiety because you have to sit and make plans for things you ABSOLUTELY KNOW are not going to happen or get told off for your negative outlook. It's like sitting in a house that's on fire and everyone around you keeps telling you that you would be much happier if you stopped talking about the possibility of burning to death and ignored it.

This part, the part where actually everyone acknowledges that oh crap, it's back? It's easier. I can plan now, rather than pretending to plan. I can work out what we're actually doing for Christmas rather than pretending it's going to be normal because Boris says the war will be over before Christmas. It feels better.

But I know other people don't feel like that at all and still desperately want to cling to BUT IT MIGHT GET BETTER.

Just because you need to cling to that for your mental health doesn't make someone else's need to accept the situation for their own mental health any less important.

This is so well put, especially the house on fire bit. Sometimes it feels like some people's coping mechanism is to all intents and purposes gaslighting, because they have to act as if there's nothing going on at all or nothing could possibly change and get worse, and that means pretending nothing's going on when it clearly is. Personally I do much better having accepted that something bad is happening, or may be about to happen, and making a plan.

@swg1 Thank you for those posts. They were great and really helpful!