Advice please

[Buttercup95]

Hi everyone,

I am new here, and realise what I am about to post is certainly nothing new, or unique to me but I don't know who else to turn to.
I'll try and keep it brief. I have had low mood since I was a teen, I'm now late 30s so over 20 years. The norm was a couple of episodes a year where I felt down and miserable before a couple of weeks before clawing my way out of it, but for the last couple of years or so it has become a constant feeling of low mood, exhaustion, irritability with my kids for anything and everything and a general sense that my life is worthless and pointless, and it's just the same boring rubbish, day in day out. I feel like just packing up and disappearing off and never coming back, but don't we all?! I don't have any friends and no one I feel I can really talk to. I work part time, loathe my job and am searching for another one, but only live in a fairly small town where part time work is pretty scarce. I guess I just mainly feel isolated and lonely. I have looked for voluntary work at weekends but haven't found anything local, don't drive and can't afford lessons either which is very restricting. I joined a local meetup group a while back but found I couldn't make many of the meetups due to my other half working long hours, and when I did go everyone else knew one another and I ended up sat in a corner on my own most of the night (I am shy and hopeless with strangers). I realise in the grand scheme of things my problems are very, very trivial and I apologise if what I have posted has offended anyone, and to be honest I don't really know what advice I am expecting, I just wanted to sound off. Thanks.

Have you ever spoken to your GP about how low you are feeling? They may be able to help. For shyness I recommend a book called "Dare to Connect" by Susan Jeffers. Also do you do any exercise as this releases your bodys natural antidepressants and can really help too.

Hi, thanks for your reply. I haven't spoken to my GP yet, because I find him a bit hit and miss, and worry that if I catch him on a bad day he'll just tell me to go away and stop wasting his time . Reading is actually one of my favourite things so l'll give that book a try, thank you! I do have a dog that I walk every night, and sometimes I find putting my headphones on and listening to something upbeat helps whilst I'm out and about. I've enrolled on a free online course tonight as well, in the hope that doing something to occupy my brain might help shake the fog. Thanks again for replying

Buttercup, I really hope your GP won't be dismissive of you; that would be so unprofessional. GPs these days know they have to take MH seriously. They can't just say 'it's all in your head' the way they did in my parents' day, when so many people had to self-medicate with Valium and headache powders. Can I suggest you go to your GP with a written list of points about your situation? It will help keep you on track, and if you become tearful you can hand the list to him to read.

As for those Meetup people, how rude of them to leave a newcomer to sit by herself.

The new course and the walks with your dog sound great. Looks like you are taking practical steps to beat your malaise.

Thanks groovergirl, you're right, I do need to pluck up the courage to see my GP, it's just that I feel a bit of a fraud really when there are so many people out there who have it far worse than I do, and I know how overstretched mental health services are as well. I think making a list is a good idea, as I am not great at saying how I feel unless I write it down, I end up getting all tongue tied and forgetting what I wanted to say. I'll keep looking on the Meetup front, there seem to be quite a few groups out there so hopefully something will come up that's for me. Thanks for your reply

Buttercup

You are right that MH services are stretched, but, in a sense, if you are able to be as articulate as you are being here, your GP may be able to refer you for some help specifically for problems of low mood like yours relatively quickly. There has been a big investment in mental health in primary care in recent years.

One thing that I found helpful in getting the help I felt I needed was to be as open as I felt able to be about how I was thinking and feeling, and to ask that the professional that I was working with (e.g. GP) to do the same and not use euphemisms. I think that sometimes a professional might use "lay person's" language and the euphemisms might confuse the issue for a patient who is articulate. If you don't understand your GP's recommendations or why he has made them, you can continue asking until it is clear to you what decisions are being made and why.

The other things that have helped me include writing down a list and asking the professional to read it, and bringing my DH with me, even if he does not say anything. There was one occasion when my DH managed to spit something out that I did not feel able to admit to. These days he just sits there; DH and I have a joke that I could bring his childhood cuddly toy to sit next to me in the surgery instead, because I am not sure that DH understands how powerful it is for me to have somebody whom I trust with me for some difficult conversations like admitting that I am feeling low.

I hope that some of this is helpful to you. If it does not go well with your GP, you could make an appointment with a different one in the practise, if you feel that might go better for you.

Thanks for your reply erinaceus. I think I will pluck up the courage to make an Appointment, and I will write everything down that I have been feeling, in more detail than I have here so that he understands it isn't just me having a couple of off days, it goes deeper than that, and I have been feeling on and off for years but am struggling somehow to just keep on "getting on with it". Unfortunately I don't find DH particularly supportive, he's very much a brush it under the carpet and pretend it isn't happening kind of person, and always has been, so this is something I need to do by myself, but I will. Thanks again.

You are welcome. Just because your DH is a brush it under the carpet and pretend it isn't happening kind of person, does not mean that you have to be.

It took me quite some time to learn this, that just because other people prefer to bury things or ignore them or pretend that they have never happened or are not happening does not mean that I have to be the same. (But it is okay for them to be like that. I cannot make other people face things. Etc etc.).

Good luck with plucking up the courage and making the appointment and going there and talking or showing what you have written. It sounds as if you have a plan in place. .