Anybody else struggling with the way things are now?

[BarrowInFurnessRailwayStation]

The pandemic, brexit, the cost of living crisis, the war, food and petrol/diesel shortages and the NHS. Everything seems weird now and impossibly insecure. I'm a bit dissociated today I think. I feel like the world isn't real and like I'm going to wake up and everything's going to be okay after all.

Just a lot of worry for everyone I suppose. The ship is no longer on an even keel. What can we do to remain sane?

Yes, I’ve quite literally lost the will to live 😭.

I dont know

My Nanna used to say that when it’s raining all you can do is close your windows and keep the rain out. Fingers in ears, lalala. Nothing you can do so stop worrying yourself about it.

We need to find ways of dealing with this 🤔

Nothing has felt real to me since first lockdown, I literally feel like I'm waiting to wake up and for all this to not be real. DD (also ASD) is also struggling and I'm trying so hard to keep it together for her but it's getting harder all the time. Feel very down when I let myself think about everything and yes, kind of disassociated the rest of the time. Wish I had something positive to add but I'm running on empty tonight I'm afraid.

Think small. Switch off the news. No social media. As little time as possible thinking about the bigger issues and as much time as possible spent outside, listening to leaves rustling, feeling the breeze on our skin.

Yep, I'm the same.
We had to shield my 7 year old and now he's home schooling cos the government have dropped all restrictions. I don't even like home schooling, but he gets so ill with normal bugs, never mind being bombarded with covid constantly.

We used to go out to all sorts of places but now I feel stuck and isolated.

Everything is so expensive too and the news about the war is so upsetting and scary.

Unbelievable how much our lives have changed in 2 years and I really don't see a way out of it for us either.

The problem is, we don’t need the news to see the effects of the cost of living crisis. We can see it in our food bills, petrol gauges and the fact that the thermostat in our bedroom reads 13 fucking degrees 😡. I have SAD too and I can’t even get some sunlight as it’s been raining and windy all week. Everything felt OK when we had that mini heat wave a few weekends ago and now it all feels shit again.

Agree on the weather too. We went for a lovely long walk with the kids when it was sunny. 3 and a half hours and had a picnic. Was knackered when we got back but felt so much better.
Everything feels better when it isn't cold and rainy.

Everything feels like it’s constantly changing. I find this deeply unsettling as routines, predictably, are good for me.

Avoiding the news is a good idea, yes.

Trying to find pleasure and comfort in simple things like walks, nature, animals, hobbies.

The media like to hype things up.

The fuel and food hikes can't be avoided. I don't know how to fix this one.

Try to follow routines as much as possible and make sure things are in place to keep them stable.

Good advice @BarrowInFurnessRailwayStation

I am probably too invested in it, so I have been watching silly cat videos and cute animal videos to calm down - and taking little walks and admiring all the spring flowers when it is not too cold and wet

I've gone past the point of struggling now and am simply regarding it all as a really really shit Black Mirror episode. When I'm struggling I have to put a strict time limit of one news bulletin a day in place (I'm normally a bit of a news junkie and will quite often have the news channel on as background noise) and switch to a non-commercial car radio station to try to avoid the endless covid themed adverts. We have to downplay lots of it or teach rational thinking about it as DD2 gets very very anxious about everything... this may have had the result that DD1 got into trouble at school for asking why they were using anti-bac wipes against a virus!

My current obsession is making blankets anyway so I'm relatively OK on the staying warm front!

The war and nuclear worries - I'm actually fine about that (horrified at what's going on clearly and loving the fact the Ukrainians are managing to give Putin a hell of a fightback) but then the Cold War formed the background to most of my childhood, plus Chernobyl, so it's a bit deja-vu on that front which relaxes me a bit - and I'm very much at the point with that that if someone pressed the button there's not much I can do about it.

I grew up in a family of journalists though so I've seen how the media agenda works in terms of emphasising one story over another to keep the supply of engagement running, so in one detached way I find it quite interesting, almost like an orchestra conductor - they'll wind up the covid story, then get the sound of that played right down and replaced by petrol, then drop that back for a bit more covid, pop in a little bit of the royal family - it's my strange way of seeing things but you see the same melodies appearing and then falling away again.

I'm finding it hard to not think about climate change all the time after the IPCC report.

I feel like extinction of humanity is almost inevitable at this point and most people are able to get on with their lives pretending this is not the case.

I think as an ND person, I have very logical thinking and can be very focused on finding solutions to problems. I see all the interconnected variables in a way that NTs cannot and it makes it difficult to do nothing about a problem. All around me I see a lack of planning to mitigate the impact of climate change, not just on a global scale but on a local, organisational and individual scale. It is exhausting to think like this.

For example, every time I drive across the local moorland I feel a sense of urgency that we should be reforesting these areas now, so that the trees are sufficiently mature to cope with the heat and aridity that will be here in 30/ 40 years. I see the cattle grazing the land and think about the impact of eating meat on carbon emissions and the grazing on the ecosystem of the moor and feel feel frustrated that people don't understand the urgency of stopping this right now. There is more, but I will stop now as this thinking is not helping my mental health when I have no individual power to do anything.

How are you feeling about i now @BarrowInFurnessRailwayStation ?

I felt similar when the war started on Ukraine it felt so surreal and I was really worried about nuclear war. I couldn't tell what was anxiety and what was a normal reaction to an awful (obviously that's not a strong enough word) situation.

Now I feel a bit more...settled?...about it now. Mainly because nuclear war doesn't seem like much if a possibility now, to me anyway.

@ZenKaleidoscope I've been avoiding the news other than some basic headlines on the radio. I keep feeling a bad background sadness for Ukraine and the people in Mariupol mainly. Those people who are trapped in the steelplant 😥 I keep fantasising that putin will die and how I could ask the universe/gods/fate to make that happen, but I know it won't; hitler and stalin etc. went on for long enough after all. It's a kind of miserable acceptance that people are still suffering and we face an existential threat on top. Nothing we can do.

Yes limiting the news is really needed sometimes.

I've also fantasized about some sort of capturing of Putin to get him out of power.

Yes it's a strange sort of acceptance.

I think it's part of the human condition to fight over land isn't it? I know many animals fight constantly over territory. I have to keep telling myself that humans are just fancy animals and our behaviour is part of the natural world, so it's still bad, but no worse than chimpanzees waging war on their neighbours. I know that humans have the curse of knowing what's happening to them and going to happen whereas animals don't really have that - perhaps the higher ones - and mainly live in the moment.

I don't see putin as being any different from an ageing alpha male chimp who's railing against his fading power and rapidly advancing old age.

How has such a primitive person been allowed to have all that power?! Or is it that power brings out people's primal urges?

He was a street thug growing up, I think it's just an extension of that. He has very basic, crude speech apparently - in normal conversation. Boris the permanently pissed Yeltsin put him into power. He couldn't even stand upright in public let alone choose a half decent successor. Dreadful lot.

detroit drain gang... maybe it is the swirly water going down the cleared drains...

noise off though. no scraping rakes on tarmac and metal for me thanks.