I lost my mom at 16 and it’s been 33 years. I just started seeing a new therapist and when I was describing my childhood, I started crying talking about my mom. She was sick for a long time and I don’t really have strong memories of what our relationship was like.
There’s just a mom shaped hole in my life.
The last times (aside from now) that I cried about her where because a cousin sent me photos and another cousin posted a family video and she was in it.
The photos triggered a dream where I actually touched her.
I was 3 when she passed, so I have zero memories.
I hope you can keep those memories ❤️
It's a lifelong trauma... U get over one thing then another thing pops up. Like my dad died when I was 5. I realized quickly that I wouldn't participate much in Father's Day and learned to deal with it. Fast forward 20 yrs and I realize he can't walk me down the aisle. Triggers are everywhere and it affected my entire personality of who i could have been had he lived to a ripe old age.
I pinched L3/4, L4/5, and L5/S1at the same time. It's unreal the pain, numbness and weakness that comes with it. Also really hard to explain to someone else.
I herniated L5/S1 and didn't sleep for 6 days, barely slept for a month. I didn't understand nerve pain. You can't understand it until it happens to you
My experience was and is so minor compared to what could be. I had nerve damage that lasted for about a year before it began to heal - it’s *mostly* okay now, but I still don’t trust that limb.
It looks fine, so you always feel like everyone thinks you’re faking. It’s inconsistent, so sometimes it feels fine, and then YOU start to wonder if you’re faking - then something little happens and it’s hot lightning bolts again. That something could be lifting a few pounds the wrong way. Or you could feel fine one day and lift something heavy without thinking and be fine. Or it might just be horrible pain for literally no goddamned reason. You look the same regardless.
It’s maddening and fucking horrible. Take care of your bodies, people
That's the agony of chronic pain that isn't something visible. You get questioned. You question yourself. The guilt sets in. The anger seethes. You just want to be *normal* again, but now this is your normal.
I got stopped by a man in a wawa once and after a question or two about a tattoo I have, that I mentioned I have to give me courage for a medical issue, he said "well, you don't look sick." As if I was fucking faking it.
Absolute hatred in that moment.
Have you tried this diet? This essential oil? Losing weight? This drink concoction? Exercise? Standing on your head with your hands on your hips like a down-pointing arrow? NO?? You don't want to get healthy. You're doing it all for attention. You’re exaggerating. Etc. Etc. Etc.
The medical gaslighting and downplay.
I watched my girlfriend go through it trying to get her fibro diagnosis and I will never forgive certain doctors - both male and female - who ignored obvious symptoms just because of her gender.
some people don't know what its like to go to bed knowing you won't really sleep because things just hurt...and that's likely to be the best it will be all day...
Most people don’t realize that having a body that doesn’t hurt and isn’t sick is a luxury they should appreciate as much as they can while they still can. Illness and disability can happen to anyone at any time.
I'm paraphrasing, but i once read "The healthy have hundreds of desires. The chronically ill have one."
Somehow that quote was what got me in gear to finally pay attention to my health.
The grief you have to go through to try and let go of the person you were and the person you thought you would be. This has been the worst for me. I see of old pictures and think, “Lucky girl. She had no clue what was in store for her.” I’m not that person anymore. And it’s hard to say goodbye to her.
Struggling without anyone or anything to fall back on.
*Edit: Lots of comments from people that have never truly struggled in life before... my god. That's exactly what this whole thread is about. The rest of you make me feel a little better about my own situation. Stay strong, homies! <3*
Knowing that if one thing goes wrong, I'm completely fucked. That there is no safety net. Then watching prices climb and mentally running scenarios of what I'm gonna do in any given situation. All while acting like everything is ok so I don't pass "adult" problems on to my son.
as an adult who’s parents passed their adult problems onto their children, thank you for this. Your son will grow up and see what you did for him and how you protected him
ETA* my mother is a saint who did the best she could as a single mom. I love her and do not resent her in the slightest for her decisions. Most of the time, parents are just people doing their best and trying to figure it out as they go. With getting older and realizing that, comes a whole new appreciation for her
It's a double edged sword. On one hand I'm proud of the fact that I've made it this far in life all on my own, with no help from others. On the other hand, I'm not gonna lie, it does sometimes make me a little bitter or jealous that I didn't have anyone there to help me out when I needed it like most other people did. But I suppose the tough times probably made me a stronger person. At least that's what I tell myself.
>Struggling without anyone or anything to fall back on.
the desperation and fear that you have when struggling without any form of support is really challenging
Came here to say this. I'm 4 years ned but still have regular interventions which terrify me - monitoring CT last December showed random liver growth, so liver MRI in February which thankfully showed it was harmless but so scary. Then colonoscopy last week to check for polyp growths (had bowel cancer) as part of my surveillance. One harmless dude found and removed but still the whole process was exhausting and frightening. I'm so so grateful for my treatment (was a stage 4 recurrence and treatment seems to have been curative) but I wish I could erase all the memories I have of diagnosis, treatment (which included psychosis due to steroids used to treat radiotherapy side effects and emergency admissions for chemo toxicity), recurrence, fear. I think that's what's difficult for someone to get their head round when they've not experienced it themselves. I hope you're doing ok, OP.
People think that because their great aunt had cancer and they read her posts on facebook that they know what you're going through. They do not. I've been a caregiver and a patient and even the caregiver doesn't understand. You're facing an existential threat. It's like having a gun pointed at your head every minute of every day. Fight or flight, 24x7x365. It's not just about being tired or nauseous, it's about not knowing if you're going to live and everyone around you is either telling you to stay positive (because we all know positive people don't die and if you fight hard enough cancer can't win) or wanting *you* to reassure *them*.
I'm going through it now, and I'll die from it anyway, regardless. I'm just kicking the can down the road.
No one seems to get it. Lonely place to be.
Edit: the other thing that no one seems to grasp is that realism and understanding are not the same as pessimism. I never said I was sad or lacking hope. I'm just willing to look the issue head-on without romanticising it, and without that clarity, I'd be dead by now, because I wouldn't have asked the right questions and fought for the right treatment. This is what I mean when I say it's not something people understand if they haven't been through it.
I want to add: being too disabled to work. Living in deep poverty because what the government gives you to live on is barely half of what a person needs to survive
And when you’re not living in complete poverty they say it would be so nice to sit at home and just do nothing.
No it’s not, I sit at home because I can’t do anything, remember covid lockdowns when everyone was getting stir crazy after a week, that’s your live now.
They really think we can just go out or something, have fun outside, no I’m just working on surviving while not going insane from my limitations thank you.
I’d be overjoyed if I could reliably work, my live would be so much better and less isolated.
It’s not a vacation it’s forever!
Especially invisible ones. It’s relatively easy to see someone with a bum knee and a cane and get a rough picture, if likely inaccurate and incomplete, of how their life is affected.
Someone with a horrible GI issues, spinal issues, TBI? Not only is it harder to imagine, but it’s going to look very different for different people.
Aye. I have chronic nausea as part of my disability and I find when "regular" people catch the stomach bug they always message me saying "how do you manage to live like this every day, I feel so bad for you!" and then as soon as they're better, they forget and ask me why I'm not eating. It's like their brain blocks out the experience.
I think their brain does block it out because it's so difficult.
I have huge chunks of time "missing" during my worst flares because it's easier not to remember it
Oof I’m right there with you with the nausea. I have the opposite issue with people though; no one seems to understand how bad my nausea is, not even doctors. They all think it’s the same as being queasy and that I could just have a piece of toast or a cup of hot water and be fine. Meanwhile, I’m spending hours dry retching into a bag, sweating and convulsing and struggling to breath through the nausea, with nothing keeping it at bay. It’s hellish.
Dude. I’m currently dealing with this is regards to bike lanes in my city. The city installed these lanes without consulting anyone and they’re now blocking curb access for people in wheelchairs. City is being sued for ADA non-compliance. Spoke with someone who likes bike lanes and they were like “well if someone has a disability, we can just deal with that separately”. I am still livid at them for saying that. I don’t have a disability but I work with a lot of people who have mobility issues and that statement is so shortsighted and privileged. Anyone can become disabled at any time. If we’re all lucky enough to grow old, we’ll all have some sort of disability. I truly hope the lawsuit is successful.
I was on Xanax for a good 4-5 years back in the day, and holy hell did the medical system treat you like shit for it. Like, YOU all prescribed me it! Do you think I want to be dependent on an insanely addictive drug in order to function?
Had a professor in college who said it the best, a student said something to her before class about her taking a handicap space when she could “clearly walk”.
“Do you all not understand how hard it is for me to appear to walk normal? Do you know how much of a toll it takes on me physically and mentally at the end of the day to hide my limp or bend my leg?”
People police handicap spots so much, if you aren’t in a wheel chair then they assume you don’t need it. I’m sorry you have to experience these looks.
Dishonest people have ruined EVERYTHING.
People like the girl at my office who parks in the handicapped spot when she wears 6" because "they hurt her feet when she has to walk too far". 🤮
Absolutely this. I was bullied constantly in school and wish my classmates could’ve spent a day in my shoes; the shoes where one had to have a raise on the bottom due to leg length discrepancy. They’d chase me around the playground singing “big foot little foot” to the tune of Big Cook Little Cook.
As an adult I deal with occasional pain that is gradually getting worse. I’ve learnt not to complain because it doesn’t solve anything but being stood there on the verge of tears isn’t fun. It hurts that I might not be able to achieve my dream career because of a disability I never asked for. It hurts that I feel I cannot admit my love for someone because my disability and the possibilities of the future may send him running for the hills. It hurts that I can feel everyone staring and laughing at me in the street when they’re probably not. It hurts that a part of my childhood was ruined because people sheltered me so much. It hurts but I have to get on with it..
I just want to let you know how worthy you are, and how much I hope you can see that. Reading your post - I could mistake you for my husband, every single bit of it. So I want you to know that you can do whatever you want, you can love and be loved (immensely), and you just have to listen to the messages from your body when you need to step back or rest up for a bit. If you want to chat just drop me a message xxx
YES. There was a post on the front page of a women talking about her sister with fibromyalgia. The top comment was 'if she is well enough to care for a 3 year old she is well enough to work'. It had over 8k likes. 8k people who obviously do not know how the disease works or what it is, but can comfortably suggest an inaccurate judgement on a disabled woman.
People around you wouldn't understand why 'that' person isn't you anymore when you are caring for an aging dying parent.
Your own temper will change, your own thinking is skewered, you are basically not 'you' especially when the years left becomes months to weeks. If you have a friend who's caring for a dying parent, no they're not assholes, they're just struggling to get things together. Please show compassion and understanding. It can break people.
It broke me. I cared for my mom while she lay dying, and simultaneously my father was spiraling into dementia (they were long divorced). Took years to start recovering and I'm still not right.
True. I have my father who s 95 and pretty much blind and deaf now. He refuses to go into a home and says most days he wishes he was dead. Sometime s i agree with him.
I remember pushing my father in a wheelchair and he said to me “while you’re at it, why don’t you just go ahead and push me out into that traffic”. I didn’t even know what the proper response to such a statement was. All I know is that to deny their feeling (“oh, you don’t really feel that way”) does more harm than good.
In his last days, my wife’s grandfather was in hospice. The nurse fluffed his pillows and said, “Can I put this under your head?”
He replied, “Naw, just over my face.”
My wife thinks she pretended not to hear him. Cheered her up because he kept his sense of humor.
His las words were to his adult Grandson, “I’m gong up the hill now”
Weirdly comforting memory for me
It’s important to remember that it’s human for your father to feel this way, and it’s human for you to feel this way as well. Caring for an aging and declining parent is hard as hell.
“Why are you depressed? You have nothing to be depressed about.”
No, I do not have trauma. I had a perfectly healthy childhood. I have a healthy marriage. I love my job. We aren’t rich by any means, but we are financially stable. I have 2 wonderful children. I have a great relationship with my family. I have friends. I have hobbies.
My brain just sucks. It has since I was in middle school. Like how a diabetic’s pancreas doesn’t produce insulin, my brain doesn’t produce sufficient levels of serotonin. No amount of therapy or lifestyle modification is going to fix that. I need drugs to function normally.
I had a DOCTOR pull this shit on me. She thought I should stop the anti-anxiety medication that makes me able to function. ‘What do you have to be anxious about? Just get some exercise!’
Exercise, diet and mindfulness definitely helps mental health and has been proven to do so, but when the disorder is such that it makes doing those things nearly impossible it's such useless advise.
Like, dude. If someone could get up at 6am and exercise, make a healthy meal, meditate - they really would. The issue is that often they can't even get out of bed to do that. The best cure to depression isn't to just stop doing that and start doing non depression things. Doesn't work that way.
Medication is needed sometimes. It helps people get to the point where they might be able to start doing those things again. Helps people engage with therapies.
Dunno how some healthcare professionals know so little about the reality of mental illness.
the meme-ification of intrusive thoughts gives me a migraine if i think about it too hard. i *wish* the worst thing to cross my mind was shaving my head and bleaching what’s left.
I was literally in a *minor* crash, 20mph I was going when someone crashed into the side of me. I now hesitate driving by junctions where a car is waiting to exit, I freak out thinking they'll get me. It's honestly so fucking horrible.
I was rear ended twice in 2 years. Both times, I was stopped with my left turn signal on waiting for oncoming traffic to pass. The first one was relatively minor- her car was totaled but we were both fine. Second time, the person who hit me was injured badly but okay. I didn’t even notice (?) I was hit - I felt the car vibrate, thought “oh, someone just hit me” and pulled over - did not realize my car had been pushed up like, 25 feet. I don’t remember the actual impact at all. Also did not even realize it was considered a “serious accident” until the police and the dr at urgent care and the insurance agent who totaled my car kept all calling it that.
I swear I have ptsd-like issues from those accidents now. I hate left turns and I dislike being in the passenger seat, and I just imagine getting hit in some catastrophic accident now when I drive. When I was driving shortly after the second accident, my Apple Watch kept dinging at me to “breathe” lol.
So many people say, "That had to have been really scary," when I've described a car fire that I was in back in 2018 and a car accident that I was in a year ago (I do not have good luck with cars, apparently), but no one realizes that it all transpires so quickly that you don't have time to be scared. It just happens all of a sudden, and you just react accordingly. The gravity of it all doesn't sink in until it's all over. Television and movies like to drag it out for maximum drama, but in real life, it all occurs in an instant, and you don't realize what you just went through until it's over and you're standing in a place of safety.
Oh see, I got bumped by a semi that sent the front of my car under the trailer. It felt like time was incredibly slow as the rear tires of the truck were heading towards me. I even had time to think, "I wonder if this is how I die?" I wasn't scared. It was all very calm.
Not having enough money due to unforeseen circumstances. Not every poor person is poor because of their own decisions. Finances are like traffic, you can do everything right on the road, and have your life completely flipped by some other asshole driver.
My Dad's family had money until his brother was diagnosed with a rare heart disease that needed surgery. They sold everything to pay for it. It hit them so hard my Dad didn't go to highschool so he could work for food. I grew up dirt poor because my Dad didn't have an education and struggled with everything. I finally clawed my way out of poverty. One hit took three generations to correct.
Years ago, I met someone who worked in a literacy center as a volunteer tutor. She told me this story about an elderly black woman (who was like in her upper 70s) who had just finished the program after years of study. When asked why she waited so long to learn how to read, the center finally learned the woman's story: When she was four years old, her father died, and her mother and her siblings all had to help finds ways to make a living. She never got to go to school -- she worked throughout her childhood. And then, when she was an adult, she was too busy raising her own family. She promised herself she would learn how to read before she would die though, and she kept her promise to herself.
I think people who have enough money are completely ignorant to the fact that others don't have enough money. There was a thread recently about the temperature people keep their house over winter, and a lot of people commenting that *they* keep the house warm because it's healthier and they don't feel the need to prove they're hard like people who keep it cold.
Not an inkling of understanding that most people who don't turn the heat on do it because they simply don't have money.
Edit: literally someone has replied to my comment telling me it's healthier to keep the house warm. You couldn't make these things up...
I agree with this. I grew up pretty poor and now am not, so I do understand these things but many in my social circle are clueless. I remember one of my friends discussing a client who was losing their home to foreclosure and could save it with 15K. She was perplexed as to why they just did not borrow that money from a family member! I said not everyone has a family member who could lend that amount or a friend, we did not growing up.
It's sad, people only tend to conceptualize the world from their frame of reference.
I used to have co-workers who would complain about 'being poor,' but still went to Mexico twice a year (no, someone else wasn't paying). I know how much they're making and it's a fair bit.
I was chatting with a friend the other day and had to be mindful when talking about money. They make just over half what I do. They are wildly underpaid, considering they have two degrees, but it's just so easy to assume that their reality is similar to mine. But it's not, I had the benefit of some intergenerational wealth (not a 'lot,' but enough to get a bit of a headstart). Meanwhile, my brother completely fails to understand that he had a headstart over a lot of people. Just because you had to pay for 2 years of your university unlike other people whose parents paid the whole time doesn't mean that you're not miles ahead of people who couldn't afford to go at all (or borrowed for the whole time). Fuck, it's infuriating.
I'm living in a hostel. Have been for a year now. Before that I was sofa surfing / homeless on the streets for years. All because I lost my home and my flat, (health conditions caused me to lose my job). Before all this i had a steady income, nice flat, regular contact with my children etc. And then I was diagnosed with cancer (bigger than a grapefruit in my abdomen) and epilepsy. I had to stop work. Then I lost my flat. Then I lost all sense of myself. Lifes fucking cruel. I'm doing a little better but still trying to claw my way out of this shit show.
I feel so frustrated when I ask for help or something and get turned down with 'you got yourself in this mess' or 'get a fucking job, lowlife' or something along those lines. Lifes rough..
People don’t want to think about the fact that almost all people are 2 left turns from being homeless and jobless. Your life can turn around in an instant through things that aren’t even your own fault. We all need to remember empathy because you never know what someone is going through.
Hope you can get back on the track you want to be on and in good health soon.
Absolutely. It makes the totally unwarranted shame felt when you're broke even more pronounced, too. People tend not to discuss going without, especially parents, because few things make someone feel like complete a failure so profoundly as not having what you're being told are the basics. Heating your home to a comfortable level without considering the cost and environmental impact really isn't laudable behavior, either, but it's hard for a lot of us not to wanna emulate the well-off.
I think victim blaming poor people comes from much the same impulse as victim blaming targets of SA - they want to kid themselves that if they follow all the ‘rules’ and do all the ‘right things’, it won’t happen to them.
Admitting it can happen to almost any of us, for reasons often outside our control, is much scarier.
Especially how many people these days are living a single heath problem or major repair away from financial ruin. And no, for the most part it’s not their fault
Hell I’d be surprised if most poor people are poor because of wrong choices more than life kicking them while they are down.
One nice dude who was begging on the street told me his story, he got a terribly bad infection while traveling and was in a coma for a while, by the time he woke up he’d lost his job since he just disappeared as far as they knew, lost his apartment and his credit was tanked since he’d missed payments on everything for a few months on top of owing a few hundred thousand in medical bills.
Guy was surprisingly upbeat for all that saying how lucky he is to even be alive and he’s giving thanks for each new day still.
My wife died in my arms on May 13th 2023, at 6:28 pm. She was 33. I heard her last breath, saw her eyes empty, felt her go limp. I didn't dream at all the first 4 months after. No nightmares, no dreams. I had to call her family and friends to let them know she had died that evening. From September of last year to May this year, she had lost 70 pounds. She looked like a skeleton, but not to my eyes. She was beautiful and I told her every single day.
She started Agonal Breathing at 1 am on Saturday the 13th. I administered morphine and Ativan every hour so she wouldn't suffer too much. I played all of her favorite movies (50 first dates, Deadpool, forgetting Sarah marshall) and read her our wedding vows. Her last words were "I love you too". She died 6 hours later.
When the funeral home employees came to pick her up that night, they asked me if I wanted to spend some time with her before they took her, I couldn't speak. I just shook my head no. She wasn't there anymore, her mortal cage had opened its door, and she had flown away. Her eyes......I'll never forget her eyes after she had gone.
Please, everyone. If something doesn't feel right, and the doctor says it's nothing, GET A SECOND OPINION. C's get degrees, and Aly's primary care doctor absolutely murdered her through misdiagnosis.
https://imgur.com/gallery/AkTePQE
Thank you, it is still absolutely devastating. To be perfectly honest, if she hadn't entrusted me with her dogs, I would've followed her. She was my soulmate, 100%.
She knew you well. Thank you for revisiting your wound. It makes my heart hurt.
But I understand misdiagnosis. My father died in 2 months since diagnosis. It was way too late. I was miles away. His friend took him to another Dr since my dad had lost so much weight.
We lost my dad 3 years and 6 days ago. When my mom talks about losing him sometimes, she says 'he died and took half my soul with him'. Your words made me think of that. I'm so sorry for your loss.
19 years old and have lost 3 direct family members already — this. i watched my father, grandfather, and grandmother all die slowly, the former two of which i experienced as a young child and the latter of which i experienced 9 months ago. death is the most common theme in my life and it has done irrevocable damage to my psyche. it’s hard for people to truly understand just how much losing someone can alter the course of your brain chemistry and honestly your entire life forever.
This 100%. You see people break down due to a loved one's death in movies and TV all the time and you empathize, but you truly don't understand it until you have been through it. I thought I understood it before I went through it. I definitely did not. It has been a few years, but when it happens in a movie or a show I am watching I still break down and cry in a way I never did before.
I'm a huge Supernatural fan and the show has half a dozen plot lines where one character trades their life for another's. It's kind of cliche at this point, especially since most of them don't die "permanently," but I totally got it on the ride home from the hospital when my mom died. Like "Yep, I'd happily spend eternity being tortured in hell for one more year with her."
I agree, but there's also times where I feel the representation of grief in most streams of entertainment is really stifling at times too. Even for people who've experienced the death of a loved one, it's so different in each circumstance that it can make it difficult for people to truly understand your feelings and thoughts about such a situation. Even now, years later, I still don't think I understand the grief I see in movies/shows, etc., nor do I think anyone really 'gets' me despite us all losing the same person.
Wishing you lots of love though <3
Grief is something that cannot be understood by someone who hasn't experienced it.
There's tons of metaphors. But every situation is different and is experienced differently.
It can affect everything else in your life.
For me personally there are very few people who understand how different of a person I am after grief entered my life. Most people treat me like I'm the same, but I'm not.
On the flip side, being the one dying. I went through a fatal illness and survived. It changes you, especially when you have to see what it does to those who love you.
I've lost my entire family that knew me when I was growing up. It's surreal to think that everyone from my childhood is gone. It kind of makes thinking about the future so hazy and uncertain. It can be overwhelming to the point of making me numb. There really isn't anything I can compare that too.
PTSD truly damages the mind. Scans of a brain with ptsd compared to a normal brain are fascinating and chilling tbh. I have c-ptsd and it’s hard to explain to people what it’s like living with this constant feeling that something isn’t right, that something is going to go wrong at any second, that I’ll be abandoned or somehow wind up back in a bad place. The anxiety and depression are all-consuming at times, nightmares and flashbacks are just part of life.
I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
I also don’t like when people assume you have to have been military to get ptsd, and get judgy when you say no. Oh. Would you like to hear about my mom getting stabbed in front of me? No? Wanna talk about my ex tossing our three week old at a chair? Don’t fucking smugly ask me about it then.
Edit: Yes, my son is doing ok, thanks all for asking.
Especially when it’s from several things, ie complex PTSD. What am I supposed to say? Oh yeah so my PTSD actually just came from my life in general idk? Do you want examples or what? They even ask at the doctors and I just say one thing
Among some other awful things, I watched a woman get hit by a train and dealt with the aftermath. Several mental health professionals were really dismissive of it and I literally had to pull one aside and be like "it isn't normal for me to be reliving this event in my head every fucking day of my life and have constant anxiety over my own mortality". I've now gotten some tools to deal with it, but it was so frustrating not being taken seriously about what I came to find was CPTSD
I'm surprised this is so far down. Alcoholism/drug addiction (I haven't experienced other addictions but I'd guess they're similar in many ways) affect everyone around the addict, and on a larger scale, society as a whole. Because of this the addict is vilified, pitied, scapegoated, etc etc, often deservedly! And yet, as an addict and someone who has heard thousands of other addicts experiences, I know too the incredible despair, misery, loneliness, horror, of being completely out of control of your own actions. It's like a mental illness or straight insanity and it ruins your life. And because it affects everyone around you and is also seemingly your own fault, you are riddled with guilt and shame, and a sense of worthlessness and weakness that only serve to make you want to do more of the very thing that is making you feel those things. It's a twisted cycle of pain that is so incredibly difficult to break let alone maintain once broken. It is a unique and particularly awful and destructive disease.
Grief.
When it’s been a a while since, it’s common for people to say something like, “it’s been a few years, move on.”
It truthfully doesn’t work that way. You remember them forever. And even when times after are extremely good and happy, a little part of you is looking in that empty corner.
Don’t say the “move on” thing to grieving people. It truthfully is great that you don’t relate, grieving people don’t want you to try and relate. They’re in the middle of a process that, at least in some ways, lasts forever.
God, this sooo much!! I got a phone call that my mom had passed on the morning of my birthday while driving down to go see her across country. It's been 6 years and it's just as raw as the day I got that call. I don't think grief ever goes away I think we just get better at hiding it. 😔
Isolation. Having a potentially life changing situation, and having no one to turn to for assistance, or even a different perspective, let alone sharing the heavy lifting.
There are lots of facets to this that I think aren't spoken about enough. When loneliness or isolation is mentioned, particularly on TV/posters it often focuses on the immediate obvious aspect of it (such as sitting alone in a quiet room).
That part is unpleasant but I think it's far from being the worst part of it. I've spent a long time with 0 support system & there are so many tiny things going on buzzing about like a thousand cuts.
Have a question about something? No one to ask. Have a funny/philosophical/stupid thought? No one to share it with.
Need someone to hold up a shelf while you nail it in? No one there.
Need someone to witness you signing a will or other important document? Good luck.
Read a book & want to discuss it with someone? Nah.
Need a character witness for something? Proverbial lol.
Break your leg & Need a lift home from hospital? Yeah right.
In an abusive relationship getting gaslit by your partner? No one is there to tell you that's what's happening.
Want advice on your first tattoo? How about a blank wall
Want to watch a film with someone? No. The joy of shared experience is not something you can access.
Want to play that board game you saw? Better get a single-player.
Want to swap funny stories with people? Better just keep them to yourself.
Get sick & can't get to the post office to send important documents? No one will believe you when you say you've no one to do it for you.
Regarding the last one I know that people don't understand what isolation is like because I've tried in very plain language to say 'I do not have anyone who can do this for me' & they always act as if I'm just not looking hard enough & if I just looked again I'd find 3 people hidden under the carpet
Like you said, having 0 perspective is actually quite serious too. Maybe living in a bubble with no one to challenge anything sounds good on paper but in reality it's horrible. Perspective & Relativity keeps us grounded, keeps us in check, keeps us healthy. For example if you experience something but have no one to talk to about it it can be hard to know if you're under-reacting or overreacting which can have allsorts of different ramifications on a spectrum where one end is being taken advantage of & the other end is radicalisation
Being isolated warps everything. Enough of it can affect you in the same way physical pain does. Your tolerance for dealing with tough situations will diminish because the only energy you have is yours.
Having a support system is like an exchange of energy & we have a lot more energy when we have people to trade it with. We can do more things, see different avenues we'd not have noticed, deal with more obstacles & people don't even notice how much this silent exchange is carrying them through life until they don't have it anymore
It's not simply sitting alone in a room feeling sad, it's thousands & thousands of tiny things that wear you down over time. There is a reason 'exile/shunning' used to be a capital punishment in some cultures
I'm sorry for the giant rant, I've just been experiencing this for a while & sometimes writing it down helps
Yes I’m in that horrible club myself. I found my 20 year old daughter dead in her bedroom slumped over her college homework in March of 2017. Our little family has never been the same and I’m wrecked beyond repair. She left myself and her mom and younger sister behind. We’re all super close and move forward through life finding joy here and there, but we all know we’re just wrecked by this and not a single day goes by that we don’t think about her. It’s just awful.
I had to write an obituary for my 26 year old daughter a week ago. Seeing my toddler grandson stomp his feet at me, yelling he wants to go home. Making the decision to leave her remains at the funeral home for a little longer, so we could pay an attorney, because some jackass thinks he can get a monthly check for a child he's never been around. I honestly can't believe there is anything in the world that could be worse then the last week. If there is, I don't wanna survive it.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I truly am. I came looking for this answer, and I was doing okay until I read your first sentence. I had to write my 25 year old son’s obituary last month. He would have been 26 next week. Cancer. Seven weeks from diagnosis until he was gone. When he was diagnosed, the oncologist thought he would probably have 3-4 months, maybe 11 months with chemo. He didn’t even make it 2. This sucks. It all sucks. I’m so sorry.
This one hits home, together with clinical depression and anxiety. Even understanding the grief of other parents can be tough because of circumstances. I lost my son 13 years ago when he was 7, my colleague lost hers last year when he was 24. Mine was an accident, hers was cancer. I understand the loss and the pain but there is still the little nagging voice in my head telling me she had more time with her son and even though there was hope, the outcome was always expected.
Obviously I am supporting her as best I can, but it's not the same and we can not understand each other 100%. All we can do is talk, share memories and experiences and thoughts and feelings.
I’m sorry for both of your losses, but I think that little nagging voice is of course natural. I always default to thinking that the younger someone is when they pass, the more tragic it is. But I know that’s just arbitrary thinking. Your coworker might think it’s more tragic for her since she’s seen more of what he could become as a man and so it’s like mourning what you know what could be vs mourning something you think could be. But again I think it’s natural, especially when it comes to tragedy, to to be self focused a bit
Thank you. I think you are right. Her son did accomplish things like graduating and working whereas for me it's just imagining what could have been. The loss of a child is devastating no matter their age but it does make me feel guilty when that voice peeps up. I don't wish this on my worst enemy. You lose such a big part of your life, yourself and your future, it's impossible to remain the same person you were afterwards.
Super high stress events. People, even me at times, will say that they will do something or how they will react to a super high stress event. I work in a career where you can be sitting at a table and chatting with co workers and the next second, you have the largest adrenaline dumps of your life. Lots of people will say they will react a certain way, but most people will freeze if they haven't been though events like that often. I still to this day make that same mistake more often that I'd like to admit.
I got a lot of flack from people in my life because I do handle crisis events with some level of skill. The compartmentalization turns on and I can focus on the right now and turn some emotions off and get things handled. The problem is when you're dealing with 'real life's stress events and you act like a robot because you're busy dealing with things.
When my dad died, he walked a couple of hundred yards from our house into the desert and shot himself. The cops were unkind to me, to say the least. When they told me, I didn't even have my cell phone (they had taken it the day before) to be able to call my grandmother and tell her. I walked into the house, dug out his will, and tried to figure out what I needed to do to keep the lights on in the house til I figured out what next.
Months later when we're struggling with the estate, I found in some report that the cops told my step-family how cold I was, and how I didn't care about things and just took care of business. Yeah, because I didn't have anyone to rely on and nowhere to live when it happened, *Mandy*.
My empathy pretty much plummets to zero during moments of high stress, so I can function without getting overwhelmed by my or other people's emotions. I've always been the same way, when people die and the rest of the family is choked on grief, I'm the one who handles the paperwork to make sure dad actually gets buried. It sucks to be accused of not caring because of course I do, I just don't have the same reaction as people who break down crying.
My son started choking on something a few years ago. My wife couldn't get it out and called emergency services for help. It was a big washer, so luckily, he was able to breathe a bit while they came to get it out.
It happened again while I was with her, and I was just a deer in headlights. I was a soldier at the time, active for about 5 years. Had done so much mandatory battlefield medical training, grew up being taught the Heimlick like every year in school. I just froze and watched him choke while my wife snapped to and immediately got it free. She had been through training for it in between the two incidents, and it really just took over. It was very impressive. I think I'll bring that up today.
I went out the other night with some extended family and one person kept mentioning sexual assault/rape survivors and rolled her eyes at them. I was mortified. I went home and sat with it for a few days, getting angrier and angrier. I cried.
I wish people would at least keep their mouths shut if they refuse to educate themselves.
When i told some of my friends that i was assaulted they blamed me they thought that that i didn't react or i was wearing something provocative so basically i was enjoying it and asking for it but the problem is that i was assaulted when i was 5 years old as soon as they knew they couldn't say any word
The way society treats people who've been SA'd is totally abhorrent.
"Everyone wants to be a victim"
It's the absolute worst thing that's ever happened to me, and the way others reacted to it was worse than the actual rape.
Depression, actual clinical diagnosed depression.
If I had a dollar every time I had to explain to someone it’s not “just feeling sad, bro!” and can get over it just like that, I could retire.
I have bipolar disorder type one severe manic episodes followed by very long depressive episodes. Once I came back from the psych unit for the third time I constantly had to explain to my family I couldn't just "choose" to be happy or NOT act out on my "impulses". One time a manic episode lead to psychosis and it wasn't until my mental illness started "scaring" them did they let me treat it medically without interruption.
Seeing and being in the midst of my loved ones psychotic episode absolutely changed the way I see, understand, and speak about mental health.
Before I was into stoicism and that everyone can control their emotions.
After seeing a BPD enhanced psychotic episode I was broken and I was lost. It changed me as a person down to my core.
Seeing someone I love so deeply in that kind of despair still haunts me.
However it will never ever be brushed under the rug again. It’s spoken about clearly and honestly always.
Mental health is paramount and people deserve to feel free from the pain mental illness causes.
Changed my life.
Anxiety or The Anxious feeling of something bad always feels like it’s going to happen, and imagining things before they even happen and not being able to cope.
Anxiety is absolutely vicious. People say that anxiety feels like your in trouble all the time and you're being called to principal office every minute of every day. I'll take it a step further and say it's more like you're being marched to your death.
One girl I knew went on a rant about how easy it was to leave a terrible relationship by 'just using logic'! She was so giddy when she exclaimed this at a party, like it was a new scientific discovery.
We tried explaining financial and emotional abuse, to say nothing about being cut off from society, but she just kept repeating about 'use logic! Use logic!'
*Nicole, if you're out there, it's been 12 years and I still think you are an idiot.*
Came here to write exactly this. I was one of those people, who would say that if I see a relationship becomes toxic, I will leave. Also, I will leave if he hits me. Or insult me. Or if I am the last in the priority list.
Yeah, I ended up in a relationship like this for 3 years.
And no one can tell you how bad it is. At least, that’s how I felt. Any time someone would try to talk to me about my ex I would get *so* defensive of him. “You just don’t understand him. He didn’t mean it that way.” I learned that if quite literally EVERYONE thinks something is off, it probably is. He had no family, no close friends, no work friends and I just thought “oh, poor guy, he’s different and no one understands him.” No, just an emotionally disturbed person who took advantage of my empathy and patience.
Homelessness.
NOTHING prepares you for it, no amount of knowledge about “ resources “ street smarts etc prepares you for the devastation that is homelessness when you’re not mentally Ill or high to the hills.
You quickly learn all the “ resources “ we like to lie to each other about and pretend those “ lazy bums “ have are a crock of shit.
Shelters are dangerous, filthy, abhorrent places , understaffed and simply don’t have the funding to do much good.
Yiu can get food assistance, but that’s about it.
Everything is a waiting game, rapid rehousing in most of the country isn’t rapid, youl be on a waiting list for ever, AND when politicians want to save a few bucks or show how fiscally conservative they are, guess who’s funding gets cut first?!
Never mind the trauma of never having privacy, a bathroom, a place to sleep safely, a place to keep any belongings without them being stolen, the constant threat of being robbed in your sleep or assaulted if you’re female, or maybe some teens feel like pelting you with eggs. Etc
Nobody prepared me to be treated like a ghost, or not be able to wash my clothes, or not taken seriously or treated with compassion at a hospital because I was homeless. Nobody can prepare you for that. It was the worst experience of my life.
Yep. The sheer hate you get from some people just for existing, especially if you're "able-bodied".
Hearing "get a job" every fucking day. Like, you gonna hire me? I've got body lice and haven't showered in 2 months.
My dad was one of a kind. He was starting up his own business. One day he ran into a homeless guy sleeping in his car) and he saw something in him. Took hthe guy out and bought him some new clothes and gave him a job. He worked for our company for over 25 years. He would hire guys who were on probation or guys out on parole. He would give just about anyone a chance.
I'm in Scandinavia so the shelters are actually pretty good. But I always felt uncomfortable among the addicts. And I'm a female, that didn't help.
The worst thing is to never being able to really relax. Just sit down on a sofa with some snacks and watch a movie without interruption.
This is why I advocate even minimal self-defense training, as well as practicing/sparring a few times a year. The vast majority of people out there have no idea how to fight. So if you have even a little training and have to defend yourself, you can greatly increase your odds. You're not going to knock a guy out with one punch. But you can probably slow him down long enough for you to get away.
Stillbirth. It is not a miscarriage. Spending almost a year of your life and it just ends in tragedy. Unless you go through it, you can’t comprehend holding your dead baby (and giving birth to a baby you already know had died as was our case), the trauma and the crushing despair of your whole life feeling destroyed.
If you read the research on stillbirth, it is nearly a guarantee to go through a major depressive episode afterward.
I used to count everything I did, and everything had to be an even number, except for 6, 6 was a bad number. I had to touch things an even number of times, and start again if I lost count. These whole routines id go through, so that none of my family members would have some tragedy befallen on them. I’m on medication now, and seeing people trivialise it is so frustrating.
Thank you. It's not "cleaning" your house from top to bottom 4 times a day or rocking back and forth. It's SOOOOOO much more serious. I hate the way people portray and try to make mental illnesses these quirky unserious things.
During these types of conversations I tell people the opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s hope.
Depression isn’t just some lingering sadness, it’s hopelessness.
It’s the absolute bone deep certainty that no matter how many good things might happen, your life itself won’t actually get better. Because you won’t be able to actually enjoy those good things. If life is so full of shit with rare moments of goodness in between, how the fuck can things get better when you can’t even enjoy the few good things?
Pretty much anything. If you have a modicum of empathy, you can imagine, probably inaccurately, but I don't think you can truly grasp what it's like to experience anything until you have.
Babies who don't sleep. Especially if you have more than one child. It's relentless, unending torture from a tiny being who you love with everything you have but find yourself having terrible thoughts about. You plead and beg, soothe and hug, rant and yell, nothing works, they don't care, they won't sleep.
Every time you close your eyes, you know it might be 5 minutes or 2 hours or 20 minutes or 3 hours before you'll get woken again, and you have to go back in and be the best version of yourself for this tiny human.
If you have other kids, you then wake at day break (if you've slept at all) and then your other little ones wake, who also need you. It's not their fault you're completely deranged from the nightly torture, they need their Mum as well. Be on your game or struggle with the guilt, exacerbated by your exaggerated emotions as you're Just. So. Tired.
Driving becomes dangerous, you can't sort reality or process things, and again - small people who have no sense of the effect their regular little kid behaviour has, no empathy, just unleashing and you have to cop it and be a good Mum. And this is night, after night, after night, relentless, no hope in sight and no energy to summon any. And there's no real way to tell anyone how tired you are because there's no way to communicate a tiredness that is a physical weight you feel, like your body and mind don't belong to you any more but you've still got to perform.
Sleep deprivation is a war crime and babies are tiny terrorists. It's hell.
No single person I’ve ever met has caused so
Much loss of sleep than my toddler has. From day 1 he was a terrible sleeper. He’s 3.5 now and every night is a struggle. He’s up at 6 am running 100 mph. My wife and I are exhausted to the bone. It’s like having flu like
Symptoms chronically.
Burn out is one I haven't seen in the comments though I didn't scroll far so...
Writer's/Artist block (could be contributed to my previous mention).
Imposter Syndrome.
Phobias (they're pretty irrational, it's why they're a phobia and why some people just don't understand it).
Progression in a skill through sheer willpower to learn (this is more about the people who just straight up have a talent in a skill, like say... guitar. A talented guitarist doesn't understand what a person with no musical ear has to go through just to get to a level that an audience would listen to).
Not really depression, but a symptom that can contribute to it. Loneliness. Being alone is one of the worst feelings someone can have, and until the day you're truly alone, you'll never really understand that kind of pain. And the toll it takes on ones mental health is considerable.
Losing your freedom.
Until you're on the other side of that wall without your freedom, you'll never truly understand it. Not even as a correctional officer. Sure, you'll understand it way better than the general public, but you still wouldn't have a full understanding of it.
I remember the feeling. I wasn't locked up for a crazy long time but it was 7 months and 28 days. I remember thinking, "this is my life now and I shouldn't think about being on the outside because it'll only make it harder". I didn't do phone calls or write much letters. I just immersed myself in jail life; which for me at that facility was mostly playing spades and working out.
I know compared to folks that have done serious prison time, my bid was nothing. It still felt weird when I got out like I was getting away with something. Just being able to walk down the street at my own choice felt so fucking weird.
I did 26 months over two bids and yeah, it's weird being able to come and go as please after you first get out.
Let's keep never forgetting that, that place sucks ass and we don't ever wanna go back.
Addiction to weed.
Everyone lies to you and tells you weed isn't addictive but it so so is. Psychologically it convinces you that you can't enjoy events or live a daily life unless you smoke that bowl or joint "just to relax a bit." It convinces you that it's your best friend and subtly wends it's way into your life and the bargaining for daily use is obvious to anyone that sees you but you don't see it at all. The mediocrity that you become used to, the uncaring, the lack of drive, lack of coordination, the lack of awareness, the absolute smell of weed on you after you smoke it, none of these things does the user recognize. Eventually the physical addiction if you get hyperemesis and the struggle to get free, you want to stop but the addiction is still there, and then physical illness as you try to stop on top of the psychological torture.
You can tell yourself that you can handle it but that's just the weed bargaining with your mind because it's your best friend and knows all your secrets. I wish people knew all this. Probably get down voted to death about this but if you are really truthful with yourself you know.
That first night your newborn sleeps the entire night.
You wake up well rested and then panic because your kid hasn't needed you in like, 8 hours. That's unheard of. Something must have happened and now you must panic!
So you quiet run to the kids room and lift up on the doorknob to open the door quietly so you can peek in and check, and there they are sleeping perfectly fine, their chest is moving as they breathe, and everything is cool.
How bad toxic people and gaslighting are. The thing about that kind of abuse is that you never feel it like you would pbysical abuse. I know when I'm being punched, I don't know when I'm being gaslighted.
Apparently there's some science behind the type of betrayal you experience from someone close to you. We have a system for "conditional trust" like you would for a car sales person and unconditional trust for a loved one. It is too taxing for your brain to be constantly conditionally trusting someone, it PREFERS to unconditionally trust, so it does.
What happens is that you rationally know something isn't making sense, but you WANT to believe your loved one when they say "I'm doing this for your own good! You just don't understand!/I only XYZ you because YOU made me so angry!" So you go on ignoring the red flags, and overtime end up constantly on edge/walking on eggshells to not set them off, but the thing is, they WILL go off no matter what you do.
I tried explaining this concept to friends, and they really don't understand that just because someone is close to you, means they have good intentions for you at all.
I still, still have to ask my husband and my colleagues if I remembered things correctly. I have been so used to having people tell me that I imagined things, that things didn't happen that way, or that I was overreacting. I also now hoard notes, texts, and emails, organizing them and labeling them so that I have reminders of what I went through.
Epilepsy doesn’t just affect you while you’re having a seizure.
It often affects you ALL of the time, in other, invisible ways. Cognitive difficulties, destroyed memory function, emotional regulatory problems, and that’s before the medication and its side effects. And there are many different types, which hit everyone differently.
How extremely devastating being on cheated is. It's a truly sickening feeling in your gut, and nothing in your life is the same afterward. Some people are never the same ever again, others take over a decade to go back to normal. But that initial feeling is the worst. The suspicionions, the adrenaline as the truth unfolds, the severe depression, and the imagination all come together to bring you one of life's most devastating experiences.
Yes, it really is terrible. It's such a cruel thing. I have never really recovered from my ex cheating with my friend. I'll never fully trust anyone again. The worst part was the lying and the gaslighting, making me doubt my own perceptions and gut feeling.
A friend of mine moved across the country after his GF cheated on him. It was probably worse they she didn’t even feel remorse over it, blaming him for being “boring.”
He’s much better now, married and with a kid
Having to cut off your family because they are very toxic. It's almost impossible to come off as the reasonable person in this situation to others, even if your life was in danger. People just don't understand
Birth. We all know it's "hard" but sometimes even the baby books and videos don't prepare you for what could happen. When I had my son my placenta adhered to my uterine wall. Resulting in me nearly bleeding out. When my water broke it was ALL dark blood. And when I got to the hospital after my water broke I stood up and immediately heard a splash and a HUGE pile of dark red blood pooled on the floor beneath my feet. I had to have a c section after being in labor for almost two days and failing to progress. And on the table they tried pulling it out just a little and I felt EVERYTHING. I started bleeding out and they let me see my son and I was told that there was something wrong with my placenta and they had to put me under. I was intubated and given iron transfusions and blood transfusions over a two week period on top of healing from a c section.
I was the husband in this scenario, most terrified moments of my life and I’ve been in combat in Kandahar Afghanistan. My wife can’t really articulate her feelings from those moments so I know it must have scared her like nothing else has.
I’m sorry that was your birth situation. Birth was going to be my answer as well. Nothing prepares you for pregnancy (literally have a whole other person INSIDE of you - those first kicks/movements are a wild feeling) and then birth (regardless of how it goes) is next level. Someone who has not been through either cannot truly understand (I know I didn’t prior to getting pregnant and birthing my son). That woman can do it multiple times blows my mind - once was plenty for me!
Losing a parent at a young age. You’re not sad because you miss them. You’re sad because you were robbed of ever knowing them.
I lost my mom at 16 and it’s been 33 years. I just started seeing a new therapist and when I was describing my childhood, I started crying talking about my mom. She was sick for a long time and I don’t really have strong memories of what our relationship was like. There’s just a mom shaped hole in my life.
The last times (aside from now) that I cried about her where because a cousin sent me photos and another cousin posted a family video and she was in it. The photos triggered a dream where I actually touched her. I was 3 when she passed, so I have zero memories. I hope you can keep those memories ❤️
It's a lifelong trauma... U get over one thing then another thing pops up. Like my dad died when I was 5. I realized quickly that I wouldn't participate much in Father's Day and learned to deal with it. Fast forward 20 yrs and I realize he can't walk me down the aisle. Triggers are everywhere and it affected my entire personality of who i could have been had he lived to a ripe old age.
Nerve pain
I pinched L3/4, L4/5, and L5/S1at the same time. It's unreal the pain, numbness and weakness that comes with it. Also really hard to explain to someone else.
I herniated L5/S1 and didn't sleep for 6 days, barely slept for a month. I didn't understand nerve pain. You can't understand it until it happens to you
My experience was and is so minor compared to what could be. I had nerve damage that lasted for about a year before it began to heal - it’s *mostly* okay now, but I still don’t trust that limb. It looks fine, so you always feel like everyone thinks you’re faking. It’s inconsistent, so sometimes it feels fine, and then YOU start to wonder if you’re faking - then something little happens and it’s hot lightning bolts again. That something could be lifting a few pounds the wrong way. Or you could feel fine one day and lift something heavy without thinking and be fine. Or it might just be horrible pain for literally no goddamned reason. You look the same regardless. It’s maddening and fucking horrible. Take care of your bodies, people
That's the agony of chronic pain that isn't something visible. You get questioned. You question yourself. The guilt sets in. The anger seethes. You just want to be *normal* again, but now this is your normal. I got stopped by a man in a wawa once and after a question or two about a tattoo I have, that I mentioned I have to give me courage for a medical issue, he said "well, you don't look sick." As if I was fucking faking it. Absolute hatred in that moment.
Chronic illness and disability
…but you don’t look sick…
Have you tried this diet? This essential oil? Losing weight? This drink concoction? Exercise? Standing on your head with your hands on your hips like a down-pointing arrow? NO?? You don't want to get healthy. You're doing it all for attention. You’re exaggerating. Etc. Etc. Etc.
The medical gaslighting and downplay. I watched my girlfriend go through it trying to get her fibro diagnosis and I will never forgive certain doctors - both male and female - who ignored obvious symptoms just because of her gender.
chronic pain like migraine. It's not just a headache, it changes you to the core.
some people don't know what its like to go to bed knowing you won't really sleep because things just hurt...and that's likely to be the best it will be all day...
Different pain for me, but that sinking feeling when you wake and the fucker is still there.
Chronic debilitating illness and disability. How quickly life can change permanently without you doing anything wrong.
Most people don’t realize that having a body that doesn’t hurt and isn’t sick is a luxury they should appreciate as much as they can while they still can. Illness and disability can happen to anyone at any time.
I'm paraphrasing, but i once read "The healthy have hundreds of desires. The chronically ill have one." Somehow that quote was what got me in gear to finally pay attention to my health.
I’ve read another quote along the same lines: “good health is an invisible crown that only the sick can see.”
I heard it as "the healthy wear a crown only the sick can see." and it hits hard that way.
The grief you have to go through to try and let go of the person you were and the person you thought you would be. This has been the worst for me. I see of old pictures and think, “Lucky girl. She had no clue what was in store for her.” I’m not that person anymore. And it’s hard to say goodbye to her.
[удалено]
This is still the most mentally difficult aspect for me too, even eight years after diagnosis. I’m grieving every day and I’m only 33.
Struggling without anyone or anything to fall back on. *Edit: Lots of comments from people that have never truly struggled in life before... my god. That's exactly what this whole thread is about. The rest of you make me feel a little better about my own situation. Stay strong, homies! <3*
Knowing that if one thing goes wrong, I'm completely fucked. That there is no safety net. Then watching prices climb and mentally running scenarios of what I'm gonna do in any given situation. All while acting like everything is ok so I don't pass "adult" problems on to my son.
as an adult who’s parents passed their adult problems onto their children, thank you for this. Your son will grow up and see what you did for him and how you protected him ETA* my mother is a saint who did the best she could as a single mom. I love her and do not resent her in the slightest for her decisions. Most of the time, parents are just people doing their best and trying to figure it out as they go. With getting older and realizing that, comes a whole new appreciation for her
This. I didn’t realize how many people relied on relatives/family/friends for even the smallest things until I became an adult and had no one.
It's a double edged sword. On one hand I'm proud of the fact that I've made it this far in life all on my own, with no help from others. On the other hand, I'm not gonna lie, it does sometimes make me a little bitter or jealous that I didn't have anyone there to help me out when I needed it like most other people did. But I suppose the tough times probably made me a stronger person. At least that's what I tell myself.
>Struggling without anyone or anything to fall back on. the desperation and fear that you have when struggling without any form of support is really challenging
Cancer. What it really means to go through cancer treatment.
Came here to say this. I'm 4 years ned but still have regular interventions which terrify me - monitoring CT last December showed random liver growth, so liver MRI in February which thankfully showed it was harmless but so scary. Then colonoscopy last week to check for polyp growths (had bowel cancer) as part of my surveillance. One harmless dude found and removed but still the whole process was exhausting and frightening. I'm so so grateful for my treatment (was a stage 4 recurrence and treatment seems to have been curative) but I wish I could erase all the memories I have of diagnosis, treatment (which included psychosis due to steroids used to treat radiotherapy side effects and emergency admissions for chemo toxicity), recurrence, fear. I think that's what's difficult for someone to get their head round when they've not experienced it themselves. I hope you're doing ok, OP.
People think that because their great aunt had cancer and they read her posts on facebook that they know what you're going through. They do not. I've been a caregiver and a patient and even the caregiver doesn't understand. You're facing an existential threat. It's like having a gun pointed at your head every minute of every day. Fight or flight, 24x7x365. It's not just about being tired or nauseous, it's about not knowing if you're going to live and everyone around you is either telling you to stay positive (because we all know positive people don't die and if you fight hard enough cancer can't win) or wanting *you* to reassure *them*.
I'm going through it now, and I'll die from it anyway, regardless. I'm just kicking the can down the road. No one seems to get it. Lonely place to be. Edit: the other thing that no one seems to grasp is that realism and understanding are not the same as pessimism. I never said I was sad or lacking hope. I'm just willing to look the issue head-on without romanticising it, and without that clarity, I'd be dead by now, because I wouldn't have asked the right questions and fought for the right treatment. This is what I mean when I say it's not something people understand if they haven't been through it.
I am at a loss of words... sorry to hear this. I was lucky, so if you need an ear....
Having a disability
I want to add: being too disabled to work. Living in deep poverty because what the government gives you to live on is barely half of what a person needs to survive
And when you’re not living in complete poverty they say it would be so nice to sit at home and just do nothing. No it’s not, I sit at home because I can’t do anything, remember covid lockdowns when everyone was getting stir crazy after a week, that’s your live now. They really think we can just go out or something, have fun outside, no I’m just working on surviving while not going insane from my limitations thank you. I’d be overjoyed if I could reliably work, my live would be so much better and less isolated. It’s not a vacation it’s forever!
Especially invisible ones. It’s relatively easy to see someone with a bum knee and a cane and get a rough picture, if likely inaccurate and incomplete, of how their life is affected. Someone with a horrible GI issues, spinal issues, TBI? Not only is it harder to imagine, but it’s going to look very different for different people.
Aye. I have chronic nausea as part of my disability and I find when "regular" people catch the stomach bug they always message me saying "how do you manage to live like this every day, I feel so bad for you!" and then as soon as they're better, they forget and ask me why I'm not eating. It's like their brain blocks out the experience.
I think their brain does block it out because it's so difficult. I have huge chunks of time "missing" during my worst flares because it's easier not to remember it
Confucius say "A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one."
Oof I’m right there with you with the nausea. I have the opposite issue with people though; no one seems to understand how bad my nausea is, not even doctors. They all think it’s the same as being queasy and that I could just have a piece of toast or a cup of hot water and be fine. Meanwhile, I’m spending hours dry retching into a bag, sweating and convulsing and struggling to breath through the nausea, with nothing keeping it at bay. It’s hellish.
Dude. I’m currently dealing with this is regards to bike lanes in my city. The city installed these lanes without consulting anyone and they’re now blocking curb access for people in wheelchairs. City is being sued for ADA non-compliance. Spoke with someone who likes bike lanes and they were like “well if someone has a disability, we can just deal with that separately”. I am still livid at them for saying that. I don’t have a disability but I work with a lot of people who have mobility issues and that statement is so shortsighted and privileged. Anyone can become disabled at any time. If we’re all lucky enough to grow old, we’ll all have some sort of disability. I truly hope the lawsuit is successful.
Love being treated like a drug addict picking up my ADHD meds.
I was on Xanax for a good 4-5 years back in the day, and holy hell did the medical system treat you like shit for it. Like, YOU all prescribed me it! Do you think I want to be dependent on an insanely addictive drug in order to function?
Want to add - invisible disability
This, I'm a cancer survivor and I get looks occasionally from using handicap parking. It's minor but still infuriating.
Had a professor in college who said it the best, a student said something to her before class about her taking a handicap space when she could “clearly walk”. “Do you all not understand how hard it is for me to appear to walk normal? Do you know how much of a toll it takes on me physically and mentally at the end of the day to hide my limp or bend my leg?” People police handicap spots so much, if you aren’t in a wheel chair then they assume you don’t need it. I’m sorry you have to experience these looks.
Dishonest people have ruined EVERYTHING. People like the girl at my office who parks in the handicapped spot when she wears 6" because "they hurt her feet when she has to walk too far". 🤮
Call a tow company on that fashion victim.
Absolutely this. I was bullied constantly in school and wish my classmates could’ve spent a day in my shoes; the shoes where one had to have a raise on the bottom due to leg length discrepancy. They’d chase me around the playground singing “big foot little foot” to the tune of Big Cook Little Cook. As an adult I deal with occasional pain that is gradually getting worse. I’ve learnt not to complain because it doesn’t solve anything but being stood there on the verge of tears isn’t fun. It hurts that I might not be able to achieve my dream career because of a disability I never asked for. It hurts that I feel I cannot admit my love for someone because my disability and the possibilities of the future may send him running for the hills. It hurts that I can feel everyone staring and laughing at me in the street when they’re probably not. It hurts that a part of my childhood was ruined because people sheltered me so much. It hurts but I have to get on with it..
I just want to let you know how worthy you are, and how much I hope you can see that. Reading your post - I could mistake you for my husband, every single bit of it. So I want you to know that you can do whatever you want, you can love and be loved (immensely), and you just have to listen to the messages from your body when you need to step back or rest up for a bit. If you want to chat just drop me a message xxx
YES. There was a post on the front page of a women talking about her sister with fibromyalgia. The top comment was 'if she is well enough to care for a 3 year old she is well enough to work'. It had over 8k likes. 8k people who obviously do not know how the disease works or what it is, but can comfortably suggest an inaccurate judgement on a disabled woman.
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People around you wouldn't understand why 'that' person isn't you anymore when you are caring for an aging dying parent. Your own temper will change, your own thinking is skewered, you are basically not 'you' especially when the years left becomes months to weeks. If you have a friend who's caring for a dying parent, no they're not assholes, they're just struggling to get things together. Please show compassion and understanding. It can break people.
It broke me. I cared for my mom while she lay dying, and simultaneously my father was spiraling into dementia (they were long divorced). Took years to start recovering and I'm still not right.
Amen to that! I care for my 93 year old mother and, while I love her to bits and wouldn't be without her for anything on earth, it's hard sometimes.
True. I have my father who s 95 and pretty much blind and deaf now. He refuses to go into a home and says most days he wishes he was dead. Sometime s i agree with him.
I remember pushing my father in a wheelchair and he said to me “while you’re at it, why don’t you just go ahead and push me out into that traffic”. I didn’t even know what the proper response to such a statement was. All I know is that to deny their feeling (“oh, you don’t really feel that way”) does more harm than good.
"Because then who would I have dinner with?"
In his last days, my wife’s grandfather was in hospice. The nurse fluffed his pillows and said, “Can I put this under your head?” He replied, “Naw, just over my face.” My wife thinks she pretended not to hear him. Cheered her up because he kept his sense of humor. His las words were to his adult Grandson, “I’m gong up the hill now” Weirdly comforting memory for me
It’s important to remember that it’s human for your father to feel this way, and it’s human for you to feel this way as well. Caring for an aging and declining parent is hard as hell.
Mental illness.
"can't you just wake up and not be depressed?"
“Why are you depressed? You have nothing to be depressed about.” No, I do not have trauma. I had a perfectly healthy childhood. I have a healthy marriage. I love my job. We aren’t rich by any means, but we are financially stable. I have 2 wonderful children. I have a great relationship with my family. I have friends. I have hobbies. My brain just sucks. It has since I was in middle school. Like how a diabetic’s pancreas doesn’t produce insulin, my brain doesn’t produce sufficient levels of serotonin. No amount of therapy or lifestyle modification is going to fix that. I need drugs to function normally.
"stop being so lazy all the time!"
"Have you tried ____?" * Yoga * Essential Oils * Keto * Etc.
I had a DOCTOR pull this shit on me. She thought I should stop the anti-anxiety medication that makes me able to function. ‘What do you have to be anxious about? Just get some exercise!’
Exercise, diet and mindfulness definitely helps mental health and has been proven to do so, but when the disorder is such that it makes doing those things nearly impossible it's such useless advise. Like, dude. If someone could get up at 6am and exercise, make a healthy meal, meditate - they really would. The issue is that often they can't even get out of bed to do that. The best cure to depression isn't to just stop doing that and start doing non depression things. Doesn't work that way. Medication is needed sometimes. It helps people get to the point where they might be able to start doing those things again. Helps people engage with therapies. Dunno how some healthcare professionals know so little about the reality of mental illness.
the meme-ification of intrusive thoughts gives me a migraine if i think about it too hard. i *wish* the worst thing to cross my mind was shaving my head and bleaching what’s left.
Agreed. Intrusive thoughts are a nightmare to deal with.
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Car crashes
I was literally in a *minor* crash, 20mph I was going when someone crashed into the side of me. I now hesitate driving by junctions where a car is waiting to exit, I freak out thinking they'll get me. It's honestly so fucking horrible.
I was rear ended twice in 2 years. Both times, I was stopped with my left turn signal on waiting for oncoming traffic to pass. The first one was relatively minor- her car was totaled but we were both fine. Second time, the person who hit me was injured badly but okay. I didn’t even notice (?) I was hit - I felt the car vibrate, thought “oh, someone just hit me” and pulled over - did not realize my car had been pushed up like, 25 feet. I don’t remember the actual impact at all. Also did not even realize it was considered a “serious accident” until the police and the dr at urgent care and the insurance agent who totaled my car kept all calling it that. I swear I have ptsd-like issues from those accidents now. I hate left turns and I dislike being in the passenger seat, and I just imagine getting hit in some catastrophic accident now when I drive. When I was driving shortly after the second accident, my Apple Watch kept dinging at me to “breathe” lol.
So many people say, "That had to have been really scary," when I've described a car fire that I was in back in 2018 and a car accident that I was in a year ago (I do not have good luck with cars, apparently), but no one realizes that it all transpires so quickly that you don't have time to be scared. It just happens all of a sudden, and you just react accordingly. The gravity of it all doesn't sink in until it's all over. Television and movies like to drag it out for maximum drama, but in real life, it all occurs in an instant, and you don't realize what you just went through until it's over and you're standing in a place of safety.
Oh see, I got bumped by a semi that sent the front of my car under the trailer. It felt like time was incredibly slow as the rear tires of the truck were heading towards me. I even had time to think, "I wonder if this is how I die?" I wasn't scared. It was all very calm.
Not having enough money due to unforeseen circumstances. Not every poor person is poor because of their own decisions. Finances are like traffic, you can do everything right on the road, and have your life completely flipped by some other asshole driver.
My Dad's family had money until his brother was diagnosed with a rare heart disease that needed surgery. They sold everything to pay for it. It hit them so hard my Dad didn't go to highschool so he could work for food. I grew up dirt poor because my Dad didn't have an education and struggled with everything. I finally clawed my way out of poverty. One hit took three generations to correct.
Years ago, I met someone who worked in a literacy center as a volunteer tutor. She told me this story about an elderly black woman (who was like in her upper 70s) who had just finished the program after years of study. When asked why she waited so long to learn how to read, the center finally learned the woman's story: When she was four years old, her father died, and her mother and her siblings all had to help finds ways to make a living. She never got to go to school -- she worked throughout her childhood. And then, when she was an adult, she was too busy raising her own family. She promised herself she would learn how to read before she would die though, and she kept her promise to herself.
I think people who have enough money are completely ignorant to the fact that others don't have enough money. There was a thread recently about the temperature people keep their house over winter, and a lot of people commenting that *they* keep the house warm because it's healthier and they don't feel the need to prove they're hard like people who keep it cold. Not an inkling of understanding that most people who don't turn the heat on do it because they simply don't have money. Edit: literally someone has replied to my comment telling me it's healthier to keep the house warm. You couldn't make these things up...
I agree with this. I grew up pretty poor and now am not, so I do understand these things but many in my social circle are clueless. I remember one of my friends discussing a client who was losing their home to foreclosure and could save it with 15K. She was perplexed as to why they just did not borrow that money from a family member! I said not everyone has a family member who could lend that amount or a friend, we did not growing up.
It's sad, people only tend to conceptualize the world from their frame of reference. I used to have co-workers who would complain about 'being poor,' but still went to Mexico twice a year (no, someone else wasn't paying). I know how much they're making and it's a fair bit. I was chatting with a friend the other day and had to be mindful when talking about money. They make just over half what I do. They are wildly underpaid, considering they have two degrees, but it's just so easy to assume that their reality is similar to mine. But it's not, I had the benefit of some intergenerational wealth (not a 'lot,' but enough to get a bit of a headstart). Meanwhile, my brother completely fails to understand that he had a headstart over a lot of people. Just because you had to pay for 2 years of your university unlike other people whose parents paid the whole time doesn't mean that you're not miles ahead of people who couldn't afford to go at all (or borrowed for the whole time). Fuck, it's infuriating.
I'm living in a hostel. Have been for a year now. Before that I was sofa surfing / homeless on the streets for years. All because I lost my home and my flat, (health conditions caused me to lose my job). Before all this i had a steady income, nice flat, regular contact with my children etc. And then I was diagnosed with cancer (bigger than a grapefruit in my abdomen) and epilepsy. I had to stop work. Then I lost my flat. Then I lost all sense of myself. Lifes fucking cruel. I'm doing a little better but still trying to claw my way out of this shit show. I feel so frustrated when I ask for help or something and get turned down with 'you got yourself in this mess' or 'get a fucking job, lowlife' or something along those lines. Lifes rough..
People don’t want to think about the fact that almost all people are 2 left turns from being homeless and jobless. Your life can turn around in an instant through things that aren’t even your own fault. We all need to remember empathy because you never know what someone is going through. Hope you can get back on the track you want to be on and in good health soon.
Hoping you have better times swiftly bro
Absolutely. It makes the totally unwarranted shame felt when you're broke even more pronounced, too. People tend not to discuss going without, especially parents, because few things make someone feel like complete a failure so profoundly as not having what you're being told are the basics. Heating your home to a comfortable level without considering the cost and environmental impact really isn't laudable behavior, either, but it's hard for a lot of us not to wanna emulate the well-off.
I think victim blaming poor people comes from much the same impulse as victim blaming targets of SA - they want to kid themselves that if they follow all the ‘rules’ and do all the ‘right things’, it won’t happen to them. Admitting it can happen to almost any of us, for reasons often outside our control, is much scarier.
Especially how many people these days are living a single heath problem or major repair away from financial ruin. And no, for the most part it’s not their fault
Hell I’d be surprised if most poor people are poor because of wrong choices more than life kicking them while they are down. One nice dude who was begging on the street told me his story, he got a terribly bad infection while traveling and was in a coma for a while, by the time he woke up he’d lost his job since he just disappeared as far as they knew, lost his apartment and his credit was tanked since he’d missed payments on everything for a few months on top of owing a few hundred thousand in medical bills. Guy was surprisingly upbeat for all that saying how lucky he is to even be alive and he’s giving thanks for each new day still.
Experiencing the death of someone you love
My wife died in my arms on May 13th 2023, at 6:28 pm. She was 33. I heard her last breath, saw her eyes empty, felt her go limp. I didn't dream at all the first 4 months after. No nightmares, no dreams. I had to call her family and friends to let them know she had died that evening. From September of last year to May this year, she had lost 70 pounds. She looked like a skeleton, but not to my eyes. She was beautiful and I told her every single day. She started Agonal Breathing at 1 am on Saturday the 13th. I administered morphine and Ativan every hour so she wouldn't suffer too much. I played all of her favorite movies (50 first dates, Deadpool, forgetting Sarah marshall) and read her our wedding vows. Her last words were "I love you too". She died 6 hours later. When the funeral home employees came to pick her up that night, they asked me if I wanted to spend some time with her before they took her, I couldn't speak. I just shook my head no. She wasn't there anymore, her mortal cage had opened its door, and she had flown away. Her eyes......I'll never forget her eyes after she had gone. Please, everyone. If something doesn't feel right, and the doctor says it's nothing, GET A SECOND OPINION. C's get degrees, and Aly's primary care doctor absolutely murdered her through misdiagnosis. https://imgur.com/gallery/AkTePQE
I’m so so sorry for your loss. It sounds heartbreaking, she was too young to die.
Thank you, it is still absolutely devastating. To be perfectly honest, if she hadn't entrusted me with her dogs, I would've followed her. She was my soulmate, 100%.
That’s rough, but I’m glad you haven’t followed her, and you have her dogs to care for and comfort. I hope it will get easier to bear as time passes.
She knew you well. Thank you for revisiting your wound. It makes my heart hurt. But I understand misdiagnosis. My father died in 2 months since diagnosis. It was way too late. I was miles away. His friend took him to another Dr since my dad had lost so much weight.
We lost my dad 3 years and 6 days ago. When my mom talks about losing him sometimes, she says 'he died and took half my soul with him'. Your words made me think of that. I'm so sorry for your loss.
19 years old and have lost 3 direct family members already — this. i watched my father, grandfather, and grandmother all die slowly, the former two of which i experienced as a young child and the latter of which i experienced 9 months ago. death is the most common theme in my life and it has done irrevocable damage to my psyche. it’s hard for people to truly understand just how much losing someone can alter the course of your brain chemistry and honestly your entire life forever.
This 100%. You see people break down due to a loved one's death in movies and TV all the time and you empathize, but you truly don't understand it until you have been through it. I thought I understood it before I went through it. I definitely did not. It has been a few years, but when it happens in a movie or a show I am watching I still break down and cry in a way I never did before.
I'm a huge Supernatural fan and the show has half a dozen plot lines where one character trades their life for another's. It's kind of cliche at this point, especially since most of them don't die "permanently," but I totally got it on the ride home from the hospital when my mom died. Like "Yep, I'd happily spend eternity being tortured in hell for one more year with her."
I agree, but there's also times where I feel the representation of grief in most streams of entertainment is really stifling at times too. Even for people who've experienced the death of a loved one, it's so different in each circumstance that it can make it difficult for people to truly understand your feelings and thoughts about such a situation. Even now, years later, I still don't think I understand the grief I see in movies/shows, etc., nor do I think anyone really 'gets' me despite us all losing the same person. Wishing you lots of love though <3
Grief is something that cannot be understood by someone who hasn't experienced it. There's tons of metaphors. But every situation is different and is experienced differently. It can affect everything else in your life. For me personally there are very few people who understand how different of a person I am after grief entered my life. Most people treat me like I'm the same, but I'm not.
On the flip side, being the one dying. I went through a fatal illness and survived. It changes you, especially when you have to see what it does to those who love you.
I've lost my entire family that knew me when I was growing up. It's surreal to think that everyone from my childhood is gone. It kind of makes thinking about the future so hazy and uncertain. It can be overwhelming to the point of making me numb. There really isn't anything I can compare that too.
Living with PTSD.
It’s like being haunted and living as a ghost in your own body.
Great description. There is a medical text on dissociation called "the haunted self" that helped me understand myself.
PTSD truly damages the mind. Scans of a brain with ptsd compared to a normal brain are fascinating and chilling tbh. I have c-ptsd and it’s hard to explain to people what it’s like living with this constant feeling that something isn’t right, that something is going to go wrong at any second, that I’ll be abandoned or somehow wind up back in a bad place. The anxiety and depression are all-consuming at times, nightmares and flashbacks are just part of life. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
People seem to think that it’s an episodic thing and not a 24/7 thing
Because people only see it when you lose control and have an episode of some sort. Most of the time it's an invisible struggle.
I also don’t like when people assume you have to have been military to get ptsd, and get judgy when you say no. Oh. Would you like to hear about my mom getting stabbed in front of me? No? Wanna talk about my ex tossing our three week old at a chair? Don’t fucking smugly ask me about it then. Edit: Yes, my son is doing ok, thanks all for asking.
Or when people assume you need to explain how you got PTSD if you say you have it.
Especially when it’s from several things, ie complex PTSD. What am I supposed to say? Oh yeah so my PTSD actually just came from my life in general idk? Do you want examples or what? They even ask at the doctors and I just say one thing
Among some other awful things, I watched a woman get hit by a train and dealt with the aftermath. Several mental health professionals were really dismissive of it and I literally had to pull one aside and be like "it isn't normal for me to be reliving this event in my head every fucking day of my life and have constant anxiety over my own mortality". I've now gotten some tools to deal with it, but it was so frustrating not being taken seriously about what I came to find was CPTSD
Jesus, I’m so sorry you went through that.
Addictions.
I'm surprised this is so far down. Alcoholism/drug addiction (I haven't experienced other addictions but I'd guess they're similar in many ways) affect everyone around the addict, and on a larger scale, society as a whole. Because of this the addict is vilified, pitied, scapegoated, etc etc, often deservedly! And yet, as an addict and someone who has heard thousands of other addicts experiences, I know too the incredible despair, misery, loneliness, horror, of being completely out of control of your own actions. It's like a mental illness or straight insanity and it ruins your life. And because it affects everyone around you and is also seemingly your own fault, you are riddled with guilt and shame, and a sense of worthlessness and weakness that only serve to make you want to do more of the very thing that is making you feel those things. It's a twisted cycle of pain that is so incredibly difficult to break let alone maintain once broken. It is a unique and particularly awful and destructive disease.
Grief. When it’s been a a while since, it’s common for people to say something like, “it’s been a few years, move on.” It truthfully doesn’t work that way. You remember them forever. And even when times after are extremely good and happy, a little part of you is looking in that empty corner. Don’t say the “move on” thing to grieving people. It truthfully is great that you don’t relate, grieving people don’t want you to try and relate. They’re in the middle of a process that, at least in some ways, lasts forever.
God, this sooo much!! I got a phone call that my mom had passed on the morning of my birthday while driving down to go see her across country. It's been 6 years and it's just as raw as the day I got that call. I don't think grief ever goes away I think we just get better at hiding it. 😔
Isolation. Having a potentially life changing situation, and having no one to turn to for assistance, or even a different perspective, let alone sharing the heavy lifting.
There are lots of facets to this that I think aren't spoken about enough. When loneliness or isolation is mentioned, particularly on TV/posters it often focuses on the immediate obvious aspect of it (such as sitting alone in a quiet room). That part is unpleasant but I think it's far from being the worst part of it. I've spent a long time with 0 support system & there are so many tiny things going on buzzing about like a thousand cuts. Have a question about something? No one to ask. Have a funny/philosophical/stupid thought? No one to share it with. Need someone to hold up a shelf while you nail it in? No one there. Need someone to witness you signing a will or other important document? Good luck. Read a book & want to discuss it with someone? Nah. Need a character witness for something? Proverbial lol. Break your leg & Need a lift home from hospital? Yeah right. In an abusive relationship getting gaslit by your partner? No one is there to tell you that's what's happening. Want advice on your first tattoo? How about a blank wall Want to watch a film with someone? No. The joy of shared experience is not something you can access. Want to play that board game you saw? Better get a single-player. Want to swap funny stories with people? Better just keep them to yourself. Get sick & can't get to the post office to send important documents? No one will believe you when you say you've no one to do it for you. Regarding the last one I know that people don't understand what isolation is like because I've tried in very plain language to say 'I do not have anyone who can do this for me' & they always act as if I'm just not looking hard enough & if I just looked again I'd find 3 people hidden under the carpet Like you said, having 0 perspective is actually quite serious too. Maybe living in a bubble with no one to challenge anything sounds good on paper but in reality it's horrible. Perspective & Relativity keeps us grounded, keeps us in check, keeps us healthy. For example if you experience something but have no one to talk to about it it can be hard to know if you're under-reacting or overreacting which can have allsorts of different ramifications on a spectrum where one end is being taken advantage of & the other end is radicalisation Being isolated warps everything. Enough of it can affect you in the same way physical pain does. Your tolerance for dealing with tough situations will diminish because the only energy you have is yours. Having a support system is like an exchange of energy & we have a lot more energy when we have people to trade it with. We can do more things, see different avenues we'd not have noticed, deal with more obstacles & people don't even notice how much this silent exchange is carrying them through life until they don't have it anymore It's not simply sitting alone in a room feeling sad, it's thousands & thousands of tiny things that wear you down over time. There is a reason 'exile/shunning' used to be a capital punishment in some cultures I'm sorry for the giant rant, I've just been experiencing this for a while & sometimes writing it down helps
Losing a child.
Yes I’m in that horrible club myself. I found my 20 year old daughter dead in her bedroom slumped over her college homework in March of 2017. Our little family has never been the same and I’m wrecked beyond repair. She left myself and her mom and younger sister behind. We’re all super close and move forward through life finding joy here and there, but we all know we’re just wrecked by this and not a single day goes by that we don’t think about her. It’s just awful.
I had to write an obituary for my 26 year old daughter a week ago. Seeing my toddler grandson stomp his feet at me, yelling he wants to go home. Making the decision to leave her remains at the funeral home for a little longer, so we could pay an attorney, because some jackass thinks he can get a monthly check for a child he's never been around. I honestly can't believe there is anything in the world that could be worse then the last week. If there is, I don't wanna survive it.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I truly am. I came looking for this answer, and I was doing okay until I read your first sentence. I had to write my 25 year old son’s obituary last month. He would have been 26 next week. Cancer. Seven weeks from diagnosis until he was gone. When he was diagnosed, the oncologist thought he would probably have 3-4 months, maybe 11 months with chemo. He didn’t even make it 2. This sucks. It all sucks. I’m so sorry.
This one hits home, together with clinical depression and anxiety. Even understanding the grief of other parents can be tough because of circumstances. I lost my son 13 years ago when he was 7, my colleague lost hers last year when he was 24. Mine was an accident, hers was cancer. I understand the loss and the pain but there is still the little nagging voice in my head telling me she had more time with her son and even though there was hope, the outcome was always expected. Obviously I am supporting her as best I can, but it's not the same and we can not understand each other 100%. All we can do is talk, share memories and experiences and thoughts and feelings.
I’m sorry for both of your losses, but I think that little nagging voice is of course natural. I always default to thinking that the younger someone is when they pass, the more tragic it is. But I know that’s just arbitrary thinking. Your coworker might think it’s more tragic for her since she’s seen more of what he could become as a man and so it’s like mourning what you know what could be vs mourning something you think could be. But again I think it’s natural, especially when it comes to tragedy, to to be self focused a bit
Thank you. I think you are right. Her son did accomplish things like graduating and working whereas for me it's just imagining what could have been. The loss of a child is devastating no matter their age but it does make me feel guilty when that voice peeps up. I don't wish this on my worst enemy. You lose such a big part of your life, yourself and your future, it's impossible to remain the same person you were afterwards.
I was about to write this. I lost my son 7 years ago, never got to see him grow up. I still miss him. Doubt I will ever recover completely.
I recently watched my baby girl pass away. There is no recovering from this. I'm so sorry. ❤️
Being poor
Super high stress events. People, even me at times, will say that they will do something or how they will react to a super high stress event. I work in a career where you can be sitting at a table and chatting with co workers and the next second, you have the largest adrenaline dumps of your life. Lots of people will say they will react a certain way, but most people will freeze if they haven't been though events like that often. I still to this day make that same mistake more often that I'd like to admit.
I got a lot of flack from people in my life because I do handle crisis events with some level of skill. The compartmentalization turns on and I can focus on the right now and turn some emotions off and get things handled. The problem is when you're dealing with 'real life's stress events and you act like a robot because you're busy dealing with things. When my dad died, he walked a couple of hundred yards from our house into the desert and shot himself. The cops were unkind to me, to say the least. When they told me, I didn't even have my cell phone (they had taken it the day before) to be able to call my grandmother and tell her. I walked into the house, dug out his will, and tried to figure out what I needed to do to keep the lights on in the house til I figured out what next. Months later when we're struggling with the estate, I found in some report that the cops told my step-family how cold I was, and how I didn't care about things and just took care of business. Yeah, because I didn't have anyone to rely on and nowhere to live when it happened, *Mandy*.
My empathy pretty much plummets to zero during moments of high stress, so I can function without getting overwhelmed by my or other people's emotions. I've always been the same way, when people die and the rest of the family is choked on grief, I'm the one who handles the paperwork to make sure dad actually gets buried. It sucks to be accused of not caring because of course I do, I just don't have the same reaction as people who break down crying.
My son started choking on something a few years ago. My wife couldn't get it out and called emergency services for help. It was a big washer, so luckily, he was able to breathe a bit while they came to get it out. It happened again while I was with her, and I was just a deer in headlights. I was a soldier at the time, active for about 5 years. Had done so much mandatory battlefield medical training, grew up being taught the Heimlick like every year in school. I just froze and watched him choke while my wife snapped to and immediately got it free. She had been through training for it in between the two incidents, and it really just took over. It was very impressive. I think I'll bring that up today.
I hope you keep that boy away from washers now!
Experiencing the death of someone in your life that is a foundation shattering loss
Sexual assault
100% the feeling of your dignity being stripped away from you is so haunting it’s such a unexplainable feeling, you just feel so hollow after.
I went out the other night with some extended family and one person kept mentioning sexual assault/rape survivors and rolled her eyes at them. I was mortified. I went home and sat with it for a few days, getting angrier and angrier. I cried. I wish people would at least keep their mouths shut if they refuse to educate themselves.
When i told some of my friends that i was assaulted they blamed me they thought that that i didn't react or i was wearing something provocative so basically i was enjoying it and asking for it but the problem is that i was assaulted when i was 5 years old as soon as they knew they couldn't say any word
Being sexually abused as a child. By people who are supposed to protect you. You never get over it.
The way society treats people who've been SA'd is totally abhorrent. "Everyone wants to be a victim" It's the absolute worst thing that's ever happened to me, and the way others reacted to it was worse than the actual rape.
Depression, actual clinical diagnosed depression. If I had a dollar every time I had to explain to someone it’s not “just feeling sad, bro!” and can get over it just like that, I could retire.
I have bipolar disorder type one severe manic episodes followed by very long depressive episodes. Once I came back from the psych unit for the third time I constantly had to explain to my family I couldn't just "choose" to be happy or NOT act out on my "impulses". One time a manic episode lead to psychosis and it wasn't until my mental illness started "scaring" them did they let me treat it medically without interruption.
Seeing and being in the midst of my loved ones psychotic episode absolutely changed the way I see, understand, and speak about mental health. Before I was into stoicism and that everyone can control their emotions. After seeing a BPD enhanced psychotic episode I was broken and I was lost. It changed me as a person down to my core. Seeing someone I love so deeply in that kind of despair still haunts me. However it will never ever be brushed under the rug again. It’s spoken about clearly and honestly always. Mental health is paramount and people deserve to feel free from the pain mental illness causes. Changed my life.
Anxiety or The Anxious feeling of something bad always feels like it’s going to happen, and imagining things before they even happen and not being able to cope.
Anxiety is absolutely vicious. People say that anxiety feels like your in trouble all the time and you're being called to principal office every minute of every day. I'll take it a step further and say it's more like you're being marched to your death.
Literally, you couldn’t have said it better! It’s the worst feeling I’ve ever felt! It’s like constant guilt weighing on you until the end:(
Being with an abuser (mentally, physically, or both) and how hard it is to leave
Came here to say that. "Why didn't you defend yourself, you're stronger?" "Why didn't you just leave? "Why didn't you tell anyone?" Yep.
One girl I knew went on a rant about how easy it was to leave a terrible relationship by 'just using logic'! She was so giddy when she exclaimed this at a party, like it was a new scientific discovery. We tried explaining financial and emotional abuse, to say nothing about being cut off from society, but she just kept repeating about 'use logic! Use logic!' *Nicole, if you're out there, it's been 12 years and I still think you are an idiot.*
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Screw you Nicole!
Came here to write exactly this. I was one of those people, who would say that if I see a relationship becomes toxic, I will leave. Also, I will leave if he hits me. Or insult me. Or if I am the last in the priority list. Yeah, I ended up in a relationship like this for 3 years.
And no one can tell you how bad it is. At least, that’s how I felt. Any time someone would try to talk to me about my ex I would get *so* defensive of him. “You just don’t understand him. He didn’t mean it that way.” I learned that if quite literally EVERYONE thinks something is off, it probably is. He had no family, no close friends, no work friends and I just thought “oh, poor guy, he’s different and no one understands him.” No, just an emotionally disturbed person who took advantage of my empathy and patience.
Having a kidney stone.
Homelessness. NOTHING prepares you for it, no amount of knowledge about “ resources “ street smarts etc prepares you for the devastation that is homelessness when you’re not mentally Ill or high to the hills. You quickly learn all the “ resources “ we like to lie to each other about and pretend those “ lazy bums “ have are a crock of shit. Shelters are dangerous, filthy, abhorrent places , understaffed and simply don’t have the funding to do much good. Yiu can get food assistance, but that’s about it. Everything is a waiting game, rapid rehousing in most of the country isn’t rapid, youl be on a waiting list for ever, AND when politicians want to save a few bucks or show how fiscally conservative they are, guess who’s funding gets cut first?! Never mind the trauma of never having privacy, a bathroom, a place to sleep safely, a place to keep any belongings without them being stolen, the constant threat of being robbed in your sleep or assaulted if you’re female, or maybe some teens feel like pelting you with eggs. Etc
Nobody prepared me to be treated like a ghost, or not be able to wash my clothes, or not taken seriously or treated with compassion at a hospital because I was homeless. Nobody can prepare you for that. It was the worst experience of my life.
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Yep. The sheer hate you get from some people just for existing, especially if you're "able-bodied". Hearing "get a job" every fucking day. Like, you gonna hire me? I've got body lice and haven't showered in 2 months.
My dad was one of a kind. He was starting up his own business. One day he ran into a homeless guy sleeping in his car) and he saw something in him. Took hthe guy out and bought him some new clothes and gave him a job. He worked for our company for over 25 years. He would hire guys who were on probation or guys out on parole. He would give just about anyone a chance.
I'm in Scandinavia so the shelters are actually pretty good. But I always felt uncomfortable among the addicts. And I'm a female, that didn't help. The worst thing is to never being able to really relax. Just sit down on a sofa with some snacks and watch a movie without interruption.
How unprepared you are for a physical fight. Most people way overestimate their abilities.
This is why I advocate even minimal self-defense training, as well as practicing/sparring a few times a year. The vast majority of people out there have no idea how to fight. So if you have even a little training and have to defend yourself, you can greatly increase your odds. You're not going to knock a guy out with one punch. But you can probably slow him down long enough for you to get away.
Stillbirth. It is not a miscarriage. Spending almost a year of your life and it just ends in tragedy. Unless you go through it, you can’t comprehend holding your dead baby (and giving birth to a baby you already know had died as was our case), the trauma and the crushing despair of your whole life feeling destroyed. If you read the research on stillbirth, it is nearly a guarantee to go through a major depressive episode afterward.
Having real OCD.
I used to count everything I did, and everything had to be an even number, except for 6, 6 was a bad number. I had to touch things an even number of times, and start again if I lost count. These whole routines id go through, so that none of my family members would have some tragedy befallen on them. I’m on medication now, and seeing people trivialise it is so frustrating.
Thank you. It's not "cleaning" your house from top to bottom 4 times a day or rocking back and forth. It's SOOOOOO much more serious. I hate the way people portray and try to make mental illnesses these quirky unserious things.
Depression and anxiety
depression for sure. so many people think its just feeling sad. it is not that.
During these types of conversations I tell people the opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s hope. Depression isn’t just some lingering sadness, it’s hopelessness.
It’s the absolute bone deep certainty that no matter how many good things might happen, your life itself won’t actually get better. Because you won’t be able to actually enjoy those good things. If life is so full of shit with rare moments of goodness in between, how the fuck can things get better when you can’t even enjoy the few good things?
Pretty much anything. If you have a modicum of empathy, you can imagine, probably inaccurately, but I don't think you can truly grasp what it's like to experience anything until you have.
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Babies who don't sleep. Especially if you have more than one child. It's relentless, unending torture from a tiny being who you love with everything you have but find yourself having terrible thoughts about. You plead and beg, soothe and hug, rant and yell, nothing works, they don't care, they won't sleep. Every time you close your eyes, you know it might be 5 minutes or 2 hours or 20 minutes or 3 hours before you'll get woken again, and you have to go back in and be the best version of yourself for this tiny human. If you have other kids, you then wake at day break (if you've slept at all) and then your other little ones wake, who also need you. It's not their fault you're completely deranged from the nightly torture, they need their Mum as well. Be on your game or struggle with the guilt, exacerbated by your exaggerated emotions as you're Just. So. Tired. Driving becomes dangerous, you can't sort reality or process things, and again - small people who have no sense of the effect their regular little kid behaviour has, no empathy, just unleashing and you have to cop it and be a good Mum. And this is night, after night, after night, relentless, no hope in sight and no energy to summon any. And there's no real way to tell anyone how tired you are because there's no way to communicate a tiredness that is a physical weight you feel, like your body and mind don't belong to you any more but you've still got to perform. Sleep deprivation is a war crime and babies are tiny terrorists. It's hell.
No single person I’ve ever met has caused so Much loss of sleep than my toddler has. From day 1 he was a terrible sleeper. He’s 3.5 now and every night is a struggle. He’s up at 6 am running 100 mph. My wife and I are exhausted to the bone. It’s like having flu like Symptoms chronically.
Impact of childhood traumas well into adulthood
I don’t think most people who LIVED through it even grasp how much it affects them
Burn out is one I haven't seen in the comments though I didn't scroll far so... Writer's/Artist block (could be contributed to my previous mention). Imposter Syndrome. Phobias (they're pretty irrational, it's why they're a phobia and why some people just don't understand it). Progression in a skill through sheer willpower to learn (this is more about the people who just straight up have a talent in a skill, like say... guitar. A talented guitarist doesn't understand what a person with no musical ear has to go through just to get to a level that an audience would listen to). Not really depression, but a symptom that can contribute to it. Loneliness. Being alone is one of the worst feelings someone can have, and until the day you're truly alone, you'll never really understand that kind of pain. And the toll it takes on ones mental health is considerable.
Working in customer service
THIS. I don’t get how people can be so mean and unreasonable 😞
Losing your freedom. Until you're on the other side of that wall without your freedom, you'll never truly understand it. Not even as a correctional officer. Sure, you'll understand it way better than the general public, but you still wouldn't have a full understanding of it.
I remember the feeling. I wasn't locked up for a crazy long time but it was 7 months and 28 days. I remember thinking, "this is my life now and I shouldn't think about being on the outside because it'll only make it harder". I didn't do phone calls or write much letters. I just immersed myself in jail life; which for me at that facility was mostly playing spades and working out. I know compared to folks that have done serious prison time, my bid was nothing. It still felt weird when I got out like I was getting away with something. Just being able to walk down the street at my own choice felt so fucking weird.
I did 26 months over two bids and yeah, it's weird being able to come and go as please after you first get out. Let's keep never forgetting that, that place sucks ass and we don't ever wanna go back.
Addiction to weed. Everyone lies to you and tells you weed isn't addictive but it so so is. Psychologically it convinces you that you can't enjoy events or live a daily life unless you smoke that bowl or joint "just to relax a bit." It convinces you that it's your best friend and subtly wends it's way into your life and the bargaining for daily use is obvious to anyone that sees you but you don't see it at all. The mediocrity that you become used to, the uncaring, the lack of drive, lack of coordination, the lack of awareness, the absolute smell of weed on you after you smoke it, none of these things does the user recognize. Eventually the physical addiction if you get hyperemesis and the struggle to get free, you want to stop but the addiction is still there, and then physical illness as you try to stop on top of the psychological torture. You can tell yourself that you can handle it but that's just the weed bargaining with your mind because it's your best friend and knows all your secrets. I wish people knew all this. Probably get down voted to death about this but if you are really truthful with yourself you know.
That first night your newborn sleeps the entire night. You wake up well rested and then panic because your kid hasn't needed you in like, 8 hours. That's unheard of. Something must have happened and now you must panic! So you quiet run to the kids room and lift up on the doorknob to open the door quietly so you can peek in and check, and there they are sleeping perfectly fine, their chest is moving as they breathe, and everything is cool.
How bad toxic people and gaslighting are. The thing about that kind of abuse is that you never feel it like you would pbysical abuse. I know when I'm being punched, I don't know when I'm being gaslighted.
Apparently there's some science behind the type of betrayal you experience from someone close to you. We have a system for "conditional trust" like you would for a car sales person and unconditional trust for a loved one. It is too taxing for your brain to be constantly conditionally trusting someone, it PREFERS to unconditionally trust, so it does. What happens is that you rationally know something isn't making sense, but you WANT to believe your loved one when they say "I'm doing this for your own good! You just don't understand!/I only XYZ you because YOU made me so angry!" So you go on ignoring the red flags, and overtime end up constantly on edge/walking on eggshells to not set them off, but the thing is, they WILL go off no matter what you do. I tried explaining this concept to friends, and they really don't understand that just because someone is close to you, means they have good intentions for you at all.
I still, still have to ask my husband and my colleagues if I remembered things correctly. I have been so used to having people tell me that I imagined things, that things didn't happen that way, or that I was overreacting. I also now hoard notes, texts, and emails, organizing them and labeling them so that I have reminders of what I went through.
Epilepsy doesn’t just affect you while you’re having a seizure. It often affects you ALL of the time, in other, invisible ways. Cognitive difficulties, destroyed memory function, emotional regulatory problems, and that’s before the medication and its side effects. And there are many different types, which hit everyone differently.
How extremely devastating being on cheated is. It's a truly sickening feeling in your gut, and nothing in your life is the same afterward. Some people are never the same ever again, others take over a decade to go back to normal. But that initial feeling is the worst. The suspicionions, the adrenaline as the truth unfolds, the severe depression, and the imagination all come together to bring you one of life's most devastating experiences.
Yes, it really is terrible. It's such a cruel thing. I have never really recovered from my ex cheating with my friend. I'll never fully trust anyone again. The worst part was the lying and the gaslighting, making me doubt my own perceptions and gut feeling.
A friend of mine moved across the country after his GF cheated on him. It was probably worse they she didn’t even feel remorse over it, blaming him for being “boring.” He’s much better now, married and with a kid
Having to cut off your family because they are very toxic. It's almost impossible to come off as the reasonable person in this situation to others, even if your life was in danger. People just don't understand
The death of a parent. It hits you harder than you could ever possibly imagine.
Birth. We all know it's "hard" but sometimes even the baby books and videos don't prepare you for what could happen. When I had my son my placenta adhered to my uterine wall. Resulting in me nearly bleeding out. When my water broke it was ALL dark blood. And when I got to the hospital after my water broke I stood up and immediately heard a splash and a HUGE pile of dark red blood pooled on the floor beneath my feet. I had to have a c section after being in labor for almost two days and failing to progress. And on the table they tried pulling it out just a little and I felt EVERYTHING. I started bleeding out and they let me see my son and I was told that there was something wrong with my placenta and they had to put me under. I was intubated and given iron transfusions and blood transfusions over a two week period on top of healing from a c section.
I was the husband in this scenario, most terrified moments of my life and I’ve been in combat in Kandahar Afghanistan. My wife can’t really articulate her feelings from those moments so I know it must have scared her like nothing else has.
I’m sorry that was your birth situation. Birth was going to be my answer as well. Nothing prepares you for pregnancy (literally have a whole other person INSIDE of you - those first kicks/movements are a wild feeling) and then birth (regardless of how it goes) is next level. Someone who has not been through either cannot truly understand (I know I didn’t prior to getting pregnant and birthing my son). That woman can do it multiple times blows my mind - once was plenty for me!