Mental Health issues can be overwhelming

GOOD MAN.

 

So very pleased to hear your good news @Mike Allen , that's made my day!!!!!

 

That's great news @Mike Allen Always good to hear some great news and lifting your spirits..whiskey, that's generous, guessing that is a bottlesworth

 

For working full time in the field of mental health (psychologist and psychoanalyst) I honestly have zero interest in reading the psycho rants and raves of people in my preferred gardening forum. That said, I take full responsibility of myself, and just skip the messages that do not interest me.

What I say is not directed to anyone in particular, but I am expressing myself as if it about you. Please take this into account, I too am expressing myself.

Just because I don't want to read it doesn't mean others could not,or that indeed the writer should not, express themselves.
(Forum rules aside, moderators see to that when necessary).

What I would call out here is our own responsibility to choose what we read in our free time. If you don't like something, move on, nothing to see here.
If you feel insulted by someone's comments, why pick up a fight? State you felt hurt if you want, and move on. Returning to the place of pain by reading and rereading and continuing the conflict won't make it better. Why would you need to get others to understand you when you feel insulted? We are not responsible to teaching others how to think.

If you don't want to belong to a forum because of what somebody said, by all means leave. But don't put the blame of your feelings and actions on others -you choose to leave and feel that way. Nobody makes us feel anything. We feel things and think of them by our own choice. Recognise the power you give to others (to make you feel x) and take it back. Not all insults are insults. Sometimes we take a compliment as an insult. Sometimes an insult is perceived as a compliment. The receiver of message also has certain responsibility to themselves.

 

Excellent and eloquent post, @Finngal! Not much I can add to your comments with the exception of this one...

The receiver is primarily responsible, IMHO that's the only way of shifting from a place of victimhood to one of empowerment. But the tricky thing is that with anxiety disorders, it's incredibly difficult and painful to understand that you're actually misperceiving reality itself. Once you are brave enough to accept that and stop feeling guilty (our guilt is often just another excuse to not move forward, much easier to wallow in it than embrace an entire lifestyle change!) you can progress very rapidly.

Nick

 

I couldn't agree more, Finngal. But when the proportion of gardening-related threads is naturally lower in the winter, and then even those are peppered with inane and irrelevant content, the attitude of 'If you don't like it, don't read it' has just one outcome. Fortunately, those of us who participated in GC because it's a gardening forum, but don't need or want to discuss the minutae of our lives via the internet, can continue to communicate by other means. So all's well that ends well. That's good

 

@noisette47 Sorry, but I'm just a little confused by some of your comments. You seem to be expecting the forum to be of the dry, academic variety but it's a friendly gardening forum, with the moderators repeatedly emphasising the friendliness and fellowship aspect. Was it a more scholarly forum which has recently degenerated? I have no idea, haven't been here long enough to know really, but it's not the impression I get! You complain of off-topic threads but you yourself appear to be one of the most prolific contributors to these threads sometimes (Brexit?). "Do as I say, not as I do?" If you want to see more gardening-related threads, what's stopping you from initiating them? That's what I tend to do when things get too off-topic for my liking!

I'm genuinely not trying to be adversarial or a dick here, but you seem to be complaining about a forum that is already perfectly well-compartmentalised! If anything, I enjoy reading your highly informative and often very witty posts and am concerned about so many knowledgeable members wishing to voluntarily exclude themselves recently. You are (as far as I know) an autodidact and they can often have the best insights into a subject! It's what differentiates fora like this one from purely academic online venues and makes them even more valuable!

The "Welcome" page already sort of filters out any 'impertinent' posts, so I simply use that instead of the "Latest Posts" list most of the time.

Plus, who agreed with Noisette and Lori's posts and why is the former lady the only person left elaborating here? You won't be publicly shot for airing your views, you know!

Regarding this thread, I was going to post what helped me deal with my own mental health issues as things have significantly improved recently, but I'm feeling a little trepidatious about it now... wouldn't want to add to the off-topic posts! (OK, this sentence is me being a bit of a dick! )

I'm really sorry about that and need to be more restrained!

Only one (IMO rather large) problem with that: you end up with a form of tyranny caused by an emotionally fragile minority, since some are virtually unoffendable (which I aspire to be eventually) and some are offended at the drop of a hat!

Nick

 

I'm not getting involved in this one, too risky.

But I would like to say,

I think we are seeing a touch of the winter, lockdown blues.
We have been here before, over the years.

Well not the lockdown bit.

And an improvement in the weather, and sunny days ahead will make all the difference.

So if the thread was to go back on topic and not be a thread analyzing why the thread exists
Things might calm down a bit.
In other words, I can see both sides of the debate,(nearly called it an argument but that would have got me in trouble), so anyway I forgot what I was going to say.

But as you can see, I'm keeping out of it.
Pour me a large one Hic Hic.

 

How common are mental health problems?

Just adding stats to remind us all that some mental health issues are very common but the more serious illness's are at least much much lower on the stats charts. My late mate Rosi worked with somebody whose wife had bio polar. She would go weeks sometimes acting very erratic, no sleep hardly at all. shopping around the clock and happy as a lamb..then the reverse would occur..could not know how to make a cup of tea even...So Rosi, such a real caring person, worked part time for the company and part time for his wife's needs...Kindest sole she was. Take good care of yourselves, you never will know what life can throw at you....

 

Uuuu you are a big boy aren't you

And as we try to make sure absolutely nobody in any mental state could possibly interpret anything we innocently say in any way negatively, we close ourselves more and more into tiny spaces in which we always can find one more thing that could hurt someone's feelings, and if we do, we can attack then because surely it must be bad. And the illusion of control is perfect, until o e day in the thought totalitarian world questions what about the feelings of those we ended up shunning, those who no longer could talk, in fear of some Karen somewhere getting the hump.
And thats when the house of card fails.

Personal responsibility. If you are an idiot nothing stops you from being one. But those of us who have ethics, already regulate what we let out.

 

Hahahaha

Well, although via forum, "How do you do?"