Hey Shippy wassup. Have a GQ.
As with @filmfann, whereas two years ago I could quite easily work in a crowd or walk around in a crowd (hey, a clothes store can be very busy on a Saturday!), I couldn’t do it now. Earlier this year I went to my Mom’s, she lives in a city. I used to be able to go around that city all day and not bat an eyelid about any notion of panic or some such, but I got the motherload of a panic attack for no apparent reason last time it nearly knocked me out I was that distraught.
I had to sit on a bench for over twenty minutes to just get myself back together again.
Straight into the chemists and getting some stuff to calm the nerves (I’m thinking some people would smoke something to do that but hey, that’s not legal in a lot of places). So I got a whole bunch of meds and stuff from Boots and my God it cost sooo much.
My Doctor’s bloody hopeless at pointing out what is wrong with me, but seems great at trying to find out what might be wrong with me. Worse still, when he suggested going to see someone from a mental health team, that mental health team is located miles away and I don’t do travel very well at all!
I spent five years working in a busy supermarket, surrounded by people, and I did my job pretty well, I was great at customer service and all sorts of other work related endeavours, but these days, I couldn’t even dream of doing that.
I don’t even know why I have this kind of problem in the first place. I used to be outgoing and like to socialize, but these days I tend to avoid any notion of going out unless I’m with someone else, and I hate any other form of getting out and about for too long because it always causes difficulties even when I don’t think about them ever occurring in the first place.
Thankfully, with a girlfriend like mine, and she has mental health issues (which I’ve plastered over a few responses before now), she knows a thing or two about therapies and help and stuff. So I’m doing an online cognitive behavioural therapy course – which isn’t really doing much for me right now. I’ve never stopped trying to get help for it, it’s just a matter of getting the idiots in the white coats (not the nuthouse employees, the doctors) to understand that I am having problems. People in the UK with mental health issues seem to be so largely ignored or not even understood or worse, both, that it makes life increasingly difficult for people in that kind of situation to even begin to hope to have something close to a normal life again.
I think I’m going to post a link to this on Twitter to some folks see if I can get them to put their few cents in on this one.
If any of this doesn’t make any sense, it’s because I’ve been awake since 13:30 yesterday afternoon and it’s now 0438. Sorry!