Oh one thing ER, it might not mean much right now as you're going through it and it may sound glib.
But radiation does work, it significantly reduced my mother's lung tumour to the point where it was operable and cleared off cancerous cells in her lung.
Each patient and case is obviously different, but yeah.

Thanks Floppy. Third of the way through 35 bangs of it so light etc

That's the main thing really. I spent time in one of those gaffs with very little real danger but others around were in much worse shape. Two room mates much older than me went the other way. Keep in there, you've definitely got the right attitude to get through it. Good luck with it all.

Wasn't sure where to post this but needed to vent a bit. Got a message today that a friend of mine was in a serious car crash over in New York, thankfully he survived but 2 of the other passengers were killed. Irish guy and his US wife. Had met them a few times over there and they came to my 30th. Was really shook by the news, really chilled me to the core and feel absolutely awful. My friend has a suspected lacerated liver but he was the best of the 5 occupants of the car, which is something to be thankful for. But I can't help keep thinking if how traumatic it must have been, and this guy is one of life's good guys. Drunk driver apparently.

Jesus. Senseless tragedy.
Hope your friend makes an ok recovery both physically and mentally over time.
Was his wife in the vehicle?

Sorry might have phrased that wrong. It was an Irish guy from Mayo that died, along with his American wife. They were friends of my friend. Drunk guy was some other driver in his Dodge Ram or something. Doesn't sound like they had much of a chance.

Glad to hear the treatment is in progress

I never thought I would ever post on this thread, but I believe I am experiencing anxiety for the first time.

About three weeks ago, there was a restructure at work. It is temporary restructure that is meant to be for 6 months. My reporting line changed, which means that I am now working away from my old team who are on a different level of the building. I had good relationships with them and always enjoyed their company. I am working next to people in the new team, and although they are nice people, I just don't feel a strong connection with them. I am also working on an important project largely by myself.

After a couple of weeks, I started feeling a sense of loneliness which is an unusual experience for me. Last week I experienced a migraine at work, which was my first migraine in 5 years. I also noticed that I experienced an acute feeling of loneliness when I attended a meeting in which I would usually attend with my old team. It felt like empty holes in my sides. I've kept in daily touch with my team and we exchange personal visits, and these have now become the highlight of my day.

Today, I experienced what can only be described as anxiety. I've never felt that feeling before. It felt like intense pins and needles in my body. I could also feel that my heart rate was up a fraction, and I had to leave the building twice to get some fresh air and try to bring myself back to normal.

I've started increasing my exercise output over the last week, and have started eating better food again. However, I am worried that these negative experiences are going to get worse, rather than better. The project that I am working on is about to amp up in volume and importance over the next few months. I largely enjoy the work, my problems lie with my current social context at work. My sleeping patterns aren't good at the moment, but that can be pretty normal for me anyway.

Next moves at work:

1. I am going to talk to an older guy at work, who has become my mentor and let him know what is going on for me, and see how he thinks I should handle the situation.

2. Following my talk with my mentor, I will also consider explaining the situation to my current manager, and ask if I can be relocated back with my old team but still report back to them for this work. I won't use the word 'anxiety' with her though, I will use softer language and simply say that I've become unhappy working away from my old team.

What are peoples' thoughts on this approach?

What is your current manager like? Would it be any trouble to put you back to where you where before? This is just a 6 month temp situation that has you working elsewhere right?

very similar to what I'm experiencing. Due to work drying up in the business unit I was in, I jumped to another team where there was an opportunity.

Big gamble as my contract was up and the other 3 team members all work in separate parts of the building.

I miss the banter and I am fairly close by.

Perfectly normal to feel anxious

The manager is good. And my feelings have nothing to do with that person. There may possibly be some trouble me going back to where I was physically, but it's nothing that can't be overcome by regular communication and travel between the floors.

Would your new manager (and colleagues) not regard that as a vote against them?

I don't want to sound negative, but could you be storing up trouble for yourself? Even if you can convince them that it isn't the case, there is bound to be a lingering doubt. I think that it has to be very sensitively handled, otherwise you might build up resentment. You may be better off coming clean and describing your state of mind accurately. Perhaps if you go to a doctor and get some kind of formal diagnosis, you can use that to justify wanting to move without raising the suspicion that you might feel that your new workmates are inferior to your old team.

Obviously, I don't know how accurately I have read your situation, so I may be talking absolute kak, but it strikes me that you may need to be aware of the possibility of getting people's backs up, particularly if your circumstances mean that you are a bit of an outsider already.

I agree that it would need to be handled sensitively to avoid creating resentment. However, we do work in a place where people 'hot desk' and move around a lot so it's not that unusual.

I've just spend the entire night tossing & turning and I can't get to sleep. I think i better schedule an appointment with the doctor. I've never experienced anything quite like this before.

I suffer this quite a bit when going through stressful periods at work so I don't think it's that unusual. But seeing your doctor is the smart thing to do as your next step. Good luck and keep us posted.

This

Sounds like you have a good plan in place, implement it and good luck, also as has been mentioned a visit to the doctor might be good, check your blood pressure at least.

Lost my younger brother just over a week ago, totally unexpected was talking to him on the phone the night before, and have just got back from his funeral down south. He was 51 & had a young family 18 down to 4. Feeling shattered and not sure I've even processed it properly. Having trouble sleeping and have no real will to do anything. Feel selfish posting this as I'm not going through even a tenth of his wife & kids but just needed to type it out I guess.

Our work has EAP so may give them a call when I get back to work.

Sorry for your loss. Don't ever feel guilty for your feelings, especially how you're feeling now mate.

Condolences mate. Nothing selfish about your post at all. Best wishes and may your younger brother RIP.

I lost my little sister in law a couple of years ago and this forum was a great sounding board when I was at my lowest ebb.

This is a thing you don't want to be caught up in for too long

Basically you can get caught in a trap of explaining shit to someone who doesn't take in what you are actually doing totally because it is probably legacy (guessing) from the other lot.

I would encourage you to ask whoever the new boss is what others are working on and try to get involved on the side, if poss.

Losing a sibling is a very big deal, condolences to your family and yourself, i would be devestated if i lost any of mine, no need to feel guilty.

I saw a doctor today who has prescribed me sleep medication. He suspects most of my symptoms are due to major sleep deprivation. I probably mentioned this in an earlier post, but I've been averaging about 1 hour of sleep a day for the last week. He says that sleep deprivation can do some strange things to people. My heart tests came out normal so that was pleasing.

We'll see how I feel tomorrow after a decent sleep. Thanks to everyone for their constructive feedback.

Condolences, mate. One week does not sound like enough time to process that sort of shock. Be gentle to yourself

Hope it does the trick.

So sorry for your loss.

Make sure you catch up with EAP, never used them myself but friends swear by the benefit they’ve had utilising their expertise.

I know you are fond of the pisstake but it's obvious that you have balls of steel. Give it socks.

We are watching and some of us are praying. Good wishes from The Management and me.

Battles are fought to be won.

Condolences. Don't "may give them a call".

Call them.

My Mrs buried her twin brother quite a few years back, and struggled on and off with her feelings for the guts of ten years before taking advantage of a new employers EAP programme. A decent one is a godsend.

Make that call, please.

Sleeping tablets should be a very short term solution only, be careful with them.

If available where you are I highly recommend CBD oil instead. It helped me tremendously under similar circumstances (work/family stress and insomnia). I took it regularly for about 6 months but now don't use it all all.

I feel the deepest sympathies with the posts on this thread, I have been fortunate all my life to have an attitude (rightly or wrongly) that it`s not worth worrying about things that might not happen.
But, this evening all that went by the board and I burst into tears (in front of my wife) when she called me, and asked what is this?
I have to go back to late last year to explain, she fell in the street and had a nasty bang to her head. We weren`t too worried at the time, but, she then started having memory lapses. We went to the doctor who refered her to be assessed at a memory clinic.
An appointment was then made to see a consultant as there was a possibility that she had the early onset of Alzheimers disease. The consultant saw her and thought that she appeared to be a lot better than the assessment showed and made an appointment to see her in three months (two weeks time)
She has deteriorated a bit these last few months, but this evening really broke me. When the woman you have been with for fifty five years and has handled all the household finances through all our married life asked me what is this and held up a £10 note (she didn`t know the difference between a £1 coin and a £10 note) and said she always gave our grand daughters £1 when she sees them (although she gives them £10) I had to explain the difference between £1 coins and £10 and £20 notes, I just couldn`t take it.
It really upset her seeing me in tears but I just couldn`t help myself. I`m in tears typing this and dreading the future.

GW02

That is hard to read.

That is so sad
I lost both my grandfathers to Alzheimers, its a bastard of a thing
Make sure you look after yourself too

Seeing as we're sharing.

I've suffered depression since my mid-teenage years. Of course I didn't know that's what it was at the time, not until I was formally diagnosed in my mid-20's, which was a bit like a bright light suddenly turning on as far as recognition of my behaviour up until then and discovering there were actually ways to alleviate it, both medical and therapeutic.

What spurred me to go to the GP at that point was my inability to walk without bumping into something. Navigating a footpath downtown became a nightmare. A consistent struggle to avoid objects both moving and inanimate. I had to see the family doc to ask him what was wrong with me. Unexpectedly he asked me questions about how I felt. I told him I was sad nearly all the time. That I had no place I wanted to be, and an innate sense of emptiness, like a hollow container. He told me there and then that I had serious depression and arranged for me to see a therapist from the NZ Mental Health Service immediately. This was the early 90s and I knew absolutely nothing about depression, but as he rattled that list of symptoms off it became clear to me that it hadn’t begun the moment I started bumping into trashcans.

So I got treatment and then I lived happily ever after.



No. Not remotely.



Since then I’ve spent a small fortune on psychiatrists, therapists, psychologists and medicine. I’ve been escorted from my home under police guard for presenting a danger to myself. I’ve had long multiple stays in the secure wing of the local mental hospital, sometimes voluntarily, often under protest. Most antidepressants I’ve taken over the last 25 years have failed however Lovan seems to be able to moderate my brain the best of all of them.

The last time I was checked in to the mental hospital was about 2 years ago. It was during that stay that for the first time I was diagnosed with having a form of PTSD. I had a violent upbringing from about age 6 onwards. My Dad (actually my stepdad but that’s irrelevant to me) was a disciplinarian whose first recourse for meting out punishment was either the first hard object at hand or (usually) his fist.

Do you know how much it hurts to get punched in your 6 year old head by the clamped fist of a physically strong 28 year old man? Let alone what it does to the brain of a child that age.

It didn’t take anything at all to incur punishment. A broken cup, a bad report, a misplaced response. It’s the point that I learned that lying to get out of a situation was the first course of action rather than be beaten for losing one cent from the change on the way home from the shop. Up until then I was as innocently honest as the sky is blue.

This only got worse as I got older, the hits got harder, the anger heavier and of course I wasn’t the only one that was the focus of his rage. My brothers got it too though I can’t recall if I got it worse than they did, as I was focused on trying not to trigger a beating, and if someone else was getting hit then all the better because at least it wasn’t me. It was all about survival of the self.

The most malicious thing though was the permeation of that type behaviour into us. We would fight between ourselves as kids which became even worse as teenagers. Full on violence. His behaviour became our behaviour. The fights escalated, particularly between myself and the second oldest. We’d throw fists, he’d get a kitchen knife, I’d get a heavy post. That sort of shit became normal. I have the image of my mother, my sister and my youngest brothers being absolutely terrified seared into my brain (or at least a bit left that works). Cop cars outside the house yet again. Simply f**king horrible.

It got better, eventually. Seriously, it did. Starting about the time the first grandchildren appeared. They weren’t us. They were better. They deserved better. So we all, subconsciously, tried to be better. For them. Including my Dad.

But despite that. The trauma we all carry has still f**ked us up, some of us in different ways.

Is it the main reason I’m f**ked up? I think it’s one of them. I have gaps in my memory of other instances that I just can’t recall and I’m rather little fearful of what I would find if I suddenly did. Maybe I’m best not knowing? They will probably require deep hypnosis of some sort to bring to light. I have a genuine feeling that none of them are going to be good.

Anyway, at this phase in life I’m the best that I can be and the best that I have been for a very very long time. I still have low moments but I have developed ways to mitigate the majority of them. I have restarted therapy again in order to continue working to resolve the PTSD aspect of my depression. I’m 50 years old and I’ve let go things that are no longer important to me regarding career and goals. The best “medicine” of all has been the woman who’s stood by me for the last 22 years. Never giving up, despite the toll on her own wellbeing (OK, she’s had to take sabbaticals away from me at least twice during that time just to build her strength back up, and that doesn’t include the occasions she’s had me committed into hospital for months at a time). She has stopped me from harming myself. She has stopped me from killing myself. Without her I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be building our new home. I wouldn’t be contemplating how much f**king superannuation to invest so I can actually retire in 17 years when I’m supposed to.

I hope that I have not reached peak wellbeing and that there are even better times ahead. but if it is it’s still a shitload better than where I’ve been. Now I’m actually trying to be here for someone else because that someone means something to me.

And there you go.

Btw sorry this is so badly written. I'm at work guiding a major release right now so I've writing this during the gaps between getting reports from the team spread across the globe.

Sounds like you have a fine woman behind you
Being in a strong relationship were you can talk and share even your most horrible feelings is lucky, it took me a while to open up to my wife about my issues but she has also been my rock.
Good luck in your ongoing recovery, everyone on here is rooting for you

Speed Racer

That is a tough but inspiring read. Utter respect for your honesty and courage, and the same for your woman.

GW02, my heart goes out to you, I hope your Mrs gets the help she needs.

Speedracer, fair play for putting that all down. I can empathize with the upbringing side, and the battle royals with your brother.

Good to see you posting again Speedy

Blimey sending love speed racer. I hope the therapy works quickly.

Condolences, and make the call.

+1 Speedy