Hi @tyme,
Thanks for replying and thinking about this. Sorry, I'm really, really not ok at the moment. But I'll try to respond to you.
Hmm with your situation with the dogs... I'm not sure it's the same. I don't get those typical anxiety or panic issues with spiked heart rate and shallow breathing (perhaps I miss-typed this previously).
I think there is a connection with, perhaps, the act of waking up and participating in society. I know that sounds very broad, but I'm just spitballing here.
When this all first happened with school when I was young, my family and I lived out in the country. I was a pretty "free-range" kid. Then I went to school and had all these pressures and expectations on me, as well as the traumatic events. I remember when I first went to school I would constantly get in trouble because I just wasn't used to the structure of a school environment and the absolute unquestionable authority the teachers had. I specifically remember being yelled at a lot by adults, something which never happened at home. You forget your hat? Yelled at. You accidentally lose a ball over a fence? Yelled at. Drop your pencil case? Yelled at.
Now, I knew that education was a good thing and a kid you *had* to go to school. I knew this is what everyone did. So I just assumed that this was what life was. Get up, put on a uniform, get yelled at by adults, get bullied, get abused, be made to do academic work I didn't like, go home exhausted, and repeat the next day and day after day, year after year.
I don't want to say this was just school. I think other things also set the tone. My first job at 14 for example: put on a uniform, go to the store I worked at, do crap work (in my case cleaning a Woolies butchers department), get yelled at by adults.
Then there was all the social crap that happens as a teen. Because I was so overweight and under confident I struggled to make friends. And when everyone started dating and all that I was miles behind. I'm fine about it now, but as a teen seeing all your friends meet people, date, fall in love, etc and being left out - it kinds hurts.
I remember once driving in town with a friend when he saw some girls he knew and pulled over to talk to them. I just sat in the car minding my own business while they talked. Suddenly one of them opened my door, said "Who's this piece of shit?" and half kicked half wiped the sole of their shoe across my shirt. That kind of stuff happened a fair bit. I felt I never really did anything but exist and random people hated me for it.
Same sort of thing continued into my adult life. Tried to go to uni, failed miserably. I just couldnt work in that environment.
At some point I did get an actual, career-type job. But I was so under qualified and stressed out I just snapped one day. I remember getting and email from a client who (again) was pissed off at me, and just thinking "f*ck it, I'm out". A real sense of calmness and clarity settled over me. Honestly, it was the best I'd felt in a very long time. I just left the office without telling anyone anything, drove home to my rented share house, and spent the next few hours packing up my belongs into boxes and cleaning my room. I still felt this amazing feeling of calmness. Then I drove somewhere remote and tried to "unalive" myself. Obviously, that didn't happen - someone driving past saw me and called the cops. The cops came, dragged me out the car, called me a bunch of nasty things ("a waste of time", "c*nt", "f*ck wit"), "arrested" me (frisked me, took away my stuff, locked me in their car) and drove me to a hospital. No one likes it when I talk about the police behaving the way they do. We're all meant to live in this fantasy world where this doesnt happen, apparently.
Nothing I said to anyone - doctors, nurses, the police, etc - mattered. Once these people have decided you're a nut case you're nobody. You're in a "don't speak until spoken to" situation. You couldn't ask any questions. I sat in this locked room/ward for close to 24 hours. There was about 6 beds to a dozen patients, so a lot of people literally slept on the floor. There was nothing to do to pass the time - no TV, no magazines, no news papers. You weren't allowed to use your phone to call anyone. I passed the time by playing a game flicking balls of tissues into a plastic cup for hours on end. At one point I did try to ask a nurse for something to read - she pointed to a scrap of newspaper poking out of a rubbish bin and walked away. When I asked for my phone one to many times one of the nurses called me a "stupid c*nt".
Eventually, I saw someone (I don't know there actual job) who simply said "Will you be a good boy and not do that again?" of course I said "yes" and they let me go. I had to walk hours back to my car (did I also mention they don't give you any food there?).
As you can imagine, that experience did wonders for my mood. It immediately lead to another "unaliving attempt", this time with no intervention. Obviously failed that too and spent days just sick in bed pretending I had a cold.
I've "attempted" a few more times since then over the years. Sometimes I ended up in hospital. Still the same stuff from the police. Last time they kicked open my door when I answered it smashing me back so hard I fell against a shelf, breaking it. My wrist was swollen for weeks afterwards.
Still the same stuff from the public MH system - don't want anything to do with you, still calling you names.
So, can you blame me for not thinking MH professionals arn't the bees knees?
Obviously, these experiences only added to my internal sense of dread, stress, and fear. And here we are - can't trust anyone, everyone is out to get you in one way or another.
Sorry, that was another wall of text. I just am trying to explain to you why I feel the way I do.
