Fragile

Thank you dear @Maggie

Very gentle today. Brothers photo central. Walking boots on.

One thing I wanted comment on was that my supt wkr in session yesterday required me to agree with her calling us "nutters" she was also being nice and trying to make it all chatty and I am such a good girl I went along with it. SHe is putting good value and work in, but ...

Same with physio, she is great, but a little intrusive about my deep soul and past and relationship with mother, etc. My OT said she does not need to do that, as it is not necessary for her job as physio. Wearing my heart on a sleeve and all that. I am getting better at saying I dont want to talk about tha, or I want to be quiet.

However I also have a growing friendship with a woman who has about same quals as me, a lot less trauma, but MH issues and this week she asked me to agree not to revert to my making fun of myself and MH issues. I kept saying I had to move on from tears and so started making bad MH jokes at own expense, but as she has been working on growing a sisterhood. She was asking me to have more dignity about it all, and I agreed with her too. I am happy to move past that immature approach. I would never make a joke at anyone else's expense, but she found it confronting that I would do it about myself. SHe is also activist for Indigenous Australians and I know their current attitudes would not budge in the slightest about any disrespect, they would be offended, where I still I dont feel I have the luxury of carrying on about it on my own account, ie me being offended.

SO the usual for me .. between a rock and a hard place.

Also the month has a strong element of the pattern I had when rearing small children. Hiding real and contemporaneous deaths from children more vulnerable than I.

@Jynx @Emelia8 @Zoe7 @outlander @Maggie @Former-Member @Adge @MDT @Snowie @Faith-and-Hope @Former-Member @Owlunar @Former-Member @chibam @oceangirl @NatureLover @Bunniekins @Historylover

Any thoughts.

@Appleblossom Oh Apple I make crazy jokes about myself and son2 (not infront of him) just as a means of coping with the awfulness of it all. If I couldnt joke about my own predictament I would be a blubbering mess. I am a good girl too and I hate it. I have become a good girl because of all the meds I am on. I am no longer a bad girl and sometimes that drives me loopy. A bit of cray cray can be a good thing for me anyway. As for pleasing everyone I dont do that anymore. If people cannot take me for who I am they can go take a hike. Then again it depends upon how much someone means to me ..... I suppose I am a very independent pea so that doesnt happen very often and I really dont like people in rl ...... I prefer online relationships. Does that make me weird?? oh well.

The thing is Apple I think you are pretty perfect :). pea

Hey @Appleblossom ,

I hope you don't mind me putting my 20cents in on this convo.

Firstly I think only you can find your boundaries with any professionals. I'm not saying that's easy but it can be done. This week I had two appointments with new services. One was an exercise physiologist and one a physiotherapist. For me I had to tell them both that I have ongoing mh issues but more so to explain where I was at physically. I have no more inclination to share any more than that the parts of my body that were breaking down as a part consequence of mh struggles which for me was about having been physically inactive for great stretches of time. That was accepted well without any further questions. I would not expect to answer any further questions about my mh from here. Again for me personally I just needed them to know the context but not the details.

The support worker one was a bit interesting for me. I use that term for me but I guess wouldn't expect anyone else to use it as a pact type thing. My reading from that though is that they were using is as a way to normalise things and create connection primarily.

I think that if you feel uncomfortable with it it's fine to speak up. If it's not bothering you then it's probably ok too. It really depends on how it makes you feel. I have a very good friend who calls me occasionally because I'm her nutter friend and she has a mh question for me. I am never offended by this because of our very long friendship and because we've always called each other nutters before my mh stuff surfaced. I have a sense of pride when she calls and asks me for advice. That is my very personal take in it. I always tend to look at intention and context of how a word is used first before judging it.

Lastly the self deprecating humour is a quite tricky one. I think it's a growth set one. I'm not sure if you've ever watched or heard Hannah Gadsby's show Nanette. It's a really interesting look at that intersection between self deprecating humour and self esteem. I think in other things I've seen or read since that show is that she has moved on from that in a way and that her humour has some self deprecation again.

On a particularly personal note this has been very much the same journey for me. When I had my big breakdown 8ish years ago I realised that I just set myself up to be a joke. It was actually part of my breakdown too. I felt like no one took me seriously or that I didn't have any skills or apptitudes that were worth while because all I knew to connect with people was to self deprecate. That sense of uselessness has pervaded on and off since.

In just the last week I watched a video on the awesome bits of adhd. It turns out that many of develop a funny and connecting type of self deprecating humour early on because for many ADHD things we have to find a way to laugh about it or become so humiliated that we crawl into a shell and retreat. As a child without ever knowing I developed a self deprecating sense of humour. In the last two years I'd been thinking about mine and wondering if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Here's what I had come up with and after seeing the video (just last week) I feel ok with.

1. When you use self deprecation it often leads to others feeling more at ease because it shows a human side that you are fallible.
2. People don't take me as a threat as much because they can feel better about themselves when I've made a joke about myself. It's helped to make friends along the way.
3. Its often a good icebreaker if you are not too heavy or deep with it.
4. If others laugh it can actually make you feel ok about the thing that you just self deprecated about. Somehow there's possibly a normalising affect. If others laugh it kind of makes that thing feel less of a taboo.
5. I think that if you understand it's affect on others as a neutral thing then it becomes more of a self esteem building thing than a self destructive thing.
   
   Ive written this because I can see it from your friends point of view and from yours. If it was me in this situation I think I'd want to open an honest discussion about it. See how you feel and how she feels after looking at pros and cons. She might be in the very heavy stage of being angry at self deprecating humour like I once was and I suspect Hannah Gadsby was. Maybe she hasn't seen the strengths behind it as well and it will be an enlightening conversation for both of you. I hope this helps. 💜🤗

@Appleblossom I think we need to be accepted for who we are and what we do/say. If making fun of yourself is your way to get through the days then so be it, that is who you are.

I agree with @Bunniekins I think you are perfect just the way you are.

If we cannot be ourselves then who can we be

Lots of love Apple 💜💜

Thanks for your Tag @Appleblossom I'm thinking of you.

Anniversaries are hard - especially one so sad & intimate, as your brother's.

Tribunals & official hearings etc, give me the Heebie Geebies.

All the Best,

Adge

Thank you for all the thoughtful caring responses.

@Bunniekins @Snowie lol .. Nah, not perfect, but Good Enuff. Gp your beautiful bouncy personality has cheered me up no end over the years. Yes you get where I am coming from about humour. It is recent for me just the last few years, before that I was probably a bit too serious. Also my kids tried to make me happy and laugh and I could not disappoint them. Well I know they feel disappointed, but I tried my best to rise to all the occasions, but as you know, being a mum, there are an awfyul lot of occasions ...

@MDTgood to get your perspective.

@AdgeYes tribunals are tough. Spoke to my son this arvo and he seems happier, that it is over. He was glad I arranged a MH advocate for him, which gave him someone to talk about it, but my son felt better handling it all himself, and that is probably a good call for him in his stage of life.

@Teej I really appreciated your long post. I agree with all you wrote about humour, and I guess it will be ongoing. I will raise it with my friend. Like you, I feel privileged that this friend looks to me regarding MH issues. I do think she has a point. The spt wkr has petrol head hubbie and son and would be used to that kind of language.

Setting boundaries with friends and professionals feels new. A work in progress. My session with pdoc was good. He did not comment on my health, but agreed with me about med decisions and came up with some insight into my son's current predicament which I appreciated. So tonight 25g less, but gently in pushing it down.

At last I have a range of people to bounce things off and talk about life, instead of managing on my own for so long. It helps.

I think you are very wise, very brave and very thoughtful @Appleblossom while I have spent years pretending I didn’t have any mh issues.

I’ve had to face some hard facts this year and that has been difficult. This forum has been the first place I have been honest about what is happening in my life and I am still not sure who I really am.

I hope you sleep well tonight ❤️

Hi @Appleblossom.

I'm only entering this conversation at the point where I've just been tagged, so I'm probably missing a fair degree of context here.

But yes, I can absolutely relate to the rock and the hard place dillemma.

I've found that many people don't like jokes or happiness at all. When they encounter funny things, it invariably triggers them to project negativity and unpleasantness out into the world, which leaves the rest of us with the overwhelming dillemma of exactly how we are supposed to handle these people, in the interest of making the world a better place, which I think is what all ethical people aspire for their time on earth to accomplish.

I've spent decades trying to crack the riddle of how to get these people to provoke happiness in others; trying to figure out precisely which combinations of words will trigger them to pass along funny statements that will uplift the lives of other people who encounter them. The obvious approach, of conducting yourself in a funny manner, prompts them to project negativity, not positivity, out into the world. So what's the solution?

I've come to stongly suspect that these people are 'unhackable'. They seem to be hardwired so that they can only project unpleasantness out into the world. The only solution I've been able to figure out is to try to minimize exposure to these people at all costs. Sometimes it feels like the bad guys have already won, but there are times when I see glimmers of hope that perhaps those of us who want the world to be a worthwhile place mightn't yet be defeated. Every now and then I'll hear tell in the news of people cultivating laughter and happiness; sometimes even in pioneering areas where laughter has traditionally not been aloud to flourish.

Reading through some other responses in this thread, I've encountered the phrase "self-depricating humor" several times in regard to this topic and, although I'm familiar with the phrase, I am deeply puzzled by why people use it to describe such jokes. It implies that somehow such jokes are a disservice to the person, or reduces their quality somehow, which utterly mystifies me. How can decorating yourself with something that enhances your ability to elevate the quality of life of those around you be a bad thing? If I can say things about myself or conduct myself in such a fashion that makes the world around me laugh and feel good, then surely that is a major service to all concerned, including myself. I would be much more inclined to use the term "self-improving jokes".

Anyway, that's just my opinion.