Help with life

Hey there @steab , just letting you know if you need to chat to peers at all - we are here to listen

Hi @steab ,

im sorry that you haven’t had more responses earlier. Sometimes it happens on the forum when it gets busy.

I have locked myself away before lots too, possibly for different reasons although I guess mostly related to depression for me.

Im wondering what supports you have. Do you have a counsellor you see or a service your involved with like headspace?

I can imagine that it is really hard for you with not having worked and being scared of failing. They are two things that I feel scared about almost obsessively too. I’m older but haven’t worked for 24 years. I’ve been lucky enough to have support from my therapist to begin to get on with achieving small steps. I’m not working yet but have made a plan to volunteer to start getting out of the house.

I think it is really important to get support from someone to help you through this stuff, it was for me.

@Teej Thanks for responding. I wasn't sure what to do or how long I should have waited for a response before making another post to reach out or if it was even okay for me to share anything here to begin with.

I don't really have any sort of support. This is the only time I've spoken about this out loud. I've never seen a counsellor before and I'm not sure how to go about finding one either.

I'm also the black sheep of my family, so there isn't anyone to rely on for support. They're just there to remind me that I'll only ever make things difficult everyone. It's not just that finding work and being around others scares me. It's that my family will be there to tell me I'm a failure once again. I can't be in the same room as them.

I’m really sorry that your family is so unsupportive and damaging @steab . Are your family financially supporting you? I’m guessing if yes that makes it even harder.

There are a few ways of going about getting help. One is seeing a GP and telling them that you are struggling with life. They can then write you up a mental health plan and you can access a psychologist for 10 visits usually with a much smaller gap fee to pay (some don’t charge a gap). The GP may be able to recommend someone.

Another thing that might be really helpful is to ring or chat on the sane helpline or beyond blue. I’m not sure how old you are but headspace may be a good option too. They all have a chat service too where you can chat one on one. They will be able to talk you through the kind of services around and how to reach them.

Here is the page for sane https://www.sane.org/get-help

This was how I got the help I’ve needed. In the meanwhile keep posting if you feel comfortable. I’m going to tag in @MDT who may be around to help support you too.

@Teej I appreciate you for showing that there are options and sorry for not saying anything these past few days.

To be honest I felt a little defeated after I first see your post. I'm 25 now which meant that headspace is no longer an option for me and finding a psychologist sounded impossible since my family still do support me financially. It also didn't help that I haven't seen a GP in more than 10 years so even the idea of going back to one started to intimidate me.

But I think I will try the helpline chat and look into beyond blue too. Hopefully they can walk me through things like you said.

@MDT Sorry I didn't get back to you either. I'm not doing so great. The last few days I've gone back to keeping myself in my room, not getting any sleep and not eating again. It sucks too because I feel I'm very self-aware about what I'm doing but still can't do anything to fix it. The other day though I was finally able to get myself to step out of the house for a bit but when I came home I immediately felt like I had to keep myself iscolated again.