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Discussion & help on depression & mental health related issues

Lanolin said:
I can empathise with this completely, I have a similar personality to that you described.

You mention that depression can be easily mis-diagnosed and I have to say my experience is that it definitely can be. I was diagnosed with depression a few years ago, given medication and sent for counselling. I completely believed that I was 'suffering from depression' in the sense that I had an illness, but in hindsight I'm sure I was just 'depressed' in the sense that I was having a bad time of it. I didn't take the medication I was prescribed because I was scared to, and counselling sessions took forever to be organised so I never went. This was because by the time I got the letter confirming them, I felt OK again, and have never since felt like I did then. At the time my mum had a terminal illness, I'd given up University to help look after her and was stuck in a dead end part time job earning a pittance, was living at home again, had split up with a girl and had no time to meet anyone new. It was no wonder I was depressed, but it was circumstantial not an illness. My mum passed away, I grieved and then got on with my life, went back to Uni etc. It scares me how quick the doctor was to tell me I was suffering from an illness and needed pills when the last 9 years tell me that i'm just a slightly introverted character who was having a bad time of it for a few months.

I want to be very clear here that I'm not suggesting depression or anxiety are not real. They most certainly are, and people close to me really suffer from them. That's one of the reasons why i'm so sure I didn't/don't suffer from depression myself, the way I see some people crippled by mental anguish tells me that I don't have anything like the same condition. Personally, I hate the way that internet memes etc have reduced something like anxiety to a case of 'do you hate it when people laugh at you? do you find it really difficult to walk into a room full of strangers and start chatting to them all? do you sometimes doubt you're doing the right thing? you've probably got anxiety' when actually everybody feels like that at times.

Please nobody take me saying I didn't take my prescription and was fine as a suggestion that you should do the same. These conditions are real and I know that medication can help sufferers immeasurably. I'm simply regaling my own experience, not trying to demean or diagnose anybody else.
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I totally agree, "circumstances " can combine all at once, to make your life almost impossible for a while, plus we`re ll different and handle things differently.
 
Lanolin said:
I can empathise with this completely, I have a similar personality to that you described.

You mention that depression can be easily mis-diagnosed and I have to say my experience is that it definitely can be. I was diagnosed with depression a few years ago, given medication and sent for counselling. I completely believed that I was 'suffering from depression' in the sense that I had an illness, but in hindsight I'm sure I was just 'depressed' in the sense that I was having a bad time of it. I didn't take the medication I was prescribed because I was scared to, and counselling sessions took forever to be organised so I never went. This was because by the time I got the letter confirming them, I felt OK again, and have never since felt like I did then. At the time my mum had a terminal illness, I'd given up University to help look after her and was stuck in a dead end part time job earning a pittance, was living at home again, had split up with a girl and had no time to meet anyone new. It was no wonder I was depressed, but it was circumstantial not an illness. My mum passed away, I grieved and then got on with my life, went back to Uni etc. It scares me how quick the doctor was to tell me I was suffering from an illness and needed pills when the last 9 years tell me that i'm just a slightly introverted character who was having a bad time of it for a few months.

I want to be very clear here that I'm not suggesting depression or anxiety are not real. They most certainly are, and people close to me really suffer from them. That's one of the reasons why i'm so sure I didn't/don't suffer from depression myself, the way I see some people crippled by mental anguish tells me that I don't have anything like the same condition. Personally, I hate the way that internet memes etc have reduced something like anxiety to a case of 'do you hate it when people laugh at you? do you find it really difficult to walk into a room full of strangers and start chatting to them all? do you sometimes doubt you're doing the right thing? you've probably got anxiety' when actually everybody feels like that at times.

Please nobody take me saying I didn't take my prescription and was fine as a suggestion that you should do the same. These conditions are real and I know that medication can help sufferers immeasurably. I'm simply regaling my own experience, not trying to demean or diagnose anybody else.
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Felt very like this myself. As I posted finally went to the doc. He said I showed all the symptoms of depression . Got medication. I'm takin half the dosage he recommended.. Not sure how that will work but I have been feeling better but it used come at me in waves so maybe I'm due another bout again. But I'm trying to be more positive and that
 
Been a while since I felt the need to post something personal on here as in truth life has been going great.

Business going really well in the last 12 months and I should bring in 4 times as much money as last year. But,

Having to go out of my comfort zone to do so and after 12 months of being secure in everything I've done I'm now doing things that I'm say 80% sure off. Learning all the time and this new work just feel into my lap and couldn't say no.

I've always suffered from lack of confidence and anxiety but have always spent a lot of time on the toilet, pulled myself together, took a deep breath and got on with it.

Guess my issue is that in my core role I know everything, but this new role i don't and worried that I get something wrong. Wife says I'll be fine and just treat this as everything else I've done, but still feel something isn't right, like I've taken on a role that I'm not fully certain off.

Sorry for this and not even sure I've made any sense.
 
Writing this at stupid o'clock because I'm lying in bed unable to drop off, my mind is so clouded.

Yesterday was the most farcical day I've had in this job so far. Nothing to do with any of my colleagues, we all got lumbered with the same thing. On Wednesday our Chief Exec told us that Thursday and Friday we'd all be off the phones and away from our desks because they'd arranged three people from another, larger company to come up from Wales and spend 2 days explaining to us how to use a new system our bosses want to introduce. We all thought "Okay whatever, it makes a nice change from our usual routine."

The whole thing was farcical. The 3 who came to educate us were 2 blokes and a lady. One of the blokes did the presenting and to this fella is a real-life David Brent is the understatement of the year. The bloke is so loud and cringeworthy, I felt uncomfortable in the room with him. He was trying to be friendly and engaging but it bombed badly, he kept putting his hands on my shoulder and pointing across the table at people, he completely lost my interest immediately. The other two were just a bit smug, every time we asked a question we were answered in a very know-it-all tone of voice. Maybe it was just a cultural clash, they were from Newport and were all Scouse so perhaps our ways of communicating our just vastly different but the point were all made to feel very put off and unenthusiastic.

The bit that keeps playing on my mind though is how dramatically they want to change our way of working. A standard phone call we made took about 10 mins tops, we ask about a dozen questions and try to explain the process to people as best we can. Now, because of this new way of doing things that these people have told us we'll be doing, one phone call will probably take up to half an hour. They want us to ask clients up to 50 questions and some of them are extremely personal, ranging from whether or not they or anyone in their family has a history of mental illness and what medications they may be on. That is not a question I feel comfortable asking a stranger or something that is morally right. Yet these people are telling us we should ask people this like we're asking them about the weather. I think it's disgusting personally and when I raised this point of view privately I was basically told again, in a smug sort of way by one of the blokes, to not be stupid.

I'm not going in tomorrow morning, I'm not sitting in a room with these people for another 8 hours of the day. We'll see what happens next week in regards to how we operate going forward but I'm not spending another day with people who make me physically uncomfortable, make scamming people sound like something to be proud of and basically fob off what are genuine concerns about ethics.
 

EFCPaul said:
Writing this at stupid o'clock because I'm lying in bed unable to drop off, my mind is so clouded.

Yesterday was the most farcical day I've had in this job so far. Nothing to do with any of my colleagues, we all got lumbered with the same thing. On Wednesday our Chief Exec told us that Thursday and Friday we'd all be off the phones and away from our desks because they'd arranged three people from another, larger company to come up from Wales and spend 2 days explaining to us how to use a new system our bosses want to introduce. We all thought "Okay whatever, it makes a nice change from our usual routine."

The whole thing was farcical. The 3 who came to educate us were 2 blokes and a lady. One of the blokes did the presenting and to this fella is a real-life David Brent is the understatement of the year. The bloke is so loud and cringeworthy, I felt uncomfortable in the room with him. He was trying to be friendly and engaging but it bombed badly, he kept putting his hands on my shoulder and pointing across the table at people, he completely lost my interest immediately. The other two were just a bit smug, every time we asked a question we were answered in a very know-it-all tone of voice. Maybe it was just a cultural clash, they were from Newport and were all Scouse so perhaps our ways of communicating our just vastly different but the point were all made to feel very put off and unenthusiastic.

The bit that keeps playing on my mind though is how dramatically they want to change our way of working. A standard phone call we made took about 10 mins tops, we ask about a dozen questions and try to explain the process to people as best we can. Now, because of this new way of doing things that these people have told us we'll be doing, one phone call will probably take up to half an hour. They want us to ask clients up to 50 questions and some of them are extremely personal, ranging from whether or not they or anyone in their family has a history of mental illness and what medications they may be on. That is not a question I feel comfortable asking a stranger or something that is morally right. Yet these people are telling us we should ask people this like we're asking them about the weather. I think it's disgusting personally and when I raised this point of view privately I was basically told again, in a smug sort of way by one of the blokes, to not be stupid.

I'm not going in tomorrow morning, I'm not sitting in a room with these people for another 8 hours of the day. We'll see what happens next week in regards to how we operate going forward but I'm not spending another day with people who make me physically uncomfortable, make scamming people sound like something to be proud of and basically fob off what are genuine concerns about ethics.
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They of course mentioned the upcoming GDPR and the processing of sensitive personal data?
 
EFCPaul said:
Writing this at stupid o'clock because I'm lying in bed unable to drop off, my mind is so clouded.

Yesterday was the most farcical day I've had in this job so far. Nothing to do with any of my colleagues, we all got lumbered with the same thing. On Wednesday our Chief Exec told us that Thursday and Friday we'd all be off the phones and away from our desks because they'd arranged three people from another, larger company to come up from Wales and spend 2 days explaining to us how to use a new system our bosses want to introduce. We all thought "Okay whatever, it makes a nice change from our usual routine."

The whole thing was farcical. The 3 who came to educate us were 2 blokes and a lady. One of the blokes did the presenting and to this fella is a real-life David Brent is the understatement of the year. The bloke is so loud and cringeworthy, I felt uncomfortable in the room with him. He was trying to be friendly and engaging but it bombed badly, he kept putting his hands on my shoulder and pointing across the table at people, he completely lost my interest immediately. The other two were just a bit smug, every time we asked a question we were answered in a very know-it-all tone of voice. Maybe it was just a cultural clash, they were from Newport and were all Scouse so perhaps our ways of communicating our just vastly different but the point were all made to feel very put off and unenthusiastic.

The bit that keeps playing on my mind though is how dramatically they want to change our way of working. A standard phone call we made took about 10 mins tops, we ask about a dozen questions and try to explain the process to people as best we can. Now, because of this new way of doing things that these people have told us we'll be doing, one phone call will probably take up to half an hour. They want us to ask clients up to 50 questions and some of them are extremely personal, ranging from whether or not they or anyone in their family has a history of mental illness and what medications they may be on. That is not a question I feel comfortable asking a stranger or something that is morally right. Yet these people are telling us we should ask people this like we're asking them about the weather. I think it's disgusting personally and when I raised this point of view privately I was basically told again, in a smug sort of way by one of the blokes, to not be stupid.

I'm not going in tomorrow morning, I'm not sitting in a room with these people for another 8 hours of the day. We'll see what happens next week in regards to how we operate going forward but I'm not spending another day with people who make me physically uncomfortable, make scamming people sound like something to be proud of and basically fob off what are genuine concerns about ethics.
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I wouldn`t worry too much mate, as from what you`ve said I can only see the new " system " completely bombing and things quickly reverting back to normal.

Who wants to spend 30 mins on the phone, with a stranger asking you personal questions, I know I wouldn`t.

I suspect you make get a load of clients making excuses to get off the line or just putting the phone down.

This all smacks of some smart arse in HQ trying to make a name for himself / herself.

Just ride it out.
 
Doing a walk/run in aid of Pieta House next month. (Darkness Into Light)

The vision at Pieta House is to create a world where suicide, self-harm and stigma have been replaced by hope, self-care and acceptance.

Darkness into Light is vital for our fundraising, for raising awareness and for bringing people together as we do everything we can to bring about a suicide-free world.

If anyone could spare a few quid, please ckick the link below to donate. Every and any amount would be greatly appreciated.

https://dil2018.pieta.ie/fundraisers/conorwaters/dundalk

images (1).webp
 

Quit my job today, not officially but I'm not going back. Cleared my desk before I went and will hand a sick note in.

Today was the final straw, the new sweeping changes came into effect like I previously explained and I don't like them one bit. The questions we have to ask now are for me way too personal and the pressure they want us to put on clients is harassment. We have to demand to know people's medical histories and if a client refuses to answer, or can't because they can't remember, we have to threaten them with a cancellation fee. My exact words to my team leader were "mate I am not calling people on the phone and outright bullying them into giving us private information they don't feel comfortable giving to a complete stranger, especially one they know isn't with the NHS or the police. We're just a claims company and its a horrible thing to do." He replied with a snarky laugh;
"Well that's your job."

Felt like getting up and walking out right there. I don't want a job that entails any of that, it's not what we did before last week and not what I'd have signed up for originally. Not going back.
 
EFCPaul said:
Quit my job today, not officially but I'm not going back. Cleared my desk before I went and will hand a sick note in.

Today was the final straw, the new sweeping changes came into effect like I previously explained and I don't like them one bit. The questions we have to ask now are for me way too personal and the pressure they want us to put on clients is harassment. We have to demand to know people's medical histories and if a client refuses to answer, or can't because they can't remember, we have to threaten them with a cancellation fee. My exact words to my team leader were "mate I am not calling people on the phone and outright bullying them into giving us private information they don't feel comfortable giving to a complete stranger, especially one they know isn't with the NHS or the police. We're just a claims company and its a horrible thing to do." He replied with a snarky laugh;
"Well that's your job."

Felt like getting up and walking out right there. I don't want a job that entails any of that, it's not what we did before last week and not what I'd have signed up for originally. Not going back.
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Mate. Well done for sticking by your principles - they will win you more friends both professionally and personally. I wish you the best of luck!
 
Bryan said:
Mate. Well done for sticking by your principles - they will win you more friends both professionally and personally. I wish you the best of luck!
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Ta mate. I don't want to try paint myself as some sort of white knight but the stuff they're demanding we do now is borderline horrible in my opinion. No one likes change and no one likes having to learn something new from scratch but it isn't a case me just spitting my dummy because I was set in the old way of doing it. I just don't agree with what they want us to do, it doesn't sit right with me one bit. I might have felt better had my team leader sympathised with ny position and tried to explain it in a more reasonable with me but he just got arsey and basically said, without saying the actual words, that I should just shut up and get on with it. No way, it's utter BS and a scam and they're asking us to disrespect people for the sake of getting money. I dont want any part in something like that.
 
EFCPaul said:
Quit my job today, not officially but I'm not going back. Cleared my desk before I went and will hand a sick note in.

Today was the final straw, the new sweeping changes came into effect like I previously explained and I don't like them one bit. The questions we have to ask now are for me way too personal and the pressure they want us to put on clients is harassment. We have to demand to know people's medical histories and if a client refuses to answer, or can't because they can't remember, we have to threaten them with a cancellation fee. My exact words to my team leader were "mate I am not calling people on the phone and outright bullying them into giving us private information they don't feel comfortable giving to a complete stranger, especially one they know isn't with the NHS or the police. We're just a claims company and its a horrible thing to do." He replied with a snarky laugh;
"Well that's your job."

Felt like getting up and walking out right there. I don't want a job that entails any of that, it's not what we did before last week and not what I'd have signed up for originally. Not going back.
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Good for you mate and I suspect a few of your colleagues will probably follow you out of the door too.

Just make sure that you leave on "favourable " terms, as you don`t want them sticking the knife in, if you ever need a reference of them ;)
 
EFCPaul said:
Ta mate. I don't want to try paint myself as some sort of white knight but the stuff they're demanding we do now is borderline horrible in my opinion. No one likes change and no one likes having to learn something new from scratch but it isn't a case me just spitting my dummy because I was set in the old way of doing it. I just don't agree with what they want us to do, it doesn't sit right with me one bit. I might have felt better had my team leader sympathised with ny position and tried to explain it in a more reasonable with me but he just got arsey and basically said, without saying the actual words, that I should just shut up and get on with it. No way, it's utter BS and a scam and they're asking us to disrespect people for the sake of getting money. I dont want any part in something like that.
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Good for you mate. When asked by recruiters or in interviews on why you left, tell them that and it'll look good for professional companies. I'd be tempted to put a google review and spill the beans. I wanted to do that after I was asked to leave my temporary role, but I've resisted the temptation in case it backfires in some way.
 

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