Depression Forums
General => Welcome our 'NEW MEMBERS'!! => Topic started by: manintheshadows on March 15, 2012, 11:36:17 PM
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i registered on this site a long time ago.in my initial enthusiasm i wrote several,i think short pieces.i did not come back for along time,and ive thought quite hard about why not.
i got lost.....after all that is the name i write under in some other places.here im naintheshadows because to this day and for a long time that is how it feels.when i say i got lost thats literally true.somehow i could not gain renetry to this site,and then i think i either got hijacked by another-sort of related site ori made a mistake and ended up on another site.i hen simpy got s dissillusioned that i gave up and besides which thigs just got worse for me.when i did try to come nback earlier this year,i think i found myself still caught up in the conundrum i had left.
when im rational,which i hope is most of the time,i take life as it comes,knowing that compared to many in the world i have a few cards to play and they have less or none.i dont take my position for granted and i like to think i spend a lot of my abilities and energies,such as they are trying to contribue to making a better world because i believe passonately in that.not that i know better let alone best,nor that i will make that better world in some way in my own image,for other people but that i will engage with those people,whoever they are in the building of a common wealth fit for us all to live within and to share,and that the process should engage with most people in its construction.on the other hand i know im climbing amssive mountain in which i believe there are much fewer people who have dispoportionately larger voices or say or power or wealth or resources.i believe this to be unfair,but i recognise im just one of the masses,a minute participant in a big society-be that my neighbourhood,workplace,town,country,continent-the list could go on like when the child writes their address which tries to loacet that self in the world.imrealistic and sometimes pragmatic but none of that stops me feeling and probably being out of step with most of the world and my surroundings most of the time......i came to terms with that mostly a long time ago and felt i might be mostly"content with my discontent".
the conundrum however on the two sites got much worse for me though and whilst im not a conspiracy thinker nro someone who thinks they are either out to get me or that the world is in aconspiracy to get me,there are times when it feels like all of those things and more.i recognise that over a few days i got more and more hysterical,and did feel all of that and more.the more i struggled to find tis site and to log on to it,the further away i seemed to get.id actually got onto another site which seems to be based in the usa.i have nothing against americans mostly but having lived their and experienced the overarching imperialism of the usa as a state in various forms,even living in a country which itself was once a major imperialist power-britain-and even now is in some ways a poodle of or satellite to the usa,i am aware that many americans have differente sensibilities to our own.
the only way i could gain entry to that site,thinking it was this one was by constantly trying to find an identity that it/they would accept.the apparent refusal by what is probably there and automated process sfelt like it was stripping more and more of me as aperson away.i felt profoundly rejected despite the kind of strap line to the site that saysthinsg like no-one should suffer alone.even less able to find my way around,i felt like i was in an empty mansion or castle with empty rooms,the wind blowing in through windows with no glass,corridors with no doors,broken staircases,full of at best ghosts and shadows and the residue of persons who had left the space before i could enter and speak with them,this is the image that comes to mind for me actaully on many websites-i felt it on facebook,which is another story and actually on anow favourite site,briefly where i not only post very frequently but where i now feel at home and where i joined the network behind the site.how strange life is.
i psoted a piece on the only place it seemed open to write in,which included that image and quite a lot about my bad feelings.i felt unable to avoid saying i did feel alone and unhelped and helpless.within a very brief time my psoting was removed as detrimental to the site.next mroning another email stripped me of my identity and i really did get close to a very uncomfortable edge.im aware to my regret that i got even more anrgy and very distressed.fortunately both i amnd more importantly 2 od the founders of thsi site slung on to me and helped me.they gave me the help that the other site ,now months afterwards has never given at all.i want to publicly apologise,in so far as this is public,for the difficulty i gave the beautiful,wonderful 1 people-pip and victor-who helped me out to find a toe hold here.it turned out that we have several points of connection between the 3 of us thatbrought me kind of to my home and certainly to my senses.
actually that experience repliactes both sides of my persistent experience of anythig conected with the new technologies,and especially those related to the internet.that on the one hand i think it is very dangerous and untrustworthy and capable of sending me to the edge.ive had several of those experiences.on oen occassion,on the street it made me feel so bad that i felt i had dissappeared and could not actually be seen by others.on another i had the kind of experience where the technology broke down in front of me and i felt i was also falling apart.i ran from my office room in tears and phoned counsellors.on another i simply tried hiding under the desk.all the sort of stuff that invites discipline from employers-unless all too frarely,they or at least individual managers actually recognise what is happenning.
throughout most of this following another mental health crisis at work of a differente kind,in which i knew i was falling apart but could do little about it except try to hold myself together and failed, i went sick for over 14 months.despite clinical depression,i am not normally anxious but i had the discinnected symptoms of anxiety and became quickly anxious about my future in employment or out of it and in life in general.everything went on hold.i felt i had to keep my "head down" and for many months just retreated.i ahve written elsewhere about this experience as a trades unionist.i will not yet reeat it here.suffice to say that whilst supposedly subject to dda/disabled discrimination act,i felt that if i returned to work i would be in automatic breach f my employers health and culpability/sompetency procedures,and that i was going to be fired-left with no income and no prospects.the longet the time the graeter this feeling,though i am not critical of and indeed highly grateful to my seeverla trades union srepresentatives who supported me throughout.in november 2011 my income went down to zero.i faced a very lean christmas execting that things would get very much worse.my attention ws not on getting on this site,even though had i actively sought to use it earlier i may have found support,given the help of pip and victor that i subsequently recieved.
just before christmas,i got a payment for holiday time and a letter agreeing to early medical retirement with full pension which ws subsequently varied and improved slightly so that on 11/01/2012 i retired for real.i recieved some further outstanding payments and im now waiting for my pension ararnegments to come on stream.things looked up immediately.
that however is not the end of the story by any means.
to bring it briefly up to date:immediately on sealing the deal,retiring and leaving the formal meeting,i felt a palpable physical wight lifted from my shoulders.i could barely contain my desire to yell,and misquote or at least misconstrue martin luther king junior in saying"...lord god almighty,free at last..."the only imediately distressing bit was to discover that following my and another union signing a protocol the previous day,that planned compulsory redundancies woukd be offset against vacancies in a dfferent grade,they made 32 compulsory redundancies that very day,one of whom was a younger,black,female colleague,adn indeed friend.she was on the edge of tears and so was i.these decisions have real imacts on real human beings-contributing to strees,and both ill hysical and mental health.
i knew that the my mental collapse was partly the impact of 40+years in the field,combined with the increasing tensions,bullying and micromanagement of staff as if we are machine parts.i suspect its the dulling effect of work with people being replaced by targets,outcomes and bureaucratic procedures that take no account of syetemic,or technological failures.but most of all i think the stress of not only being always an oddity,someone always swimming against the stream,with strong moral,political(i do not mean party political)/social and spiritual values increasingly and wideningly against the values of capitalism and the state as it dismantles the welfare state became such that i could no longer hold them together.i felt increasingly compromised.these tensions became even more obvious during my sck leave and indeed since retirement.victors succinct description that depression is "(unresolved)anger turned inwards "may well be right,because i have always described my feelings as permanetly alienated,oscillating between love and rage,expressed in distress.
my counsellor warned me about adaptation tochanged conditions-an idea i amdit i had given no thought to but may well describe coming to terms with 14 months on"hold"and ow retirement.it feels now like she is right.what i am beginning to discover is that i had become so alienated and suppressed/repressed/oppressed as well as exploited like any other wage labourer is that i had lost touch with yself.i am redisovering myself.it is proving and exhilarating,demanding and emotionally painful experience.it is as if the spring water has rushed u through the earth and cannot be returned,or the jack in thebox,in jumping fromthe box is too big to put back.however,if the emotional pain is the price of rediscovering myself,i would rather pay that price than continue to be alienated from myself and lead a dulled life.
and of course,the illness that provoked my application for such retirement does not suddenly go away either.....
this,again,is a continueing story...
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Hi and welcome, you'll find everyone here will help as much as they can :)
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it feels odd,making a reply to my own post.in fact ive probably got it wrong,although i hope in that case i will be forgiven and maybe my error corrected without the cold shoulder ive recieved from some other sites(NOT THIS ONE),which given the subject matter and focus of them,they should know better.....
throughout my illness(es),and particularly during my application for early medical retirement,i had continued doubts about my onw condition-that in some way it was fraudulent and that i ought to"snap out of it"or that maybe i would make an immediate recovery following that retirement.
im not a hypocondriac or anything like it.i dont like dwelling on myself or my condition largely because i was taught early on to look outwards and to be concerned about others not oneself,that others were always worse off.i dont like what feels like my own egocentricity or self centredness.that said i know im harder on myself than i ever would be on others and i also know that it is in part my condition that forces,despite always having choices,some of that focus.
after some 14 months with the whole of my life on hold,on long term sick and essentially biding my time and being very cautious about a lot of things,i thought that once granted my"parole" or"release",i might sort of manage to"hit the ground running"and simply maintain a forward but different direction.
that has proven not to be the case,as slowly some of the new reality for me is sreading out before and around me.
unlike some i did not get the chance to participate in any pre-retirement course or anything like it,although i admit to doubts about such things.haveing beeen essentially told what to do,and increasingly so in apublic sector job which is increasingly micro-managed i would not take kindly to such"help"however well intended especially as one of"nature's"or the worlds discontents!
i know that played its part!i think from an early age i felt different and at odds with the world,always out of step.learning about and becoming a marxist taught me a lot and ive found the thery of alienation very important.evenetually i developed and outlook which i called"being content with my discontent".my rediscovery of gnostic and other heretical ideas in around 2000 strengthened me,although over the last several years,i feel with hindsight that the compact i made with myself inbeing"content with that discontent"has i realised either unravelled or become re-opened,so i need to renegotiate it with myself.
i knew before i "crashed off the tracks"in Decemeber 2010,that this time i was headed to a crisis.part of the generalised background context was seeing myself and my work colleagues being continually demoralised,individuated,isolated,and yes oppressed by it all,as mmanagement techniques take an increasing grip in the public sector.its increasingly about detailed micro-management,with the impositions of protocols,standards and targets about outcomes and behaviour.
its only since my departure that ive realised just how oppressive and repressive this all is.i dont want or intend to gossip about individual managers but as an experienced worker and trades unionist,socialist activist,sho steward and other things,ive long been critical of management in practice and its theories.in the industry i worked in ther seem to be variety of levels of management competence but where it is actually so low that i think people forget their humanity in their eagerness to prove themselves to themselves and the layers above,and simply to prove something.ive long held the idea that the longer the words about treating people decently,represents an inverse relation to content.i continue to hear stories of completely unreasonable expectations.bullying,unreasonableness and worse.it is apparently still the case that when technology,primarily computers fail,which makes recording impossible-there is still no excuse for not recording,and that it depends on the individuals management of their own time.if bad workmen(sic)blame their tools,then when management systems/tools fail-they just blame the workforce.
i realise with hindsight that despite vigilance and experienec i too feel for some of this nonsense.i felt that as a white middle aged male worker(see in identity politics,as priveleged)i could not be having it as badly as my black,asian ,womena nd ayounger colleague.i think now that is wrong.the fact that it happens to those groups probably-undoubtedly more-does not make it any less damaging for me.bullying,undermining,stereotyping,and lots else is whatever it is whoever is the target.
i felt an increasing dissonance between the values i was expected to adhere to and those i was brought up with,tested and lived,and this tension became increasingly difficult for me.i often talked especially to younger colleagues who felt a similar or differenet dissonance of the importance of managing it,of managing their own discomfort and how difficult it often is to draw the line in the sand or elsewhere and to decide whether and how to resist,figgt,stand aside or get out.it seems to me that there are a spectrum or range of choices,its not often as siple as presented in say films.and sometimes carrying people with us is important if say standing aside or resigni is not simply to be self indulgence.but its never easy and i always felt that soem level of unese and discomfort reflected that i or we were in approximately the right moral place-ever vigilant and thoughtful but not making simple choices or concessions.
now i admit,i have some further doubts about my own philosophy as i am now out,for whatever set of reasons.but then i sppsoe i ams till in aplace of constructive unease,though i would not want my choices to determine the fate of anyone else,though i was always careful to say that each of us had to make our own choices weighing up the factors before us,but sometimes that seems disingenuous.
i have talked and written about here and elsewhere of how a weight was lifted as soon as i came out of the meeting that"wrapped up"my retirement,but its only in the weeks,now months since that im realising the dreadful impact of living with and working under such repressive management.it makes sense of the adaptatin that my psychologist/counseellor talked about and which had me initially very perplexed,with"what adaptation"
whilst i realise that the public services have protocols that contribute to elaborating what is and is not acceptable behaviour,i realise that this can also be damaging.clearly it would not be appropriate for say an older white man in a position of amodicum of authority/power to respond to distress expressed by a young black woman in an interview,when she bursts into tears,by hugging her...but in other ways like expecting "us","professional staff"to always act as ambassadors of the service"outside work time and place,never to criticise it is another.and i felt it placed increasing limits on our very humanity-the passing words of greeting,friendly gestures,little touches-but then management control always sees our human desires and needs-from banter over coffee to a toliet break, as enemy to profit and productivity.
for aman who is as personally and socially shy,reservedand private as me,at one level this was easy.im not mostl very tactile or physical anyway.i know too that noone else is responsible for my personality or choices,but that does not make the situation,the ambience andy less repressive.when i hugged colleagues who are now friends,or they me-it began to strike me,and not least that a few days before such a hug would have invited disdain,comment,discipline.
no longer having to be anxious about the job or anything much that goes with it,except by choice which is now mine,my feelings,and my thoughst and my memories have space and depths to roam.this is better than anxiety or the numbness of medication or alienation but its still very emotionally painful,and im in some turmoil.sometimes there is reason associated with particular incidents and events but mostly it simply goes with the change,the adaptation.but i would rater the pain and vulnerability,than the numb alienation.in turn i dont doubt i still alienated,due to the nature of the society in which i live but it might be one or several degrees less,or at least less like being entirely screwed down.
it still pains me greatly to see the stresses born by many others in similar or indeed disimilar work situations,especially where many of those have health problems of their own,but at least i can support them,somehow as best i can.