Mental Health Dojo

Dear @bcdcdude: first off, I am very happy to hear that you managed to get married to your Japanese wife, but at the same time, I am sad to hear that it isn't all gold that glitters. To know that the UK currently greatly suffers from political and financial distress is very saddening to me, especially because I have friends in the UK (besides you of course), who are starting to feel as a burden to the privileged bunch. Remember the gasoline/petrol crisis that occured a few years ago during the pandemic? The couple I know who lives in Southampton struggled to afford enough petrol for their campervan and had to stay home. Moreover, after this Brexit shit, they had to renew their passports and even acquire travel visas to travel to the countries they wish to visit. And guess what? After spending several hundred quid on the entire process, they stumbled upon even more problems, be it mechanical problems on their campervan, or personal problems, such as getting sick with Covid.
My thoughts are with you and your family right now, and just so you know: being your fellow autistic and OCD-stricken friend I can help you out by sharing my side of the story too:

Yesterday, me and my mom received a letter from one of the six special needs institutions. And guess what? I am eligible for their services and have been accepted on a waiting list. At first, I thought this will be a long and strenuous journey, but it turns out it was done with express speed. Unfortunately, there are some problems: my parents are constantly feuding over their ownership of our house and the house we have in Croatia. They have agreed to halve the ownership of both properties between themselves, but I have second thoughts. Since my mom took out so many loans over the past years, I have a feeling that my own personal savings will suffer quite a lot because of this. My dad is retiring from his work next month, yet the pension he'll have will surpass that of a regular worker by a much bigger margin.

That being said, I am also going to wave goodbye to my workplace too. I'll throw a goodbye party if possible and then I'll be relocated to an institution that will take care of me and my needs.
 
I've been trying to spend less time on my phone. I've found my mindlessly flicking through Reddit, YouTube shorts or just back and forth on the screen refreshing sites time and time again. One thing that did help was putting timers on Apps. Put Reddit for an hour and YouTube for 30 minutes. Significantly reduced the time I use it. However, still find myself sliding my phone aimlessly checking for updates on emails and forums. Decided to remove the email widget for work and even only give my 2 hours on Chrome, and will gradually reduce it.

Just I often find myself in situations where I have nothing to do or think about. Don't really speak much with my wife anymore (a number of reasons) and the kids are young. Recently, I've cleared of my debts and paid of my student loan. This has given me some extra money each month. Coupled with a reduction in nursery fees, I can now start spending a bit. Booked a little break to Edinburgh in June and have a glamping trip with my family in July. Hopefully will be able to go aboard this year.

Work sucks and all the motivation has been sucked from me. Well, it's not bad but I've found myself in a position I'm just doing the bare minimum until I get fired. I'm actually do well at work, but I'm so stretched that I found myself going from very busy to just doing nothing.
 
Lovely Sunday walk around the countryside followed by collecting some horse dung from the local stables for my mums compost and getting us a dominos tonight.
 
Not doing great lately. Particularly about kidney stone stuff I have scheduled next month. Aware it’s common enough but even with how rare I’m told these chances are I still worry myself sick thinking all the things that can go wrong will.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JP_
Greetings fellow members of Shenmue Dojo Forums! I'm here to bring you all another update on what's been going on in my life:
Firstly, my parents have thankfully changed their minds about putting me in a special needs institution. We were on a tour of a prominent institution last month and my parents' eyes were opened. They said that if they put me there, my life will be completely ruined. And now we have thankfully stopped arguing once and for all. My dad successfully retired after around 40 years of work and now he spends most of my time with me; working out, cooking, walking our dog and more.
Another thing is that I've been re-assessed about my mental health and the experts have found out one very important thing: the medications I'm using are potentially harmful for my body, especially for my cognitive brain functions. Right now, I'm on a small rehab; I had to lower the intake of all my pills and as a result I started to feel the symptoms, be it lethargy, fatigue, depression (albeit minor) and brain fog. Basically I'm experiencing what a drug addict might call a "turkey" and thus I felt completely unmotivated to do things that bring me joy. Hence the fact why I wasn't that active on the forums and on Steam.
But my life took a fortunate turn and after a few weeks, I'll be completely clean of the pills that I've been taking for the past 15 years! So yeah, life is getting a little easier after all.
 
LittleBoShenmue said:
Greetings fellow members of Shenmue Dojo Forums! I'm here to bring you all another update on what's been going on in my life:
Firstly, my parents have thankfully changed their minds about putting me in a special needs institution. We were on a tour of a prominent institution last month and my parents' eyes were opened. They said that if they put me there, my life will be completely ruined. And now we have thankfully stopped arguing once and for all. My dad successfully retired after around 40 years of work and now he spends most of my time with me; working out, cooking, walking our dog and more.
Another thing is that I've been re-assessed about my mental health and the experts have found out one very important thing: the medications I'm using are potentially harmful for my body, especially for my cognitive brain functions. Right now, I'm on a small rehab; I had to lower the intake of all my pills and as a result I started to feel the symptoms, be it lethargy, fatigue, depression (albeit minor) and brain fog. Basically I'm experiencing what a drug addict might call a "turkey" and thus I felt completely unmotivated to do things that bring me joy. Hence the fact why I wasn't that active on the forums and on Steam.
But my life took a fortunate turn and after a few weeks, I'll be completely clean of the pills that I've been taking for the past 15 years! So yeah, life is getting a little easier after all.
Click to expand...
Glad things are really starting to work out for you.
 
I'm in a bit of a bind with work and it's really taking a toll on me and I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

Basically until earlier this year I worked for a large news media company as a journalist and later editor, which I enjoyed decently well at first. I joined as an apprentice reporter without qualifications and things went well for a few years, and I got promoted several times. But then it turned into a bit of a slog for the last few years as that industry struggled and the company lost staff left and right. I got essentially trapped in the job by two things:
  1. I have no qualifications apart from journalism qualifications I got as part of the apprenticeship, and no professional experience apart from journalism and being in the army
  2. I was widowed in 2020 and left by myself with two small children, with no family around me to help out, and my girlfriend isn't always here with us - it's mostly just me with the kids, and my youngest has special needs
Now, all that's fine, and my old company at least let me do the job remotely, so at least there was that one upside to what was a pretty terrible job by the end. But all this meant that to find a new job, I had to find something that would accept me with just journalism qualifications and experience, which would also be work-from-home or at least very flexible. This meant I tried several times over the last few years to find something new, and a few times I got to the interview stage only to fail. Finally, at the start of this year, I succeeded in getting a new job with a small public relations agency.

It seemed almost too good to be true. Whereas the old company had treated me like a pointless anonymous number for years, this new company was so enthusiastic to hire me. The managing director told me how I was "a talent" and went so far as to make a new job just for me, because she thought the existing vacancy didn't quite fit me but she was still so keen to have me on board. She also said she'd be very happy for me to do the job remotely. I accepted, quit the old job and started at the new company.

But although things started well, we're now a few months down the line and things aren't going so great. First they introduced a regular "virtual office" thing, where everyone working remotely has to have their cameras on all the time while they work. Creepy and annoying, but tolerable, I guess. Then last month they made everyone come in to the office to work for a few days, which doesn't really make a difference for the others, but fucks things up majorly for me as I have to make a plan for someone to watch the children. I wasn't able to get them into any clubs before or after school, but in the end my girlfriend took a few days off from work so she could be with them in the afternoons, but I wasn't able to make any plan for the mornings, so I had to just take them to school myself and go in to the office a little late. Even though this was a massive strain on me, it was taken like I was skiving off. They mentioned that they want to do this for a few days every month. They also sometimes do social events after work in the evenings, and of course I can't attend any of those because I have to be with the kids.

Then, today, my boss returned after a couple of weeks off and I wrote to her asking if I could go to my daughter's school sports day and leaving assembly over the next week or so (I only found out the timings of these while the boss was away). I had waited for the boss to return because I thought it wasn't proper to get in touch about this while she was on holiday, but she got annoyed with me about the short notice and ultimately made me take off half a holiday day for each of the two events, rather than letting me make up the time in the evenings as I had proposed. I had previously been allowed to make up time in the evenings for stuff such as this, for example when it was my son's sports day last week (when the boss was away and the second-in-command allowed it).

It's all very well to say I don't have to go to these things, but if I don't go to these things, my children will be there with nobody there. Their mum is dead. All other relatives are either far away or dead. It's just me. I try incredibly hard to balance everything and get treated like I'm trying to take advantage or something. It's bullshit.

Then there's the work itself. Some aspects of it aren't so bad, I guess, but without going into detail, basically I'm now about four months in and it has become clear to me that I'm just not very good at the job. I am screwing up left and right and can barely do anything right the first time. This morning my boss even asked me for an opinion on something over email, and when I sent it, she replied asking me to do it again more concisely and using subtitles and bullet points "so I can copy and paste it straight to the client". When I'm asked to write something, I end up having to do it two or three times because they're not happy with the way I wrote it. In particular, I wrote one thing for the company website four sodding times before the second-in-command took mercy on me and wrote it herself.

I wouldn't mind so much if I was just messing about, but I really am trying. It's really disheartening to be trying my best and yet fucking up so consistently, so often and in so many different ways. I spoke to my boss about this earlier, pretty much saying what I've been saying above, and she said she appreciated my honesty, then something about how she had already been looking at doing a mid-probation review before she went away, and would now be looking at that again. So it looks like I may be on course to fail my six-month probation period anyway.

I try to get rid of the stress through exercise, particularly running, but I can't go out and run as often as I'd like because when it's just me with the kids (most of the time), I can't leave them alone in the house. I feel like the stress has been impacting on me physically too. I feel bloated and fat, even though I eat right and make such efforts to stay in shape.

Coming to the point: I really don't want to do this job anymore, but I don't know what I'm going to do if I leave. In short, I need the money. I lack qualifications or experience to get stuff in other fields and my home situation means I'm restricted in the jobs I can do - ideally it needs to be from home so I can get the kids to and from school, etc, while also working. Honestly, my heart says to quit, but I have a mortgage on this house and my head keeps screaming at me that I can't risk us losing our home. Those are the stakes I'm talking about here. It's really tough.

I'm sorry for a really long post, but my girlfriend isn't back until later and I just wanted to get it out of my system so I can at least try to enjoy the rest of the evening. Peace.
 
Its been a very nice time spending a year at home, come august i will be back to being a teacher in China and will be back with the love of my life and 45 mins away from Hong Kong. Im still off alcohol and its just a distant memory now. My free time will be playing sport, days out to places with gf and getting a drivers licence/saving for a car.
 
Last edited:
In the end I quit the job. Screw it. Life’s too short and it was really affecting my health. Fortunately because it was still during probation I can get out with just a week’s notice. Now I must find another way. Wish me luck.
 
Hello everyone!

Today I celebrated my 29th Birthday. Thank you to all of you who have told me that they're glad that everything is starting to work out better on my end. Yesterday, my dad officially retired from his 40+ year tenure as a construction worker. Now, both of us are enjoying leisure activities, such as cooking, grilling, walking the dog and exercising. I already lost about 3 kilograms in the first week and I'm already feeling a whole lot better both physically and mentally. Even so, my psychiatrist told me to lower the dosage of my medicine so that I'll be able to live without any horrible side effects.
Here's to a better tomorrow, cheers!
 
I don’t wanna go into too much detail, but finally went through near everything I was worrying about…this last week has been the worst in my life. Usually I say that and acknowledge it’s a bit exaggerated but this time it really seems like it’s definitely true.

I guess at the very least the actual surgery to get the kidney stones removed apparently went smoothly. But as soon as I got in the car on the way home, it was all downhill with the stent in place. For all the painkillers I had, I don’t think there was one moment I was in anything I’d call relief, never mind worries about UTI and whatnot.

Had been told to take it out myself at home after five days. Had done what many seem to do, and from what I read expected some pressure, but as soon as I pulled an inch or two out it was like razor wire and almost entirely debilitating. Had to go to an urgent care and through the embarrassment of having someone else take it out, thankfully professional, but even after stronger meds that made me tired it still felt terrible for five seconds and there was no way I’d ever be able to do it myself.

Needless to say think I’ll be traumatized for some time. Wondering if it’s at all worrying to have no burning or blood in the first bathroom visit I made upon removal when I’ve been told it’s to be expected…but for now the cramps and spasms I’m having are way better than what I’d been dealing with before. Hoping the rest goes well. I have more stones in my right kidney to worry about but hoping maybe I can wait until they find alternative technologies or something. Can’t recall where I read about possible dissolving stents that wouldn’t need to be removed at all.
 
Feeling in a good place. I have a couple week's off work and it's so relaxing to just let everything go. Main issue is my sleep problems have come back. I absolutely dread the nigh time as I spend most of it tossing and turning the waking up feeling like crap.

I have had this issue for as long as I can remember. Going to do a bit of a juicing diet next month. Just to see if it's something in my diet causing the issue. Or at least having green juices may make things better.
 
Started a new life in Guangzhou and started a brand new character on GTA Online and will be able to start a new Shenmue game soon as its on the PS4 i left in Chengdu and my now reunited gf bought over to our new apartment. I have settled into my new school and its amazing being here. My main indulgence is going on nice days out with her and eating all the amazing food. I am scouting out gyms at the moment and my strongest drink is Pepsi. SEGA for me stands for Straight Edge Grafter Aedan as i im clean as a whistle,i work hard and my name is Aedan.微信图片_20240911160916.jpg
微信图片_20240911160904.jpg
 
Hello again everybody, it has been quite a hiatus here.

You are probably wondering what happened to me and what I've been up to. A lot, and to be frank it took quite a toll on my mental health.

For several months I have almost completely severed contact with many different people, heck, I barely even got any motivation to do the things that brought me joy. The reason behind all this is the fact that I kept getting nasty flashbacks about my past mistakes and in the present, people kept bothering me relentlessly because they expected too much from me.

Yesterday, I took an online PTSD test and despite having second opinions, the test showed that I most likely suffer from severe PTSD. I tend to avoid the media, violent or graphical content, negativity and dumpster fires, because I have a feeling that if I enter a conversation with any of these type of people and content, I'll end up getting stressed out and with lots of intrusive thoughts.

Fortunately, last month and a half, I've been visiting a special therapist where we discussed my hobbies, relationships and other things and have been making excellent progress. I even downloaded a special self-help app called Finch and it really helps me pour out everything that comes to my mind.

Another thing is that we completely overhauled our frontyard: we got rid of the archaic wooden fence that my dad erected around 20-25 years ago and replaced it with a cutting-edge style automated fence that works with a push of a button.

On a completely unrelated note: do any of you ever visit Newgrounds? It's a popular website similar to Deviantart, but with a focus on browser games and movies, original audio, art submissions and of course collabs. They just happen to have a Dreamcast collab going on right now and yes, Shenmue is being referenced quite a lot there. I recommend you give a try and get some peeks into the unforgettable era.
 
LittleBoShenmue said:
Hello again everybody, it has been quite a hiatus here.

You are probably wondering what happened to me and what I've been up to. A lot, and to be frank it took quite a toll on my mental health.

For several months I have almost completely severed contact with many different people, heck, I barely even got any motivation to do the things that brought me joy. The reason behind all this is the fact that I kept getting nasty flashbacks about my past mistakes and in the present, people kept bothering me relentlessly because they expected too much from me.

Yesterday, I took an online PTSD test and despite having second opinions, the test showed that I most likely suffer from severe PTSD. I tend to avoid the media, violent or graphical content, negativity and dumpster fires, because I have a feeling that if I enter a conversation with any of these type of people and content, I'll end up getting stressed out and with lots of intrusive thoughts.

Fortunately, last month and a half, I've been visiting a special therapist where we discussed my hobbies, relationships and other things and have been making excellent progress. I even downloaded a special self-help app called Finch and it really helps me pour out everything that comes to my mind.

Another thing is that we completely overhauled our frontyard: we got rid of the archaic wooden fence that my dad erected around 20-25 years ago and replaced it with a cutting-edge style automated fence that works with a push of a button.

On a completely unrelated note: do any of you ever visit Newgrounds? It's a popular website similar to Deviantart, but with a focus on browser games and movies, original audio, art submissions and of course collabs. They just happen to have a Dreamcast collab going on right now and yes, Shenmue is being referenced quite a lot there. I recommend you give a try and get some peeks into the unforgettable era.
Click to expand...
https://www.newgrounds.io/ this one? Dont appear to work but i dont have a vpn
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back