A few weeks after my 16th birthday, I made a new friend at my new school, Steve. Within months we’d become best friends and basically inseparable. Just platonic friends but we did everything together, went to music festivals, had our first foreign holiday together, took drugs together, shared our favourite books, had discussions long into the night, shared our secrets and problems that we’d never tell anyone else. Went through all kinds of difficulties and hardships and loss side by side. He was my best friend for nearly a decade, and at age 25 we finally lost touch. He moved to another city and my health took a turn for the worse. One day it was just the last time we saw each other and now it’s been 17 years.
Those 17 years haven’t been good for me, with my worsening health, having to give up work and socialising, and just losing all hope of ever having anything worthwhile. But I often thought of Steve and everything we’d shared.
Today i was googling people I’d known and I found a social media page for Steve. He’s now married with two kids. It seems crazy to me that this whole time I’ve been sitting here rotting alone he’s been living his best life. He and his wife and kids all look so happy in their pictures. All the photos are of them happily goofing around together with all their friends and family, going on holidays and living life. And I am happy for him, he was always a great friend and decent person who deserves to be happy but it just highlighted to me how empty and pointless my life is. 17 years have passed and what has changed for me? Just everything getting worse.
It’s also crazy to me that after such a long and close friendship i didn’t even know he was married, much less being invited to the wedding. So strange how you can be such close friends with someone for so long and not even be at their wedding. I was not well enough to go anyway but the not even being invited does hurt.
I don’t really know what I hope to achieve with this rant other than I have literally no-one else to talk to, and it’s hard and embarrassing living such a pathetic life when everyone I’ve ever known turned out to be “normal” while I’m now a weird loner shut in who can’t even eat without begging for handouts, who never goes anywhere other than hospital appointments and hasn’t spoken to anyone face to face other than hospital staff, benefit assessors and shop assistants for 17 years.
EDIT: I’m still creepily stalking Steve’s social media and I can’t believe this. He now works as a work coach for the DWP - one of those people who makes benefits claimants lives a misery by slave-driving them into unsuitable employment and sanctioning them (stopping their benefits) as punishment. I never thought he’d do a job like this, he used to be a real man of the people, now he’s on the opposing side. He always used to want to be an engineer. I wonder what happened.
That sounds painful. Do you think the health people would set you up some telehealth counseling? I think it would greatly benefit you, if you can get it and you do the painful work.
I’ve had 5 mental health therapies on the NHS already and they were all so awful most actually made me feel worse. Therapy is totally pointless for anything other than trying to help me win my benefit appeal.
Good therapy will absolutely make you feel worse, for a while. Bad therapy will too.
It’s all bad therapy on the NHS. I’ll give some examples. I had one therapist who was this hippie woman in purple flowing robes. I explained to her that I’ve already made one suicide attempt and was on the brink of making another. I told her all my issues. Her therapy was that she told me to buy the New Age book “The Secret,” about the law of attraction and use it to attract whatever I want into my life, then my life will be great and I won’t be suicidal any more.
Another therapist, the entire therapy was her telling me to write lists of why I shouldn’t feel bad. Write a list of reasons why I shouldn’t feel depressed, or anxious, and whenever I feel depressed or anxious, look at the list and I won’t feel depressed or anxious any more. Surprisingly, didn’t help.
My last therapist did EDMR, and I asked for that but she refused. She said EDMR is only for people who are no longer in the bad spot in their lives. Since my life is still bad it will be totally unsuitable and make me feel worse. So she just wasted the time in our sessions doing nonsense like shitty guided meditations and drawing pictures, anything to fill up the time so she could collect her paycheque. When I said the sessions weren’t working for me and I wanted to quit, she said if I quit she would inform the DWP. She’d written a letter of support for my benefit appeal, and said she would call them and retract it if I quit (because if I quit she would no longer get paid.) I said, this could cause me to lose my benefit appeal, leave me permanently destitute and I’d end up homeless. She didn’t care at all and said if I end up homeless, she’ll give the phone number of a homeless shelter. The bleach and room scents in that building also gave me severe migraines every week and she didn’t care and ignored my requests to move the sessions to a different room or outside.
I had one therapist who, when I spoke about a time I’d been kidnapped off the street and SA’d by a gang of 4 men, tried to get me to sympathise with my attackers and see it from their point of view, saying they were probably just victims going through a hard time themselves. I was even told that my choice of attire had encouraged the attack.
I was given two therapy sessions straight after my suicide attempt. This was when I was in the intensive care unit, still being treated for the physical affects. I was extremely confused due to the high levels of medication I was on and they actually thought this was a good time to make me go through therapy. I was so ill I couldn’t sit up, so confused I didn’t know what was happening during the sessions and after one session the therapist just put me out the door expecting me to find my own way back to my bed. I was so confused and lost I ended up sitting on the floor in a hallway with my head between my knees, not knowing what to do or where to go until the nurses from the ward eventually came looking for me and found me when I didn’t return after a while.
These are just a few examples. This is the therapy that’s on offer from the NHS. It is all worse than useless and I really hope I never have to engage with any of it ever again.
They pay The Secret peddler? Stunning. The one encouraging you to write lists is aware of neuroplasticity. It’s not instant, and they should have warned you it’s a multiple times a day exercise, and given you some CBT/DBT homework.
I can tell you that being on low income therapy, off and on for 40 years, I had more bad therapists than good. What eventually did help me was sticking with it and doing as much research and testing for myself as I could find approaches. Of course this took all of my free time, when I was working full and overtime, and most of it when I was completely unemployed.
Eventually I recognized if anyone was going to save me, it was going to be me. It only took repeated physically, financially, emotionally, and sexually abusive relationships and a couple of very real, very close NDEs to finally get that. I had a choice where no options seemed particularly desirable.
It sucks that it’s like this, but lamenting it doesn’t change it. I hope you find a solution that you find tolerable. I think you deserve a fair chance at a good life. Unfortunately, your hardest work may only yield a tolerable life. I wish you the best you can make of it.
I am already exhausted beyond endurance by cancer treatment, endless benefit appeals, hunger, endless struggles to access food, and chronic pain. I don’t have the energy to spend years doing therapy exercises in the vain hope they may one day make me feel a fraction better. My life is never going to be decent, I have accepted that fact. It’s just even more exhausting having people try to push therapy on me, it’s just extra work for very little potential reward. It’s not going to end my severe chronic pain, it’s not going to fill my belly, it’s not going to keep a roof over my head, it’s not going to make my disabilities or sickness disappear. All it is, is a fake cope. Nothing is going to save me. I’m just not interested in bothering with it any more.
I completely understand. Mentally, I have been there. I wish you the best, comrade. 🫂