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Tiina63

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Just over two years ago I had been attending a creative writing group which was also a support group once a week at the local MIND mental health drop in centre for three years. That year in August I was diagnosed with Aspergers and I started to feel really ill. Thought it was stress over the diagnosis but it later turned out to be a brain aneurysm.
At the time I had a really bad headache all the time and was feeling crap emotionally . I was crying a lot as well and most days I went to the drop in centre and cried quietly in a corner. I spoke twice to the woman who ran the centre and the first time she was ok but the second time she was really nasty. She told me that people were fed up with me crying, that noone took me seriously, that if I wanted to kill myself I would already have done it etc. Anyway, I was admitted to hospital later that day (in the night) and ended up having brain surgery. When I was in hospital, one of the writing group sent me a card and she phoned the hospital once to ask how I was. Other than this, the group didn't bother. None of them came to see me in hospital or when I came home afterwards. None of them texted me or emailed me to ask how I was. As it was also meant to be a support group, I felt hurt about this. I didn't go back to the centre because of how the manageress had spoken to me and because I didn't see the group as very supportive.
Fast forward two years-on another thread I have written about a man in our AS group who we are all visiting in hospital regularly. Like me he has no family, and we are like a surrogate family for him.
I recently went back to the writing group after a two year break- I went one week and then didn't go for a fortnight owing to visiting my AS friend in hospital. I mentioned to R., a man in the writing group, that I hadn't been for two weeks because of visiting the hospital and I said how all of us in the AS group were all visiting J. R. said that the writing group would visit if one of us went to hospital and I said that noone had visited me. This has brought back how I felt at the time. I feel that returning to the group was a bad idea. Last night I was awake for hours feeling really upset that the writing group hadn't cared about about me when I needed care. It's like a sore place inside which I thought had healed, but now the scab has been torn off. (Sorry that this sounds so horrible.)
J. is holding his own in the hospital. He is eating a lot of yoghurt as his throat is sore. I will be seeing him next on Tuesday.
 
dear Tiina, I am with you in this… I am sure several people from the forum would have visited you in hospital, if it hadn't been for the distance.
 
Thank you Peaches-I agree with you. I know that many people from on here would have come to visit me.
 
Tiina63 said:
Just over two years ago I had been attending a creative writing group which was also a support group once a week at the local MIND mental health drop in centre for three years. That year in August I was diagnosed with Aspergers and I started to feel really ill. Thought it was stress over the diagnosis but it later turned out to be a brain aneurysm.
At the time I had a really bad headache all the time and was feeling crap emotionally . I was crying a lot as well and most days I went to the drop in centre and cried quietly in a corner. I spoke twice to the woman who ran the centre and the first time she was ok but the second time she was really nasty. She told me that people were fed up with me crying, that noone took me seriously, that if I wanted to kill myself I would already have done it etc. Anyway, I was admitted to hospital later that day (in the night) and ended up having brain surgery. When I was in hospital, one of the writing group sent me a card and she phoned the hospital once to ask how I was. Other than this, the group didn't bother. None of them came to see me in hospital or when I came home afterwards. None of them texted me or emailed me to ask how I was. As it was also meant to be a support group, I felt hurt about this. I didn't go back to the centre because of how the manageress had spoken to me and because I didn't see the group as very supportive.
Fast forward two years-on another thread I have written about a man in our AS group who we are all visiting in hospital regularly. Like me he has no family, and we are like a surrogate family for him.
I recently went back to the writing group after a two year break- I went one week and then didn't go for a fortnight owing to visiting my AS friend in hospital. I mentioned to R., a man in the writing group, that I hadn't been for two weeks because of visiting the hospital and I said how all of us in the AS group were all visiting J. R. said that the writing group would visit if one of us went to hospital and I said that noone had visited me. This has brought back how I felt at the time. I feel that returning to the group was a bad idea. Last night I was awake for hours feeling really upset that the writing group hadn't cared about about me when I needed care. It's like a sore place inside which I thought had healed, but now the scab has been torn off. (Sorry that this sounds so horrible.)
J. is holding his own in the hospital. He is eating a lot of yoghurt as his throat is sore. I will be seeing him next on Tuesday.

I would find another writing group. They don't seem to care about you.
I try to avoid people who are rude to me. I know if I became ill my work friends would at least want to know how I was. (I don't think they would visit me though)
 
That's why I don't like support groups, a lot of times they don't seem to really help support a persons specific needs. You have a group of people with similar but different issues trying to support each other when they have their own stuff to deal with. You can't just focus on one thing to help everyone.

I had a friend once, she made some very bad choices, people tried to be supportive of her and help her the best they could. All she did was cry about her problems but never did anything to change it, she expected everyone else to do it for her. I'd talk to her for hours and she'd just cry, she'd tell me how all she ever did was cry at where she was staying. Eventually the people had to ask her to leave, they were trying to run a business and having her around crying in front of people wasn't helping. She went to stay with another friend and continued this behaviour, crying all the time yet nothing changed. She eventually was asked to leave there as well. After she continued to make some poor decisions I too just stopped talking to her, it was emotionally draining and I had my own honeysuckle to deal with.

I know what you are talking about is A LOT different than what I mentioned. The roundabout point I'm trying to make by telling that story is that even though we all wanted to help her, as the human beings we are we could only take so much. It got to a point where her crying never stopped and we just had to give up, we weren't capable of supporting her the way she needed. She knew all she did was cry, but I don't think she ever really realized how it was affecting the people around her. We often don't realize how our moods affect those around us, we're in our own heads.

Now the difference in your situation is that your support group is supposed to be there to support you and help you through your issues. Instead of doing that they got nasty with you, doesn't sound like much of a support group to me. Shouldn't someone taken you aside to find out what was wrong, and maybe get you better support? I thought that's what these mental health support groups were for. Trained "professionals" who would say "lets get you the help you need" instead of "knock it off".
 
Thank you TB for your support. I will look for another writing group.
Sci-Fi-I was crying because I felt so unwell. My head was so painful and I felt so ill because of (unknown to me) the aneurysm. It wasn't a question of bad choices but of being seriously ill. I was stressed too about the AS diagnosis, and I would have expected some understanding at the drop in centre.
 
I think you missed my point, that was just a story of someone I was telling trying to explain human nature. Those people all have their own mental health issues, right? So maybe to them seeing you crying all the time they felt like you were maybe putting on a show for attention. Some probably felt like they were going through worse things, because many people usually feel that way, how their situations worse than anyone else because it is what they are going through. They weren't crying about it so they probably figured why should you be crying about it. They just didn't understand that you breaking down and crying was because of how unwell you felt and it's just what you would do. Like I said, instead of finding out what was making you cry and finding a way to help you it seems like the went the "I'm worse off that you route" and shut you out, or felt like maybe you were seeking attention, there are people who do that. It's usually someones first reaction to a crying person anymore, "oh so and so is doing it for attention."

I'm not trying to make excuses for them, just trying to help you see it in a different light and look down on what happened to you so much. So you can just put it behind you. You see that type of reaction a lot, especially from people who have their own problems, the seem to forget that other people deal with how they feel in a different way. We live in a world where people are so wrapped up in their own heads with their own issues that they seem to forget about the world around them, that everyone is different. So when you'd be there crying they reacted in a "here we go again" way instead of "something is really upsetting this person, maybe we should find out what it is", that just takes too much time and thought. People just don't want to be bothered anymore if something takes too much effort, the quicker simple solution is to make it go away instead of solving it.
 
Tiina63 said:
I know that many people from on here would have come to visit me.

Yes, Tiina. Definitely. And I'm sorry to read about all that. :( *hugs*
 

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