Hanging by a thread

Sometimes I think there must be one attached to my Forehead. Some sign saying Idiot or Please Kick Me. I don’t quite know how else to explain my bad luck.

There’s still a lot of Stigma and discrimination around Mental Health. I once got told by the lady working in a Charity shop that all people with Mental Illness should be locked up. Sadly, this isn’t just your average uneducated idiot’s stance. I’ve heard stupid and worrying things from past Doctors, Nurses, even Mental Health staff.

There’s also this constant belief that if you do have Mental Health issues that you must be an idiot or have an IQ of 10. This one I find the most annoying and confusing. Sadly the statistics are very clear that the higher your IQ, the more likely you are to develop mental health issues, and yet most people who are supposed to work with us or provide treatment will talk to you like you’re 5 and not very bright.

That’s all to say that my current Social Worker is the latest in a long line of people who are supposed to help and yet seem to go around making my life harder. When it comes to these types of jobs, social workers, mental health staff, volunteers etc the tend to broadly fall into 2 categories.Firstly, those that genuinely want to help, I think from a young age they’ve wanted to support others and this is the path they’ve chosen to do that. These people are awesome. They’ll treat you like an actual human being and do what they say they’re going to do. Then you have the Second type. For these people this is just a Job or a Career. The people that they are supposed to be helping don’t matter, they may (if you’re lucky) cross their T’s and dot their I’s but mostly they just do busy work between 9 and 5 and then go home and forget that the people they were supposed to be helping ever existed. Needless to say I’m not a fan of the second type. I wouldn’t mind so much if they actually did their jobs properly but that is generally too much to hope for from these people.

But when you have to rely on them to do tasks you cannot it makes life unbearable at times. Sadly with some things or organisations the client (Me) isn’t listened to so you need to get a professional (Doctor, social worker, something) to act for you. Except that would require actual working. And so I’m stuck. I have 100 things that need to be dealt with and I’ve done everything possible for me to do and now I’m in the No Mans Land of waiting for someone else. I have no control and no support. This makes me want to scream and shout and throw things but that won’t do any good and just leave me with a mess to tidy.

I’m starting to think my warning label should read “Scary when Pissed!”