16 Comments

Beautiful, tragic and thought provoking Julie. As someone who has always struggled with their mental health and suicidal ideation, this was an important read. I often worry about coming across as attention seeking when I’m needing help and shut myself away instead when I’m at my worse. Thank you for this reflection. x

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Cheers, Nat. I think we need to rethink ‘attention seeking’ as a concept.

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I think there is a real lack of understanding with mental health problems too. Many people see mental health now as mild anxiety problems or a low mood. Yet will run away and ignore anyone with any of the more serious symptoms of mental health conditions. I have observed this myself. People are more likely to want to help when you are a little sad not when you are actually suffering and at risk to yourself unfortunately.

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And many people don’t want to talk to friends or family, because they convince themselves everyone is busy with something better to do.

In my view, that’s what has come of the pushing of medicalisation and involving professionals in everything.

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Yep, a whole big mess made worse with the pressures of social media and the stress and obligations of the modern digital world. Society needs to learn to be more empathetic, kind, compassionate and understanding of others again. x

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I find the whole mental health obsession within the media and social media as a strange one.

This is coming from someone who’s from a family with mental health issues, going way back to relatives been institutionalised, including one of my mum’s sisters.

I find the whole media obsession and frenzy around it bizarre, it makes me rather queasy surrounding their motives.

It seems amongst celebs mental health problems are seen as on trend as the band wagon to jump on.

I’m in no way demeaning anyones suffering, I know the daily is struggle is beyond real, what I cannot stomach is how it’s been turned into a circus industry, without any constructive move in help or increases in support initiatives put in place for suffers who are crying out for help, these are the ones who usually suffer in silence and very rarely attention seek.

I wish also people would realise we all suffer with our mental health, it’s part of what makes us human beings. I thought I was going mad being the only adult in my immediate family who could see the government bullshit for exactly what it was. I kept pointing out the emperor had no clothes on, to be just met with shrugs and blank stares.

All I know is even as a well mentally balanced person they tried their best to push us over the edge, using the public as weapons against us, there’s one person in our social circle who was vocal about people like me, you know those who chose bodily autonomy, should have been dumped on a dessert island and left to rot.

The government with the help of msm have a lot to answer for, their actions of mentally torturing the nation with the constant gaslighting and propaganda is beyond evil in its destruction.

They have destroyed so many lives, have not one jot of remorse or empathy, they go round and round in circles highlighting the problems they caused without not one solution for the poor sods who are suffering covered in darkness.

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Thanks for your considered comment. Yes I agree. Somewhere along the line someone decided there was lots of cash to be made and milked TF.

A truly healthy and caring society starts by looking at the causes but not only do we just offer a sticking plaster approach, as you say, our government and MSM actively seeds dis-ease and trauma.

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Thank you for this post. There’s a therapist who makes YouTube videos and a podcast (Kati Morton) who says that we’ve turned attention seeking into a negative thing when it is in fact a basic human need. We want and need to be seen and heard to feel meaning and purpose. Although I still believe some negative attention seeking behaviours exist, the way she explained it definitely reframed my thinking about it.

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Thank you. Not heard of her. Yes it puts people off voicing what is basically a human need for connection.

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founding

Very well said. Beryl’s response was as unfair as David’s was dramatic. The only way I can parse this stuff to deal with it on a regular basis is to be entirely non-judgmental, which is to say, I acknowledge that whatever anyone says or does just happens to represent the best option, however, sub-optimal, that felt available to them at the time in response to what was troubling them. That’s not to say better options weren’t available, but circumstances prevented them from seeing or believing that to be the case. Obviously, some collective judgement needs to kick in when people’s behaviour becomes murderous, abusive or an otherwise unacceptable risk to themselves or others - but as individual human beings we’re all just as capable of greatness, kindness, weakness and pettiness. There but for the grace of God go I (or words to that effect).

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We all deal with things the best we know how with the tools we’ve got at the time, don’t we?

Getting older and having navigated different sorts of problems and messing up ourselves helps us hopefully see the bigger picture.

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Hi Julie, I’m new to your SubStack. Mark Fletton told me about you and your writing, I’m so glad he did. As someone who had a manic depressive mother I really get this article. I also suffer from depression myself so I can see both sides of the story. Thank you.

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Thanks Jan. Nice to see you here :)

Yes, it’s not as cut and dried as it could appear is it? Mental health.

And as with physical health it is becoming massively commodified and exploited by that industry (charities, therapies, drugs) which serves both profits and darker agendas that seek to make people doubt themselves and their abilities, making them easier to control.

But that’s a whole different article, hey?

Please look at my archives and get an idea of what I write cause it’s a bit of a mixed bag really. I have to go with mood. I’m anti shitshow but not all of my posts are about it. Often I write poems then other times I get angry and swear a lot😂😂

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Thanks Julie. I will look into your archives. No worries about the swearing! I’m a friend of Abi Roberts and on her Abi Daily SubStack she rants and swears a lot😂😂

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I love that and you're so right!! I often get worried that people might think I'm attention seeking whenever I open myself up and tell my story. I never am but so what if I was? I try not to worry about it now. People will always think what they want and it's got nothing to do with me xx

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Exactly that.

I think wanting to connect with others is natural and shaming people for trying to do it is dangerous.

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