i-Ram

Maybe it has always been this prevalent and it just seems on the increase as there is greater awareness and openness. This is the case in child abuse, your child is no more at risk of being abducted than in the 60s, 70s or 80s, we just perceive a greater risk.
I would also suggest that we have higher expectations of our outcomes than in previous generations and the social and economic mobility has led to a more fractured and isolated society where our place of study, work and extended family were likely to be geographically near,
I was in the barbers the other day and an old lady was in with her grandson. She was telling me how much she saw of him as he lived across the road. She told me how her son was soon moving the family 10-12 miles away to get a bigger house, but for a car-less Gran it was 2-3 buses away and you see the sadness in both of them.
What a fractured web we weave when we try too hard to achieve.      

What the **** is wrong with the world that we live in that it does this to so many of us? Are any of us truly happy? Christ sakes...
I know it's brain chemistry, I know it's not as simple as life is ****, but what are we all doing wrong fundamentally that puts us like this? I just can't accept that this mental health crisis is just the way things are. There must be something we can change.
Is it our diets? Lack of sunlight? Technology? Aliens with a depression ray?
There's more of us than you think, and it's bittersweet to think that. On one hand, we're not alone. On the other hand, how and why is it this way?
P.S. Politely, don't ask me to share my story, because I haven't got one. I'm just miserable as **** and everything is useless and pointless, same as the rest of you. I'm just looking to see if anyone knows what the **** is happening? Seriously? Why are we all ****** up?

Do you feel you've had it too easy maybe, and don't deserve the success you've had so far?
If so, you're wrong, after all you wouldn't be in this situation unless others felt you were more than capable.
You sound like you're in a rut of routine, doing the same things every day which at any age soon wears you down.
Do you run the business in exactly the way your dad did?
If so, you'll not challenge and stretch yourself, are there areas you'd wish to change, if so look into changing things.
You say you've been blessed, and have nothing to moan about, but it's a heavy burden to be responsible for other people's employment at your age.
One easy thing I've used to cope with routine, choose a different way to work and home every day, you'd be amazed the difference it makes seeing different things on your everyday journey!
Hope things turn for you soon.

When you get an itchy arse in public.
The next few moments of your existence seem to wholly concentrate on how you can get away with scratching it aggressively without being seen.
Easier said than done.

As we are a similar age this really resonated with me, the me of about 4 years ago. Some of the advice and understanding on here is remarkable.
The key thing I take is that knowledge and understanding that your feelings, your wellbeing is incredibly important. You have the right to feel the way you do. Your opinion, your view is as valid as anyone else's.
In some ways I love the routine, prevents me getting anxious about the what ifs but then I get easily bored if my mind isn't challenged. After first reading your post it made me think about my job and know that I pretty much sleepwalk through it, ticking down the hours. But eventually i will find that happy balance where work challenges but not enough to charge up the anxiety.
I also find i have stopped being so self critical about my day to day choices, that feel of failure has lessened. You can make your life whatever you want to be(within reason) but i feel society, people, the media, all expect us to be that same idealised character. We aren't all the same and who wants to be anyway.
Enjoy your quiet time, enjoy the time to be you how you want to be.

Thanks i-Ram - if you're ever on Ilkley Moor it would be an honour to walk with you and talk. 

Top post. If l am ever on Ilkley Moor I will make sure not to bother you 

Glad you hit the button Norman, and l hope you feel better for doing so. Not sure l can give any great words of wisdom here but I am comforted by the details of your fifth paragraph. A chat or two with a good Counsellor l am sure will help with tackling the sadness and anxieties that you are experiencing. Best wishes.

Glad you hit the button Norman, and l hope you feel better for doing so. Not sure l can give any great words of wisdom here but I am comforted by the details of your fifth paragraph. A chat or two with a good Counsellor l am sure will help with tackling the sadness and anxieties that you are experiencing. Best wishes.

Hi Norman
I'm just over twice your age but just like you I am hesitating about whether to press the send button or not because I am in no way qualified to express an opinion about you or what you describe - I don't know you or your circumstances or the people around you. I do know however how courageous you and Loughborough and Tony and everyone else is on this thread who are sharing their innermost feelings to a bunch of strangers on a forum. I come from a generation and a family who largely don't do that. So thank you for pressing send. Your way is much better than my way.
 The bad news is that one of the things that I have learnt over the years is that life is repetitive and routine. Each of us take the same journeys, do the same jobs, follow the same football team, go to the same way to matches, eat the same food, go to the same pub, drink the same beer, shop in the same shops, listen to the same music, watch the same films, develop particular interests, do similar things day in day out. Every day, every week, every month and at certain times, every year. Life is routine whether you are the most glamorous person you can think of, or whether you're me. That's life.
But
Life is not pointless. You have a brilliant missus and a great dad. They probably think the same about you. That's not pointless, that's important. You have a decent job. That's not pointless. Whatever it is that you do you will be interacting with others - colleagues, customers, suppliers - people you affect through whatever it is you do. People who will be grateful for what you do and how you do it. That's not pointless, that's important. You have friends. They're friends because they care about you. That's not pointless, that's something to be valued and nurtured. It's important.
And, it seems to me that you have some of the answers that you might be looking for. What's wrong with being in your garage for two hours in silence? I walk on Ilkley Moor every day with my dogs. I talk to them but mainly I talk to myself. I don't want anyone else with me. I want to be on my own. What's wrong with that? It does me good. Be kind to yourself and do what makes you feel good, never mind what you think anyone else might think. It has taken me many years to realise that I'm important to me.
But you also say that you struggle with day to day life and that you feel intense feelings of sadness and we are the only ones who know, and you hit the send button. I'm not qualified to help you, but you know what, if one of my friends said those things to me I would say find some help, someone who is qualified to assist - a GP, a counsellor, a friend. Not because what you are feeling and doing is pointless or wrong, but because you are important.
Good luck.

Glad you hit the button Norman, and l hope you feel better for doing so. Not sure l can give any great words of wisdom here but I am comforted by the details of your fifth paragraph. A chat or two with a good Counsellor l am sure will help with tackling the sadness and anxieties that you are experiencing. Best wishes.

Glad you hit the button Norman, and l hope you feel better for doing so. Not sure l can give any great words of wisdom here but I am comforted by the details of your fifth paragraph. A chat or two with a good Counsellor l am sure will help with tackling the sadness and anxieties that you are experiencing. Best wishes.

Glad you hit the button Norman, and l hope you feel better for doing so. Not sure l can give any great words of wisdom here but I am comforted by the details of your fifth paragraph. A chat or two with a good Counsellor l am sure will help with tackling the sadness and anxieties that you are experiencing. Best wishes.

True. There was a time when you never thought much about your body apart from 'is it clean' and 'is it dressed impressively'. Now it demands constant attention, popping pills, X-rays, cameras up and down, health screening, tooth ache, random stupid hairs to pluck out, eye tests, moisturiser. It's grim 

Everyone drinking gin. It's for 50 year old women yet all I see is gin palace this, gin festival that, gin and tonic the other.
Hipster w**kers.

I've kept away from posting on this thread for about 9 months but I always read the new posts with interest. Its such an amazing thread with cyber strangers opening up about their fears and life problems, uniquely heartwarming I find it - and proof that a lot of us 'normal' folk do have issues that feel good to share once the courage has been raised to do so. 
With the talk being about therapy I thought I'd add my positive experience to maybe help persuade anybody thinking about it to take the plunge and go for it.  
I went through counseling for PTSD, some of it was with the NHS and the bulk of it privately (i was fortunate enough to have it funded through insurance). They both helped, but in my experience the private therapy was more focused on my requirements. 
Its good to talk to a stranger, let it all out, they won't judge you, they will see the root cause of your problem and offer practical self help to resolve it. There is no magic wand, you've got to want to overcome your issue and have some determination to succeed. Experienced therapist's will have probably come across your problem with other patients and have numerous techniques to help you overcome them. The CBT helped for me, its a circular way of addressing your issues and slowly reprogramming the brain and thought processes to help you overcome the issue.
I learnt some good, simple coping techniques to help me combat my anxieties, basic stuff like breathing techniques, take slow deep breath's in through the nose and breathe out slowly through the mouth. Sounds daft but it helped me. When I was anxious or getting agitated composing myself and breathing correctly really helped. I was still bricking it about the cause but as @Tony Le Mesmer pointed out the more you put yourself through the cause of your anxiety the less difficult it becomes. Sometimes for me things went wrong and it left me a nervous wreck and set me back a few days or weeks but you have to persevere to get past the anxiety.  Or take the easy way out and avoid the situations that cause the anxiety. I did this for ages but as my fear was traveling in vehicles the excuses for not going anywhere where wearing thin. At the start I couldn't get to the end of our street without throwing up or having cold sweats and feeling faint, but over time and with sympathetic driving from whomever was driving me around (I was unable to drive at the time due to various broken bones, plaster casts and metal bolts/wires hanging out of me) my situation improved. Its still not perfect, I don't think it will ever return to my pre-accident level, but at least I'm able to travel around again and not make excuses.
If anybody is looking for a therapist make sure they have a good armoury of skills, some will have one or two techniques and they might not be the right ones for you - go to one that covers all aspects, unless you know the specific one you need.
I saw a therapist in Derby that had as long a list of BSC's and diploma's as your likely to see, she is in her mid fifties so has plenty of experience, she covered everything even hypnosis! 

Paying for insurance that never seems to cover anything.
Having to pay for house repairs that will never be noticed by you or anyone else, but are essential.
How everything that costs money always seems to happen at once.

I always believe to compare your problems to others does you a disservice straight off. Each person has their own coping levels, their own fragility and their method of getting by. What seems trivial to one can mean the world to another. Respect always to the feelings you have but know how to handle them.
I think this thread is a blessing. It is honest and supportive and a friendly ear from people who won't judge. I guess I am currently an example of someone who reluctantly got help but is now realising his dreams, a happiness that 4 years back seemed impossible to even contemplate. Sometimes I stop and think how the hell did I get here and when I do, I thank every soul that ever gave me the time to hear my problems. Now I have a fecking wedding to plan!

I've been through no end of forums dedicated to mental health and the likes but nothing comes close to this, it really sets this forum apart from any other I know. So therefore, having read everyone else's stories over the last few months and after finally acknowledging I have an issue, I will now pour everything out.
I've known for years that something has been wrong with me, but the last few days have just certified it. I'm 22, recently graduated and have now moved back home as I have a graduate job close to my family home. The issue with this is I'm not exactly mad about the job, the people are not the most welcoming and all of my previous school friends and the likes now live away. I go to work and I go home, that is as exciting as it gets. 
Last year saw a range of little blips come up which I didn't think affected me too much, with my uncle's dementia and constant hospital stays probably the most notable. What's really done it for me though is the relationship with my girlfriend, who is still at university. I've been with her for three years and it's been great (she's even seen Derby play twice the lucky thing) but a mixture of the distance and the loneliness has changed things to the point where she's told me that she's not sure if we're still working like we did. I've found myself becoming needy, completely ignoring the fact that she's got her own life with new friends and a part-time job. We planned to build a life together after uni and I'm hoping that can still be done because even though we're only young, it's been an incredible time that I don't think needs to be given up. I'm trying to tell myself that it's the fact we've gone from living together to living 80 miles apart, with only a few months until we can go back to how we were. Unfortunately, my head doesn't really want to listen to what I say for too long. 
I don't know if depression or anxiety or just general loneliness is my problem, but I do know that I'm not meant to be feeling like this, especially at such a young age. I've got a doctors appointment booked for next week which I'm strangely looking forward to, purely to try and change things around. I know in comparison to others my problems might be nothing and I apologise if I seem dramatic or anything but it just seems after months and months of trying to contain everything, it's all just come to a head now. I've been able to speak to my parents and girlfriend over the last few days which has at least helped. This has been a very soppy post and as such I apologise to anyone who has managed to read it all the way through! 
 

Hopefully I'm not too much of a burden to the people following this thread, but as a fairly regular reader, barely ever poster I thought I would finally contribute
Coming out of 2016, I can safely say it was the worst year of my life so far. Yes, time is arbitary, and the 365 days of 2017 aren't guaranteed to be any better, but it does provide a spell of time to quantify my feelings. 
I've suffered family loss, the break up of a relationship with the person I loved more than anyone else, the months of getting over her only for her to get in touch and subsequently mess me around whilst seeing someone else that she's now in a relationship with. 
All of this combined with being stuck in a job I hate and am probably overqualified for lead me to the pint of self destruct. 
During all this time I had to persuade myself (and take the advice of the people that care about me) to go to the doctors and speak to someone, and admit that the depressive feelings I had had been there for 6/7 years. What I thought was just part of my personality, who I was, was actually an underlying issue that needed addressing for years. 
The prescribed medication seemed to help me quite a lot. Whether that was purely a placebo effect or not is anyone's guess, but I wholeheartedly advise anyone feeling low to find someone to console in.
I guess, other than being able to get some stuff off my chest, that is the overriding point of this post. Don't ever allow yourself to feel like you're alone. There are so many resources available to help you and so many people that will understand
 
 
 

People who stand/sit at the bar in pubs, meaning that you have to shout your drinks order over their shoulders from 6 foot away from the barman. We get that you're a "regular" but you're annoying

Really slow, attritional, safety-first play in cricket and snooker.
Alan Partridge goes freganing.
When one of your favourite songs is played on the radio.
Making oblique references to TV/music/films in conversation and the person you are with getting it.
When the air vents in your car all line up together perfectly.
Sometimes, mostly around this time of year when the sun is rising or setting and the sky looks like this:

My mum!
Despite having had many difficulties in her life including a disability from birth that doctors told my grandparents would mean she'd never live past her 7th birthday and then she'd never walk unaided and then she wouldn't be able to have children, she remains the most positive, generous and cheerful person I know.
If I'm feeling a little low, a quick chat with mum soon lifts my mood.

Have to agree. There are a couple of teams forums I've used in the past and a few I haven't but still check in on daily and the amount of abuse and bickering that goes on between fans OF THE SAME CLUB is tragic. That's all it seems to be on thread after thread and it gets sad and tiresome.
This forum mostly I have found to be filled with fans of varying backgrounds and opinions like Jono said but each willing to listen to one another and try to help too if need be. Rarely do folk get abusive or obnoxious and that is despite Derby being a big club and therefore the site having many many more users than many clubs. You'd have thought you'd get a fair selection of knobs but no. Everyone is friendly and there for help and advice about anything if needed. Even hard to talk about things like depression and addictions. Nobody judges.
Spot on Jono. It's a great and fun place to be and that's credit to all the Derby fans that use it and of course Dave and the mods that help run it.

This forum .. No I really mean it. I am conversing on a regular basis with folk from numerous different backgrounds and with political, social and sporting beliefs that aren't the same. Yet we all get on pretty damn well. There is a fantastic, fun, sometimes combative exchange of opinion but always in a brilliantly open self policed way. Yeah, we have our "mates" of like mind but it is great to come across a different view and have your own shifted just a few degrees because someone has made you think outside your own boundaries. 
Jeees I really am thinking of parting with some folding stuff as a gesture of support and become a plus or whatever it is.
owners / operators take a bow.