Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Inspired by the vegan pet peeves thread in the forum.

-people saying I am to young to be stressed. I am 33 and have had stress since I was young!

-same people saying i am to young to have shingles due to stress, i have been getting them since i was like 20.

-people saying 'they are so OCD about their hair being perfect, the way their drink is made or whatever'...Um, no. unless it effects you to the point where you get nervous or feel panicked than it is not OCD and it is not cute when you say this shiitake around me. i call people out on this, i have ocd and it is not something cute or about being funny...

Good ones. I get really annoyed when people are like, "uhhgghh I'm so depressed because the mall is closing early today" or whatever. You're actually DEPRESSED about that, or you're just being dramatic?

Or people talking about have anxiety about actual real situational things. The medical definition of anxiety describes it as being a free-floating fear but not knowing exactly what you're frightened about. If you know what you're feeling "anxious" about, that's just called fear and it's not maladaptive. Anxiety is not just simply being fearful about an upcoming exam or something.

Interesting, when I was a teenager, I had alopecia areata (bald spots), eye twitching and other things due to stress. I have OCDs as well like I get panicked by the unknown/unplanned.

So, I use 'anxious' to describe how I'm feeling sometimes. I can usually trace the feeling back to a general situation (ie, recent crush/person i'm dating) but it can encompass something larger than just that particular situation. It feels like it's anxious to me, because I'm not sure the feeling fits under 'nervous' or 'scared' but is very closely related to both. (It also creates weird tail-spinny headspaces that can lead to more stress and emotional eating)

People who deal with anxiety can also have those same feelings and panic attacks focused on specific things, like exams. Anxiety manifests itself in all sorts of ways that impact how people cope with specific situations. At least that's how it works for me. When I'm not generally anxious, I don't get panic attacks over specific things.

I have students with test anxiety and documented accommodations for anxiety. Their anxiety may be general, but they definitely channel those feelings when it comes to stressful things like tests. They are fine sitting in class, but if I ask them to do anything they aren't comfortable with, they shut down.

"I'm feeling really anxious."
"What are you anxious about?"
"I don't know I just feel anxious."
"But what are you anxious about?"

You can totally substitute "depressed" there.

I do have increased anxiety about specific situations, but sometimes I have no reason for it at all, I've just had overwhelming anxiety since I was at least 3 years old.

Yeah, this. My mom still keeps trying to figure out what's wrong when I'm depressed.

It grates on me so badly when people use these terms incorrectly!

I feel stabby when people (usually Mr8's Dad) says very unhelpful things like "You just need to focus on the positives", as though it had never been thought of before and doing so will be a magical cure for all forms of depression.

My ex-girlfriend would do that.

Also when you talk about feelings of depression and people are like, thing aren't that bad! Your life is awesome! Etc. Honestly maybe my life is fine, except my brain chemistry is forked.

"you just need to [whatever] and then you won't be [whatever] anymore."

I got this especially when I had PPD after my first child, though I've heard it during periods of general depression too. I often think that the next person who tells me I just need to get more exercise and my life will be hearts and stars and rainbows might end up dangling from their toes somewhere.

A colleague opened a resident's file (to check her history because she has become ill, with a sudden change of attitude), read out to us that the resident has suffered from schizo-related episodes and has previously attempted suicide and bursts out laughing. The colleague is a qualified social care worker, employed by the council who have "See me: I'm a supporter" signs on their vans (part of a national mental health awareness campaign). It was a horrible thing to laugh at, by someone you would hope knew better. And then people kept talking about 'those people' as though people with mental health issues were not fully human.
I felt kind of threatened, but couldn't think of a way to speak up that would actually help, rather than make me seem like a bleeding-heart liberal who wasn't worth listening to, or make them think I was secretly an axe-murderer or suicidal or something equally 'bad'.
Oh, yeah, and this was done with the door open. So much for confidentiality.

Hah. Yeah. That being said, I have a sneaky feeling I'm guilty of this. So I'm going to try and be hypervigilant about what I say around depression/sadness. (I think, for me, saying that comes from a place of not knowing what else to say and wanting to be helpful... despite it NOT helping me at all when I need it)

People using "hoarding" casually. "OMG I'm such a hoarder", etc.... or thinking hoarding = having a lot of stuff.

Also, pop culture television shows that make spectacles/entertainment/mockeries of mental illness, like Hoarders.

pretty sure this is the 'exaggeration pet peeves' thread:
- 'he is such a nazi'
- 'X is a cancer on society'
- 'X is making me paranoid'
etcccc

This thread seems super judgey. Someone using a term like "OCD" might seem like they're being casual about it but may actually have nervous and anxious feelings attached to something that you find ridiculous. How do you know what's going on inside of someone else and who are you to tell them they're not allowed to say those things?

Also, what joshua said. Do we really need to crack out a dictionary every time we say something, just to make sure it's within the strict confines of the definition?

Yeah, the thing is that there is nothing to say that's right. It's not that I've never felt that, I've felt it, but I think it was kind of also my problem that I wasn't being very understanding about the people around me and how they were dealing with the fact that I wasn't okay and there was nothing that was going to make me better. There was no pill, no words, no amount of listening, nothing. So when I actually opened up my mouth to say words to people about how I was feeling, what did I expect them to say in response?

Then again, that's something that I can think of now, that's nothing that would've ever occurred to me in the moment - that I was forcing people around me to suffer with me.

A colleague once said to me "there's a difference between us and them, their brains are wired wrong and they can't handle normal stress unlike us." Thanks for making me feel utterly fabulous about myself you complete crasshole.

I'm going to shoot the next person that tells me I need to "snap out of it."

Oh please....Seriously. I get judged on by society, family, strangers and peers due to my mental illness all the time. I do not see anything wrong with this thread or what I have read thus far. It is a place to complain/moan/poke fun of things that we get mocked for.

As for OCD - I was talking about specific instances I have come into contact with. Like a relative about her hair not being perfect enough due to the wrong product. Did she leave the house? Yes! Was she stressed to the point of panic? No. However I cannot leave the house or touch things if my hands feel dirty. I will spend 5 minutes washing my hands, then start again. I have to count and if I get interrupted, well I have to retrace my steps.
So can you see why this can be infuriating to me and others that have OCD when people say flippant things in a way to be cutesy or funny?
People can say "I have OCD about matching my undergarments" in a funny not serious way and people will laugh. I will tell people I have OCD and do not like to be touched sometimes and they will never call me again.

I think the only thing that posters in this thread are trying to achieve is to vent some frustrations. Using a mental health term flippantly can be demeaning to those who suffer from that particular illness.

Oh truuuust me...I know so incredibly well (everyday of my life) what anxiety and panic can encompass. I maintain that someone who is otherwise well-balanced but gets really nervous about normal life stresses like exams, dates, breakups, etc...do not suffer from anxiety. That's just fear. Anxiety may have a trigger, but becomes much, much, MUCH bigger than that very quickly.

Huh? It's about having some tact and compassion for people who actually struggle with these very real diseases. I'm sure you wouldn't stand for the use of the term "rhubarbed", would you? Or is it that folks with mental illness should just suck it up and let people co-opt medical definitions for kicks?

I think part of the problem (at least on the part of people who don't mean to be crassholes) is that there are a lot of terms that are, and have long been, part of our general lexicon but have later gone on to have defined medical definitions. If you look up anxiety in a regular dictionary, the way a lot of people who don't suffer from anxiety disorders use it matches up fine with the dictionary definition. Knowing that my casual use of the word anxiety might be marginalizing to someone else means I will try to be more aware of defining my emotional state in a different way. (OCD is a completely different story... it's not a word and it didn't mean anything at all until obsessive-complusive disorder was defined.)

Another mental health pet peeve....... when you can't read a thread because all the words get confused in your head and you haven't a clue what people are talking about because of this. Damn attention span of a .........

I agree, also, I think a lot of people go undiagnosed but suspect things about themselves. Like I don't actually have OCD because I've never been diagnosed but I suspect a mild form or something related because I match up to the medical symptoms. It doesn't interfere with daily activities (normally) but it is a fear of mine that my issues will later on life. I've created many self coping mechanisms which helps but in some sense, it seems like things have gotten worse over the years.

I wasn't trying to tell you what anxiety is--sorry if it seemed so. I just think that a lot of people with anxiety do also get specific. I also think most people don't understand anxiety or panic attacks at all. I spent an entire semester unable to speak without a really horrific stutter after a series of panic attacks. Most of my friends stopped speaking to me then because it was too strange.