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Frustrated by Mental Health 'Help'

2 years ago734 words

Ugh, yet another week where I've made no worthwhile progress on game dev projects, largely due to frustrations about the mental health 'help' I've been getting.

Promoting Atonal Dreams is particularly daunting to me due to trauma from the toxicity of Fig Hunter, so my plan was to get some mental health help, work through some of those issues, and then get back on track with that.

My hope when I saw my GP a few weeks ago was that I'd be referred to free, weekly counselling like I had for two separate months-longs periods in the past, but that's not what happened.

Instead I've been passed from one person to the next, told to go to things run by one organisation that might tell me something about a different organisation who might direct me to yet another, etc, etc, and it all feels like I'm not really getting anywhere, or not getting what I feel I need, and it's frustrating.

One person told me to improve my health and get more exercise, as they're tied to wellbeing. Not untrue, but it feels like it's not the issue.

Another suggested that by going to various things I'll improve my self-esteem, which in my experience is what kind-hearted but not-themselves-mentally-ill people assume is the root cause of any kind of personal struggles, which I find frustrating because that's not the issue for me. The stuff I make gives me a sense of personal value; the social anxiety I have about interacting with people comes more from a negative/fearful view of people in general, seeing them as tribalistic brutes who cast out anyone perceived to be abnormal for the sake of ensuring the safety of the tribe.

My main issue though is isolation, and it's an issue many people suffer with - especially recently, though I wonder to what extent it seems so only because of technological developments that allow it to be more accurately measured - because it's not as if there's an easy solution. Meeting people is hard, not because of the steps in the social dance that takes you from strangers to friends, but because even crossing paths with compatible strangers you could potentially become friends is all down to chance. Especially if you work from home, as I do, and don't already have a web of existing connections.

It's frustrating hearing about how you just need to put in the effort! from people who just lucked into the connections in their lives without going through some gruelling gauntlet of effort-putting-in themselves.

...Anyway, I already scrapped a 3000-word rant about this and was intending to just summarise it, but got carried away again. It is really frustrating, after all.



It's made it difficult to focus on games dev, and honestly I feel fairly lost in general.

I recently started working on porting my old games while waiting for this mental health help stuff, but returning to the old files comes with mixed feelings. Some slight nostalgia, but it's overwhelmed by feelings of "but I've moved on from this", or feeling like I'm going backwards or something.

I do still intend to do it, but... the excitement of pushing forward that I get from working on new stuff just isn't there.

I've also tried to work on some other stuff like Dreamons, Atonal Dreams, or some side projects, all things I 'want' to work on, but I've just not been able to focus because I feel so... lost, stuck, hopeless, frustrated, something like that.

I've spent more time just investigating various online places where I might have a better hope of meeting someone like-minded than if I go to some local yoga group or whatever, which I talked about at length in the original version of this post, but... I'll just summarise it by saying I had flashes of hope, far more frustration, and ultimately the whole thing was largely fruitless.

My parents are going away on yet another two-week holiday, so I'll also have looking after the adjacent community hall and dog hanging over me... I hate the thought of taking time off when I've already done little in weeks, but... I don't know. We'll see how it goes.

I'd like to put CBC on Steam or mention it on Reddit or something (I did at least write out a draft of such a post), if I'm able to concentrate at all.