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Today is the first day after speaking to my doctor regarding my mental health issues and the effects this is having on my daily life and physical health. I am going to record my feelings and how my mental health is affected every day from now on.

Hopefully this will give anyone who eventually reads this blog an insight into how my life is affected on a daily basis. This is going to be a long journey. It will probably be a lot of rambling on but I feel I must document this to keep myself on the right path to getting better.

How my first day started and what this means to me

I was awake during the night. It must have been sometime between 4 and 5am. I didn’t want to upset myself so I ignored the urge to look at my phone to check the exact time. As I laid there in bed I was running thru everything that we had discussed at the doctors yesterday. What really stuck out in my mind was the fact that I am going to get help.

I am slightly nervous as to what the referral to the local mental health team and the psychologist will entail but I am sure they will help me in the long run.

My morning got off to a slow start. My wife got up and helped both my children get ready for school. Our eldest child rides her bike about 2 miles to school everyday. This is a good thing because I believe it helps with her mental health. This gives her time to deal with the pressures of the day or the thoughts from the previous day. My youngest son gets a lift to school everyday. This will change after Christmas. He is getting a mobile phone so will be given more independence.

I was feeling slightly sluggish due to being awake early. I don’t think my medication is doing what it needs to do but we are going to monitor this. This may need to be increased as advised by the doctor.

Job searching is not going to well at the moment. The change in UK government has definitely affected the contractor job market. They put a stop on a lot of government spending. This is not good for my mental health. It increases my worrying but I am trying to control this and remain positive.

Looking deep inside myself and trying to find positives to focus on

As I sat here at my laptop yesterday detailing my visit to the doctors it suddenly struck me how much of my life has been affected by my childhood sexual abuse. I know its easy to say this and that but to actually have a deep look at the effects has been quite upsetting.

All the times that I have lied to friends and family. This isn’t just the little white lies that everyone says. The “I’m Ok’s” seem to be taken for granted in this world.

Everyone has responded with this type of answer to a daily question. It seems so innocuous and is readily accepted as a response.

What if you were to actually take that person, friend or family member to one side and sit down with them. Would they open up. My guess is no. So many people don’t want to admit that they are not ok.

These reasons for not being ok could be money worries, relationship issues or something more powerful and life changing. We just accept that the standard response is ok. Well its not ok and I must travel this path to find who I am.

I will attempt to stay positive and take each day as it comes but the fear, worry and self doubt does not help this. I know I need to live in the now and now worry about things I cannot control in my future.

Hiding my emotions has helped no one, it seems to just be accepted

I personally have done this thousands of times and to be honest this is my standard default answer to anyone who asks. I never wanted to admit how bad things are. How the little issues everyday actually build up and make daily life worse.

Sometimes family members will admit to others what the real issues are. This is incredibly helpful and eases some of the worries associated with the issues. Other times they just lie and make an excuse so that they are not questioned further.

The lies that I have told have really affected my life. If I had just taken charge and dealt with what happened to me things today may have been completely different. It does sound easy now to say that but the reality of what happened is different.

I was scared, threatened with violence and didn’t want to let my parents know because I was ashamed. He knew where I lived. He knew what school I went to. Anything could have happened to me if I told my parents.

How would they have looked at me. Would they have felt pity, disgust or maybe other emotions. How would that have affected my life. I did not ask for what happened to me. All the years of living with this has changed how I am as a person.

Positive change and what I must do

Everything is going wrong in my life. Trying to see anything positive in my life is a real struggle. I know some of this is due to how I have conditioned myself to think and act. I have made a decision to grab all the help I can to fix what has been done.

Maybe no one will read these posts. At this moment in time I don’t really care. I am going to use this blog to keep a record of my thoughts, feelings and how this affects me as I start my treatment.

Some of it may make sense. Other elements will sound like the ramblings of a mad man. I know this and that’s really how I feel right now.

There is so much self doubt, self loathing. fear. anger and guilt from my past that I need to have a way to vent. Maybe something good will come from this, maybe someone will get some help by realising they are not alone.

I told myself that I would try and write something everyday. It may work out like that but right now I am not so sure. With everything I do there is always the fact that I may give up and this is all for nothing.

I will remind myself everyday that I need to stay positive. Not just for myself but for the sake of my family and my wives mental health. She has already told me several times today to stop being so negative.

It has been a while since I have written anything about how my mental health has been affected by my past. Things have come to a head and if I am to continue and survive, I know I must make a fundamentally change my outlook on life.

Hiding how you feel, especially from the people you love and hold dearly is a massive mistake. Don’t do it. I really thought I could manage my emotions. I kept telling myself I would get better but I haven’t. Things have developed and my situation is now worse than it was before.

I have asked my wife and doctors for help. I cant take this stress anymore.

If anyone has read some of my previous posts and my about page then you will see that I have had mental health issues for most of my life. I suffer daily with emotions like fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, depression and self loathing. I guess what I am trying to say is I pretty much hate myself.

Hate is a very strong way to describe how someone feels about themselves. but I cannot at this stage in my life define it in any other way. I don’t like who I am, I don’t like what I have done to people in my past, how I have treated people. Most of all at this point in my life I don’t like what I have done to my wife and my children.

I believe my mental health issues have negatively affected the other members of my family and this will have tainted their outlook on life. My wife is amazing and is trying to stay positive but I know my behaviours are and will eventually wear her down. I don’t want that to happen. I love her so much and she deserves to be happy and have a great life. Sometimes I feel like a burden to her, she didn’t ask for all this shit that I struggle to deal with.

I am highly aware that my mental health has taken a big step backwards. I broke down last week and had to tell my wife that I am not well. She told me that she knew I had been hiding how I feel. I spoke to the doctors and I am back on medication. I have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow to discuss what’s going on and to see if they can help.

My mental health issues are affecting my children

It must be hard for children to live in a family unit with an adult who has mental health issues. Some children unfortunately have to deal with alcoholic parents, abusive parents and all manner of other types of influences. Every child deserves to grow up in a loving and supportive environment. I know some will say that this is a pipe dream, but I wonder constantly what my life would be like now if I had a childhood free from the effects of being sexually abused.

In fact I often think about how my life would’ve been different when I lie awake at 3 or 4am in the morning after a nightmare. I guess what I am trying to say is that the influences you receive at a young age go on to affect your life for the rest of it. This is why I must get help and change how I think. I don’t have a lot of my life left and I really would like to enjoy the last few bits.

I don’t want my children to remember me as a grumpy old man. There must be a change. I need to change my outlook on life. I need to get help. They should remember their parents as supportive, loving and great people to be around. My childhood was different. I shut myself off from my family. I didn’t have the emotional control or the ability or the confidence to explain what had happened to me. Some of my strongest memories of that time were being scared to open up and admit that I had been abused. I was scared they would hate me or blame me for what happened to me. I still feel ashamed to this day.

Trying to limit the impact of my mental health issues on my family

My eldest son has been dealing with his own identity issues for the last few years. A couple of years ago he came to us and asked that we call him by a female name. There had always been an inkling that he may be confused about his identity and sexuality and this has been confirmed. K as I will call her had been using this identity within her friend group for quite sometime before she had the courage to speak to myself and her mum.

We have had to manage some issues with self harming and the fact that unfortunately a couple of K’s friends have not had a good start to their teenage lives. One has unfortunately taken their own life

We knew there were issues. It wasn’t just hormones. We have been trying to help since she started secondary school. Every parent nowadays must be aware that there are so many influences on children. We must manage these and help as much as possible when we can. When it became obvious that this was the main issue we have been completely supportive from that point onwards. Yes, it is hard to keep the pronouns correct but we make every effort to do this and it does get easier as time goes by. I still find myself reverting to the original identity occasionally when I am angry or annoyed by her actions.

How we have tried to deal with this

It was a massive change for all of us in this family. It has not just affected K but also her little brother. We have spoken to the school to explain that this has taken place as my youngest son was greatly affected by this change. He has and still does look up to K but we have noticed that he doesn’t talk about K the way he used to.

As he is growing older and becoming more aware of himself we can definitely see this change. They still interact and play fight with each other but he doesn’t talk anymore about his big brother. Sometimes we notice that he stops himself before speaking. I believe this is why he has developed a slight stutter.

My youngest son has also started to develop some separation anxiety, he doesn’t want to sleep alone and wants cuddles with his mum a lot more. And he is now afraid of the dark. Some of this may have come from films and television shows and other external influences. We do try and monitor this. He told me last night there are scary things in the dark that we cant see.

Created 16/09/2024

I have been working on being more positive since my last post and although its early days, I think this way of dealing with my anxiety, depression and thought process has really been helpful.

There is no doubt that trying to be positive and even attempting to be positive for a few hours can be very rewarding. It seems like such an easy thing to do but it is actually quite difficult.

Even the slightest change to someone’s mood can affect their overall ability to be positive. I really struggle with this process of being positive, mainly due to the way my brain processes emotions. You could say that all the years of living with the after affects of bring a victim of childhood sexual abuse has slightly tainted my ability to embrace the idea.

With being positive and having a healthy, happy go lucky outlook, even being able to compartmentalise daily thoughts could increase anyone’s ability to embrace a positive outlook.

Hiding the effects of the trauma from sexual abuse, the fear, the nightmares and wishing you could remove what happened from your memory, even removing yourself from existence can all affect the way our brains work. Its really hard work when your world went to rat shit nearly 40 years ago and you’ve been living with and trying to manage the fallout from those events everyday since.

I have read a few web pages recently, even travelled down the Instagram video spiral after a video popped up telling me that I can gain positivity for the rest of my life..

The reality is that no matter what someone says, no matter what someone does, their experiences will be massively, if not completely different from everyone else. We are not robots or machines and we cannot process information the same way and or be expected to do so. Even a persons reaction to say a stinging nettle or a bee sting cannot be handled in the same way.

A person who has allergies to the toxins in the nettle or the bee sting could actually die from something that others may treat as a minor inconvenience. Not all people fall or fit into someone’s idea of how being positive helps them and how easy they find it. I guess what I am trying to say is we are all different.

We all have different levels of issues to deal with. We all process thoughts, issues, daily life differently and that’s just how the world works.

Update 25/09/204

I forgot about this blog and feel I have failed to write what had been concerning me. I will try and write this out better in the future.

Created 09/09/2024

The title says it all really, being positive as someone who has lived with the effects of childhood sexual abuse and post traumatic stress symptoms from this abuse is very tiring, this has affected my mental health.

It is an enduring struggle that continues hour by hour, day by day, month by month and year after year. This level of emotional and mental stress has definitely taken its told on my life in more ways than one. This has been my enduring struggle and affects all areas of my life

How these thoughts and effects control my life

All relationships, old and new have been and are affected. It is a constant struggle for me dealing with everyday life. Some might not get this but even the slightest emotional issue, a few cross words in an argument can cause certain mental health symptoms to develop and cause further issues. These emotional responses control my life. Its not a great way to live but I have no choice. It wasn’t my fault that this happened to me. I was and still am a victim.

The trigger for these symptoms could be anything from my past. There are certain subjects that trigger massive post traumatic stress disorder symptoms that are incredibly hard to control. It seems like every other week there is a report in the news or on social media of a child being hurt or physically abused by an adult that they trusted.

These symptoms include fear, worry, anxiety and depression.

No child deserves to go through what happens to them when they are abused. What happened to me was physical sexual abuse, that’s at the extreme end of the scale but even verbal abuse can cause emotional and mental issues that will affect the sufferer for potentially the rest of their lives.

Detailing my experiences is to hard at the moment

I am not willing to delve deeper into my experiences at the moment. I need to build up the courage. There are to many other factors and people involved.

I have been doing a great amount of reading recently regarding the power of positive thinking. I have mentioned this in some of my previous posts but now I am actively trying to use this to assist with my daily life. It sounds easy to “just be positive” but its not.

Emotionally tiring weekend, trying to stay positive

This weekend has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, up/down, up/down and down/down before rising back up again. My health to a dip this weekend, I was quite stressed when I finished work on Friday and my wife was away with the scouts this weekend so left on the Saturday morning and didn’t return until the Sunday afternoon.

My youngest son and his friend joined me at my golf clubs 50th Birthday celebration on Saturday. I had offered my assistance as men’s section vice captain. I had a small area for visitors to practice chipping as a golf skill. My son and his friend spent half an hour doing some chipping which attracted some interest.

Once visitors started showing some interest, I found myself struggling to be approachable and open to talking to the children and parents. I had to tell myself many times to smile, relax, be positive believe in myself and show these people how much I enjoy golf.

I did feel a bit better and happier about myself once I managed to force my fears out of my mind and embraced the event.

Saturday evening is when I started to struggle mentally, my sons friend had gone home, I had feed my youngest son, his elder sibling went out with friends to see a band. My youngest son spent the evening playing online which left me on my own. That’s when I started to dwell on issues, work, my health, even if had I done a good job today?

Anything that I was worried about crept back into my head. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted from todays efforts. I hadn’t eaten anything for my dinner, in fact I hadn’t eaten all day. I did make sure to get my son and his friend lunch and snacks whilst at the golf club.

My mind was racing even though I tried to clear my thoughts.. I struggled to settle and sleep Saturday night,

Not letting my mental health issues affect my family

Sunday morning started with my sons football match. We went with his friend and his dad drove. I wasn’t in a very good mood on Sunday as we got ready to leave and I snapped at my son in response to what I thought was a stupid question. I apologised but the damage had been done. He was subdued during his football match, I shouted encouragement to try an undo what I had previously done.

He seemed happier at the end of the match, he had played well and I gave him a hug. I still felt guilty for the effect of my actions earlier.

I played golf yesterday afternoon, not very well but I had to get out and rid myself of my bad mood and the emotions I as displaying. This did help me feel better, I concentrated reasonably well and tried to enjoy myself.

When I got home my wife was back, my eldest had been looking after his younger brother for one hour before she got back. The mood in the house was slightly subdued, I am guessing they had talked about their respective weekends and discussed how I had acted.

Again I hadn’t eaten enough on Sunday, only managing to have a light snack last night.

What can I take away from this weekend to help me

Since I started writing this today, I have eaten a light lunch and I will eat a full meal tonight. I will complete my press-ups and squats. I have to do this, I cannot let this slip, I wasn’t in a good place over the weekend so I didn’t do it. I have cheated myself.

The kicker to all this is what my wife said to me earlier when she came home from food shopping. She said, “I brought you this as a treat because you don’t seem very happy at the moment.” That really hurt.

I feel very guilty right now for burdening my family with all of my emotions. They get so strong sometimes I cant hide them. I hate the fact that my past and my mental health and ptsd affects them so much. I don’t like myself right now but I am going to try and be happier and positive for my wife and children when they get home.

It must be very tiring for them, I love them all dearly and I will do anything for them. They don’t deserve to have their lives disrupted any further by my mental health issues. Its been going on for too long and needs to stop.

Created 03/09/2024

I finished work early on Friday so my wife suggested taking our sons to a local beach as a way of finishing the English school holidays. This sounded like the perfect way to spend an evening. We would get fish & Chips, eat the on the beach and then spend some time relaxing.

Everything started off fine, we didn’t leave until later than planned but traffic down to the coast wasn’t to bad. It normally takes 30mins but the journey this evening took 45 mins. Fish and chips were bought and we parked in a small side street close to the beach so we didn’t get caught out by car parking charges.

For some reason I already wasnt comfortable with being at the beach. I am still unsure what the kicker was for these feelings but they disappeared so no real drama.

The walk to the beach was uneventful and we got there to find out it was high tide, not a lot of space left to sit on the beach between the water and the land that backs on to the sand but enough.. Alot of people were starting to leave for home as it was already quite late by the time we had found a spot, put out the blanket and settled down to eat our food.

I don’t know if its just me but I am starting to find I have an issue with people not controlling their kids, especially the swearing from them in public. I know I sound grumpy but I cant help the way it bothers me. Guess I am just old fashioned.

Once we had finished our food and the boys had sat long enough to let their dinner settle we allowed our youngest son to go in the sea with his body board. It took a while to get our eldest to go in and join his brother but eventually that happened and it was great to see them playing with each other in the very small waves.

After a short while I started to feel unusually anxious, started getting nervous and couldn’t quite work out what the problem was. My eldest got out of the water and decided to get warm and dressed, couldn’t blame him, the sea wasn’t quite as warm as it could’ve been a few weeks earlier.

Then it hit me, my mind was trying to catastrophize the situation at the beach.. Here we were, a quiet pleasant evening sat on the beach and my mind was trying to play tricks on me. I had already mentioned to my wife that we should get going by a certain time and she pointed out that I should relax and enjoy the evening. Problem was that I could not do that. My mind started visualizing issues, what if my son in the water hurt himself, what if a rouge wave appeared and knocked him over, what if….

To deal with the way my brain was working and trying to control the thoughts and images I had to get up from the blanket and walk towards my youngest son. This helped my feelings and anxieties and helped me to calm down. As I have stated before, my mind does terrible things with the smallest of issue due to living with the effects of childhood abuse. It always runs to the worst possible outcome, even if there is no reason for those types of thoughts to be present.

About half an hour later my youngest son decided it was getting to cold, no more bigger waves were breaking on the beach, these were only caused by passing boats or ships, so we decided to pack up and head home. Luckily it was just light enough to see our way through the wooded area back to the car. They kids both had hot chocolate when they got home.

I woke on Saturday morning to my alarm at 5am, I knew I had not slept well and felt groggy and very lethargic. I had stayed up until midnight watching YouTube golf videos, I couldn’t sleep even with my medication which I had taken about 9pm. I was due to play golf with a friend at 6am so I made coffee, had a cigarette and headed to the golf course.

Long story short is I did not play very well. I wasn’t able to concentrate and see the positives in my game. My friend asked if I was ok and of course I fobbed him off with some excuse but the main take away from that was the effect my thoughts the previous night had on me. I didn’t realise until after our game, sat having a coffee that I was my own thoughts that had dragged me down.

I didn’t do much on Saturday afternoon, I was tired and pissed off at myself for the way I had behaved, I had also hurt my back, trying to chase the good golf of a couple of weeks ago and trying to hit the ball to hard.

Saturday night was quiet, my wife was out on a work event, I picked her and a friend up ,my wife was quite drunk so got her home and in bed. Went to see my youngest sons football match on Sunday morning. It was lovely to see him play and get involved in something he has just started. He didn’t get much time on the pitch. It made me happy to see him getting involved, having a go at new things. I got a boost from seeing his smile and hearing the excitement in his voice afterwards.

Played golf with a friend on Sunday afternoon at his local course, he is a member there so it was easy to get a tee time. We decided fr a bit of fun we would play for a pint. Loser buys the drink after.

This put a friendly but competitive edge on the game and much banter ensued when either of us didn’t score well on a hole. I eventually won but didn’t do myself any favours on a few holes. I did enjoy the pint of cider I had afterwards, victory tasted sweet.

Playing that round of golf has helped me realise, I have said it before I think, but being positive and believing you can do something instead of doubting or convincing yourself you cant is a better way to live.

This will always be an enduring struggle for me but I believe I have started a process that is helping me change the way my brain works. Only time will tell if it will but I am not going to stop. Yes its going to be hard work but I will stick with what I am doing. After so many decades of living with the effects of being a victim of childhood sexual abuse, I really wish I had done this a lot earlier.