Mental Health and the car enthusiast - help & support

The latest from a guy I follow on YouTube.

Not much to add other than (please) keep fighting the good fight.

Kudos to all that have shared. Its not easy airing your dirty washing.

Live in Gloucester if anyone needs support. Just drop me a PM, am here most days.

Stay safe all

Owning your own business with no permanent staff is one of the loneliest places on the planet at times.[/quote]


Trust me, we have 15 staff at the moment, but man, it feels lonely at times....

Drawing the line and standing firm shows just how good of a father/person you are. Making one of the toughest decisions to cut off a family member for all the right reasons must leave you in turmoil inside but the best thing you could have done. I was the disgraceful son, grandson, brother and friend and my mum kicked me out permanently at 20 years old. I carried on being a bad person for another 8 years and it took a short spell in prison at 25 to stop me causing trouble then another 3 years of heavy drinking to the point I my body was shutting down before I put a stop to it all. It wasn’t until my head was clear that I realised just how much damage I had done it’s hard to see things from a different perspective when your still in the middle of all the s**t. Might take a while yet but lots of “nope, your on your own now” will eventually make him realise that actions have consequence’s and that it takes a long time and alot of hard work to put things right. What you are going through is very common in my experience just doesn’t get spoken about because it’s embarrassing. You haven’t failed, your not responsible for his actions and certainly shouldn’t feel responsible for them although I’m guessing every parent does. Good bit of space and time apart not talking to each other will do all sorts of good. Put yourself and your own head first it’s not selfish at all you can only do so much and the line has to be drawn somewhere.

I get this. Alone, but not lonely.

My colleague is going through similar with his (mid 20s) step son at the moment. The lad is a grade A bell end, drugs, gangs, police type stuff and unfortunately his mum (colleagues partner) and dad keep bailing him out of the s**t and he'll never change while he's got them running round after him. My colleagues main hobby along with cars is shooting and collecting old ammunition and he has the appropriate licences to own guns and deactivate various rounds etc so having the armed police giving them 6am wake ups looking for the step son isn't good.

Doing what you've done to your lad takes a huge amount of bravery and is a very tough decision , but it's the right thing to do both for him and for you.

I'd like to say that there is no such thing as "normal", your brain is wired a particular way because of an evolutionary need. That may or not be helpful to you as an individual in todays society, but you are not un-normal, you just have a skill set that's not greatly in demand today.

I've had a share of mental health issues, some on-going, but sexual abuse at an early age puts them into perspective, now I can shrug most things off. It's taken a long time to reach this point though.

And finally, thanks for spell checking, I wouldn't (couldn't!) write this without it, being very dislecsic.

A picture, but not a cool car.






Reach out.

Thought long and hard about contributing to this thread, by doing so I knew it would involve summarising a long history of depression. So whilst I've probably met no one on the forum so could be quite anonymous, my cars are somewhat more distinctive and easily linked to me.

I was first diagnosed with depression at 19, frighteningly 32 years ago now. Attitudes and treatment were markedly different, and not coping meant failure in the eyes of most. So depression was a hidden shame, and certainly impaired my social skills. It was easier to hide myself away than to constantly hide my "problem".

I am a depressive, not manic, just depressive but there are traits of that manic disorder and being honest for me, in many ways they are great spells. I'm energised, productive and creative, a "can do, anything is possible" attitude, everything you think a healthy balanced person should be… unfortunately in the face of such unfettered optimism, frequently rational becomes ejected from the decision making process and a car enthusiast makes that a dangerous combo.

Sadly when the highs are that high then eventually a low will be equally extreme. Sometimes these lows can be over quickly, other times that darkness can cast a shadow for days, weeks even where all my energy is consumed dealing with the mundanity of life leaving nothing for the "fun" stuff.

Inside that, if I push myself to do a little tinkering, seeking that endorphin rush of a little job ticked off, that might break the funk, I know I'm also one minor incident away from not working on a car for weeks… It is serious that constant knife edge.

So cars are the rock I can climb to find a safe space, but equally a millstone that could at any moment drown me. I think I dropped away from this very forum for about 4 years at one stage.

I have spent time receiving professional help, and it does make a difference but the connection between patient and counsellor has to be "right". If you're still struggling then if you can change the counsellor rather than giving up(appreciate many are stuck within local NHS services and changing isn't easy/possible).

What I will say, to anyone is don't give up, whilst there will be bad days(and in the last 4 years I lost my direct family all to cancer, and a failed relationship) but there will be the odd moment that reminds you to keep going. I once went nearly 10 years without problems, but sometimes a week feels like the greatest victory…It's part of me and who I am, it's shaped where I am now(good and bad).

However this is a car forum, and keeping on theme here's something I bought whilst at the upper end of a manic spell and then never used and sold it 4 or 5 years later…and the 11 yrs and counting Cortina project I bought when my 10 month marriage collapsed….

A while ago I was at a not car related thing at a posh hotel and in the car park was a Vauxhall Chevette rally car (on a trailer) with My Black Dog stickers. Something I have now dipped in and out of quite regularly after doing a Google. Sometimes even a small thing helps.

I looked at my green Vauxhall which is rotting away in the car park and hope I can tackle it one day if I have the time, energy, money, enthusiasm and physical ability, everything else is going round the track. Not had a single offer of help to do it, nobody has even asked why I'm not driving my car, it's been 7 years. That said, my Monza has been off the road 24 years now, realistically it'll never get done.

I thought of just driving off into the sunset but I'd only get 30 miles before running out of fuel and I couldn't even afford a KitKat once I got anywhere.