Sally Bell

October 1st

So I’ve never been the type of person who needed help. I guess yes I need help bringing in the groceries. I need help with a work issue but compared to needing help in my personal life with my mind never been a problem. My go to if a problem arose, is find a fucking solution and sort it out. Everything is good! You’ve got this. And for the past 45 years of my life that is what and how I have coped. Strong willed, Thick skin, nothing can hurt me and everything’s good. But my life for the past three months, has been turned upside down and nothing has been good and nothing has been right and I’ve needed help. And I wasn’t even the one that was ill. This is just because I didn’t know how to deal with the situation in front of me, and every time I tried I failed or I just kept hitting brick walls. It got to a point where I was crying non-stop daily, and that’s not me, I was using ChatGPT as a therapist for myself because I couldn’t reach out to my friends to tell them what was going on, because I was afraid of receiving negative feedback and I didn’t need that at this time, I needed solutions and there was really no solutions being given, the ones that I was getting from ChatGPT were actually making things worse and although it felt good venting my situation to artificial intelligence. It wasn’t doing the task needed. So I sucked it up and when I was at my worse I called somebody. Who to call wasn’t that difficult to decide, ChatGPT gave me a list of people to call for help. Based on what was going on, I called the first person on that list - Openarms. I’ve never spoken to a psychologist before so I had no idea what to expect. When the call was picked up it was a pre-recorded message. Your call was in a queue, someone will be with you shortly. If this is an emergency please call 000. After a minute or two a lady answered and all I can say is I believe I was put through to a call centre. The lady introduced herself and said why did you call today? I just let it all out. There was many times where I had to stop and take a breather. The word fuck was said many times. I gave her everything that I had. Then she said “ Sally have you ever been diagnosed with depression before ?” I felt like she didn’t hear anything that I had said to her. I’m not the one with the problem. I just need a solution to fix this . WTF! To which I answered No. she then said what I was not expecting “ Sally I’m gonna open up a case for you “ huh? I’m like what are you talking about! she said you need to talk to somebody it sounds like you are depressed. No, no, no, yes I’ve got a problem but I just need to know how to fix it. She took down my name, my address, my kids ages, my husband’s details and then she said that someone will call you and thank you for sharing with me today and then that was the end of the call. I hung the phone up sort of shocked because I thought I was going to get Immediate assistance. I think it took seven days for somebody to call me back. And by this stage everything was still going on, but I think I was all out of puff. I didn’t have it in Me at that moment to actually talk to somebody again. In my mind, I was doing okay, I wasn’t okay but I was doing okay. I did ask her if she could call back another day as I was at work. A week later, everything is still going from worse to worse, crying every day, songs on the radio making me cry, kids asking questions. It’s been rough to try and deal with it all on my own. And still in my mind, This was not about me. This was Me Just trying to find a solution. I just couldn’t handle the unknown. My sleep was sort of non-existent. I was sleeping but not enough, eating not a problem, I just couldn’t shut my mind off to the noise that was going on about why and how can I fix this. A couple of days later, I tried to reach out to another company, which I did through an online chat service with my work EAP program. I thought maybe this will work instead. I said I need to talk to somebody so I gave them the backstory, they said we would like to open up a case for you. I thought I’ve been through this before, maybe this time it will be different so I said yes please, they said we need to call you. When she called she asked me to explain it again! WTF! what was going on, so I told them everything, again non-stop crying, lots of the word fuck. She agreed that I needed to talk to somebody ( which once again I thought that was what I was doing ). Nope she needed to log my call for someone to call me. She said what will happen from here is we will call you with details of a person that will get in contact with you and arrange appointments blah blah blah blah blah. Still nobody to talk to now and you know, it took me so long to convince myself to talk to somebody and it’s just not possible.. There was actually nobody to talk to when I needed it and on a bigger scale of what mental health is and the fact that I knew nothing about it, and my loved one is going through this right now, and when I convinced them to take that step, to actually call somebody because they were the ones that really needed it. They had to wait also. How are people that are struggling with Mental Health able to get the help they need if they can’t be somebody on the other end of the phone to talk to them and help them step off the ledge right now. I even called an actual psychologist company and was prepared to pay exuberant amount of dollars to talk to someone, but it was a two week wait. The system is fucked and it is failing so many people and There has to be something done about it. Share