Coping with life's difficulties

[Till23]

Yep @MJG017 I have had problems with losing stuff when I do it on my phone, and learnt the copy trick early on!

I'm glad things are looking good for your partner getting work, that's one thing off the plate.

That's very interesting about the people with more concerning cancer being the ones to drop out of the group. I was thinking they'd be the ones staying on. I can understand how that is difficult for you.

Over 2 years of supporting people is a lot on it's own, but in your situation it must be really exhausting.

I don't think you can take responsibility for the decisions other people make, so I do see it as any failing of yours.

Didn't you say you were doing some work with adoptees?

I'm glad you are getting the chance to go to WA and meet up with your friend.

I totally understand the chasing the feel of being Good Enough as I call it. It's sort of the same with me in regard to family but maybe not as extreme with regard to cancer and for the CSA, well it's just never discussed like it never happened.

You have raised heaps of money for prostate cancer, so no need to donate to me, I'm doing this one for my Dad and prostate, but of course the money goes to the Cancer Council as a whole.

You do heaps for prostate cancer, I'm honoured that I get to chat to you on the forums. 

I also wish I could do more with the CSA work and I wish I had started a bit earlier. Even though in reality I'd been not addressing really until I got cancer.

I've really used distraction as a way of managing my MH all my life, so retirement has been hard for me from that perspective, also because I feel like a lot of the things I do now are kind of for me, whereas work was helping other people, so it's definitely a shift in thinking. Which I'm also struggling with because of feeling I have low innate worth.

Yes I can get really distracted with sport and some of my activities while I'm doing it. Because I am a shy person and feel Not Good Enough I find the social parts a bit difficult. I find dropping the mask so difficult. I've been doing it so long, it's really quite automatic. It does depend on the people I'm with how much of myself I show.

I feel now I'm settling into retirement a bit, probably I will start to try and make some changes in my thinking and try to take the pressure off myself a bit. 

It's quite a different time in my life at the moment going from working to get enough money to survive myself without depending on anyone else to suddenly being (hopefully) at that point. Sometimes I worked 3 jobs, 6 and a half days a week, to make sure I wouldn't have to be dependent on anyone or not be able to afford living by myself. I recently got a little bit of money from Dad's estate which has helped me to stop constantly worry about money. So I can relax a bit from that perspective.

Anyhow, my cold has fortunately eased quite a bit, which is also good.

I better to get to bed though

Chat later

[MJG017]

Hi @Till23 

Yes, things have turned out for my partner.  That job interview she had offered her a job.  She just has to wait until the end of this week for the administrations to formally shit the place down, or someone offers to take the staff, to accept the new job.  Otherwise she would be classed as quitting and lose about $20,000 in redundancy payments. 

I know I can't take responsibilities for other people's decisions, but i just worry that there is a reason some of the advanced guys have felt like not coming back.  Maybe it was something I could change, or make easier.  But I also understand, being in that position, that it would be so easy for them to just want to distance themselves from anything cancer related.  It can get a lot when you know the fight is lifelong.  So i understand that there may be other reasons, but I'll still try to see if there's anything I could do better.

I attend a couple of adoptee support groups, so that's about it.  But i'd like to use my peer work training to do some more.  Not sure that would ever happen but it's ideally what i'd like to focus on.  Hopefully help others as much as i've been helped the past year or so with what i've learned.

That shift in the thinking we have about ourselves is so difficult to change, even a little at times.  I don't think I would have been able to do any of it without the cancer diagnosis.  But starting to doubt those thoughts has at least allowed me to improve that thinking enough to take on things I would have always found a way out of... or never even thought to attempt in the first place.  It's still terrifying as hell, but it's improve my life in many ways.  It's strange how even such a small change in my thinking and self-worth has had such big changes.  Maybe the change in thinking is more than I think.  I really don't know.  But I have people i've only known for a year expressing their surprise at some of the things I do and say now.  It's really very motivating to get feedback like that, especially from people who haven't known me that long.  It kind of reinforces how much i've changed and reminds me that it's something I should keep working hard on.  I guess that's why i'd like to work with adoptees to try and help those who had the same self-worth issues i had.  Not just adoptees though, anyone with those attachment struggles.

Maybe that's because we both seem to enjoy these chats so much.  We've experience similar things, and some very different things, but there's enough common struggles that are often not shared so I think we both find it helpful to talk to someone else who is willing to talk about these struggles openly and honestly.  And i've learnt so much from these talks that I feel like i'm in a much better place to support people with their own MH issues than I would have been without them.

It's great that you want to try and work on the masking and take some of that pressure off yourself.  I know it's not easy at all, and it's a slow process.  But so worth the effort.  And like I said before, you don't have to change that much before you notice changes in your life.  I really hope you can find some similar success in this to that which I feel i've had.  And of course, i'm always here to talk about it and offer and advice I can, or just listen.  I've still so much to learn and work on, that it's so helpful to have another person to talk to about this.

I can understand that resistant to be dependent on anyone.  I've always been the same.  To ask someone for help with anything always felt like such a massive failure to me. Like I was a failure.  It's one of the hardest things to change, but like the rest of it... small changes taking pressure of myself when there's a step backwards... or to the side.

I'm glad to hear your cold has eased.  Hopefully you're feeling close to 100% now, or soon will be.  I've just been told my dinner is ready so I better head off.  Chat later.

[Till23]

Hey @MJG017 I saw you were on and it seems I did not answer your last post. I don't know if that was when the forums were really acting up as I remember typing some things in response! 

I was thinking of you because it happens that the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia and the International Psycho-oncolgy Society combined meeting is in Adelaide starting today at the Convention Centre. You can Google the program and there are some interesting talks and poster presentations on things relevant to bith you and I

[Till23]

So now @MJG017 back to your previous post to which my response does not appear. Of course I won't remeber exactly what I wrote but probably at least some of it!. 

I hope you are going ok. It's been a month since our last chat. 

Things are looking good for your partner job-wise and yes best not to lose the redundancy as that's quite a good amount.

I definitely get trying to find out why the advanced guys seems to drop out of the groups. If it's something easy to remediate that would be good. I feel like it's probably going to be a range of things and a bit individual to each person, but you never know.

I'm glad that you have learnt a lot in the last year. You are so lovely in wanting to use those learnings to help other people. 

I definitely understand it and wish I could do more myself. I have had a busy year this year, despite being my first year of retirement. I hope I can find some more opportunities. I was hoping the lived experience thing for NSW health might move a bit faster than it has, I do wonder if that is down to funding, which I think is highly likely.

I agree, although I think my cancers have been very different for me than you, even at the very first diagnosis, I have done things that I otherwise would have been unlikely to do. It's extremely unlikely I would have done my sport, which has been positive, not just from the exercise perspective, but also through meeting other people and being involved in the club. Sometimes I think to myself, and I have said it out loud, who would have though having cancer was a good thing. There is a thing called post traumatic growth and being diagnosed with cancer is a trauma.

I think the attachment area is a major cause of later life issues, so I'm sure people would find it useful. Although I am wondering if many people would realise that their issues were due to attachment problems in early life.

Since our last chat I have been busy going to Australian Masters Games in Canberra where the team I was in won a gold and two silver medals. Then it was the 7 Bridges walk which I managed to get round all but the last few kms because I had injured my knee two weeks before! [edited by moderator] Now we are in the middle of organising a Bunnings sausage sizzle for our club, so I've been quite busy. However, I could have got on the forums and checked this thread, so I am sorry about that.

Have you done anything new apart from being the star of your peer support course?

I have joined another couple of things just recently, one because I was getting my haircut and I must have said something, possibly about my sport and the hairdresser asked if I would be interesting in a walking group, which I joined. I was a bit busy with my sport at first to attend any, but went to my first one a couple of weeks ago and have just signed up for a 5 day walk on the South Coast of NSW for next year! Which will be after I come back from the overseas event for my sport in 2026. The other thing I joined again I've only been to one meet up and I let the mask down a little there but it is early days in both of them.

[Oaktree]

@Till23 

I would be interested in a CSA survivor group. Would I find something like that on facebook? Hi @MJG017 @Till23 I hope you don’t mind me reading through your thread?

[Till23]

Hi @Oaktree how are you. Yes, as you can see MJG017 and I started this thread because we both have cancer, we decided it best to move ourselves from your thread many months ago.

In the past there have been some CSA survivor groups, I feel as though there may be less of them now, but I don't actually know. It also definitely depends what state you are in for face to face ones. 

I always worry about posting stuff on Facebook, however I am sure there are probably groups.

Your local sexual assault centre should be able to give you some guidance for groups for non-recent (or historical) abuse. They would definitely be across recent CSA. I don't know if Blue Knot has any information on groups, they haven't in the past, but this may have changed. 

As you know MH funding is abysmal and this may have affected the ability to provide groups through the public system.

Sorry that's not terribly helpful

[MJG017]

Hi @Till23 

I've been okay.  I've been quite busy with studies and medical things... as always.  Winning that peer work student award feels like it's put a lot of pressure on me to actually apply for jobs now.  I'm really not sure I have it in me, but having won the award, I just feel so much pressure to do something.  Otherwise it feels like an insult to all the other students who worked so hard and are looking for jobs and would have loved to have won and have that help them in their job search.  It just feels like a bit of an insult to them for me not to try.  You have to love the damage attachment does to your head over a lifetime!

Medically, my latest PSMA PET (about 3 weeks ago) scan showed nothing... a little dot lit up on a rib, but was inconclusive.  So I asked if I could get a FDG PET scan just in case there is some PSMA adverse cancer there somewhere.  My oncologist agreed... I think more just to keep me happy.  He did say if it helps to put my mind at ease then it's worth doing.  So I have this (5th) PET scan at the end of the month.  I also found a trial I seemed to be eligible for, so i told my oncologist and he sent a referral off and have an appointment at the oncology department at the hospital I get my PET scans on Tuesday.  The trial is for people on the receptor inhibitors who have become resistant to them.  The idea is a boost shot of testosterone every month to try and re-sensitise the cancer to the hormone therapy... to hopefully get a bit more time out of it.  My oncologist seemed to agree it would be worth trying.  

I also got to be on a panel at a prostate cancer research symposium last week, so that was fun.  Being full of researchers made me the thickest person in the room, and I understood only bits of all the presentations, but it was very interesting.  One of the oncologists who gave a talk is apparently involved in this trial i found, so it may actually be him I see on Tuesday.  I also had a young research come up tome at the end asking about my support group as she is interested in learning more about young men dealing with prostate cancer.

Everything always seems to come down to funding doesn't it.  Hopefully things can speed up a bit for you, or you can find some more opportunities.  You have so much you can offer and I know a lot of these people see it, but... well... funding.

Congratulations on the medals.  A gold and 2 silvers!  What a great achievement.  Whatever sport it is you're in, you must be pretty good at it.  A pity we can't share photos like that here, but i'm so happy for you that you had such great success.

I certainly don't mind you joining in @Oaktree I don't think we ever meant this as a private chat, just that not many other people liked talking about the things we talked about in here so it has just been Till23 and I.

It's getting late and i'm almost asleep so I had better go.  I didn't want to leave it to tomorrow to reply, because I'd probable forget and it would be a week or more before I remembered.  My memory is getting terrible.  The main reason I was even on the PC now was to reply to some emails that I needed to get to but had forgotten during the week.