Speaker 0: 0:10

G'day everybody. My name is Elliot Waters and you're listening to the Dysregulator podcast. As always, thank you for tuning in. If you're enjoying the show, feel free to like, subscribe, give us a great rating and you can share it around with your mates. And you can follow me on Instagram at elliotttwaters. All right, so I'm coming to you on my dinner break. This is how hard of a work I am. I'm even recording on my break at work.

Speaker 0: 0:35

I don't know if you can hear the rain, but it's raining, which is no surprise. I'll tell you, the last fortnight, the last couple of weeks, last six weeks maybe, it has just rained like every day. It has been brutal, it has been grim and it's pouring rain again. It's freezing cold weather. It's been a shocking start in the winter. So, yeah, so I'm in the car, I'm recording. It's raining outside again.

Speaker 0: 0:59

I used to like the rain once upon a time, but this has become a bit too much. It's just so much of it. It's just like sunny days have been fleeting, fleeting at best. I've never, I don't think, lived through a consistent period where it's rained so often and so consistently. I don't think this, to me, is new territory. I don't know if this is climate change or what. All I know is it's grim weather and I'm feeling it, and not just me either. I talk to a lot of people and everyone's just over it, just over the rain, the gray, the cold. It's just terrible. It's interesting.

Speaker 0: 1:34

So I'm sure we've all heard of seasonal affective disorder, which is when you have a depression that comes on during the winter months. But usually, or as far as I understand it, seasonal affective disorder is more to do with sunlight or lack of. But for me, I've always found it's not so much the lack of sunlight that's been killer. For me it's the temperature. I don't care if it's sunny, but if it is freezing cold, it doesn't matter. I'm not loving it, and I've never looked this up, and maybe I will, I don't know because it becomes more and more of a theme of my life this whole. It gets cold and I get really, really depressed because it's true, it happens, it's happening again.

Speaker 0: 2:13

Things have been really hard the last couple of weeks. It's getting colder, it's getting into winter. This is not my time of year, not at all. But hey, you got to do what you got to do and that's why I'm here in my car with the rain coming down, it's single digit weather and I'm talking to you right now and making something of today, which I am because I'm at work today, but like this will. This will hopefully get me in a slightly better headspace, because today has been it's been a hard one today.

Speaker 0: 2:40

The last two weeks has been difficult. I don't want to sound like a broken record I don't but at the same time, not much has changed. I'm still in this whole holding pattern, waiting for some mental health professional to take me under their wing and show me some guidance so I can get off these medications and possibly look for some new work and get back into the transport industry. That's the plan, but I can't do it while I'm on all these meds because it's red flags go up and everyone's like, nah, we can't have you. It's not good for insurance and the New South Wales Transport Government. They don't like it when you're on any psychotic medications and wanting to drive trucks, and that's sort of what I want to do, or at least get back into it for a little bit. So I need to get off these meds and the fact that I feel terrible and this last two weeks, there's no change During this last fortnight, a few episodes ago, you would have heard that I was at the Marta Hospital begging for some sort of resolution to this whole medication problem, because I'm at my wits end and I am, I am, and one of these days the pressure just keeps building.

Speaker 0: 3:46

The pressure keeps building. There is no release, while I feel as though I'm not moving in life at all. There is no release of this pressure that is building and it's getting to a point where I'm getting a little bit concerned. Finally, I'm getting concerned about what's going to happen because I don't know. I'm telling you the negative thoughts. They're coming on. They're getting stronger and stronger as the rainy days build up. The pressure inside builds up as I don't move and progress in my career, and that word potential follows me around. And I've just had a gutful and I'm about to blow. I'm telling you, I'm about to blow and I'm on all these medications and I still feel like rubbish. So let's get off the meds and see what we're really dealing with. That's the plan, as you know, and then maybe I can change the direction of my career and I can work in a place that's maybe a little bit more in line with my meaning and purpose Not that there's any problems with me working here at Bunnings, except for the fact that you know the purpose of working here was to get me through my degree, and that was like three all my transport history and employment history in the industry, and my goal and my dream of synergizing both the mental health world and the transport world.

Speaker 0: 5:02

Obviously, I won't go through it all now, but anyway, that's the general idea of what I want to do, but at the moment I'm not moving because I have no confidence, because my anxiety, my fear of life is so great, and these winter months are just going to drag on. These dreary, cold, rainy days just keep building. The pressure keeps building. As I'm not going anywhere, I feel as though I'm sinking and it's all going to blow, unless a mental health professional, for God's sakes, grabs me and goes Elliot, here's the plan to get off the meds. Then we'll reassess. You might go back on some, which I'm fully prepared to do. We know the story.

Speaker 0: 5:37

The problem is, though, the headline of this episode and the fact that I feel like garbage still is because there's been no sort of movements to any of those goals, any of those goals I just rattled off. Oh, I'm so tired. I'm so tired and just got I got nothing. I got nothing, but hey, I've got this episode out. I had to do this, or else I'll tell you, today would have been a complete write-off, or at least it would have felt like that, even though I'm doing a full day's work. That doesn't count. So I really really needed to do this, just to get the monkey off the back, and I've now done it, which is great.

Speaker 0: 6:11

So, to sum up, the last two weeks have been horrendous. The weather is horrendous. That's not helping my plan, because it's just ticked over into winter this week, the start of this week. So you know like the plan was, I wouldn't be here at Bunnings working at night in this cold, rainy winter's weather, but unfortunately I'm still here, and the reason for that is because I'm stuck. I'm still here, and the reason for that is because I'm stuck. I'm frozen, not just because it's so cold, but because I'm so anxious and I do not have the capacity to do anything about my current situation, or at least it doesn't feel like it, and I really want someone in the mental health area that knows what they're doing to say Elliot, let's get you back on track, follow this plan. It's going to be hard, but if you stick with it, the results and the rewards will be there. That is all I want and, as we know, if you've listened to the last couple of episodes, I am making no progress on that front whatsoever. So that is another very happy, cheery episode that I'm so glad that I've been able to bring to you, which I am. I am glad I've been able to bring this to you and I'm not going to sugarcoat these things.

Speaker 0: 7:17

At the moment my life sucks. My life is so just, oh, it's just grim, and the thing is it's probably objectively not as bad as I feel, but that doesn't matter. There's no objectivity about this at all. It's all subjective. And subjectively, this BPD lens or this mental illness lens, whatever you want to call it I'm not seeing anything good. I'm seeing lots of gray and I'm looking at all this rain coming down. I'm going to have to get back into work, make the quick dash from my car back inside and then out to the yard out the back, but it's going to be freezing. I'm drenched, my feet are cold. Who cares? Elliot needs to stop complaining.

Speaker 0: 7:54

Thank you for listening everybody. As always, I do appreciate it. I've got to go, but I'll talk to you soon here on the show. Coming up shortly will be the discharge papers from my little trip to the Mater Hospital about a week and a half ago. That is coming, probably next. That will be next, when I have the impetus and the energy and the drive to do it. And today, given this weather and how cold it is, it was never going to happen, so but anyway, but I've done a quick check-in. It's great to talk to you. As always, I'm going to stop rambling. I'll talk to you here next time on the Dysregulated Podcast podcast.