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Difficult situation you had/have to face and how you managed to overcome it

Discussion in 'Serious' started by satisfiedwimp, 9 Apr 2021.

  1. satisfiedwimp

    satisfiedwimp Minimodder

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    As the title says. Everyone's having their own rough times these days, what are you doing to overcome it?
     
  2. mrlongbeard

    mrlongbeard Multimodder

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    Pharmaceuticals & alcohol, with a side of exercise, spannering, and gaming
     
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  3. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    AKA The Solution Pentagon
     
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  4. satisfiedwimp

    satisfiedwimp Minimodder

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    Pharmaceuticals like what? :worried:
     
  5. goldstar0011

    goldstar0011 Multimodder

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    I was using whisky and a certain smokeable herb to help me quiet the constant noise in my head and calm the emotions.
    As time is a healer it's getting better and now gyms are open I have an outlet again.

    Due to move into my own house so I can create my own structure and hopefully use the above for a treat
     
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  6. satisfiedwimp

    satisfiedwimp Minimodder

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    When it already affects you mentally, is it right to ask for support outside your family? Do you have any good experience working with a therapist or counselor?
     
  7. IamJudd

    IamJudd Multimodder

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    Found the delights of Whiskey and said 'urb to help with sleep. For years I've been waking up 3-5 times a night and, as I'm up, go to the loo then sit and think about things for a while like why the phook am I not sleeping. Since lockdown, said 'urb has been allowing me a consistent 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep which I've not had for twenty years!

    So Yeah - I'm right with you on this one!
     
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  8. Mr_Mistoffelees

    Mr_Mistoffelees The Bit-Tech Cat. New Improved Version.

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    It can be difficult to realise you need help and harder to ask but, it is right to ask. Been there, got the tee-shirt.

    I found therapists very useful, didn't "fix" my problems but, helped me to understand the cause and live with them more easily.
     
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  9. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    We had an adjoining neighbour whose adult son had a penchant for that combo - he passed out, set fire to their lounge and filled our house with smoke.

    Twice.

    I overcame the difficult situation by presenting my neighbour with a cleaning bill and a threat of legal action, after the second occurrence. Their dope fiend waster of a son was soon living elsewhere.
     
  10. boiled_elephant

    boiled_elephant Merom Celeron 4 lyfe

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    In my previous business tenancy, I had a weird, sketchy, unprofessional situation with the landlord.

    Actual Landlord lived hundreds of miles away and was entirely absent start to finish - I think I met him once, in passing. Intermediary Landlord was a friend and customer, nice chap, he got me into the office space and was generally very easy-going. From the outset, electricity and heating were included in the rent, which was a market-reasonable amount.

    Suddenly a couple of years in, Intermediary Landlord contacts me saying "actual landlord has noticed that the electricity is costing us much more than expected, we're going to have to start billing for it separately". All well and good. It's a reasonable change.

    Wanting to be on firm ground, though, I measured the electric on all my outlets, calculated running averages over a couple of months, and simultaneously took meter readings from the submeter for my office, which I had access to. Pleasingly, my estimates aligned exactly with my actual consumption. Confusingly, though, my consumption was paltry - about £40 worth a month. This is almost exactly the amount detailed as being included in my original rent agreement with Intermediary. This is burning a hole in the pocket of the man who owns this huge building with multiple tenants? Odd.

    I mention this to Intermediary. He fobs me off with excuses and vagueness, and seems reluctant to discuss it on record. He keeps wanting to come in and talk in person about it; I insist on keeping it in emails, which makes him very angry. A red flag begins to ascend the flagpole.

    I contact Actual Landlord by email, noting that Intermediary has failed to ever provide an invoice for any of my rent despite me asking (oh yeah, this also happened), and ask about the electric readings and the submeter, and the means of calculation.

    Landlord's explanations are unusual. He claims that the submeters are inaccurate and don't read in kWh despite saying "kWh" on their displays. He says they're proportionally accurate but not kWh accurate, so he proposes to calculate my electric costs by dividing his total bill down, based on the submeter ratios, to get my ratio of the cost.

    This makes no technical sense - either the submeters are working correctly or they aren't. The readings I've taken of my own outlets, the estimates which agree with the submeter and fall within my expected consumption, are not addressed.

    Intermediary, meanwhile, finally produces invoices - all 2 years' worth, and appears fumingly angry about it, saying nothing more than my name when handing them over in person. A red flag fully flaps in the breeze: asking his boss about the invoices seems to have caused problems for him. There is something odd about the dynamic between them.

    At this point I am ferretting around for other tenancy options, because this is all looking very bad indeed. There's a weird power dynamic between these two and I'm stuck in the middle of it.

    Actual Landlord has still not explained the electricity calculations in a coherent manner and seems offended by my questions. Communications continue to deteriorate; I ask him why my rent payments go to Intermediary Landlord's own account, and my invoices state a trading name made up by Intermediary Landlord, while Actual Landlord is claiming I have a tenancy contract with his entirely different business who I've never heard of until this moment. He insists my tenancy is with him, not Intermediary, and that he is positioned to handle all contracts and negotiations.

    I am fully aware that they are on shaky ground at this point: there is a signed contract between myself and Intermediary which only names Intermediary and his trading name, and makes no mention of Actual Landlord. Actual Landlord is, in every sense, not my landlord, but he appears to have no knowledge of how my tenancy has been handled up to this point or of Intermediary's ways of doing things, and believes I'm under his thumb.

    Intermediary, I gather, has been acting as a middleman and has not bothered to keep Not-Landlord up to date with anything. Their strange communication problems are now my problem.

    In a separate and fascinating case, one of my neighbouring businesses is also having grief with Not-Landlord, who is their actual landlord and is pressing them for money. They go digging and discover a multitude of services and maintenance items, promised in their contract, which are not being kept up: fire extinguishers years out of date, lift maintenance not being done (!), safety documentation absent, toilets non-functioning, fire escapes locked, security practices with other tenants a shambles. They, too, are being hit with mysterious electricity bills for which the means of calculation will not be disclosed, and Not-Landlord gets extremely angry and offended when they ask for it.

    By this point I have found a new premises for the business. I make my farewells by email and pay my final rent payments to closing date. Not-Landlord's mask finally slips: "very well, but here are some invoices for the electricity you've used". He has back-dated the invented electrical costs to before our initial discussions - several months before. He wants several hundred pounds for electricity I have already demonstrated I did not use.

    I ignore further emails. His behaviour is unprofessional and his demands are illegal; I have a healthy mound of evidence that undermines all of it. Both he and Intermediary continue to pester me by email, making legal threats and smears against my character, implying I am a turncoat thief. I counter that they are barred from my place of business and that any further contact will be considered harassment: this is the legal silver bullet that ends any conversation. All falls silent.

    The moral of the story is, keep photos/copies/records of everything. Know where you are. Have things in writing. Make sure you get invoices. Make sure you know who you're actually dealing with. Don't ignore early warning signs of incompetence or shady practices.
     
    Last edited: 12 May 2021
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  11. Arboreal

    Arboreal Keeper of the Electric Currants

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    Electricity sharing is a nightmare. Looking at it from the other end of the telescope, as a landlord it is not 100% straightforward.
    I have a building with a main meter and sub meters, which tend to work proportionately, but it's not kWh accurate.
    I was told by an electrician years ago it's down to cable losses. In an ideal world the sub meters would be next to the main meter, so that they measure what's going through them at the outset.
    Typically, they are downstream, and in each unit, therefore only reading what 'arrives' at the other end of the intermediate supply net of cable losses.
    That building is a good 80+ m away form the supply meter and fed through and underground cable of indeterminate age...

    I always read the main and sub meters the same day if possible, and therefore they should be in proportion. Some sensible calculations based on experience are sometimes required.

    As you say, document it all and keep it professional.
     
  12. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    The short version of my story

    10 years ago I had chronic stomach pain which they corrected In emergency surgery, well it did not work unfortunately and I was back In hospital one week after I left, I spent some time in Intensive care after the second emergency surgery.

    I was left with a temporary stoma bag and my bowel area was left to heal for 6 months.

    I then had a 3rd operation and spent a further 2 weeks In hospital, after that I suffered pretty chronic depression and tried to end my life.

    it took a lot of patience from those close to me to heal some part of me. In truth the pain never ends as I suffer from nerve damage from the 3 operations.

    I met a lady who became my girlfriend who changed my life, I finally opened up to someone what I was going through and how bad it truly was this give me a reason to smile again

    this was 8 years later, I can’t legally live alone for another 3 years, and have returned to work and now in the civil service.

    I am not a 100% healthy and probably never will be but I am alive, and maybe that’s all that matters

    took me a long time to live with the consequences

    I did speak to my surgeon a few years later and thanked him for saving my life
     
  13. boiled_elephant

    boiled_elephant Merom Celeron 4 lyfe

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    This. Being able to really level with somebody about your problems is so important. In my experience so far, men are singularly bad at this and often repress their negative emotions or transmute them into misdirected anger. I'm really glad that, based on what I see on Reddit, it's becoming more normalized in the next generations coming up now to see counsellors/therapists as a sort of regular self-maintenance item. Was tremendously stigmatized in my parents' generation.
     
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  14. satisfiedwimp

    satisfiedwimp Minimodder

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    I've learned quite a lot from your experiences, thanks people!
     
  15. Jinntal

    Jinntal What's a Dremel?

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    Quitting the university

    It was hard, especially because of the pressure of my parents, but after I found a job it was easy.
     
  16. damien c

    damien c Mad FPS Gamer

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    It is good to see that happening now but there are still Men and Women out there that see it as a weakness.

    Frankly anyone no matter who it is, if they are speaking to someone or willing to open up shows to me they actually are for want of a better term "Brave" and not weak!

    My ex took the pee out of me to her friends because I opened up to her about stuff that none of her ex's would talk about.
     
  17. boiled_elephant

    boiled_elephant Merom Celeron 4 lyfe

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    That's repugnant and tremendously irresponsible, I'm sorry.
     
  18. stuartpb

    stuartpb Modder

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    Coming from a generation where men weren't allowed to express emotions, especially so in my case as I come from a military family, the change in how we are perceived as men and how we express our emotions is vastly different nowadays. That's a great thing, even if it does make me feel slightly uncomfortable now. We lost my dad whilst he was in service with the British Army, it was two days before my eleventh birthday. At the wake after his funeral in the sergeants mess, all my dad's mates told be I was now the man of the house and had to look after my sister and mum. This was my dad's fellow soldiers who I looked up to and admired. I took what they said onboard, to the point I used to get into fights for anything I perceived to be an attack on my mum or sister. If anyone said or done anything I thought was out of turn, I'd go in all guns blazing. I didn't care how old or how big they were or even how many there were. So that got me into a chain of bad behaviour, I got a reputation as a fighter, with that came more fights. I've always had a quick temper so that didn't help. In all honesty, I wanted to grieve the loss of my dad, I just didn't know how, I was angry with the army and I was angry with the world. This vicious cycle carried on until my early twenties. The break in the cycle came when I ended up getting into serious trouble with the police for a fight outside a nightclub. There is absolutely nothing like waking up on your first day in prison to make you take stock of your life!

    I learned then that I needed to grow up and stop being angry with the world, I also learned that somehow I had to begin the grieving process with my dad. The first chance I got, I spoke about my dad to my friends and family. Usually I would only speak about him if I got drunk and was in a maudlin mood. Then it all came out the wrong way. Having spoken to friends and family, I told them I felt I was weak if I showed emotion and I'd be letting my dad, his friends and my family down by doing so. They helped me realise I wasn't superman, I couldn't take on the weight that my dad's friends had unwittingly piled on me, it was unfair and unrealistic. They listened to how I felt and helped me realise I had to let go of the anger and to start remembering the good things in my life instead of having one foot in the past. I have to say this was something so new to me it felt wrong, but it worked. Slowly I started looking forwards. So for me, the way in which I overcame was to seek help, to share and to not be afraid of showing emotion. I also had to face up to some realities along the way too though, that the position I'd found myself in wasn't anyone else's fault but my own. That on its own turned me around with my attitude and behaviour. Never looked back or gotten into trouble since so it must have worked for me. 22 years since my lowest day waking up in a cell and now I wake up every day thankful for my wife, children and all my family. It could have been so different!
     
  19. DeanSUNIAIU

    DeanSUNIAIU Modder

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    Had a mentally abusive girlfriend who ended the relationship when she got bored of me being out of work and having no money so ended the relationship leaving me homeless with two kids.

    Moved in with my grandparents for 18 months, landed on my feet after a couple of months and bagged a job within the Ministry of Defence, pay was triple anything I’d made previously.

    Saved every penny (grandparents didn’t charge me a penny, even though I offered) bought a house outright in cash, had the house updated and decorated, moved in with kids and new girlfriend.

    Got engaged, then got head hunted by the Royal Air Force, which is where I currently work, on an even better salary, bought a second house, again, in cash, which is currently undergoing renovation, which will be a rental.

    Best thing that’s happened to me was getting out of that abusive relationship. Life sure is grand for me now.
     
  20. satisfiedwimp

    satisfiedwimp Minimodder

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    Oh wow, dude, you sure did went on a roller coaster ride on that one. Congrats on your achievements, just keep your feet on the ground and you will live a humble better life.
     
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