Mental Health VS Physical Health in stress situations

To be honest there is no competition when it comes to the effects hard work and stress have on someone with Mental health or Physical health issues, both suffer in there own way when worked to hard. But there difference is most of the time you can always see the effects on a person with physical problems, you can see the sweat, you can see them struggling to catch there breath, you can see there pain.

You can't see a Mental health problem, you can't see how or if they are struggling, therefore it is often all to easy to see a mentally ill person as being "lazy" or "not commited" to there work or whatever situation it is that requires your focus and attention. Well i am going to give you a small idea with a situation i had today at home...Building a summerhouse.

Now i am sure you know or know someone who will agree that it is not easy doing a job like this by yourself.

Now physically i am perfectly fine i have no problems with that, but i am helping my Dad who some of you may remember me mentioning had a heart attack resulting in a operation and then a minor stroke both earlier this year, so he quite rightly gets stressed due to struggling physically and as we all do sometimes he will take that out on me especially if i do something wrong as i am often quite as you would say slow.

Now in my case the more i am working the worse my OCD symptoms get, making sure i pick up the "right" screw out of the tool box becomes a almost impossible task, making sure i climb a ladder in the right order ie left foot, then right foot becomes a struggle and making sure tools and other items are placed just right is a MUST in my mind and this is not out of perfectionism i really think something really bad will happen to me if i don't, here is a list of things i remember having to get right during this task

Picking up the "right" screw out of a big box of screws

Placing items such as ladders, boxes, parts of the shed in the "Correct" place and position

Correcting my walking movements everywhere i walk

Making sure i touch things a certain amount of times

Making sure i grip parts of the shed in a certain way when we carry it

Now i don't work, but you can imagine this scenario for other Mental health sufferers in a working day to day situation, My Dad by now was knackered and i understand why and you could SEE it and any decent person would tell him to stop and rest as i tried to.

Now if you looked at me unless you knew me like my Dad does, you would have no idea how much i was mentally struggling, how hard it was and how bad my OCD had spiked regardless of how hard the work has been and this is a problem Mental health face in the work place.

I was so mentally drained that i literally couldn't decide for over a hour what i could or "couldn't" have for my dinner, people who don't understand would see me as a poor decision maker but hey, something worth remembering for anyone looking to understand Mental Health better.

Thankfully for me i feel much better now or at least compared to how i was earlier, just like physical problems sometimes you just need to relax