Posts by Jerry Martinez5

Douglas Morales2 said:Unfortunately, I have both a college degree and a Master's, along with a mountain of mental health struggles. I'm actually dealing with dual diagnoses: depressive-anxiety disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. I've dealt with depression since the start of puberty—something my "wonderful parents" just brushed off as "growing pains." But the depression didn't go away after puberty passed, and I've been seeing a psychiatrist for five years now.

My parents, who should be showing much more empathy—though they actually believe they are being understanding—have told me that these things aren't even real and that psychiatrists aren't actual doctors. I won't go into details (though maybe I will in a journal) unless I decide to end my life today. Honestly, I'm just waiting for my husband to get home from work because my son is not even three yet and can't be left alone.

All in all, this prolonged depression and anxiety resulted in me taking far too many anti-anxiety meds, which landed me in the hospital. That time was a genuine, desperate attempt to numb the anxiety, but today... today I am consciously thinking about the end. I can't take it anymore.

And for the icing on the cake: yesterday, my "wonderful" father blamed everything on me (after the hospital situation, I lost my job). My only regret is that I didn't tell him that HE should have acted like a father during my childhood instead of acting like a dictator.

Sorry for the long post; I just wanted to share that I have a very close connection to the issue of people who think mental illness is just an excuse, and it's truly terrible...

Despite the depression and everything else, you finished college, got your Master’s, entered a relationship, got married, and found a job.👍 👍 👍

That’s exactly my point—diagnoses and issues don't have to be excuses. Was everything harder for you than it was for people without those problems? Yeah, obviously much harder. But you made it happen! 👍

You really should be proud of yourself.

And your parents, clearly, are just absolute morons. Luckily, you didn't let them completely wreck your life.🙏

It’s tough to accept that we have parents who don't want what's best for us. Who don't actually care about our well-being at all. But when you have parents like that, I guess there's no healing without pushing them to the very edge of your life.

Did you manage to clear all those debts with the loan?

Anyway, congrats! 👍

You're still young, there's plenty of life left! Back when you bought your place, everyone was obsessed with the idea that owning a home was mandatory, so tons of people ended up in some pretty unsustainable messes. I mean, if my parents managed to get a house under their roof by the time they were 40, why on earth should I need to own my own apartment—let alone a nice one—by the age of 25 or 30? It’s great if someone can pull it off, but honestly, I don't know anyone who actually did it without massive help from someone else.

Congrats, Rebecca Scott3 😉

I'm glad you pulled it off, though I guess I was more than a little skeptical.

The main thing is that you told her how you felt without making it some huge deal where you can't hang out anymore. Who knows what happens next, maybe. People don't just change overnight. But once someone actually realizes where they messed up, most of the work is done, I suppose!

silvergull45 said:Sorry if I stepped on any toes there, seriously. It’s exactly because of stuff like this that I would NEVER co-sign for anyone, but hey, I’m not gonna judge someone who did it once and got absolutely burned. Sometimes you just trust people way too much and end up screwing yourself over. I know guys who act as guarantors for their coworkers—like, they’re best friends, they practically live at each other's houses, and then it's "hey, be my co-signer." The other guy agrees, thinking, "it'll be fine, right?" Especially when they're like, "I'm the godfather to his kid, we work together," and all that stuff...

Exactly. People just don't realize they have to take responsibility for their own actions. "He's the godfather to my kid, we work together... he won't screw me over." Instead of thinking: "He's the godfather to my kid, we work together... am I actually prepared to risk paying off his loan if he defaults? Should I sign this or not?"

They simply refuse to grasp what responsibility means, or what "signing your name" actually entails. It's like parking illegally, driving without a map, or speeding. When the ticket arrives, it's always the police officer's fault, never their own.

Responsibility: you have the right to say NO.

And honestly, the comparison to a veteran is ridiculous. These guys have survived situations where people were shooting at them, or they've watched a friend kill someone defenseless, yet it never occurs to them that some guy might just stop paying a loan at their expense.😵

Give me a break.

mellowrider10 said:Thanks a lot. I’ve been hunting for an overseas mortgage for a while now because getting one here in the States is impossible thanks to the Red Cross and all those endless blacklists. But honestly? I wouldn't give a single cent to anyone upfront. Crime in this country is blooming like nowhere else in the Western world. It feels like everyone just jumps at the chance to exploit an impoverished, struggling population. They should round up that whole gang, pay back the victims, and throw those thieves in jail—or better yet, sentence them to community service with nothing but one diet meal a day. People are so desperate, robbed blind, and left totally unprotected that they end up looking like fools by falling into even bigger... well, I won't go there. Most likely, they borrow money just to hand it over to scammers, while the people actually holding the cash just walk away clean. Man, if I had just five minutes of power, or whatever the phrase is...

Look: if you're on a blacklist, what good is a loan? It won't help you; you'll just end up losing what little you have left. If you haven't been able to pay back your current loans or handle your overdrafts, I guess nothing is going to help you manage another loan (which you wouldn't be able to repay consistently anyway).

And if you end up falling for some predatory loan shark, I guess you can't really blame the government for that.

I’m not reading all five pages: has anyone actually secured a loan from an Austrian bank, or are you all just victims of a scam?

Jonathan Ward59 said:I managed to pull it off
A lot of you seem to think you can just walk into a bank by yourself and walk out with a loan
But yeah, it doesn't work like that
, it didn't work for me either
which is why I ended up going through a broker
There are plenty of people out there with loans abroad, but it’s not a guarantee—tons of them get rejected outright

That’s exactly why those brokers exist—they work with them, and honestly, that's who you should be talking to
And if anyone actually thinks they can just stroll into a bank alone
well, good luck to them, I guess

It’s no secret what the interest rates look like—I’ve already laid it all out right here
What else do you want from me? Should I just post my entire signed loan agreement
so you can all take a look?

Look, I’m just not buying it. The whole "I'll email you the details" thing feels like a total bait-and-switch. If US banks won't approve loans for people without local income, how is this broker supposed to just fix that...

Maybe I'd be more convinced if you actually shared some specifics. How does the bank secure the loan? What kind of collateral are we talking about—mortgages, co-signers, insurance? And what were the fees?

Also, why even bother with a broker for an international loan at 7% interest when you could probably get a better rate right here in the States?

Lawrence Wright7, drop the price. I mean, is anyone even calling you? How many people actually showed up to see the apartment?

Jonathan Ward59 said:I ended up taking out a loan abroad at a 7% rate
since I've been staying on top of my payments, they dropped it to 6.35%
and they even mentioned it’ll go down again eventually
if things get tight, it's way easier to negotiate with them than with our local banks
they don't start breathing down your neck with notices the second you miss a beat—they actually show some common sense
either way, it's better dealing with people overseas than with the crooks we have here

Could you please explain publicly how you managed to secure a loan overseas?

I've been reading up on this and asking around, and so far, I haven't seen any way for a foreign bank to grant a loan to someone living in the US if they don't have income in that specific country.

A friend of mine was actually offered a loan by an Austrian bank before he even asked. Why? Because he had an account there and had been depositing part of his salary into it for a few years.

When did you take out that 7% loan? Under US law, isn't there a waiting period of a few days?

William Cooper11 said:This makes sense because anyone aiming for special ops has to be in peak psychophysical condition. These people are trained and mentally braced for whatever hell awaits them in combat or similar situations. Unstable individuals simply don't make the cut for units like that—at least not until a mass mobilization sweeps up every able-bodied man and then everything goes to hell.😢
sorry for the off-topic!

Sure, maybe in 2010, but that wasn't the case back in 1991. Back then, these people weren't being screened or trained according to today's standards for special ops. It was war; they basically just started training within the local resistance.

Kyle Lee7 said:She was only thirteen at the time.
It’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that events like sexual assault (whether it happens at thirteen, thirty-three, or any other age), experiencing the horrors of war, or losing someone close to you wouldn't cause trauma. In fact, it would be an understatement to say they don't cause significant psychological trauma...

The truth is, extreme, overwhelming stress is enough to inflict deep trauma on absolutely anyone, even someone who seems to be the most mentally resilient person you know.

Sure. But I guess that stress isn't going to trigger bulimia, anorexia, or anxiety and depression in your most stable individual.

I'm dealing with a ton of stress at my job right now, and watching how people handle it is interesting. There’s a massive range of reactions to the exact same situation.

Kyle Lee7 said:She was only thirteen at the time.
It’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that events like sexual assault (whether it happens at thirteen, thirty-three, or any other age), experiencing the horrors of war, or losing someone close to you wouldn't cause trauma. In fact, it would be an understatement to say they don't cause significant psychological trauma...

The truth is, extreme, overwhelming stress is enough to inflict deep trauma on absolutely anyone, even someone who seems to be the most mentally resilient person you know.

Look, I’m no psychologist or psychiatrist. My degree is in social sciences—barely touches psychology, really—but I have been through psychotherapy. My therapist told me this: out of 10 people who go through the exact same traumatic event, only those with a pre-existing psychological predisposition will develop PTSD. Not everyone, obviously. It's common knowledge that not every veteran has PTSD, not even the guys in Special Forces who have seen some serious shit.

It all comes down to personality structure. Some people can handle more, others less. I guess.

So you finally admitted you were resisting 😉

It’s probably best to just lay it all out for your therapist when you get the chance. But generally speaking, major traumas aren't usually caused by stuff that happened when you were fifteen; they stem from much, much earlier. I'm not saying that incident wasn't traumatic—I'm just saying it likely isn't the root cause of your issues. It was more likely just a trigger.

But you didn't actually explain why you think it was abuse. It isn't abuse every single time you get drunk and sleep with someone when it wasn't exactly what you planned 🤷

If you had said the guy was 35, fine. But he was your age.

I'm not saying you're "to blame," per se, but look—you were drunk and I guess you liked it, at least in that moment. You probably thought that was just how things worked.

How do you even know you have anxiety and depression? Who gave you that diagnosis? Maybe you should go back to that doctor and ask them the same thing. These heavy issues you're bringing up aren't happening because we got wasted once and hooked up with someone we wouldn't normally take seriously; they're happening because of stuff from a long time ago, back in early childhood.

It would be better if you just wrote about what's actually bothering you. Like, how is your relationship with your parents?

Yeah. I went down to my local Chase branch to see if I could restructure my loan to lower the monthly payments. Just being proactive, since I'm honestly a little worried about my paycheck getting cut. The guy there told me it’s basically a non-starter—unless I actually get laid off, or if my pay drops by more than half, or if I go out on maternity leave.

Makes sense. It would be a totally different story if I were missing payments. If I were behind, they'd probably be tripping over themselves to offer me some "special" restructuring plan at 12-14% interest. 😁

Lawrence Cruz said:To specific amount for child support just doesn't sit right with me. At the end of the day, the kid is a child—there’s zero debate that support needs to be paid. Honestly, it’s pretty pathetic that things had to escalate to a court order for a wage garnishment just because the payments weren't being made in the first place.
From what I understand about how things work in the private sector, child support is capped at one-third of your income, not half a paycheck.

Maybe he just hasn't been paying for a long time, so now he's paying in installments to cover the back pay.

I think I heard or read somewhere—I can't quite pin down the source—that in these situations, loan payments (in general) shouldn't exceed 1/3 of income. And by "income," they mean what's left AFTER child support is taken out.
So if the salary is $4,400 and child support is $2,000, you're left with $733 as his actual income.
By that logic, the monthly payment should be capped at 1/3 of $733 = $733.33.

As if banks would ever step up and automatically lower rates just because a payment hits a third of someone's income. That might have been a rule when applying for the loan, but if you took out a bad variable-rate mortgage and then your salary gets cut, your payment could end up eating 80 percent of your check. I guess banks don't really care about that.

I definitely wouldn't recommend drugs or any of that alternative magic nonsense. It can get incredibly dangerous, just like what this user described while trying to investigate her "past lives":

feralhound55 said:Hmm... if you actually put some thought into it, you’d probably realize certain past events have hit you harder than you care to admit. Or maybe they haven't.

I can give you my take... I've been wrestling with all sorts of limiting beliefs and baggage that kept me stuck for years. I tried meditation and specific breathing techniques—the kind designed to bypass the conscious mind and scrub the subconscious clean. I even went through regression therapy, which shed light on a lot of things, including the core issues I was fighting.

Now... as much as it helped, it wasn't all sunshine. Working on the subconscious without involving the analytical mind—without any actual processing—can get messy when all that suppressed junk starts surfacing. Honestly, after the regression, I felt incredibly strange; it took forever to digest the new info, but that wasn't even the worst part. It gave me a completely different perspective on life, time, people, and problems—both mine and everyone else's. Which was great, except I got pretty lost in it all. The world started looking... weird. In a way, I lost my grip on the "reality" we're all supposed to function in. Plus, I had no idea what to do with the experience or how to heal the raw wound that was blocking me. Neither the regression practitioner nor the people teaching the breathing and meditation techniques gave me anything intellectually satisfying—it was mostly just, "keep practicing." Who knows what would've happened if I had? I got too lost in it and eventually just quit.

The other thing I should mention is bioenergy therapy. While I was feeling that lost, I started sessions with someone close to me, and that actually brought me back down to earth. I did 11 sessions—about 45 minutes each—once a week. But the best part was what happened *between* them. Around the second or third session, my head finally cleared. As time passed, I became more aware of the fears and beliefs holding me back, rearranging my past experiences... It worked almost like psychotherapy, except I was doing the work solo. It felt like actual therapy sessions; a problem would just pop into my head out of nowhere—triggered by daily life—and I'd analyze it, look at it from a new angle, and clear it out. Every day, I felt myself getting stronger. I built up my confidence and finally dumped the old garbage. A lot of stuff I’d totally forgotten resurfaced, too. For me, personally, that was the real path to freedom.

You might just end up piling on new, even more dangerous problems that you won't be able to handle when they finally hit.

Kimberly Johnson4 said:Alright... so I guess I have to ask: how do you even define a problem? I can't really point to one specific moment, or some life-altering event, or anything like that... It’s more like someone just wiped out all the actual memories, but left these heavy, bad feelings lingering behind where they used to be.... I don't know how else to put it...

Maybe try actually writing down what's bothering you?

What kind of bad feelings are we talking about? When do they hit, and how? Like, how exactly are they getting in your way?

rapidgull3 said:I wasn't referring to one specific thing, just speaking generally. But if you want examples: being late, forgetfulness, lack of focus, slow processing, brain fog, stuttering, obsessive thoughts, and so on. Basically, any excuse used when someone fails to perform. This leads to a serious issue: people hiding mental health struggles often end up being labeled as "weird" or "lazy" by those around them.

Look, those aren't exactly mental health issues that warrant some kind of grand explanation. They’re just symptoms, really—the kind of things that are easy enough to mask. I guess it might actually be better if they just write you off as being weird or lazy, rather than having to sit there explaining that it's all due to your psychological struggles.

If you need thirty minutes to get to work, leave an hour early. I used to be terrible at being on time—honestly, it was a massive issue for me. Now that I’m working, I make sure to show up 15 or 20 minutes early every single day. Just a rule I live by now, I guess.
Forgetfulness and being scattered: I guess you end up carrying a notebook everywhere, and in it... Everything. You're signing up.
Stuttering: before any big meetings or important calls, just write down exactly what you need to say and practice it at home. Bring those notes with you. Keep them right in front of you on the table during every meeting. You might still stutter, I guess, but you'll get everything out. And that’s fine. It really is.

So many people deal with this kind of stuff. I guess the main thing is just being aware of what you're actually facing. You have to realize that you'll probably need to put in two to ten times more effort than someone who doesn't have these issues. It’s just the reality. Maybe try writing down exactly what the problem is and how you might be able to mitigate it. Just get it on paper.

You’ll probably be slower than the rest of them, I guess. But hey, that just means you'll still be grinding while they're all out grabbing coffee. You might even end up bringing work home. Coming in early, staying late... it's not exactly a tragedy.

It helps if you just put together some weird little caricature along the way. I guess people tend to forgive pretty much anything when it comes to oddballs. 😉

The real issue arises when you decide to go all in. I guess giving it everything you've got can be a bit of a problem. Maybe. Average, I guess.That’s just impossible. 🙂

ha, I totally missed the joke there 🤷

Rebecca Scott3, definitely let us know how it goes 😉

I guess I agree that a real friend would act the way you're planning. But honestly, my experience tells me it’s probably a waste of time. It’s never actually happened to me where someone was actually grateful because I stepped in 😢