What's the most pressure/stress you've been under?

[Hong Kong Blue]

Following on from the Marcus Trescothick thread and previous threads regarding Stan and professional sportsmen's inability to feel stress because they get paid.

I'd be interested in seeing what the most pressure/stress people have been under.

Extra marks for nervous breakdowns and as ever I look forward to Mad Cyril's contribution.

 

[Matt the Shrimp]

Conducting the advocacy as a 6mth qualified in a one-day adjudication hearing over a final account dispute where the amount claimed was £750,000.

I have to say... I f***ing loved it. My brain goes up a gear when I'm really under pressure.

We'd offered £170K before the hearing. We settled at £160K after the hearing. I'd say that was job done.

Only managed to sleep about 2 hours the night before, though. I was cacking it.

 

[Interpol Shrimper]

Mine's split really.

A couple of years ago, I got made redundant then had the pressure of finding something else which I did almost straightaway so hardly ate into my payoff. Unfortunately though within half an hour of starting my new job I realised I'd made a tremendous mistake - hence why I always advise people never to work for a certain well known Scottish retail bank with offices in South East Essex! I couldn't stand most of the people I worked with, my immediate supervisor & their boss and worst of all this scary psycho bird who had caused a huge domestic between me & my Mrs worked down the office. It got so bad I developed a nervous tick - I'd be sat on the sofa at night really dreading the next day & then it would appear, to much hilarity from the good lady. It got so bad that after a weekend in NYC (well remember I had the redundancy cash to fritter) that I decided I couldn't go on & immediately handed in my notice the Tuesday I went back to work. I left New Years Eve 2004 & the second I walked out of the door the stress & pressure left & so did the nervous tick.

Recently (e.g. past 18 months), I've had to contend with: -
New baby
House not selling and having to bridge on new property
Car problems
Contract not getting renewed so having to get new job
Having a minor operation
Other family illness
SUFC almost blowing the league title

This has resulted in current health problems of my own but this isn't the forum to discuss those in.

 

[Uncle Leo]

Nearly losing W4 Shrimperette to a very rare and usually fatal virus at the start of last year was no cakewalk.

 

[Mad Cyril]

How do you quantify stress?

Is a bit of sledging from the Aussie wicket keeper more stressful than working long hours in a job you hate or being unable to pay your mortgage/feed your kids?

 

[The Artful Shrimper]

I am stress free.
I therefore substitute angst by writing as many annoying irate letters and emails just to pi$$ people off.

However I have had a stressy year with PC Worlds computer, though... that turned to pity within a month, and a farce soon after.

 

[Matt the Shrimp]

Oh, we're on about long-term stress.  That prize goes to my first pupil master.  I spent four months sittting 2 ft away at the same desk from a man whose guts I hated, who treated me like his personal skivvy (*) and who considered that part of my "training" was basically to be treated like sh*t - never thanked for my work, never looked at except to have scorn poured on me - because that's how it had been done in his day.

(*e.g. to walk through the door and have a box of lemsip chucked at me with the words "make me one of those, pleeeeease" - with the last word said in the most possibly insincere manner imaginable.)

The low point was probably doing a 36-hr all nighter for him to write an advice which he'd needed to do for a client, forgot to do, and then dumped on me with a week to go.  It was 24-page detailed advice on contractual and litigation strategies.  In 24 pages, he changed 4 words.  He sent it out, and billed it as his own.  And did he thank me?  Did he f***.

He's no longer at the Chambers in question.  Sadly, it's because he's been promoted to the Bench.

I developed a sty - which for me, one of the least stressed people I know, as a rule - was a bit of a shock.  I had no idea what was wrong with me or why my eye was closing up.

Oh, and his piece de resistance  was to ensure my chances of tenancy in that Chambers were f***ed by slagging me off to all and sundry and basically putting me in the situation where I hated the thought of going to that building on a daily basis.

Doing Christmas shopping, food shopping, placing of bets and fetching the dry-cleaning for my following pupil master didn't seem so bad after that.

And they wonder why the Bar is dying on its arse.

 

[Hong Kong Blue]

Quote[/b] (Mad Cyril @ Nov. 14 2006,15:17)]How do you quantify stress?

Is a bit of sledging from the Aussie wicket keeper more stressful than working long hours in a job you hate or being unable to pay your mortgage/feed your kids?

I was hoping for a response a bit more imaginative from your good self.

What constitutes stress and quantifying it would, I would have thought, be an entirely subjective matter.

I think the most stress I've been under was when I was working on a couple of corporate transactions which completed within a day or two of each other. One was purchasing a multinational company, the other was selling the franchise of a well-known fast food outlet to which Michael Ricketts has, I understand, a fondness. Both were working to ridiculously tight deadlines and both were for substantial sums of money that could build Fossets Farm several times over. I was working 120+ hour weeks for about 5 weeks. I think the relentlessness of it and knowing that I couldn't afford to make a mistake and had to concentrate the entire time, would probably be comparable to that experienced by a test cricketer. I think I coped with that pressure fine, and to an extent thrived on it, but at the same time I was also aware that I couldn't keep going like that for ever.

 

[Slipperduke]

I tried to have a discreet fart outside my date's house once and I damn nearly followed through into my pants.

 

[Desert Shrimper]

Quote[/b] (Slipperduke @ Nov. 14 2006,16:32)]I tried to have a discreet fart outside my date's house once and I damn nearly followed through into my pants.

How did you cope?

 

[Blue Missy]

I think last year for me. My cousin died in the new year to a nasty form of cancer - 2 months later, her mum (my aunt) died - probably partly down the fact that she had lost her only daughter, then a month later, her sister (my other aunt) died and then to top it all off my upstairs neighbour hung himself.

I then started a new job in recruitment which was SO stressful - I absolutely hated it, my boss and the people I worked with and vow never to go back to the profession ever again - it is just not for me!

Needless to say, I very glad that those few years are over. I no longer work for the rubbish company that I was working for and (touch wood) nobody has died this year! I'd like to keep it that way!

 

[Xàbia Shrimper]

Sitting atop the snow-covered peak of Radalijici in Bosnia-Hercegovina in the winter of 1996 manning a rebroadcast station for the MND(SW) sector of NATO's IFOR peackeeping mission; a couple of locals, very ****ed in both senses of the word, opened up on our position one evening with automatic fire from some woods just outside the barbed wire perimeter. The communications detachment I was commanding at the time was the closest to the infiltration and the wall of our portakabin turned quickly into a passable impression of swiss cheese, destroying a much-loved poster of Kylie in the process. I and a colleague hit the deck and then crawled to our weapons standing in a rack close to the door as bits of wall and (we suppose) bullets filled the air above us. We could hear our infantry section back-up (Green Howards, if I remember right) charge past the door and within seconds a GPMG open up directly outside, laying down suppressing fire into the woods from where the automatic fire was coming whilst a couple of the lads flanked either side to try and nail these suckers. A few more seconds later and the incoming fire stopped; the only sound outside was the shouted instructions of the section leader; the only sound inside was our very heavy and very quick breathing followed by a bout of uncontrollable laughter and a hell of a lot of shaking ~ it was the first time I had ever come under fire. And it wouldn't be the last.

A few weeks later - after a period of R&R back in the UK - I was taking a young subaltern to his new (and probably first) command in Bihac in north-west Bosnia along a notorious route from MND (SW) headquarters at Banja Luka. He'd already got us lost twice by ignoring my experience (I had already be in country for four months) and taking us down a succession of dead-ends. It was just after New Year's Day. The road was thick with snow - with more falling from the sky - but we were all trained in winter driving and I knew I could handle the conditions. As I slid the landrover around a succession of corners in the style of Colin Macrae or Hannu Mikkola, the young officer grew more concerned and eventually ordered me to pull over and put snow chains on the wheels. Reluctantly, after suggesting that this wasn't the best place to stop, I pulled over to the side of the road and we started to fix the snow chains to the front wheels. Shots sounded in the wooded slopes around us but that was quite normal in this stage of the peacekeeping mission. Suddenly the snow-covered bank behind us exploded as a flurry of fairly large calibre bullets passed just over our heads and smashed into earth, sending snow and dirt flying in all directions. I vividly remember is the officer's panic-stricken face peering over the bonnet of the landrover and staring at me for a few seconds before he suggested that we forget the snow-chains and get on our way. "That's the best f%&king idea you've had all day ... sir!" I replied, jumped into the cab and slid off into the distance towards Bihac, throwing a few seriously f%&ked-off glances at the young officer who sat in silence in the passenger seat for the rest of the journey.

I'm sure Chadded can come up with a few more up-to-date gems on operational duty; those two moments, for me, are I think the most stressed/pressured I felt in my life.

 

[Slipperduke]

Quote[/b] (The Bloke In The Pram Shop @ Nov. 14 2006,16:45)]

Quote[/b] (Slipperduke @ Nov. 14 2006,16:32)]I tried to have a discreet fart outside my date's house once and I damn nearly followed through into my pants.

How did you cope?

I had four years of counselling to deal with the 'suspected impact trauma'. Still, it wasn't all bad. There was a 476 page publically funded study entitled, "The Turtle's Head And The Risks Faced By Nervous Young Men In Society."

 

[jstallan]

Back in April 1999 I have to say I made it through the most stressful period of my life. Within a 3 month period :-

1. Changed job (to work further away and enduring the most stressful part of the M25)
2. Became a father
3. Moved house
4. Got divorced (and got huge bill)

Seems that all was missing from my life was death for a 'full house'.

Looking back I wondered how I coped - but I did and now everything else is a piece of p155 (apart from the current SUFC league position)

 

[Shrimp in a Kilt]

We have two adopted kids, the younger had a traumatic first three years before she came to us so her behaviour was challenging. My wife started to take it personally, so she would give the kid a hard time - but in public she was great with her. This, coupled with some other very strange behaviours  from my wife  was bad enough that I was trying to get professionals involved, but frankly no one was believing me - to the extent that when I wrote to our GP in confidence, he told my missus that I had written to him about her. I was pretty much at my wit's end, because if I had walked out I almost certainly wouldn't have got custody of the kids, and as my daughter wasn't yet adopted, she would have gone back into the fostering system - another set of  parents letting her down so I had no idea what to do for the best.

Eventually a friend called at the house unexpectedly when I was at work,  and she caught my wife at her worst, and called social services. Because I now had a witness, they had to take things seriously but no one had any idea what was wrong with my wife. I had to  leave a job I loved, and take part time work so I could stay close to the family and be main parent. Eventually, my Mother-in-law called to tell us that my wife's dad, who had  died a couple of years before, (he had left the family when my wife was 2) had been diagnosed with Huntington's Disease. She had known for two years, but the thought that her daughter might have it had been too much to contend with and she hadn't been able to bring herself to tell us. My wife was tested, and she has HD*, which very much explains her symptoms and behaviour. This meant that I had to give up working and become a full time carer. While all this was going on my Dad died, followed within a year by my Mum, who died this March, and we were also involved in a court case where my daughter was a witness against a local man accused of child rape which was interesting in itself because of the intimidation from  his family, eg getting my tyres slashed, threatening phone calls.

I have found to my suprise that dealing with my wife's illness and all its implications, having to give up work, being threatened over the court case, suddenly becoming effectively a single parent to the kids I can cope with OK. But the most stressful part  by far was when I knew that there was something far wrong, and simply couldn't get anyone (or at least any healthcare professional) to take me seriously.   :

And I have a big debt to Tilly and Brush and the team, because, though it might sound a bit silly or trivial, the success of the team over the past 30 months has helped keep me smiling while all this has been going on.


*Some info about Huntington's

 

[MK Shrimper]

Crumbs SIAK, sort of puts things into perspective a little bit.

 

[beemamad]

Quote[/b] (Shrimp in a Kilt @ Nov. 14 2006,18:30)]We have two adopted kids, the younger had a traumatic first three years before she came to us so her behaviour was challenging. My wife started to take it personally, so she would give the kid a hard time - but in public she was great with her. This, coupled with some other very strange behaviours  from my wife  was bad enough that I was trying to get professionals involved, but frankly no one was believing me - to the extent that when I wrote to our GP in confidence, he told my missus that I had written to him about her. I was pretty much at my wit's end, because if I had walked out I almost certainly wouldn't have got custody of the kids, and as my daughter wasn't yet adopted, she would have gone back into the fostering system - another set of  parents letting her down so I had no idea what to do for the best.

Eventually a friend called at the house unexpectedly when I was at work,  and she caught my wife at her worst, and called social services. Because I now had a witness, they had to take things seriously but no one had any idea what was wrong with my wife. I had to  leave a job I loved, and take part time work so I could stay close to the family and be main parent. Eventually, my Mother-in-law called to tell us that my wife's dad, who had  died a couple of years before, (he had left the family when my wife was 2) had been diagnosed with Huntington's Disease. She had known for two years, but the thought that her daughter might have it had been too much to contend with and she hadn't been able to bring herself to tell us. My wife was tested, and she has HD*, which very much explains her symptoms and behaviour. This meant that I had to give up working and become a full time carer. While all this was going on my Dad died, followed within a year by my Mum, who died this March, and we were also involved in a court case where my daughter was a witness against a local man accused of child rape which was interesting in itself because of the intimidation from  his family, eg getting my tyres slashed, threatening phone calls.

I have found to my suprise that dealing with my wife's illness and all its implications, having to give up work, being threatened over the court case, suddenly becoming effectively a single parent to the kids I can cope with OK. But the most stressful part  by far was when I knew that there was something far wrong, and simply couldn't get anyone (or at least any healthcare professional) to take me seriously.   :

And I have a big debt to Tilly and Brush and the team, because, though it might sound a bit silly or trivial, the success of the team over the past 30 months has helped keep me smiling while all this has been going on.


*Some info about Huntington's

After reading that my original thoughts pale into insignifigance, there is really no following that. My most sincere thoughts must go out to you. Well done  !!

 

[Shrimp in a Kilt]

Quote[/b] (beemamad @ Nov. 14 2006,20:49)]After reading that my original thoughts pale into insignifigance, there is really no following that. My most sincere thoughts must go out to you. Well done  !!

I hope I haven't stopped people posting on this thread, that certainly wasn't my intention.

I have learnt a lot over the past while. Firstly, it is amazing how many people are putting up with awful situations behind closed doors - up here in the Highlands, having an alchoholic husband or wife is pretty common and that can be hell, especially if there are kids too, so I find I am much less judgemental about the way people are. Also I used to be pretty intolerant of any sign of mental breakdown or illness, 'cos that means that they must be weak, right? But of course that is just bullsh!t and I understand that a lot better now. And also, though in the middle of all of that I felt really sorry for myself and felt like I must have had the worst deal in the world, it turns out (of course!) that there are plenty who are in a much worse situation than I was. Just in  the Huntington's community, there are very many who find that not only have they had to be carer to a parent-in-law and then their partner, but some of their children have the disease, and they then have to watch them slowly deteriorate and need ever more help - something we are, thankfully, spared because our two are adopted. Others I know who live in the States have to struggle like mad because of their crap Health and Social Security system. Tony Blair may have his faults, but he introduced Child Tax Credits, and they are what make the difference for me.

And everyone is different. I have survived what has happened to me, but I would never have got through what Matt had to put up with - I would have resigned long before the 4 months were up, and I would have been a quivering wreck huddling under a landrover in Bosnia if I had been machine-gunned like Mike.

PS And of course I've learnt that Southend are INDEED the World's Greatest Team!

 

[Ulysses]

Ok my story, before this happened i hardly ever got stressed and was a reknowned laid back character!

I was implicated in a big scandal with my previous job around 2002.  I was basically bullied by a superior into copying illegal sensitive material and when it all came to light i was dumped in it by them. Got suspended pending an internal enquiry and basically made a scapegoat. Spent five weeks at home, by week 2 couldn't sleep went to doctor. Pills etc turned into a right mess could concentrate family thought i was about to go in nuthouse. Just lost it for a few weeks (stress, pressure arggh!) Remember going to the supermarket and getting freaked out when choosing crisps! The Pills man the pills......arggh!!!

Finally the results of investigation came and was given final written warning and then shock horror a £3k (sweetner) payrise. Buttered me up good and proper!

Went back to work freaked out again had 2 weeks off stressed. World caved in and had 10 sessions with a stress counciller (only nice Saffer i've met).

Suffer from stress in moderation now but sometimes see signs of how i was then.

 

[Matt the Shrimp]

Quote[/b] (Slipperduke @ Nov. 14 2006,17:22)]There was a 476 page publically funded study entitled, "The Turtle's Head And The Risks Faced By Nervous Young Men In Society."

I've always preferred the euphemism: "The Mole is at the Door..."