Bad day at work, bad brain trying to destroy me
I'm going to try really hard to break down what happened yesterday and then a quite different reaction this morning.
Context - work web site traffic has gone down recently, boss obviously not happy, quite a few recent stressful work calls, but nothing major.
My mood - I'm fragile this year, not very resilient, not able to deal with stress, probably not working as hard as before, not as invested in any of it.
With that in mind, work call ended up feeling a bit like W and F telling me how crap I am. Obviously that's not exactly what happened, but it made me feel slightly exposed for things I probably should've been on top of a bit more.
My reaction - I don't want scrutiny, I don't want pressure. If you fuckers tell me off or stress me out, you make me feel like I'd be better off dead. Is that what you want, co-workers, do you want me to kill myself? If not, then why do you put me through this pain? Maybe I should slit your throats instead, you fucking cunts? (This is clearly a flight-or-fight response that Judy taught me about, let's come back to that later)
Why this reaction? Well, I'm unable to take even the mildest and most constructive criticism.
Why? Well, because my default view of myself is that I'm useless and unable to cope with the real world. And my default view of the real world is that it's terrifying and complicated and exhausting.
So...if you tell me off, or even hint that I need to try slightly harder at anything, my fear is that my world is about to come tumbling down; that I've fluked my way to getting this far and am about to be exposed for being a fraud and so I'll lose my job, never get another one, and live a life of poverty and shame.
What about this morning? Having slept on it, my feeling is a bit more like 'hmmm ok why don't I just do what needs to be done to fix this situation? there are probably some slightly simple changes that I can make and that'll improve things or at the very least it will look better and get W and F off my back for a while.'
So what did I do? I sent some messages round to my silly Billies telling them to do something differently. I don't like doing this on my day off, but I guess sometimes needs must. It didn't take long, and, as mentioned above, it looks good doesn't it? So it will probably get nasty scary people off my back.
So what's happened here and what can we learn for the future? I think if I'm in a call I'm going to feel stressed and under attack, so flight-or-fight will kick in, which will make me incapable of making any rational decisions or coming up with useful ideas. 12 hours later, however, I've calmed down and my normal brain is kind of back in control, and then I can fix things.
Could I communicate this to my work people? I have no fucking idea. Sometimes I feel like I should be more honest about my mental health problems, but I've always been too scared to do it. Maybe I could just say give me 12 hours to think about this (to calm down, but we don't need to mention that) and then something more productive can come of these calls?
BUT it would also be good if I could avoid annoying these people and getting into these situations in the first place, wouldn't it? And that probably involves working a bit harder and taking a bit more initiative, which I'm not great at. Maybe I can use the fear from calls like this as a reminder to keep on my toes a bit more. But life is too demanding, and I have other things on my mind, especially this year as I've been a lot less resilient/focused/energised since my Dad died.
Things to discuss with Borrell and Mummy - should I go down to a four day week? Should I take time off work altogether? Should I look for a new job and maybe even a totally different career? Can Borrell maybe have a few years of being the main money-maker? Or can I make this work by learning from the fact that even if I have initial flight-or-fight-based panic attacks, I will eventually calm down and realise that I'm not totally terrible and clueless at my job?
Think that's all for now. Argh.
Context - work web site traffic has gone down recently, boss obviously not happy, quite a few recent stressful work calls, but nothing major.
My mood - I'm fragile this year, not very resilient, not able to deal with stress, probably not working as hard as before, not as invested in any of it.
With that in mind, work call ended up feeling a bit like W and F telling me how crap I am. Obviously that's not exactly what happened, but it made me feel slightly exposed for things I probably should've been on top of a bit more.
My reaction - I don't want scrutiny, I don't want pressure. If you fuckers tell me off or stress me out, you make me feel like I'd be better off dead. Is that what you want, co-workers, do you want me to kill myself? If not, then why do you put me through this pain? Maybe I should slit your throats instead, you fucking cunts? (This is clearly a flight-or-fight response that Judy taught me about, let's come back to that later)
Why this reaction? Well, I'm unable to take even the mildest and most constructive criticism.
Why? Well, because my default view of myself is that I'm useless and unable to cope with the real world. And my default view of the real world is that it's terrifying and complicated and exhausting.
So...if you tell me off, or even hint that I need to try slightly harder at anything, my fear is that my world is about to come tumbling down; that I've fluked my way to getting this far and am about to be exposed for being a fraud and so I'll lose my job, never get another one, and live a life of poverty and shame.
What about this morning? Having slept on it, my feeling is a bit more like 'hmmm ok why don't I just do what needs to be done to fix this situation? there are probably some slightly simple changes that I can make and that'll improve things or at the very least it will look better and get W and F off my back for a while.'
So what did I do? I sent some messages round to my silly Billies telling them to do something differently. I don't like doing this on my day off, but I guess sometimes needs must. It didn't take long, and, as mentioned above, it looks good doesn't it? So it will probably get nasty scary people off my back.
So what's happened here and what can we learn for the future? I think if I'm in a call I'm going to feel stressed and under attack, so flight-or-fight will kick in, which will make me incapable of making any rational decisions or coming up with useful ideas. 12 hours later, however, I've calmed down and my normal brain is kind of back in control, and then I can fix things.
Could I communicate this to my work people? I have no fucking idea. Sometimes I feel like I should be more honest about my mental health problems, but I've always been too scared to do it. Maybe I could just say give me 12 hours to think about this (to calm down, but we don't need to mention that) and then something more productive can come of these calls?
BUT it would also be good if I could avoid annoying these people and getting into these situations in the first place, wouldn't it? And that probably involves working a bit harder and taking a bit more initiative, which I'm not great at. Maybe I can use the fear from calls like this as a reminder to keep on my toes a bit more. But life is too demanding, and I have other things on my mind, especially this year as I've been a lot less resilient/focused/energised since my Dad died.
Things to discuss with Borrell and Mummy - should I go down to a four day week? Should I take time off work altogether? Should I look for a new job and maybe even a totally different career? Can Borrell maybe have a few years of being the main money-maker? Or can I make this work by learning from the fact that even if I have initial flight-or-fight-based panic attacks, I will eventually calm down and realise that I'm not totally terrible and clueless at my job?
Think that's all for now. Argh.