"We'll take a holiday, I know you'd love me better"
Ok so here is what happened yesterday.
Let me start by explaining that while I was sick a few weeks ago, I worked from home so as not to contaminate everyone in the office. A few of those days I definitely felt dizzy and not really with-it. The Friday before coming back into the office, I must have not turned off the laptop before putting it in my laptop bag, and then took it to work Monday. This meant the hard drive was still spinning while I was moving the bag around and in transit, etc.
Monday and Tuesday I noticed the damn thing kept crashing. I'd get the Blue Screen of Death every 30 minutes to an hour and would have to re-start and re-open all my systems and my work. It was a hassle. So Wednesday I called IT, and they filed a ticket for Dell to come out and service the laptop for Friday after Thanksgiving. After running tests Wednesday, they found that I had hard drive damage from the disc spinning while in my bag. Oops. My bad! So Thursday was Thanksgiving so I told them I'd be at the office Friday, so Dell was planning coming then. I had planned to work from home but they said they'd be there Friday to give me a new hard drive. I spent all of Friday waiting and waiting, Dell never showed up. IT in-building backed up all my files. It took an hour.
Monday, the Dell guy shows up and the hard drive replacement takes approximately 2 minutes. It is done in the lobby. I take it back upstairs and give it to the IT lady to put the OS on it and restore my files to it. This takes 2 hours, and when she gives me the laptop back I had to reinstall a lot of my personal files and folders and then there were some errors and issues I encountered, basically, taking the whole damn day. I didn't get much work done AT ALL. And my cases were starting to pile up.
Tuesday. I got 3 cases in the morning. THE MORNING. We usually get about 3 cases per day with a regular rotation. I got a 2-hour "HOT" case, that was assigned to me before I even woke up in the morning because the coordinator didn't see "Hot" in the case anywhere. I had 3 Executives breathing down my neck at 8:15AM wondering why I had not updated them. I had just gotten in the office! And.. we had a meeting from 8:30AM - 9:38AM that was absolute crap. Repetitive, boring, frustrating. I got another case that day. I was still trying to catch up to all the cases I missed work on from Monday when they were doing my computer thing. I asked Melissa, my manager to put me in catch-up as I desperately needed it. I had so much work to do and was overwhelmed. I did not know where to start. She "skipped me in rotation" once. Great. A lot of good that did because I still got another case later.
So by now I have 12 cases and Wednesday rolls around, and I am STILL trying to get to the cases I missed from Monday! We have very tight restrictions on customer contact times (12 hours from when you get assigned the case) and some cases are sent as 'HOT' or 1-2 hour call-back times from Executives or the Office of the President. Tuesday I had gotten 3 calls from previous customers I had worked on cases for, saying I needed to call them ASAP blah blah blah. I couldn't, though, because I had active cases I really needed to get caught up on, and they weren't putting me in catch-up or taking me out of rotation, so of course when I got a 2-hour call back HOT case from this stupid stupid girl I had a case on 2 months ago and already called her the previous day and told her there was nothing more I could do for her, if her iPhone was broken she would have to contact Apple, AT&T does not warranty or service iPhones. Etc.
But she re-escalated and it got sent to me. Because I was her previous case worker. I don't know how to explain properly what happened next.. but.. I started panicking. I couldn't take it anymore. It was too much. Too much pressure and my brain just.. stops working with the right amount of stress and pressure. I regress. I shut down. I started crying my eyes out like a fucking child. I couldn't stop breathing heavy, I couldn't catch my breath. I had been sitting down for hours but felt like I had just ran a marathon. Then the tingly scalp and hands.. the hands begin to shake.. severe anxiety. I tried hard to make it go away. Suddenly came the sense of De-personalization where everything seems surreal, like I am in a movie, and I am not in my body, I am not myself, and everything looks dreamy and wrong like its not really there. I took a klonopin but those take a while to kick in, so I tried breathing in a paper bag but that did not help my hyperventilating.
I couldn't stand it.. I was freaking out.. everything swirling around and around in my head felt like it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and every little thought was magnified x10 and overwhelming me. I got this irresistible feeling of rage and terror and fought so hard to control myself but it was all I could do to keep from ripping the white board off my wall and slamming it into pieces and screaming. I felt like punching myself in the head. I felt like screaming loudly for the whole building to hear me. I can't explain why. It just happened. I just felt like doing something absolutely terrible to myself or my desk/work property. I did take some plastic knives and break them into pieces and throw them. It didn't help. I wanted to throw things. I felt out of control. I recognized the signs so I ran down, crying, to the locker room in the gym and called my mom and she tried to calm me down but said to call my doctor. I called and the secretary said he would call me back in a half hour when he got out of his meeting with a patient.
So I went to my manager's office and told her what happened. I was a little more calm at this point because the klonopin had kicked in. She said she was going to re-assign my cases for me and get people to help with them. Then the doctor called while I was in her office. He asked me a series of questions and told me I needed to go home and make sure I was not alone. He canceled my meeting with him for Dec 17 and then said to have me come in at noon on Friday. After getting off the line with him (oh and he gave me the help-line # too) I relayed this information to my manager who told me to take Thurs and Friday off and relax. She wouldn't let me go home by myself though and wanted me to call Stacy to see if she could either pick me up or meet me home if I was ok to drive. I told her I felt better because of the drugs but she said she had an obligation as my manager to make sure that I am safe so she called Stacy on her phone and either she.. or I.. I don't remember.. asked her if she could take off work and meet me at home so she did.
Today all of it feels like a complete dream. Or like something you see in a movie of a character freaking out and going nuts. I had seen this Youtube video once of a guy who went crazy in his office and started throwing monitors and printers and shit, and fighting with the people in the office trying to subdue him.. it was nothing like that, but it was going through my head and that scared me.
I feel better today, but that's probably because I am not at work. I don't know why when the pressure builds to a breaking point that I am physically unable to deal with it like most people. It runs in my family, though, and the doctor had said not to feel embarrassed or ashamed, it is a real medical problem and I shouldn't feel guilty, and that he will help me on Friday. I need to go to some type of stress management therapy. This has happened a few times during my life and they don't have preventative drugs.. just drugs they can give you for when you feel the panic/rage/anxiety coming on, then you take a lovely pill and a half hour later you feel better. But that's not enough.. I want FREE of this risk.. of the possibility it could happen again. I want to be a normal person with a normal life and not have to take a pill anytime I start freaking out.
The worst part of it, is that I don't feel like anyone else understands. Other than my mom and sister, because it happens to them, too. My sister - a successful Escrow & Title Representative with a Lexus, pricey townhouse, and who looks like Barbie at age 41... had a serious meltdown a year ago. She just got so stressed she had a nervous breakdown and couldn't eat, sleep, was depressed, couldn't get out of bed, had panic attacks.. she and my mom are able to feel what I feel and know what its like, that is why they do a good job of helping me feel better.. and its no one else's fault if they don't, its just they haven't experienced it before so it is hard to picture. I am assuming to most people who don't go through this, they think I am nuts, or making it all up in my head, or am over dramatic, or something.. I don't know.
I would love more than anything not to have had that happen. I feel guilty about my work. I told Melissa I would come in and work today but she said no, not until after I see the doctor. She told me when I had first walked into her office crying that I had said something to her about being taken away.. I don't remember that. So she said I needed just a few days to relax and chill out and not think about work, and to see my doctor to work out a plan that will help me achieve stress management. She said when I come back Monday she will help me figure out a good way to prioritize, organize, and especially above all how to ask for help from others. Which I don't get, because I totally asked her for help by requesting to be placed in Catch-Up and all she did was just skip me one time when the next case came in. Which didn't help. If she had just kept me out of rotation for maybe one day.. I could've cleared all this up without having a blow-out.
I felt like I lost my mind temporarily.
I don't feel like it was fair to Stacy either for her to come home from work because of me. I really feel bad about that. She shouldn't have to deal with this. I hope my doctor can set me up with a good therapist, and make an appointment with him or her very soon because I really need to get past my anxiety and fear.. its obviously taking a toll on my health.
Fucking fuck.
Let me start by explaining that while I was sick a few weeks ago, I worked from home so as not to contaminate everyone in the office. A few of those days I definitely felt dizzy and not really with-it. The Friday before coming back into the office, I must have not turned off the laptop before putting it in my laptop bag, and then took it to work Monday. This meant the hard drive was still spinning while I was moving the bag around and in transit, etc.
Monday and Tuesday I noticed the damn thing kept crashing. I'd get the Blue Screen of Death every 30 minutes to an hour and would have to re-start and re-open all my systems and my work. It was a hassle. So Wednesday I called IT, and they filed a ticket for Dell to come out and service the laptop for Friday after Thanksgiving. After running tests Wednesday, they found that I had hard drive damage from the disc spinning while in my bag. Oops. My bad! So Thursday was Thanksgiving so I told them I'd be at the office Friday, so Dell was planning coming then. I had planned to work from home but they said they'd be there Friday to give me a new hard drive. I spent all of Friday waiting and waiting, Dell never showed up. IT in-building backed up all my files. It took an hour.
Monday, the Dell guy shows up and the hard drive replacement takes approximately 2 minutes. It is done in the lobby. I take it back upstairs and give it to the IT lady to put the OS on it and restore my files to it. This takes 2 hours, and when she gives me the laptop back I had to reinstall a lot of my personal files and folders and then there were some errors and issues I encountered, basically, taking the whole damn day. I didn't get much work done AT ALL. And my cases were starting to pile up.
Tuesday. I got 3 cases in the morning. THE MORNING. We usually get about 3 cases per day with a regular rotation. I got a 2-hour "HOT" case, that was assigned to me before I even woke up in the morning because the coordinator didn't see "Hot" in the case anywhere. I had 3 Executives breathing down my neck at 8:15AM wondering why I had not updated them. I had just gotten in the office! And.. we had a meeting from 8:30AM - 9:38AM that was absolute crap. Repetitive, boring, frustrating. I got another case that day. I was still trying to catch up to all the cases I missed work on from Monday when they were doing my computer thing. I asked Melissa, my manager to put me in catch-up as I desperately needed it. I had so much work to do and was overwhelmed. I did not know where to start. She "skipped me in rotation" once. Great. A lot of good that did because I still got another case later.
So by now I have 12 cases and Wednesday rolls around, and I am STILL trying to get to the cases I missed from Monday! We have very tight restrictions on customer contact times (12 hours from when you get assigned the case) and some cases are sent as 'HOT' or 1-2 hour call-back times from Executives or the Office of the President. Tuesday I had gotten 3 calls from previous customers I had worked on cases for, saying I needed to call them ASAP blah blah blah. I couldn't, though, because I had active cases I really needed to get caught up on, and they weren't putting me in catch-up or taking me out of rotation, so of course when I got a 2-hour call back HOT case from this stupid stupid girl I had a case on 2 months ago and already called her the previous day and told her there was nothing more I could do for her, if her iPhone was broken she would have to contact Apple, AT&T does not warranty or service iPhones. Etc.
But she re-escalated and it got sent to me. Because I was her previous case worker. I don't know how to explain properly what happened next.. but.. I started panicking. I couldn't take it anymore. It was too much. Too much pressure and my brain just.. stops working with the right amount of stress and pressure. I regress. I shut down. I started crying my eyes out like a fucking child. I couldn't stop breathing heavy, I couldn't catch my breath. I had been sitting down for hours but felt like I had just ran a marathon. Then the tingly scalp and hands.. the hands begin to shake.. severe anxiety. I tried hard to make it go away. Suddenly came the sense of De-personalization where everything seems surreal, like I am in a movie, and I am not in my body, I am not myself, and everything looks dreamy and wrong like its not really there. I took a klonopin but those take a while to kick in, so I tried breathing in a paper bag but that did not help my hyperventilating.
I couldn't stand it.. I was freaking out.. everything swirling around and around in my head felt like it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and every little thought was magnified x10 and overwhelming me. I got this irresistible feeling of rage and terror and fought so hard to control myself but it was all I could do to keep from ripping the white board off my wall and slamming it into pieces and screaming. I felt like punching myself in the head. I felt like screaming loudly for the whole building to hear me. I can't explain why. It just happened. I just felt like doing something absolutely terrible to myself or my desk/work property. I did take some plastic knives and break them into pieces and throw them. It didn't help. I wanted to throw things. I felt out of control. I recognized the signs so I ran down, crying, to the locker room in the gym and called my mom and she tried to calm me down but said to call my doctor. I called and the secretary said he would call me back in a half hour when he got out of his meeting with a patient.
So I went to my manager's office and told her what happened. I was a little more calm at this point because the klonopin had kicked in. She said she was going to re-assign my cases for me and get people to help with them. Then the doctor called while I was in her office. He asked me a series of questions and told me I needed to go home and make sure I was not alone. He canceled my meeting with him for Dec 17 and then said to have me come in at noon on Friday. After getting off the line with him (oh and he gave me the help-line # too) I relayed this information to my manager who told me to take Thurs and Friday off and relax. She wouldn't let me go home by myself though and wanted me to call Stacy to see if she could either pick me up or meet me home if I was ok to drive. I told her I felt better because of the drugs but she said she had an obligation as my manager to make sure that I am safe so she called Stacy on her phone and either she.. or I.. I don't remember.. asked her if she could take off work and meet me at home so she did.
Today all of it feels like a complete dream. Or like something you see in a movie of a character freaking out and going nuts. I had seen this Youtube video once of a guy who went crazy in his office and started throwing monitors and printers and shit, and fighting with the people in the office trying to subdue him.. it was nothing like that, but it was going through my head and that scared me.
I feel better today, but that's probably because I am not at work. I don't know why when the pressure builds to a breaking point that I am physically unable to deal with it like most people. It runs in my family, though, and the doctor had said not to feel embarrassed or ashamed, it is a real medical problem and I shouldn't feel guilty, and that he will help me on Friday. I need to go to some type of stress management therapy. This has happened a few times during my life and they don't have preventative drugs.. just drugs they can give you for when you feel the panic/rage/anxiety coming on, then you take a lovely pill and a half hour later you feel better. But that's not enough.. I want FREE of this risk.. of the possibility it could happen again. I want to be a normal person with a normal life and not have to take a pill anytime I start freaking out.
The worst part of it, is that I don't feel like anyone else understands. Other than my mom and sister, because it happens to them, too. My sister - a successful Escrow & Title Representative with a Lexus, pricey townhouse, and who looks like Barbie at age 41... had a serious meltdown a year ago. She just got so stressed she had a nervous breakdown and couldn't eat, sleep, was depressed, couldn't get out of bed, had panic attacks.. she and my mom are able to feel what I feel and know what its like, that is why they do a good job of helping me feel better.. and its no one else's fault if they don't, its just they haven't experienced it before so it is hard to picture. I am assuming to most people who don't go through this, they think I am nuts, or making it all up in my head, or am over dramatic, or something.. I don't know.
I would love more than anything not to have had that happen. I feel guilty about my work. I told Melissa I would come in and work today but she said no, not until after I see the doctor. She told me when I had first walked into her office crying that I had said something to her about being taken away.. I don't remember that. So she said I needed just a few days to relax and chill out and not think about work, and to see my doctor to work out a plan that will help me achieve stress management. She said when I come back Monday she will help me figure out a good way to prioritize, organize, and especially above all how to ask for help from others. Which I don't get, because I totally asked her for help by requesting to be placed in Catch-Up and all she did was just skip me one time when the next case came in. Which didn't help. If she had just kept me out of rotation for maybe one day.. I could've cleared all this up without having a blow-out.
I felt like I lost my mind temporarily.
I don't feel like it was fair to Stacy either for her to come home from work because of me. I really feel bad about that. She shouldn't have to deal with this. I hope my doctor can set me up with a good therapist, and make an appointment with him or her very soon because I really need to get past my anxiety and fear.. its obviously taking a toll on my health.
Fucking fuck.