Depression, Anxiety, or other Mental Health Conditions

Qikz wrote:

shadow202 wrote:

Qikz wrote:I've talked things through with my Mum and Dad and the consensus seems to be that now should be the time I start looking elsewhere. I suffer from confidence issues anyway and having this happened has destroyed any trust I've got at this company. They did the exact same thing to one of my friends recently at the company (but with a different role) so I should've known this was coming.

I'm anxious on what the strawberry float to do now, but I guess all I need to do is keep myself out of trouble before I can leave and dump a huge pile of strawberry float you at their door.

Reading your post about how anxious your were in your role and your reaction to it I think the company may have done you a favour here mate. Think you need to step away from the situation for an hour or two, go see some friends, play a few games or something and have a few drinks and once you've calmed down then rethink it and see how you feel then

I was suffering from anxiety, but it had nothing to do with the role. He's pinning it on that, but it's happened on cycles throughout my entire life. It's a complete cop out. If anything now it just makes me feel like complete gooseberry fool.

Is there anyway that you can talk to your boss about it or is it a finalised decision?

Qikz wrote:I got made a manager at work the other month and I've been trying really hard to do a good job, it was going fine but recently within the last 2 weeks I've seemingly let everything get on top of me after a big mistake which I'm not even in trouble for. I've been getting more and more stressed, because the more I feel like I want to do a good job the more I've found it harder to keep up.

Certainly doesn't sound like it's nothing to do with the role.

You know more than any of us what your company is like and whether or not they are actually looking out for you, but either way it sounds like they've done you a favour.

shadow202 wrote:

Qikz wrote:

shadow202 wrote:

Qikz wrote:I've talked things through with my Mum and Dad and the consensus seems to be that now should be the time I start looking elsewhere. I suffer from confidence issues anyway and having this happened has destroyed any trust I've got at this company. They did the exact same thing to one of my friends recently at the company (but with a different role) so I should've known this was coming.

I'm anxious on what the strawberry float to do now, but I guess all I need to do is keep myself out of trouble before I can leave and dump a huge pile of strawberry float you at their door.

Reading your post about how anxious your were in your role and your reaction to it I think the company may have done you a favour here mate. Think you need to step away from the situation for an hour or two, go see some friends, play a few games or something and have a few drinks and once you've calmed down then rethink it and see how you feel then

I was suffering from anxiety, but it had nothing to do with the role. He's pinning it on that, but it's happened on cycles throughout my entire life. It's a complete cop out. If anything now it just makes me feel like complete gooseberry fool.

Is there anyway that you can talk to your boss about it or is it a finalised decision?

It's a finalised decision. I asked if I improved things if it would be reconsidered and he wouldn't give me an answer.

In the end though, they have done me a favour because it's made me realise I never should've trusted everything they were saying and I should never have wasted my time being anxious about whether or not I was making mistakes. I wasn't and they know it, everyone I've spoke to in the company cannot believe it and they gave me a sword and made me fall on it.

I'm really sorry you're going through all this StayDead. It sounds like you've taken this very hard. I completely sympathise with why it's upset you, but I don't know if maybe it might help to contextualise it a bit -- you can always take the experience and move on to a different firm if you're no longer happy with your workplace.

On the careers side, the only advice I can give you is to play this strategically at work and try to remain professional. If it's final, you might have to pretend you're OK with the decision until you're ready to hand in your notice and 'seek more challenging roles elsewhere', for the sake of your reference.

Qikz wrote:

shadow202 wrote:

Qikz wrote:

shadow202 wrote:

Qikz wrote:I've talked things through with my Mum and Dad and the consensus seems to be that now should be the time I start looking elsewhere. I suffer from confidence issues anyway and having this happened has destroyed any trust I've got at this company. They did the exact same thing to one of my friends recently at the company (but with a different role) so I should've known this was coming.

I'm anxious on what the strawberry float to do now, but I guess all I need to do is keep myself out of trouble before I can leave and dump a huge pile of strawberry float you at their door.

Reading your post about how anxious your were in your role and your reaction to it I think the company may have done you a favour here mate. Think you need to step away from the situation for an hour or two, go see some friends, play a few games or something and have a few drinks and once you've calmed down then rethink it and see how you feel then

I was suffering from anxiety, but it had nothing to do with the role. He's pinning it on that, but it's happened on cycles throughout my entire life. It's a complete cop out. If anything now it just makes me feel like complete gooseberry fool.

Is there anyway that you can talk to your boss about it or is it a finalised decision?

It's a finalised decision. I asked if I improved things if it would be reconsidered and he wouldn't give me an answer.

In the end though, they have done me a favour because it's made me realise I never should've trusted everything they were saying and I should never have wasted my time being anxious about whether or not I was making mistakes. I wasn't and they know it, everyone I've spoke to in the company cannot believe it and they gave me a sword and made me fall on it.

Sorry to hear that mate because I know how it feels to go through periods of feeling anxious about everything even if you're still doing a good job. It sounds both like a shitty move from them if you explained all this to them and also maybe in the long term this will be a blessing for you.

I know it's easy to say but use it as an experience, don't beat yourself up about it and remember the confidence / what you done to get into the position to be considered a manager.

Confidence has always been a really hard thing for me to find and it's going to take me a long long time to get over this. I get so anxious over the little things that when the big things happen it destroys me. I guess realistically I'm still on the same pay so it could be much worse, but now I could end up having to answer to someone I do not respect and I know that my company do not trust me to do a good job and that hurts. I'm going to have to stay professional atleast until I can find another job, but then the stress of having to go for interviews again is terrifying me.

I won't repeat what others have said although I want to be sympathetic, but if you are on the same pay, with less responsibilities, you may find that it is is easier to cope with whatever is causing your anxiety (regardless of whether that's the work or not), and give you time to figure things out without being under pressure, as you say yourself you were constantly feeling at fault and inadequate for making little mistakes or not doing things as perfectly as you think you should do (I suffer from perfectionism too and have had to basically un-learn it).

You may feel like leaving and being given more responsibilities somewhere else will enhance your confidence, but the process of doing that, moving jobs, and potentially being unemployed for sometime, may work out worse for you. You may not like the people and you will need to re-establish relationships you have become familier with over a long period of adjustment from when you were initially looking for work. So I would urge you to take some time this weekend to think about how things might look in say 2-3 weeks, and evaluate how you feel at a later date. Perhaps speaking to a councillor if you can access one.

I did end up reducing my hours voluntarily and working from home for a long time until I left the company because I was not coping with anxiety, so that might help you feel better knowing that it's a not uncommon resolution from a managerial perspective. They do need you working at your best and happiest, even if it means having a different title or having more people above you. Sometimes that just isn't the most important thing in life, where you stand in that hierarchy - your health is.

I'm not planning on leaving before finding another job, but I don't think I can trust them anymore.

<]:^D wrote:is there anything youre in to that you could socialise via? like, a sports team or something?
easier said than done - ive been 'thinking' about joining the local baseball team for months

Brerlappin wrote:It's okay Preezy, I'm a friendless strawberry float too

Nah in all seriousness tho it sounds like you could do with a hobby or activity that takes you out the house a night or two a week. Weren't you doing Muay Thai for a bit? Are you still doing it? Before i got sick and was still training I did find a good sense of camaraderie and totally hetero not at all gay male bonding at my BJJ gym. Something like that could do you good.

Must be thinking of someone else with the Muay Thai, Brer, definitely not me.

You’re both probably right, I could do with a hobby and sports are an easy way to get social. Can I be arsed though? That’s the question (and the answer is usually no ).

Preezy wrote:

<]:^D wrote:is there anything youre in to that you could socialise via? like, a sports team or something?
easier said than done - ive been 'thinking' about joining the local baseball team for months

Brerlappin wrote:It's okay Preezy, I'm a friendless strawberry float too

Nah in all seriousness tho it sounds like you could do with a hobby or activity that takes you out the house a night or two a week. Weren't you doing Muay Thai for a bit? Are you still doing it? Before i got sick and was still training I did find a good sense of camaraderie and totally hetero not at all gay male bonding at my BJJ gym. Something like that could do you good.

Must be thinking of someone else with the Muay Thai, Brer, definitely not me.

You’re both probably right, I could do with a hobby and sports are an easy way to get social. Can I be arsed though? That’s the question (and the answer is usually no ).

Yeah you could try a regular gym just to make the first step if you didn't want to go full on sports team/martial art. Itll get you out of the house and doing something, and a lot of them will run classes where youll get to be a bit social if you take part in em

Qikz wrote:I'm not planning on leaving before finding another job, but I don't think I can trust them anymore.

Honestly, give it a bit more time and evaluate the situation after a week or two. I would try not to take this as a failure
or embarrassment. This is easy for me to say, but try not to don't beat yourself up any further.

I think your being a bit harsh on yourself, Preezy. Seeing your best mate once a month is pretty good going, especially if you don't live near each other now and you have a wife and kid. I'm lucky if I see my old best mate group once a year at the moment. I would class the other friends I see once a month or so as people I see regularly.

I do have the gym and golf at the weekends for some lad bants but your situation sounds pretty normal to me.

Well I cried myself to sleep last night and I'm trying to do anything I can to avoid work, but I know that I've got to go.

Part of me has realised though that maybe I don't want to be a manager anyway. I never was able to do any good, all you ever found out about was the bad and it's all interior company politics bullshit. It still doesn't make me feel any better and it still doesn't change the fact I want to look elsewhere but at least I don't have to deal with anyone elses gooseberry fool anymore.

I finished for the day and you know what. I don't care about being a manager. I get to keep the money I'm on and I get to do far less work and still end up looking better than everyone else.

I also don't have to deal with office politics bullshit. Also had some cool comeuppance because the idiot who they've replaced me with couldn't leave for an hour as she couldn't find her car keys. hahahahaha

Try to take the positives from this experience, Qikz. Extra cash in your pocket, managerial experience, albeit briefly, and perhaps most importantly, you've learnt through experience that you don't want to be a manager of people and be part of the whole managerial political web bullshit.

I do feel as though I have been forever entangled in the management web of politics and dirty gossip. In one way it is incredibly entertaining to be involved in so much secretive stuff but in another it is a strawberry floating nightmare. You're always one step away from landing in a deep pile of gooseberry fool.

I'm terrible for it as well. For some reason I get told every secret bit of gossip going, even though I've got a massive strawberry floating mouth and can't be trusted with anything. I'll strawberry float myself over one of these days.

I was really quite offended how rude and judgemental my manager was when referring to other people generally outside the department. the thing was I often knew these people and found them perfectly fine provided you had any people skills and well, weren't an arrogant, judgemental dickhead. It seemed I was expected to wave along and laugh at these jokes but instead I just felt, what a knob, is this what your job is, to just lament other people instead of fixing the problem? A while later I just realised they were a bad manager and stopped giving a strawberry float really. I don't understand how that kind of culture is supposed to work.

I should probably go see and talk to a professional or something, because I'm spiraling into a pit again and it's not even of anxiety it's just sadness. I know what the positives of everything that happened are, but I can't focus on them. I'm still playing over the negatives over and over again in my head and I've got no idea why. I don't want to feel like this, but the second I'm just thinking about things I keep replaying all the bad things that happened and end up feeling the same negative way I felt before.

I want to focus on the positives but my brain won't let me. Maybe I'm punishing myself in some weird strawberry floated up way by never letting myself be happy? My friends pointed out that whenever I make a comment about myself I always make it way more negative than I need to and laugh it off as a joke, but maybe I'm harsh on myself because that's all I know how to do. Maybe this is why I got effected by everything over the past 3 weeks so badly.

It sounds like you're suffering from low self esteem more than anything else which is a mild form of depression but can get a lot worse. I realise this is a bit corporate and referaly but I do use Headspace and it has helped me, it was originally recommend to me by my primary mental health practitioner (a fancy word for a long-ass referral before you get seen by a psychologist) because in-person help is so slow and otherwise expensive. I ended up not receiving care because I was "not depressed enough" despite that fact I was diagnosed with moderate to severe depression/anxiety. I did the self-esteem pack and if you need a code for another 30 days after doing the ten day introductory thing (which is just 10 minutes a day to start to teach your mind relaxation techniques, if you miss a day or 3 or 4 no problem just try to do it within a month) to do that whole 30 day thing just PM me. I get them for free and don't get paid or anything fucky like that https://www.headspace.com/blog/2017/08/ ... lf-esteem/

That's 60 days of small things you can do to hopefully feel at least a bit better. You won't need sub as you are meant to learn how to deal with those thoughts a little better, so you can carry those techniques forward yourself. If you can learn some programming or how to do some stuff in powershell in 30 days you can certainly improve your mind a little with simple exercises.

Whereas before I would feel very down about myself for days at a time I now generally get by just observing those "thoughts and feelings" and forgetting about them moments later, it's generally a case of creating not necessarily distance but some space between those unconstructive thoughts and all the other gooseberry fool going on in your head and the difference between some brain signals and constructing a narrative and that narrative preying on other aspects of your health, which only reinforces the negative ideology that is of course at odds with the day to day actions around you and the likelihood you are probably much better at things than you feel you are.

Well despite trying to be positive all week I strawberry floated up yesterday, got called into my bosses office today and given a letter of concern and now I'm even more confused than ever. I was terrified I was going to lose my job and now I feel awful. I don't think it's self esteem Gecko because I know I'm good at my job. I out perform everyone on a weekly basis, but whatever this negativity that I'm meant to be emenating is turning my boss against me (but nobody else).

I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. He keeps telling me over and over again to be how I used to, but I don't feel I've changed. I'm not even feeling anxious now it's just complete and utter bewilderment that no matter what I do things are getting worse for me and I'm scared at what's going to happen.