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How to stop work anxiety impacting the rest of my life? (feddit.uk)

submitted 2 days ago by ambitiousslab@feddit.uk to c/mentalhealth@lemmy.world

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm a people pleaser. I have anxiety and depression thanks to some trauma. I've been in therapy for a little over a year.

Objectively, I'm doing ok at work. I have always met expectations. However, it takes a lot out of me. I always try to meet people's expectations because disappointing people feels unbearable. Because of the ability to break things, I often shirk responsibility and make myself unreliable in subtle ways

My experience in work has a big impact on my wellbeing outside. Due to forcing my way through the anxiety, I feel very tired and often have to rest (lying down in the dark, not interacting with anyone) for several hours on evenings and weekends.

At the moment, I am lying in bed most of the day and having 2-3 panic attacks per day (by panic attack, I mean that my heart starts beating really strongly and quickly, and my breathing feels like it's running away from me).

I think my difficulties are almost certainly related to the trauma. I have a lot of trepidation around, and fawn a lot with the colleagues that set me tasks, even though I can see objectively that I am not in any danger.

I have been trying to set more boundaries, be more upfront and stop this fawning. I am making some (slow) progress, but I still have a real lack of energy outside of work, and spend a lot of time anxious about the next working day. It's impacting my life a great deal.

Does anyone have any similar experiences, or ideas of how to stop these situations from having such a big effect on the rest of my life?

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[–] dingus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I swear I clicked post on a comment here, but idk wtf happened to it. Doesn't look like it was removed in the modlog so I'm confused.

Couple of things...what type of therapy does your therapist use? Does it seem like it's more of a "talk therapy"? Most therapists I've encountered are like this and I have found it not overly helpful. While they are nice for a listening ear, it's hard to find enough substance for me to be able to help myself in practice. What has helped me was finding a therapy program with a specific therapy modality...so I have a way that I can apply it irl. I'd wager that the therapy type is probably less important than the structure. Many therapists claim to use CBT or DBT or whatever else, but when you actually get to the sessions, they don't. In my experience, many are just talk therapists that use vague concepts for these, which I have then had difficulty figuring out ways to help myself irl. Obviously easier said than done to find a therapist with more structure, but that is probably the first direction I'd go tbh. You also have to be very specific and explicit about what you need from therapy in order for them to be able to help you...what you wrote here is great.

Another thing is...have you tried any medications for anxiety by any chance? While therapy definitely is going to be able to do the most heavy lifting, sometimes you need just a little bit more help or a little bit more of a push with psychiatric medications. It's scary, but they are given to millions of people and are not a huge risk. You can always stop them (slowly, not cold turkey) if you feel like they are not helping you. It's not like someone is going in and permanently altering your brain like with surgery.

Best of luck, OP.