Continuous Anxiety

My anxiety is with me when I go to bed and wake up in the morning. It comes with me in the shower, rides in the front seat with me in my car and hangs out in my office at work.

It’s with me on my  commute home and sits next to me while I watch the latest season of “The Flash” on Netflix. Anxiety sits in the baby seat in my cart at the grocery store and is lifting weights by my side at the gym.

I feel that I cannot shake anxiety. It is stuck to me like glue.

I have been using CBD oil to try and combat it but it only helps so much. It doesn’t get rid of the racing thoughts, tightness in my chest (that’s not from asthma) or anything like that. It calms me for a bit but then I’m right back to feeling anxious.

My anxiety isn’t intense but it’s more frequent than it has been in a while. Which I don’t appreciate.

For some reason I’m worried about adopting the right cat at the cat cafe that I volunteer at. I worry that some of them won’t get adopted because they’re older (I don’t think they’re old but some people might), are shy/reserved or they aren’t physically pristine on the outside. One of them stress licks his fur off and another had an eye issue but is healed, his face just looks a little different but he’s cute.

I worry that they’ll get sent back to the SPCA where they’ll be euthanized. I don’t wish that for any cat which is why I don’t support the SPCA as an organization. The cafe cats just happen to come from there.

This isn’t the main reason for my anxiety but it certainly adds to it.

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Wishing I was Invisible

Do you ever feel like nothing is going your way? The universe wants to fight and it is winning.

Today I majorly fucked up at work. I had done all of the work for this idea I had to start up an Etsy shop as a fundraising effort. I hadn’t received any emails regarding any purchases being made.

Well there was one. That I found out today about an order somebody made a month ago!

I was mortified to see that this customer reached our 5 times, getting no response from me because I put in the wrong email as the contact email. So stupid of me!! She asked for a refund because it was never sent to her and she gave the shop a 1 star.

I can’t blame her for any of her actions, I would have done the same.

I’m mortified that I had this task that I gave to myself and I totally screwed it up. I let down that customer, the organization, the volunteers who made the product and my co-workers. All because I didn’t put the wrong email as the contact!

I feel like a fool.

It doesn’t help that yesterday during a meeting we were all reminded that we could be let go at any time for no reason. I’m already nervous about that so me totally messing up on our only sale makes me worry that I’ll get fired.

In this moment I wish I could be invisible.

My Fears: Everybody Hates Me

Since I wrote a few days ago about my fear of being fired from my job, I figured I would do a series about my different fears sustained by my anxiety. This one is about my fear that everyone secretly hates me.

I have thought that everyone hates me since I was a child. I don’t know where it originally came from but anxiety always told me that. I often thought my friends were friends with me for pity and not because they wanted to hang out with me.

As my mental illness developed as I grew up, I felt that way more and more.

I mainly have felt this way in romantic relationships. With my first boyfriend at the age of 15, I thought he was dating me for pity. I thought he was so cute, cool and 16 that there was no way he actually wanted to date me.

That feeling was solidified after I found out he was cheating on me with another girl. It told me that I am not enough.

Fast forward to 22 and I felt that way again with my ex and now at 25 I still have those feelings about my current boyfriend.

I worry that deep down he hates me. I worry that he is with me because he feels sad for me. I worry that he is always on the verge of breaking up with me especially if there’s an argument.

Whenever there’s a rough patch I think, “Omg, this is the end. He’s going to break up with me.” So far that hasn’t happened, we have been together for 2 years.

It’s this deep insecurity that I have always had inside me. That I am not good enough and not worthy of love. That my mental illness and other weird quirks are a turn off, making people run away from me as quickly as possible.

Anxiety screams so loudly in my mind that it is often difficult to tune out. On repeat it tells me that everybody hates me and is planning to leave me.

My therapist has worked hard to try and tell me that my anxiety is wrong. That there are many people who care about me, she even had me create a list once! She asked me to really think, without anxiety’s influence, about who I know does not hate me.

Maybe I should do that again but I’m not sure if it will curb these thoughts.

Hope you guys are all doing well!

— Megan

 

Fear of being Fired

Lately I’ve been incredibly nervous that I’m performing poorly at my full-time job and my side hustle. Both involve me writing for two different organizations plus doing some design work and social media managing.

Let’s start at my side gig where my real anxiety lies.

I’m incredibly thankful to have something on the side to bring in some extra cash every month and give me additional writing experience. I’ve was hired in April 2017 because my boss loved the writing I did about them as a reporter.

He said, “Megan, I’m going to talk to the board and try to convince them to bring you on board.”

It all worked out! I really enjoy writing for them but my boss is a perfectionist. He might even be a robot, I’m not 100% sure though.

My anxiety tells me that my work won’t be good enough in his eyes and eventually grow tired of my work then sack me.

Here’s the thing: I have no evidence or actual reason to think that he’s displeased with my work. He continues to give me solid feedback and just gave me 3 stories to complete this month.

Anxiety tells me so frequently that my writing is bad, that I have chosen a profession that I suck at. My anxiety says that I should quit writing because nobody will ever enjoy reading it.

At my full-time job I am often asked to write in a style that I’ve never really written in before, a conversational style.

All through school and university I was instructed to write in a professional manner, to stick to the facts and leave any exaggeration or bias out of it. I am a journalist by trade so that is the way I have been trained to write.

Whenever I get my stories kicked back from my supervisor with edits up and down basically instructing me to rewrite it, I fear that I will be let go. I worry that because I struggle with a conversational writing style that they will fire me to find somebody else who excels at that.

My anxiety has always had a strong grip around my writing. I have always loved to write but my anxiety repeatedly tells me it’s all shit.

I’ve worked with my therapist about this issue for a while, clearly it’s something we need to revisit.

Stay strong and be alright, everyone!

Happy Hanukkah to all of my Jewish readers!