Tag: mental health

EmployMENTAL: Anxiety & The Workplace

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Dealing with anxiety at work is admittedly one of my biggest challenges. Maybe because it is something that, over the years, I’ve hyped up in my head as being super stressful. Not that I think everyone else has it easy at work…because I’m over 1,001% sure I am not the only one plagued with this pesty problem, but it certainly has affected my life significantly.

One of the first non-seasonal “real” jobs I had was an Assistant Front of House Manager at a prominent performing arts center. I started out as an usher and then got promoted, mainly because my good friend was another assistant and I was one of the few employees to speak English. I guess that was good enough to qualify me for my first managerial position. Anyways….I had a hard time with it. Not because I wasn’t capable or confident leading others, but for other obscure reasons. Sometimes it would be that I was too nervous to ask back of house what the latecomer policy was and other times I would freak out over just the prospect of not finding somebodies seat.

The reason why I am bringing up this particular job is that it was during this time I was testing out different anti-depressants. More notably, it was the job that caused the Nurse Practitioner I was seeing to first prescribe me Xanax “as needed”. Looking back at it now, I wish I had never started taking Xanax  (more on that some other time). I also totally wish I was seeing a different NP. First of all, she started me out on an anti-depressant that did not even treat anxiety and instead of finding a substitution she would just keep prescribing more meds on top of it. Secondly, she instilled this notion in my head that I needed medication if I ever wanted to succeed professionally.

It’s a strange balancing act, being confident but also at the same time having crippling anxiety. It’s like some days I feel like I can take on the world and others leaving the house seems almost impossible. It has caused my work performance to be very uneven. And there have definitely been times where I self-sabotaged myself on the job purposely so I could try to outrun my nerves. I kept thinking that maybe if I found the right job my anxiety wouldn’t be able to find me.

Now that I am 30 and these emotions have been following me around for as long as I can remember… I am starting to realize I can’t escape them. I can’t just hop from job to job hoping that maybe this time everything will magically be perfect. I’ve often used anxiety as my crutch for failure, but in reality, I should know better than to rely on the very thing that knocks me down to help me walk. I am finally coming to the conclusion that these feelings aren’t a result of just circumstance and that it’s going to take a lot of commitment to overcome them.

For once, I am really trying. Its kind of a make it or break it moment in my life and I refuse to crack this time. As Eminem so eloquently puts it “Success is my only motherfuckin’ option, failures not”. I’m not going to lie, it has been really hard. Sometimes I feel so embarrassed and isolated by my own thoughts that all I want to do is hide under my desk. Sometimes I am so consumed by the fear of what my peers are thinking about me it makes it hard to focus on what I need to do. Luckily, strangers don’t give me anxiety! This makes meeting people and building early connections quite easy for me. Not to brag, but I am pretty personable. Now all I have got to do is figure out how to be that person more of the time. I’ll keep ya’ll posted on how that works out for me.

Til’ next time!

❤ Sweeney

New Year, Old Me

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So despite leading up to the New Year with guns blazing, once 2018 actually did roll around I fell short…and by “fell short” I mean I think I literally fell down at some point after the ball dropped and incidentally dropped my own metaphorical New Year’s ball (ba dum chh). All puns aside though, 2018 has pretty much sucked for me so far.

The month prior to January I had spent an insurmountable amount of time self reflecting, making improvements and basically just working on trying to get my shit together. And not to pat myself on my own back, but I was doing a pretty good job. I actually believed the notion of that cliche’d “New Year, New Me” thing would apply to me this year. Its not like I thought I’d become a whole different person, but I was confident in my efforts to become a least a better one.

Nothing particularly major happened to make me this way. My biggest set back was that I ended up drinking on New Years, something I had been adamantly avoiding. I had made it through Christmas and several parties and outings without even craving alcohol. I was so proud of myself and I could see my mindset changing. I was OK being the only one in the room not partaking, hell I would even say it felt comfortable not to! I didn’t even drink until after Midnight. I don’t know what flipped the switch inside my brain, but I figured I had deserved to indulge just a little bit.

Of course, there is no such thing as a “little bit” with me and I ended up waking up at 3pm with a wicked hangover. While the hangover served as a great reminder to myself that I hate drinking, I couldn’t shake the feeling of disappointment. To make matter worse, this new low energy I had adopted in 2018 followed me throughout the next week.

Although I did not work New Years day, I felt sluggish and not myself the subsequent days at work. My anxiety was back with a vengeance and I had trouble organizing my thoughts and getting through tasks. In case you don’t already know, Anxiety is a raging bitch. I started getting all these crazy thoughts in my head and coming up with wild conclusions in my head over what my co-workers thought of my obvious low energy. Reality tells you: They probably thought you could use a good Starbucks run and maybe a nap. Anxiety on the other hand attacks you with ….. OMG EVERYONE THINKS YOU ARE CRAZY. Why do you suck at your job so much…. WhAt iS wRoNg WiTh YoU?!?! Other than anxiety making you think it is acceptable to toggle your type in a blog post, it is completely illogical.

So THAT my friends has been my 2018 so far. Not so fun. All stemming from 1 night of drinking too…which is kinda insane if you think about it. On a positive note though, my efforts in December in the self improvement department were not fruitless. Because of the work I put in, I have been able to pull my big girl pants back on and myself out of this slump (It might of taken almost like a full week, but hey I still deserve some credit!). So tonight I am going to go home after a productive day at work, eat some Pizza and maybe jot down ideas on how to embody a New Year, New Me mantra for myself.

❤  Sweeney

Nicknames & Their Connotations

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So in my last post, I briefly touched upon the idea of trying to live up to this image of being a “hot mess”. I know it seems like an odd trait to pursue as your identity, but in a strange way doing so made me feel safe. As long I self-identified as being a mess other people’s perception of me (in theory) would carry less weight. To help perpetuate this idea I had a nickname, The Sween Machine.

This nickname actually started pretty innocently enough. I had just moved to New Jersey for grad school, during the height of The Jersey Shore’s popularity and it was just sort of my “Jersey” name. Soon, ​however, the name morphed into an outlet for me to become this completely different person. When you have anxiety, the thought of being a different person is comforting. The Sween Machine was carefree, wild and did things without thinking. She could act in all the ways my anxiety inhibited me from doing. Besides the obvious, one of the HUGE problems that came with this was that in order to become my alter-ego I had to drink… A LOT.

I had some fun times being the Machine, but overall it was super detrimental to my well being and completely not worth it. For those fleeting hours of drunken escape, ​I made my anxiety much worse. Now not only did I feel anxious, but I had to navigate through dealing with my drunken actions, many of which I did not even remember. I also could not handle being in social situations without drinking and when I did drink I would always binge. I started becoming a liability not only to myself​ ​ but other people. No matter how bad it got, however, I couldn’t seem to let go of the Machine. It took a lot of time for me to even begin thinking of shedding this image. I now try to work on it everyday. I am attempting to completely cut out alcohol from my life and try different natural supplements instead of medications to deal with my anxiety. I am slowly learning that being in control of your life is much better for your mood than allowing it to be a huge mess (go figure!). I am finally allowing myself to be myself. No more Machine Wreck.

 ❤ Sweeney