Anxiety, work and me

I am writing this as I feel the butterfly sensation in my stomach. Swirling and stirring. Work today has been a drain. Uncaring colleagues and a company that can't manage itself let alone the people it's designed to support. The frustration I feel comes out tinged with anxiety though. I'd love to tell the big bosses the truth they refuse to ever see. The badly treated staff and how rubbish all levels of management are. I get the beginnings of massive anxiety attack when I make any real progress towards actually approaching someone. The amount of draft emails, typed in phone numbers, half written letters is in reading. But not relieving my frustration. I know I'm going to cry if I try a face to face meeting. But scared to risk any actual in writing evidence of my betrayal that my manager may be shown, even if I ask for confidentiality I know the personality of the people I have to deal with. Gossip and sharing is a natural state they can't contain themselves, no matter what they should do. I don't think my anxiety could take showing up to work to face the backlash I'd get for the perceived betrayal. I feel nauseous thinking of that prospect now. The butterflies are becoming bats now and rising inside me. It's beginning to get me. My confidence is going I can see it all slowly fading. I'm trapped again. The anger is inside me still along with the pain. The release and cure still unclear.

My mind has gone to painful memory, that word I use a lot has surfaced, COWARD. I know I sound a coward it's a word I've labelled myself with all my life. A word my first ever counsellor called me that I've never forgotten how awful that made me feel. I pinned my hopes on counselling and it was all destroyed in that moment. It was said jokingly but it is was what she said that was so true to my own thoughts of myself.  I had avoided a social situation that week and not planned another and was therefore a coward. I hadn't managed to change and at that moment I knew what I was and that she couldn't help me. She doesn't know the damage she did. All my successive counsellors have never done such a thing, but I think I found it so hard to be open and honest to a majority of them because I thought I may get called that again, if I kept elaborating and they saw the real depths. then they might see the real coward I am.

Back to subject topic.... Work, well I guess I am seeing if writing all this is helping me. I think maybe it is. I am no professional writer as I am sure u can tell but I am being as brutally honest as I can be. Maybe I'm calling out to hear if anyone else feels the same, has done the same. Can I really be the only one who feels like this? Logically I know I’m not but part of my problem all these years has been the label I've painted myself with when it was just the anxiety. Not me. I need to tattoo this somewhere I think!.

But today is an example of how it still has such a hold over me. I have to not let this take over my thoughts and drag me down in that well known cycle.


Change can happen and I will get there.