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spritechan) wrote2011-10-21 08:13 pm
The stress, it crushes meeee.
I've had a very rough couple of weeks at work. It's kinda like everyone's lives fell apart and I don't have enough time to help them all. I have a few clients who have gotten more verbally abusive, and I've been feeling guilty even though it's not my fault. I've had several 5-minute-long messages about how a client is mad at me and I don't do my job and all I care about is my paycheck, all because I tried to explain mental illness to her because she's so delusional about why she has schizophrenia. I had a hospital nurse scream at me before hanging up rudely when I desperately needed to know if they got a fax because the timing was very important. I've had to revoke a client's commitment and do all the paperwork myself with the court liason because there wasn't enough time for the county to finish it. I've sat in an emergency room with a client for two hours after having spent the previous 2 hours dealing with her (as Phoebe put it, "I have to get out of here before I put your head through a wall!"). The stress has been building and building and all I want to do is crawl into bed and cry and not come out for days.
It took all my strength to go to personal training yesterday. I didn't go on Tuesday because I had a migraine and was also throwing a pity party for myself. I went in and Martin was all, "Hey! You look really skinny today!" I was caught off-guard and got all blushy and denying, because I ate sooo much crap over the past week and barely exercised at all because I've been too depressed to get motivated. At my last check-in, Martin told me that another member told him that my face was looking a lot skinnier than when we started. It was flattering and amusing that other people watch me in the gym. Usually I'm all about the awareness of other people, but when I'm working out all I can do is focus on the task at hand. Which is good. I've continued to improve - I'm now down to 25% body fat, my legs were the same in inches but I lost 3 more percent fat, and I lost a half an inch on my arms, and waist. But as I said, I've been struggling lately.
I'm taking Monday off and so is Steve. We're spending a nice long weekend together and I hope I feel better by Tuesday. I just feel suffocated and so burnt out. I feel shitty and ineffective and I know I shouldn't. I hate that it appears my life revolves around work, because it really shouldn't. It should only be a *part* of my life. Not the only part I can talk about because I need hours upon hours to process everything I've been through.
Through all this, Steve has been amazing. He's been patient with my venting and has put up with my stress-induced irritability, and almost literal battle against feelings suffocated. Even sitting here talking about it/doing paperwork I'm having physical sensations of pressure and difficulty breathing.
But! I've been playing a lot of Arkham City, and it's the right amount of challenging for me and I'm having a lot of fun with it. So that's nice. :) I made a new backlog banner to go with it, and I'm enjoying having a fun game to play.
no subject
And I agree with taking of the Monday--do something you can't normally do, if you can. You know, try to get as much out of your "life" as you can for a brief period of time, to give yourself some space from it all. 'Cause right now, it feels a little like you may be too deep in this routine of stress for you to really decompress from it just by doing the regular things.
And I know this is probably contrary to everything you believe about work, but you may want to consider not giving 100% all the time for work. Because at the moment, it's not totalling out at 100%, but as 100% for this client and 100% for this client, and 200% a day....and so on. Maybe pick and choose where you're going to put your energy, rather than giving everything the best you can. Because otherwise you'll burn out completely. =( That would be very sad.
Good luck with managing all this! It sounds very stressful and tricky, but I'm sure that if you can get enough space from it you'll be able to see a solution for yourself. =)