So first day back at work after 4 weeks eeeek

[silver_snow]

I'm so worried what everyone will think of me, I know they probably won't think anything but my paranoia takes over, will they think i'm weird, do they like me, i bet they all hate me... so annoying I wish i could just not care and get on with things...

[Maya_dawn]

I once read, perhaps instead of us worrying what people think of us, others should think whether WE like them and what WE think of them.

Hope you get through your day fine.

[Hidden]

Hi

Well people no doubt will be thinking nothing except its nice to see you back !

I bet they have all be concerned about you

Our anxiety always tells us these negative things & 99% of the time we are so wrong in what we are thinking

Hope you have a good day & everything goes well

Love

whywhy

xxx

[jules2105]

Hi

I found that when I was off before that noone asked me the reason I'd been off, my manager had told them not to ask me. Everyone just said how nice it was to have me back. Hope you get through your first day back, are you going back on a phased return?

Jules x

[Lions13]

Well done Silver Snow.

One of the first steps, and sometimes the most difficult is to identify our own thinking. We can then ask ourselves if our thoughts are facts or opinions. Quite often our thoughts are opinions, and they involve a "thinking error".

You have identified you are worried what other people will think of you. Yes, you manage to challenge it, perhaps only briefly, but then you return to "I bet they all hate me".

I'm going to ask you to be the prosecution in the case of "I bet they all hate me". What evidence is their to support your case? Write it all down.

In all good legal systems if we allow the prosecution to have there say, we will also allow the defence to put their case. "They don't hate me" What evidence is there to show they don't hate you. If you find it difficult to find evidence yourself use a little bit of best friend thinking. What would you say to your best friend if they came to you and told you your own story?

Here is a categorised list of thinking errors. Have a look through it, it's amazing how many we all do at various points of the day.

1.Mind reading: You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.”

2.Fortune-telling: You predict the future negatively: Things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get the job.”

3.Catastrophising: You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.”

4.Labelling: You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.”

5.Discounting positives: You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do – so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me.”

6.Negative filtering: You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.”

7.Overgeneralising: You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.”

8.Dichotomous thinking: You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.”

9.Shoulds: You interpret events in terms of how things should be, rather than simply focussing on what is. “I should do well. If I don’t, then I’m a failure.”

10.Personalising: You attribute a disproportionate amount of the blame to yourself for negative events, and you fail to see that certain events are caused by others. “The marriage ended because I failed.”

11.Blaming: You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”

12.Unfair comparison: You interpret events in terms of standards that are unrealistic – for example, you focus primarily on others who do better than you and find yourself inferior in the comparison. “She’s more successful than I am,” or “Others did better than I did on the test.”

13.Regret orientation: You focus on the idea that you could have done better in the past, rather on what you can do better now. “I could have had a better job if I had tried,” or “I shouldn’t have said that.”

14.What if?: You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?”

15.Emotional reasoning: You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.”

16.Inability to disconfirm: You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought “I’m unlovable”, you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.”

17.Judgement focus: You view yourself, others, and the events in terms of evaluations as good-bad or superior-inferior, rather than simply describing, accepting or understanding. You are continually measuring yourself and others according to arbitrary standards, and finding that you and others fall short. You are focussed on the judgements of others as well as your own judgements of yourself. “I didn’t perform well in college,” or “If I take up tennis, I won’t do well,” or “Look how successful she is. I’m not successful.”

[felipegonzales]

What a great post by Lions13, look up Attribution Bias related to psychology, it may help you with these negative thoughts and know that we all fall into these biases.

[silver_snow]

Hey, thanks everyone. Well i survived and when i got in about 10 people said it was nice to see me and have me back, no one asked why i had been off and i just got on as normal so all in all a good return to work