Anxiety and working

[wattoo1971]

My anxiety is so bad I nearly lost my job. I had not realised how anxious and unreliable I had become. Unfortunately people on the outside looking in don't realise what you go through and make assumptions.

My dad was diagnosed in May 2015 with a terminal illness and since then Mum and I have been watching him slowly deteriorate until we lost him on 2nd July 2016. I am an only child and was mums support network.

I carried on working full time as an education manager but I was becoming less and less effective and deadlines were missed. I was overwhelmed. I had bouts of vertigo, colitis, panic attacks where ambulances were called. I am on Prozac and have been for a while and now on Propranolol for panic attacks. I had started to pull away from friends and family and the amount of irrational thoughts in my head have lead me to researching effective suicide methods.

I was given some time off work after Dads death and was then asked to go into a meeting where I was given two options:

1. Competency framework

2. Compromise agreement and leave

As you can imagine this made me feel Ben more of a failure and ultimately not wanted anymore.

I have been back into work to discuss the options but what this is all about is actually my company wanting to support me back to work and give me a framework and regular support meetings.

I have been having counselling and I am booked on about 10 self help sessions on various areas of improving mental health and wellbeing. I WANT TO GET WELL!

I am going to keep you all updated on how things go and if there is any improvement.

If you are having problems please reach out to friends. When those thoughts won't shut up and you don't know how to quieten the chatter, tough it out a bit, breath through it or regardless of what people think of you tell someone so you ar not alone. I have a very good friend who contacts me about 6 times a day.

Let's see if I can improve things eh!!!