Relapse and might loose my job

[Lily181]

I suffer from PTSD, anxiety disorder and depression.

I have been seeing therapists and medical professionals on and off for 5 years.

I was doing very well for over a year and was able to manage my anxiety.

I recently started a new job in June and start of August, I've had a relapse and I'm getting panic attacks 4-5 days a week. It's usually starts in the morning and I struggle through it on and off for half a day and get exhausted after it has calmed down and need to rest and am not able to do much. Because of this I haven't been able to go to work and now I'm worried that I might loose my job or what people think about me being absent or feel guilty that I have made things worse at work. These thoughts have made things worse.

I'm really tired of being in this loop. I'm taking medication, doing therapy but I'm still struggling and really fear I'll loose my job and have financial difficulty. I'm also scared I'll struggle to find another job.

I don't know what to do with all these thoughts that doesn't seem to stop.

[therising]

Hi Lily181

First of all, a massive credit to you for having found new ways to manage over the last year. I imagine that came from a heck of a lot of hard work. In this new challenge you face, do you think it feels like time to revisit one of the therapists so as to develop some new ideas and skill/s in managing? Sometimes new challenges need new skills. Perhaps it could also involve gaining some insight in regard to some new triggers you haven't come across before that maybe aren't all that obvious.

I'm not sure if the following will be of any help but I'll put it out there anyway in the hope that it helps with perspective. While I've managed the ins and outs of depression since my late teens (I'm now a 53yo gal), I used to seriously beat myself up when I'd enter into a depressing period. There'd be the usual dialogue like 'What's wrong with me? I'm hopeless. I'm never going to be happy' etc. I eventually realised every depressing period was presenting me with a challenge I could feel but not necessarily identify at first. The ultimate challenge became about 1)acknowledging I could feel what was present (certain depressing elements), 2)identifying what they were (with or without some form of guidance and support), 3)identifying the skills needed to manage and 4)developing/practicing those skills (much easier said than done in some cases). With anxiety being a whole new experience for me last year, I had to address a whole new lot of challenges. Researching how inner dialogue impacts the nervous system became a part of that challenge.

A new job can be a massive overall challenge, with a lot of micro challenges included. Some of the challenges: Identifying which staff members are triggering and why (while also figuring out how to manage those people), working out how much new information we can tolerate learning at a time, whether we're making up for mismanagement when it comes to under staffing perhaps, whether the environment is naturally stressful and that's something we can feel, whether our co-workers show compassion through remembering what it was like to be the new person, whether we've got the self esteem needed for the job or whether that needs to be developed a little more in some ways, the list goes on.  

I think we can get a feel for what suits us and what doesn't, under different circumstances. Feeling our way through life is definitely a Goldilocks experience at times. Too hot, too cold, just right. Too soft, too hard, just right. Based on how we feel in the present, doesn't mean we can't return to a particular job or position later down the track, once we've evolved in a number of ways through greater levels of self understanding and skill development. Perhaps the question comes down to 'Does the job feel just right or does it feel like something else altogether different?'. Does it feel like you could master it or does it feel like your nervous system is screaming 'THERE'S A MUCH BETTER JOB OUT THERE THAN THIS ONE!'?