My therapist suggested that I set aside 15 minutes a day for worrying, and to postpone any potential worries until that scheduled worry time. Well, I wasn't able to do that today.
Today someone was rude to me at my volunteer job and it totally shot my day to hell. For the entire rest of the day, I was unable to relax or enjoy my usual activities. I spent most of my day wondering why I react this way, whether I will ever be able to comfortably interact in regular everyday social situations, whether maybe I really don't like most people after all and I should just go back to being a hermit, etc., etc. It's time for bed, and I'm still up feeling all agitated. My back muscles are so tight that even shifting positions in my chair hurts.
I am so tired of this. I realize that I am making progress: I go out in public, I volunteer, I go to support groups, I see friends occasionally. I'm able to drive across town. I even got a part-time temp job- finally- and I start tomorrow. (I'll tell more about that sometime, maybe.) I'm just not making enough progress to achieve my idea of what a somewhat normal life would look like for me.
There were times in my life, maybe 15 or 20 years ago, when I could just think that people were bozos and then I could move on. Why can't I do that any more? It almost seems like I had a certain amount of capacity to deal with social unpleasantness, and I have exhausted the entire amount of capability I had- I exceeded my lifetime limit, and it's just plain gone. That's how it feels.
Today I was worrying about how I can ever hold a job successfully if I can't deal with other people evaluating me, or criticizing me, or saying anything that even remotely seems negative, or even looking at me the wrong way. I guess I'll just have to try.
Showing posts with label ergophobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ergophobia. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
Collage of Fears
About a month ago I read a book entitled The PTSD Workbook. One of its suggestions was to make a collage depicting the things that you fear. I started collecting some of the pictures in a shoebox, but have not made a physical cut-and-paste type collage yet....so I'll do one here! I'll start it right now, and then come back and work on it more later.....
Monday, April 2, 2012
Ergophobia Defined
From Wikipedia:
Ergophobia also called Ergasiophobia, is an abnormal and persistent fear (or phobia) of work, finding work or functioning, ergophobia may also be a subset of either social phobia or performance anxiety. Sufferers of ergophobia experience undue anxiety about the workplace environment even though they realize their fear is irrational. Their fear may actually be a combination of fears, such fear of failing at assigned tasks, fear of speaking before groups at work (both of which are types of performance anxiety), or fear of socializing with co-workers (a type of social phobia).
"Ergophobia" is derived from the Greek "ergon" (work) and "phobos" (fear). "Ergo" is also used to form other English words, including "ergometer" (a device that measures the amount of work done by muscles) and "ergonomics" (an applied science that designs interfaces and working environments with the aim of maximizing functionality and improving worker comfort).
Ergophobia also called Ergasiophobia, is an abnormal and persistent fear (or phobia) of work, finding work or functioning, ergophobia may also be a subset of either social phobia or performance anxiety. Sufferers of ergophobia experience undue anxiety about the workplace environment even though they realize their fear is irrational. Their fear may actually be a combination of fears, such fear of failing at assigned tasks, fear of speaking before groups at work (both of which are types of performance anxiety), or fear of socializing with co-workers (a type of social phobia).
"Ergophobia" is derived from the Greek "ergon" (work) and "phobos" (fear). "Ergo" is also used to form other English words, including "ergometer" (a device that measures the amount of work done by muscles) and "ergonomics" (an applied science that designs interfaces and working environments with the aim of maximizing functionality and improving worker comfort).
Source
Description above from the Wikipedia article Ergophobia, licensed under CC-BY-SA full list of contributors here. Community Pages are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, anyone associated with the topic.
Workplace Phobia Articles, Research
There's a Wikipedia entry on Workplace Phobia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_phobia
In 2009, German researchers B. Muschalla and M. Linden published a study on Workplace Phobia entitled "Workplace phobia--a first explorative study on its relation to established anxiety disorders, sick leave, and work-directed treatment." Here's one link to it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19844838
And, an article in the UK Telegraph (mentions one of the same German researchers, Michael Linden):http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1561309/Work-phobia-an-anxiety-disorder-not-laziness.html
Here's a better link to the PDF of the article from Beate Muschalla from the German Journal of Psychiatry:http://www.gjpsy.uni-goettingen.de/gjp-article-muschalla.pdf
And here's one from allaboutcounseling.com: http://www.allaboutcounseling.com/library/workplace-phobia/
This amused me- From Wikipedia, a list of "Aspects of Workplaces" (look 'em all up when you have the time!) Wow, I can relate to a lot of these....
In 2009, German researchers B. Muschalla and M. Linden published a study on Workplace Phobia entitled "Workplace phobia--a first explorative study on its relation to established anxiety disorders, sick leave, and work-directed treatment." Here's one link to it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19844838
And, an article in the UK Telegraph (mentions one of the same German researchers, Michael Linden):http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1561309/Work-phobia-an-anxiety-disorder-not-laziness.html
Here's a better link to the PDF of the article from Beate Muschalla from the German Journal of Psychiatry:http://www.gjpsy.uni-goettingen.de/gjp-article-muschalla.pdf
And here's one from allaboutcounseling.com: http://www.allaboutcounseling.com/library/workplace-phobia/
This amused me- From Wikipedia, a list of "Aspects of Workplaces" (look 'em all up when you have the time!) Wow, I can relate to a lot of these....
- Absenteeism
- Aggression
- Bullying
- Conflict
- Control freak
- Counterproductive behavior
- Coworker backstabbing
- Cyber-aggression
- Democracy
- Deviance
- Discrimination
- Diversity
- Emotion
- Employee silence
- Employee surveys
- Empowerment
- Evaluation
- Feminisation
- Friendship
- Gender inequality
- Gossip
- Happiness
- Harassment
- Health surveillance
- Humor
- Incivility
- Intervention
- Jargon
- Listening
- Micromanagement
- Mobbing
- Morale
- Office politics
- Performance appraisal
- Phobia
- Privacy
- Probation
- Profanity
- Queen bee syndrome
- Relationships
- Revenge
- Romance
- Sabotage
- Safety
- Spirituality
- Staff turnover
- Strategy
- Stress
- Surveillance
- Toxic workplace
- Training
- Violence
- Wellness
Just for fun, let's find the Wikipedia link for "Toxic Workplace": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_workplace
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