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.....

Trying to Figure Out Exactly What the Problem Is

I'm actually a very industrious person. I thought about trying to become a slacker, but I didn't feel I was very good at it. It's possible some slacker-type jobs might work for me- I'd have to identify what they are and find out about them. There must be some video store jobs left.

Interestingly enough, there is a clothing company called Ergophobia. They sell clothes for skaters and surfers. (There's that slacker image again.)

I think my fear is not connected to all types of work, but specific types of work, and in particular, certain types of work environments. The other part of the fear seems to relate to certain types of interpersonal interactions.

I am seriously phobic about office work and office-type environments, especially high-rise buildings. The picture you see above is making me feel queasy.

I've been in clinics and medical buildings with several floors, and they don't usually bother me. I've never worked in one, so maybe this is why.

High-rise hotels are a little weird for me, because of business travel associations. Ditto for airports.

I Dream of Elevators and Collapsing Office Buildings

I'm a mellow sort of person who loves gardening, animals, gourmet cooking, and the Grateful Dead. I love to visit art galleries, plant nurseries, and the library. I make art out of found objects. I'm basically an old hippie.

Why can't I have dreams about things I enjoy? Why can't the bad dreams stop? I have them just about every night. It's like a curse.

I dream about being lost in big gray high rise office buildings. The building's on fire and I can't escape. Alarms going off. Walls and ceilings caving in. Being trapped in elevators, stuck, going nowhere.

Sometimes the dreams aren't quite that bad. Maybe I'm leaving the job and packing my stuff in cardboard boxes. Every time I think I've finished, and the boxes are ready to go, then more stuff appears in the desk drawers. So I pack it up. Then I check the drawers again- more stuff. The office fills up every time I empty it. And I have to get it all boxed up, or I can't leave.

Often I dream that I can't find my way out of the office building. It becomes a surreal labyrinth with multiple corridors and hallways. I get lost in it. Wandering around lost.

I have an idea. I'm going to make a dream catcher out of the vines and twigs in my yard. I'll make the dream catcher from the healing herbs and the sacred trees, and I will ask to go to a good place at night in my sleep, not the bad places any more.