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.....

I Want to be Happy in the Morning

Sometimes I am, shall we say, less than perceptive about the manifestations of my anxiety and depression. Like, after I left my last real job eight years ago, my life got much better. I started volunteering at the Emergency Food Program. I turned their weedy yard into a highly productive vegetable garden full of lettuce, cilantro, collard greens, kale, tomatoes, beans, corns, and squash. I was having the time of my life.
My relationship was great, my home life was good, I felt excited about what I was doing.

But I would still have constant bad dreams about the workplaces where I had been so miserable. And I would still wake up every morning with a sense of dread and impending doom.

I kind of shrugged it off, saying I'm just not a morning person. True enough. I like to stay up till about midnight every night, and I pretty much always have.

It has finally dawned on me that I shouldn't be waking up every morning with a sense of imminent disaster. And I have just now realized that perhaps the reason I feel this way every single morning is that maybe somewhere in my subconscious mind I think I'm getting up to get ready to go to Work (capital W "Work", as in Job, as in Office, as in Corporation), not work in the garden, or work around the house, or work on an art project, or volunteering. Work, that bad place where I used to have to go. Even though I haven't been there in eight years now!

So this could be the reason that I am more likely to be deeply depressed first thing in the morning than at any other time of the day. It's because my conscious mind takes a while to catch up to the fact that I'm not going anywhere bad that day, not if I can help it anyway.

Anxiety Over Volunteering in an Office

I have been volunteering at an animal shelter for the past eight months, working directly with dogs. The shelter needed help in the office with data entry and telephone work, so I volunteered for this.

Now, keep in mind that I've been volunteering there for several months, and I walk past the office area every day that I'm there. It hadn't bothered me at all. I look forward to going to the shelter, and pretty much enjoy every minute I spend there. In fact, it's one of the most fun things I've ever done in my life.

The night before I was going to work in the office, I started feeling weird. I was thinking I wouldn't like it, and thinking that the people in the office probably wouldn't like me. I was worried that maybe I wouldn't be able to do the job anyway, and then maybe I wouldn't like volunteering at the shelter any more.

The next day, I woke up really early and paced around my house nervously. I was worried about every damn thing, whether my clothes were OK, whether I would be able to learn things and remember them, whether I would say the right things, etc., etc. I felt ridiculous about the silly things that I was obsessing about. I sure hoped nobody would notice how nervous I was.

Well, I've done this assignment twice now, for four hours at a stretch, and as far as I know, nothing went wrong. I even got complimented on my performance (I hate that word "performance" in relation to work. Maybe I should think of a different word.)

Yesterday at the shelter office, there a few things that gave me anxious feelings. First of all, the supervisor was wearing a suit to work that day. He usually doesn't, so perhaps he was going somewhere special that day. For all I know, it could have even been a funeral or something. Evidently business suits trigger anxiety in me.

Then, he wanted to introduce me to his boss, who works in a corner office. That made me feel ill at ease too. He seemed like a nice enough person.

This whole experience has made me very aware of my strong desire to be free from these specific types of anxiety, since they are obviously interfering with things I want to do.

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.