The One Where They Found Out At Work
I have blogged in patches about what happened to me in March 2011, which in many ways was the main defining moment in my life. If you scroll not too far back in time, you'll see a series of 'live' blogs that I posted (which went well(!), thanks to modern technology and my lack of ability to utilise a tablet correctly) which I wrote as a consequence of that event. I will probably conclude this Sharing Experiences flurry with this event detailed in full, which won't be a particularly pleasant experience but one that I feel that will be worth doing.
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| Listen to the birdy |
The reason I mention it in line with this blog, is that the following experiences all stemmed from this March 2011 event, albeit occurring a couple of months later in the year.
I'm very glad to say that my anxiety has rarely affected my work, which I count as a blessing. I appreciate that this is not the case for many people; indeed, work is often the root cause of anxiety in the first place. However, because of the impact that March 2011 had, my anxiety was totally consuming me during the spring and summer of that year. Everything I did was, at best, difficult, to the point where I struggled to leave the house. Needless to say then, that during this time it did affect work. Simply being at my desk was hard, and what made it harder was my insistence of keeping my problems quiet, lest I was deemed temporarily unfit to work, which would make me feel like a total failure. What's more, I was a lot more scared of people's reaction back then and indeed feared for my job if I admitted to my chronic anxiety.
The two worst moments during this 6-ish month period were as follows. The first was me requiring to take a 1hr 15min bus journey to Lichfield from Stafford, undertake a meeting with someone I didn't know which would take a similar amount of time and then get the bus back. I was very anxious before I even started the bus journey, such was the nature of this particular period of time, and so the bus journey there was awful. I remember planning to eat my packed lunch on the bus there, but could barely force anything down me, which of course never helps. Me and food have had many arguments like this in the past; knowing I should eat something but not have the breath or physical calmness to even consider it. So this heightened my anxiety even more.
I arrived in Lichfield and I remember sitting in reception. What didn't help is that the reception area had totally changed from last time I saw it, which, although sounding trivial, just made things even more unfamiliar and thus put me more on edge. I was sitting there shivering and feeling very ill, physically. Of course, this is what anxiety does, but I also have health anxiety which means I took all of these physical feelings out of all proportion too. Which, of course, increases the anxiety even more.
The meeting itself was a nightmare. To this day, I don't know how I managed to get out of there without having a full blown panic attack. I think some sort of divine intervention took hold that knew that this would have been a horrendous place to have a panic attack. I remember nearly losing it at one point, and found myself staring at the person (who wasn't overly receptive either, which didn't help), or rather, staring past them. It took something unknown to pull me through that meeting.
The bus journey back? I felt perfectly fine; relaxed, even. A meeting and trip, which from a work perspective wasn't tasking in the slightest by the way, caused so much pain and exhaustion during that time that I made so many excuses thereafter so I didn't have to go to any other meetings for a fair while after.
It wasn't long after that, though, that the second main incident occurred. I'd been to the doctor's in the morning and was put back on my beta blockers (which I'm still on now well over 2 years on, albeit a weak dosage). In my wisdom, I decided to take the first one at lunchtime, whilst sitting at my desk at work. Not a good idea.
Within minutes, I felt very hot and very faint. I don't think the medication did anything to me (although I've no proof of this), but rather I was thinking of what physical effects the meds could have on me, and for some reason my brain was recounting the mechanics of what beta blockers do. As part of my health anxiety, I am terrified of the thought of "non-natural" substances entering my body and changing things "unnaturally." So consequently, what happens? The thoughts about this make you feel hot and faint. This exacerbates the health anxiety, which then in turns makes it all worse. The problem with this situation is that it was at my desk at work, with all of my colleagues sitting at their desks around me. Then, just as I was close to passing out, my boss comes round to my desk to ask me something. I remember, in reply to her question, saying something like this:
"Yes ok, but first I'm going to pass out if I don't get out of here."
Which I appreciate after the event sounds quite funny...
I was only able to wheel my chair to a separate manager's office close by, who luckily wasn't there, so it meant I could shut the door and shut out the main office. It was at this point that I blurted out to my manager that I suffered from anxiety and explained the situation with the medication. I was very incoherent at the time so I'm not exactly sure what I said, but I told her more than I ever intended to. Luckily (as is often the case - #TimetoTalk - ), her reaction was generally a positive one, and she said she'd had to take beta blockers in the past too as a result of anxiety. I didn't take in the significance of this at the time, but what it meant was that at least I wasn't seen as some sort of alien.
I was then driven home by another colleague, but again felt fine not too long after. Well, fine isn't necessarily the right word but you get the idea.
The day after, my boss's boss (at the time) took me in to a meeting room for a chat, and he also shared some of his stress experiences. OK, not quite chronic anxiety, but again I was getting support in the best way they knew how, so I could only be grateful for that. I was told that I would get any support that I needed, which was nice. Don't get me wrong, they didn't (and still don't) know the full extent of my anxiety. To them, it was limited to those few weeks (if not that one incident), but their reaction combined with my increased confidence since then would now make me less scared to open up about it at work, if required.
But at the time, this period of my life was hell, because I thought that my job was at stake. I even remember saying to my boss(es) that "I thought I'd be told to take some time off." Moreover, my anxiety across my whole life was plaguing me, dictating me and making me so low and upset. It took a huge hand from my therapist and simply the course of time to get out of this, my darkest year. Much of which I have written about in previous blogs... so feel free to take a gander!
It's #TimetoTalk.
Best wishes
Al
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