I'm having a nervous breakdown today.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Olives, I like reading your posts – you remind me a little bit of myself about 7 years ago, when I was having a lot of emotional problems and I felt like life was too much for me to handle at times. Life is still a pain in the ass but it’s getting better, and I think things will get better for you eventually if you just hang in there. Someday you’ll be a lot more confident, laid-back, and happy, and you’ll be doing something that you love. You’ll also be proud of yourself, I think, because you’ll look at all the shit you put up with, all the emotional crises you’ve experienced – all the doubt and fear and sadness – and you’ll see that you somehow managed to get through it all and become a stronger person for it. It’s hard to comprehend right now, because the future seems so shaky and nebulous, but life is long, and people change and grow (sometimes in unexpected ways) as they get older.

My own kooky theory about depression and anxiety disorders is that they are a disease of an intelligent mind. I don’t think dumb people suffer from these things in quite the same way – they may get sad or nervous, but they are blessed with the ability to accept simple platitudes like “it’s all going to be okay”, or “you’re special”, without needing to actually think about them. For whatever reason, some of us have very powerful, analytical minds that have been trained to sort through reality like a fine-toothed comb and see the little details and patterns that most people miss. People like this become the artists, writers, and musicians of a generation if they don’t kill themselves first. Because the lens with which they view the world can be devastating when turned too far inward.

I have no good advice to offer because that same lens which is probably tormenting you also makes you into a good writer who’s intimately in touch with her own emotions. There’s no way to make that lens go away, but it can certainly be focused outward a bit more with training. That is largely the purpose of CBT, I think – to train yourself to stop analyzing yourself so damn much. A little self-awareness goes a long way. Most people have no friggin clue what’s going on inside their own heads, and they’re probably better off. :slight_smile:

42

It could also be the constantly changing schedule that is the problem. I had a job like that (also in a call center). You could be scheduled anytime – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I had a lot of trouble dealing with that. It felt like I never saw my family, and since I only knew my schedule at the most 2 weeks in advance, good luck scheduling something even as simple as a dental checkup!

It was also an emotionally draining job at times. You listen to all these problems–big and small, you are required to express care and concern, and you make yourself sound happy and chipper even when you aren’t feeling that way at all. I sometimes felt burnt out at the end of a shift. I felt used up like a damp rag. The calls went by so fast, and the days went by so slowly. I was good at my job, and appreciated by my bosses and customers, but in the end, it just didn’t seem worth it. After two years, I found another job and quit.

I do better with a routine. Go to bed, wake up, eat meals at approximately the same time each day. I like not having to work evenings, weekends, and holidays. I like being able to spend time with my friends and family. These things recharge your emotional reserve. I could deal with changes for a while, but not permanently.

Frankly, even though I did like my job at times, I couldn’t really recommend it to anyone that I knew. I imagine it beats being homeless or going to a food shelf, but it’s a lot of crap to put up with for not much money.

People quit call center jobs all the time. That’s why your boss is trying so hard to keep you. However, you are feeling this bad after only one month. I think that there is a better job out there waiting for you.

43

I had a series of jobs I was miserable at, constantly stressed out. It fed existing anxiety & depression issues I had. I used to cry in the morning (and at the end of the day). I used to fantasize about and wish I could have a car accident on the way to work-- just so I wouldn’t have to go. Some mornings I began considering driving my car off the road into a tree so I wouldn’t have to go. It was that bad.

I was good at what I was doing, but miserable. And after three jobs of this, where I could never make my boss happy, I figured it had to be me. But I couldn’t figure out why. It was only after I took my current job (which I love) that I figured it out. In my case, it had to do with feedback. I’m someone who needs to know how I’m doing. If I don’t have assurance that I’m doing a good job, that anxiety creeps in and I convince myself I’m a failure about to get fired. I don’t need my boss to say “Obsidian, you’re great,” everyday (just sometimes). But I do need them to say “Thank you,” or “That’s correct,” when appropriate. I need documentable metrics of my performance. Admin and customer service work just killed me, because it’s SO variable, and so hard to pin down. Now I do short-timescale project-based work. I have a deadline and a deliverable-- when I make a deadline, the client or the senior PM will say, “Got it, thanks,” or “Good job,” and I can count that as a success. I can track the number of projects I’ve completed successfully. It provides regular reminders that I am, in fact, doing my job well.

For a long time I felt guilty about wanting a job that fit my emotional needs. There’s a lot of “why are you so special? Suck it up! What kind of baby needs feedback for everything?” attitude out there. But we all need to do what we need to do to be productive members of society within the framework of our mental health issues. I rather put the effort into finding a good fit than forcing myself into that wrong-sized slot just because I or someone else felt I should.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you can figure out what would provide positive reinforcement/anxiety abatement on a regular basis, it may help. This is my quirk, only you know what yours is. Maybe it’s a different type of work, or maybe it’s something that can change at your current job. A coworker of mine was miserable and on the brink of quitting when my boss got wind of it and had a heart to heart with her. Now her duties are changing in light of that, and she’s happier and plans to stay. She said she felt worlds better just taking to the boss and finding a receptive audience. She didn’t feel so isolated. Perhaps something could work similarly for you.

In any case I hope you feel better. I’ve been down that road and it ain’t fun.

44

That’s great that you had such an excellent talk with your boss, and that he recognizes the positive qualities you have. He also wasn’t scared away by your history. I tend to be an absolute thinker and obsess on my own and come to absoulte conclusions like, I am dropping an activity or job or whatever. Then when I bounce it off someone else I get some perspective and see things more balanced. The spiral I get into can be unspiralled.

This is not to say you should stay or go; only you know what’s right. But if it is your first job you may be putting a lot of pressure on yourself or thinking absolutely about this being what work is like and will always be like. Or I am projecting my issues on you. :slight_smile: You have the choice to do what you want, you are not trapped. But it sounds like if you do want to give it another try, you have a very positive supporter in your boss, and that can make a huge difference.

45

Nah, you hit it spot on, gigi. Today I’m going to sit down and do a full analysis of this issue, list every stressful thing about my job, rank them, and figure out if there’s anything that can be done to make those situations less stressful. Will report on my findings…

46

Wow. This is a huge win for you. You’re well-loved at that job, and you have every right to refuse it. That’s great!

The hours and the commute suck ass, and it’s a huge stressor. But I hope you stick with it for a while longer. Keep remembering that you can quit at any time with little or no consequences, and I think things will work out for the best.

I’m happy for you. This is really excellent news.

47

If your job is talking on the phone, why can’t you telecommute?
It’s great that you talked to your boss. Perhaps a different schedual, with time allowed for you to go to thearpy, would make the difference.

48

That’s what I was like when I was very severely, psychotically depressed. Of course, my job was incredibly stressful and made the depression problem worse.

I got some time off (first a week, then a couple of months because a week wasn’t enough), did partial hospital, and went back to work feeling a lot more stable. I ended up quitting my job eventually, but I was in a much more stable, rational place when I did.

Do you take meds? I am generally opposed to anti-depressants for mild-moderate depression, but when a person is this severely depressed, they can literally be life-savers. Wellbutrin stopped the suicidal thinking/crying jags within a few days and let me focus on therapy and work in a more rational way.

Best of luck.

49

Look on the bright side. With a two hour commute total – look at it as an opportunity. You have an hour to mentally prepare for work, and an hour to wind down before you get home.

I myself have a 45 min each way commute. I enjoy the time I have – it’s pretty much the closest I get to alone time all day long (other than time spent in the smallest room of the house).

That being said, having a job like that is a stressor. Not only are you trying to be empatheric and solve their problems, but you’re trying to deal with a high emotion situation – in another language. It’s not like they are calling you looking for movie times.

So, even though you thought you would enjoy it – just becuase it didn’t turn out to be what you expected – it’s OK. Your boss wants you there becuase you’re obviously good at what you do. That says a lot. But if it makes you want to peel off your skin, being there is just not right for you, IMHO. I’ve BTDT, worked at a job that gave me cold sweats going to work every day. I was very good at it – but medically, it was the worst thing I could have done for myself.

Now, I work at a credit union as a loan officer, and I love what I do. I love helping people, doing loans, financial counseling, etc. But if I had to deal with it all in Spanish, too? I think I’d poop my pants.

50

More updates…

I called my Auntie, because she is wonderful for things like this, and she agreed that my commute/schedule is currently a big part of my problem. So, she said, ‘‘Call your boss and ask him if he can work with you on your schedule.’’

I was terrified to do so, but I admit it was empowering. Unfortunately the lady in charge of schedules is getting married today and not coming back until next Monday, but my boss agreed to see what can be done–and asked me what I wanted.

I explained that I’m basically leaving the house an hour and a half before my scheduled work time, and also that if I am to work on this anxiety issue effectively, it will be necessary for me to have regular counseling.

He suggested the following possibilities:
Having a day off during the week for appointments, then working Saturday
(I would not mind this at ALL – not only is Spanish call volume delightfully high on Saturdays, but the shift is an easy 8:30-3pm and I’m home by 4.)

Looking into whether or not I would need to take a full hour lunch break each day and two 15 minute breaks – would cut back on 45 minutes of what I feel is possibly unnecessary break time every day.

He wanted to tell me I could work 8-5 every day as well (this would also be perfect), but unfortunately they do need Spanish-language coverage especially in the evenings since most people are just getting out of work in California around 8pm our time. He said he would talk to our scheduling supervisor about whether exceptions could be made.

In the meantime, he said we could try an 8-5 M-F next week on a trial basis, with a day off. Incidentally, I already have a paid day off next week for a medical procedure, so this seems like it would be an ideal ‘‘trial week.’’

Then when the scheduling lady returns the following week, he will see, based on my feedback as well, whether or not 8-5 as a regular thing would be a possibility.

He also added that of the 11 new employees he reviewed for quality control last week, my score was the second highest. They want me to stay.

I have to admit I am shocked at how much he was willing to work with me on the schedule thing. My Auntie told me it is always a scary thing to approach a job as a negotiation, but in essence that’s what it is, and you have to be willing to state what you need in order to be satisfied.

And she was right, because if they are able to make changes in the schedule for me, I will then have time to schedule therapy appointments to work on the anxiety and I think this job really could work out.

So today The Darjeeling Limited finally came out in our town, I am psyched beyond words because I adore Wes Anderson flicks, and we are going to see it to celebrate my newly acquired backbone. I definitely learned a very valuable lesson from this.

51

Dayum, girl, you are kicking ASS! Of course they’re working with keeping you…they luuuurrrrve you!

Hopefully this will alleviate a lot of your stress…you are great, and your boss knows it!!!

52

I was going to suggest this as well. One of my previous jobs was on a tech support call center. Everyone who called was in a panic, stressed to the limits, multimillion dollar sales were going to go south if it wasn’t fixed, etc. I was able to work from home one day a week but we had other people who did it 2 or 3 days. I used VPN to connect into my work network so I had access to the same stuff as everyone else. The phone system would rotate through the extensions of everyone in the call center and, when it reached my line, I had my office line forwarded to my home line.

Being able to work from home, even just one day a week, eliminates part of the stress because you are in a comfort zone at home. You can stay in your jammies, pet your cat and not feel like you have to maintain your composure around your coworkers.

Good luck and please see your doc. I believe you mentioned before being on certain anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medications. It might be time to take a look at the dosages and fine tune them.

53

I have been off all meds for about a year, and would rather not go there again-- but I am definitely going to go back into therapy.

54

Well, jeez. I appreciate everyone bearing with me here, I am acting like a complete loon lately.

I felt better for a minute after deciding to continue working at this job, but then I started being depressed again. I felt sick to my stomach, I couldn’t enjoy anything, and my husband said to me frankly, ‘‘I want you back.’’

I started crying again and I couldn’t stop. I wanted to die.

And well, I guess it became clear what I had to do.

So I called, and I quit.

It was so difficult for me to let go of this job, after all the emotional energy I had put into dreaming about it, the exuberance I felt when I was hired, my feeling that it was somehow meant to be.

But I had to tell him no, despite all the wonderful people there, it just was too painful. It is not the right kind of work for me.

I quit, then I sat down and waited for the flood of relief to come.

But you know what? No flood of relief. I am uncertain about my future. This is when I realized that I no longer live in the magic world where making the ‘‘right’’ decision makes things all better, some blinding flash of wisdom comes out of nowhere and I kick myself for not quitting sooner.

I realize there would be pain and loss no matter what decision I made. That is not an easy lesson to learn.

So I am sitting here feeling uncertain and in pain, but still with the knowledge that I made the right decision.

It is really kind of strange. But I guess that’s what being a grown-up is all about.

55

Olives, I am sorry you are not getting the relief you had hoped for. When mr.stretch had to quit working, even though he hated the job he still grieved it. You will just have to go through the grief process for this job.

This is a hijack, but I read in another thread that you will be separated from your husband for 6 months soon, yes? I’m very concerned about that. I hope you have a support network in place during that time.

56

Well… If I can find another job quickly, without a major interruption to my income, then I should be able to accumulate enough money to take an internship in Ecuador next August, and yes, I would be gone 6 months. That is a part of the pain of losing this job… Ecuador had almost been a given when I was working there, now it depends on whether I can bring in enough income to make it. But I think not even Ecuador would be worth 11 months of feeling this way.

When I was in Mexico this summer, we were separated 2 months, and it was sometimes tough, and believe me, I had plenty of anxiety and depression… but I handled it very well without letting it get out of control. I believe the same would generally be true for Ecuador.

I think it maybe really was the job making me batshit crazy… the poster who mentioned wanting to get in a car accident on the way to work really resonated with me… ‘‘Maybe I’ll end up in the hospital. Gosh, I wouldn’t have to go to work for weeks!’’

…But just to be on the safe side, I have arranged to set up an appointment with a counselor for regular therapy. It took a good deal of pride swallowing to admit I wasn’t done yet, but there you have it.

I think I am going to be okay no matter what. I think some of these lessons just happen as a natural part of life. We all have to grow up sometime.

57

I was going to send this as a PM, olives, but figured, what the heck, why not share some more personal thoughts with strangers on the internet? :wink:

I just wanted to say that I think we’re a lot alike, minus the husband and being out of school. Close in age, same struggle with depression. And I find you sort of inspiring, because you are a lot more pulled together than I am regarding your mental health.

I found myself in a similar situation earlier this year. I had landed a job at the 4th-largest Holocaust museum in the country. It was my first “real” job in the sense that I had a lot of independence and the ability to make real decisions. I worked with some really wonderful people (and a few assholes) doing work that I found really fulfilling. The income wasn’t wonderful, since I’m still in school, but being a history major, it was a great job for my future career. In fact, during a few talks with HR it was fairly well guaranteed I’d get a promotion into the education or exhibits department when I finished my degree.

But it got to me. No matter how great I felt about educating people, advocating tolerance, raising money for wonderful charities, it still didn’t outweigh the stress of working daily with people who had survived the Holocaust, of immersing myself in Holocaust literature even in my time off, of having to walk by artifacts like Dr. Mengele’s medical instruments or a boxcar that carried people to their death at Auscwitz. I couldn’t take it.

So I quit as well. I explained to the HR manager about my depression, and how I really didn’t feel up to the job, no matter how much I loved (most of) it.

It was a hard decision to make. I still regret it in a way, since it was an excellent career move, but as I said to the HR manager, “My mental health is one of my top priorities,” so I had to leave.

Our situations are not identical, and only you can know if you’ve made the right decision, but I suspect you have.

I just wanted you to know that you’re not alone in your experience, and that I’m sure you’ll do well. I’m sure you’ll be okay.

58

That would definitely factor into it. But I gotta go with the call centre itself. On top of that, you’re dealing with people that are emotionally drained by their finances, and that’s tough to hear coming from a close friend once, not to mention all day everyday as your job! Every time I’ve felt the heat on my job is when I have to deal with people on the phone (1st level support for IT stuff, 12hr shifts, 2hr commute - luckily short, but stable work weeks though). It is the single worst thing ever to deal with people on the phone! I have to step away after some of these calls to recharge.

Think about what you’re dealing with:

2-hour commute (traffic is a big stressor if you’re navigating around 9-5’ers)
9 hours days (not so bad, but 11 hour days commuting!)
Flip flop schedule (big effect on your sleep. if sleep is affected, your senses are affected) Can you imagine Hillary on the thrown?
Phone dealings (big stressor for a call centre, I’d rank it with traffic with 9-5’ers in terms of outrage felt within. “seeing red” as they say)
Clients are emotionally drained, and you have to hear it (their emotional drain is now your emotional drain)
Enabling boss (by your account, it sounds like he just wants to keep you there as long as he can regardless of how you feel. sure he’s empathetic now, but his motives outweigh your feelings in the long run)
That’s big stuff to deal with for any job, especially right out of school. And if depression is a factor as has already been noted, combined with the above… it can really cause the emotions to run wild. Which, IANAD, might be the expected outcome over time, wouldn’t it?. But if you can remove some of the stressors listed, it may help.

59

What are you planning to do in Ecuador? I don’t think I was following your earlier career-related threads.

I’m not surprised that you decided to go ahead and quit. That sounds like a very rational choice to me.

Sometimes we confuse a company’s purpose with the tasks we’re being paid to do.

My first real full-time job (at age 22) was working at a branch of the public library. I thought I was going to “embrace knowledge.” Really. :smiley: Nope, that’s not what a Librarian Assistant is there for, not in the least.

But if you read the career guidance books (like Richard Bolles’ What Color is Your Parachute, which is excellent) they rely on past work experiences (good AND bad) to help you find your way. There’s no way to get THERE without some missteps along the way.

It seems like a lot of people wind up doing pretty much what they really wanted to be doing back when they were kids in high school - even though, for some of us, it seemed like a long shot. “You can’t make a living at that!” Heh - lots of people do.

60

Oh Honey, this is a story I could have been telling myself about three to five months ago.

I started working in a 24 hour call centre, doing tech support for internet. It was a short commute, we were only dealing with dial up and the beginnings of a DSL network, I had a great team and it was good. It was my dream job. Tech support, great money.

Then in the last 12 months, everything started to change. They took away our money making shifts (night and Sundays), but still kept us on a rotating roster between 7 am and 7 pm. They started bringing in more products without proper testing or support structures in place, and started offshoring work which created more work for us because the Indian reps just couldn’t do their work properly. I started finding myself getting irrationally angry at things, crying over calls and work. I was still acing my job, but started hating the prospect of going in every day.

So late last year I changed departments. I’d worked financial services before for a short period, I liked it so I felt I’d be better off there.

How wrong I was. Like you, I was dealing with people in severe financial straits almost every day. They were crying, they were angry. People who were having to make the decisions between paying their other bills and keeping their phone on. I ended up sick on a weekly basis, crying and having panic attacks over stupidly unrelated things like my bus being late or the trains not running on time. It culminated with me breaking down at work and my team leader arranging with the centre manager for me to have two weeks emergency annual leave (as in, you go home today and don’t come back for 2 weeks) with the condition that I saw the company shrink. I came back from that hiatus and whilst I felt good whilst I was on my rest, I started panicking and crying again nearly as soon as I came back. So I quit.

Lost my excellent salary, went down to a pretty basic wage. Now I’m working office admin, and I’ve not been this happy at work for years. I felt the slight relief when I quit, but I was terrified too. We’ve got a lot of bills and obligations, but in the end even though the money was great where I was, it was killing me inside.

The long-winded point I’m trying to make is that it’s your health. It’s your mind. You can’t sacrifice yourself for something like that. Especially if you have got a history of these problems.

It may feel wonky and not great, but you’ve done the right thing. Now you can concentrate on you, on recovering and getting yourself back together.