Okay this is super relatable. It's most intense at the end of the weekend but it's a sort of round the clock experience, you are right.
I mean, yeah, a bit, sometimes. Mostly near the end of the semester. But I try to schedule a day of Doing Nothing that mostly involves knitting and that tends to help? I am not prepping for work or doing stuff at home, I am deliberately doing nothing and it is very restorative.
i used to have a full time job and it sucked the life out of me and now that's one of my firm, hard limits: i do not work 40 hr weeks. can't do it! i made a lot more money back then, even though my old job paid less, but i was too tired and depressed to use any of it. i held out for almost two years but they were the most miserable, unhealthy two years of my life. i have no advice :( just, some people can do it and some people can't. some people can do more than 40 hrs and feel healthy and productive and challenged. i did my best and learned something new about myself in the process, which was that i am emphatically not one of those people.
That is how I felt right before I had to leave my last job because it was so stressful my body just... tried to shut down on me. I don't really have any good advice on how to deal, but take care of yourself and don't push past your limits. :(
You mean Sunday Night Panic Attacks? Yeah absolutely. But then I moved, got a new job, and new brain meds and then they stopped. That was a really bizarre couple of months for me where not only did I not hate the thought of walking up in the morning to go to work, I was almost excited. I think my meds stopped working or something, because they're starting to come back up, but not weekly, thankfully. To answer your question: yes and maybe?
My mom described the Sunday evening meltdowns she used to have with a very stressful job she hated. I think they got worse over time, not better. She was not receiving mental health treatment at the time and the parts of the situation that made it so awful were unlikely to change.
I totally know that feeling, but it's not supposed to be a universal part of having a job, even a full-time one. My current job doesn't give me this anxiety, but teaching did. I don't know how I managed 2 years of mandatory teaching internships in public schools, I look back to it as a Nightmare Time. I'm sorry you're going through this.
Some job updates, a huge amount of my anxiety around work was due to this horrible, horrible woman at work who went out of her way to be petty and bitchy at me constantly. My anxiety was basically BEC with her but instead of petty rage it was nausea and fear about having to be on the evening shift alone with her. But then she turned in her two weeks notice two weeks ago and it was like the clouds opened up, and my anxiety went right back down to manageable levels while at work. Unfortunately that means that we're INCREDIBLY short staffed again. We only have 3 clinicians right now and one is barely full time. The unit is meant to have 6 full time clinicians and a number of per diams to cover the clins' weekends. It's terrible, it means we're constantly working with like two case loads each which just isn't sustainable. Plus the aftercare coordinator was in the hospital this week so we're all doing his job as well. It's so bad. At this point I'M the most senior full time clinician, that's NOT GOOD. I've barely been there for 6 months! I don't know how much longer I can keep this schedule up. I'd really like to work one less day a week, but I don't think we can afford it. Right now though I'm still having extreme anxiety and stomach troubles on the first workday of each week. I had to go in and then leave after an hour and a half this week because I just couldn't handle it. It's really dramatically affecting my health, but working less really isn't an option right now. I don't know what to do. :c
I don’t know if this is helpful or not but. If you need some moral support in prioritizing your needs: Spoiler Right now you are short staffed. If you don’t put some of the work down you will collapse and then, my word, they will not stay even vaguely afloat At All. Now more than ever, your wellbeing is mission critical to your workplace.
Work tonight was really really bad. A client had a screaming fit at me because I wouldn't let her have three giant bags of clothes dropped off when the rules she signed on admission state she can't have more than three of any one kind of item of clothing dropped off. She also screamed at me because I wouldn't let her skip out on commitment to see her brother who was an hour late. I let her see him really quick, which was way more than I should have done! Anyway, her petty tantrum doesn't really matter, I am just really really not great in the face of people screaming at me. I'm really surprised she didn't try to hit me, she was that in my face and loud and angry. I don't know how I'm feeling about it except if "crying" is an emotion. I'm not feeling anything, just crying without being able to stop.
I somehow woke up feeling even worse. I thought sleeping would help, but now I just feel sick and anxious about something that's not usual in my job, but also not unexpected. Entitlement and horrible screaming fits when thwarted are what happen when your brain wasn't allowed to develop to adulthood. That doesn't make it any less fucked up or alarming though. And I can't have other clients seeing her example and thinking that screaming lets you get your way or all of them will be acting out. But it's very hard to deal with in the moment because it's triggering as hell! And now I'm sick and anxious and I'm not going to be able to serve my other clients as well. I guess it makes sense that I feel worse now because last night I wasn't feeling anything, just crying. I'm not sure what it is I'm feeling though except just anxiety. Ugh.
My basil plants have been growing like crazy, and they're the less sweet more spicy/pungent types, so I've been making a lot of Thai basil chicken lately. I need to do more today because the basil is getting unruly. I might even start trying to dry it if this keeps up. Here's the recipe I've been using, it's good! 1 chicken breast 5 cloves of garlic 4 – 10 Thai chilies – when you fry the chilies, they aren’t as spicy 1 tablespoon chili oil 1 teaspoon of oyster sauce 1 teaspoon soy sauce 1/2 teaspoon sugar 1 handful of basil (regular sweet basil doesn't really work, but my spicy globe basil and Red Rubin basil do really nicely.) I double this recipe because I'm feeding my partners, but the above is a nice one person meal. Along with the rice, throw a fried egg on top, delicious.
basil is pretty easy to dry out - just hang upside down in bundles in a dry place without direct sun :)
And if you don't like the taste of dried basil (some folks dont, it's a thing) you can tear up basil leaves (any herb really) into ice cube trays and then cover them in a small amount of water to freeze, then just throw them into whatever you're cooking. That way they don't dessicate and go brittle like they do if you freeze them on their own. Thai basil chicken sounds delicious. Would nam pla work in place of the soy sauce, d'you think?
That ice cube basil thing is brilliant, thank you! I think I'll try a bit of both preservation methods because sometimes you really need fresh basil. Also yeah, I've used fish sauce in Thai basil chicken before, it's good. I've not used it instead of soy sauce but I feel like it would be fine. Also if you don't have Thai chilies I've used gochujang + a sweet red bell pepper (for some kind of pepper presence) and it worked great. Gave the dish a nice red color too, gochujang does not mess around when it comes to staining literally everything bright red. With the batch I just made I added 1/4 of an onion and really felt like some broccoli would have been nice. Next time!
