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Do you work?

Emma

I work in a office building. I'm one of three women and a man. My job is to answer the phone and use a computer, my day consists of me typing, speaking on the phone and engaging in conversation (help!) with my work colleagues. My friend April who works next to me is really nice and I think she knows there's something different about me because she seems to give me a sort of comforting smile a lot of the time. Work is hard, every day I spend ages making sure I look right for work and change my clothes and redo my hair about fifty times before I finally leave. When I get to work I spend the day feeling anxious because I know I'll have to engage in workplace communication, either work banter or one of my colleagues will ask me if I have a file or if someone called. This sends me in to a massive brain shutdown moment where I spend the next ten minutes trying to think and communicate at the same time, which results in me not finding the right words and just sort of babbling like a baby.

Working is difficult, mostly because of the amount of things I have to do. Focusing, communicating, being out of my safe zone and *shudders* office meetings where I sometimes have to stand up and talk to my colleagues as well as our boss... Usually after a meeting I end up throwing up in the bathroom and have a mini panic attack.

Does anyone else here work and have similar problems to me?

Parents

  • I work in software. A lot of the time I can work on my own, with headphones on in my own little world which is fine. I tend to go through cycles of being pretty much ok and able to focus, and periods where I feel constantly panicked and talking to people is pretty painful, sometimes I go and hide in a meeting room, or in a storage area at the back of the building for a while just to have fewer things going on around me - maybe not possible but you could ask if there is somewhere you could go sometimes to work quietly??  A few years back I had a terrible boss (Italian guy) who decided he wanted to make me better at public speaking, so forced me into doing presentations to fairly large groups (30 or 40 people) and chair meetings etc - it was pretty horrible and I was close to quitting, though I have to say doing it more did make it a tiny bit easier, as I got to know what to prepare and how to structure it and what the process would be. Thankfully he got fired eventually (as he was a total *** to lots of people) and the presentations stopped :)  I play in a band and wierdly have no problem going up on a stage and playing and singing to 1000 people, but talking to a group of 20 is still really difficult. I think maybe it's because performing a song I've practised loads of times makes me feel in control of whats going on, and it's kind of a one way interaction.

Reply

  • I work in software. A lot of the time I can work on my own, with headphones on in my own little world which is fine. I tend to go through cycles of being pretty much ok and able to focus, and periods where I feel constantly panicked and talking to people is pretty painful, sometimes I go and hide in a meeting room, or in a storage area at the back of the building for a while just to have fewer things going on around me - maybe not possible but you could ask if there is somewhere you could go sometimes to work quietly??  A few years back I had a terrible boss (Italian guy) who decided he wanted to make me better at public speaking, so forced me into doing presentations to fairly large groups (30 or 40 people) and chair meetings etc - it was pretty horrible and I was close to quitting, though I have to say doing it more did make it a tiny bit easier, as I got to know what to prepare and how to structure it and what the process would be. Thankfully he got fired eventually (as he was a total *** to lots of people) and the presentations stopped :)  I play in a band and wierdly have no problem going up on a stage and playing and singing to 1000 people, but talking to a group of 20 is still really difficult. I think maybe it's because performing a song I've practised loads of times makes me feel in control of whats going on, and it's kind of a one way interaction.

Children
  • in reply to Bobajob

    In a band you've got something like a misical instrument to distract you and you need your focus on the instrument and the music. Which is exactly why so many people have something in their hands while doing a presentation. Or a screen to distract attention.

    30 to 40 people is horrible Confused. The advantage is that they fade a bit because there are so many people. When groups are smaller you see the individuals Slight frown