Published on 12, July, 2020
On reflection, I think this problem has defined much of my life since childhood. To the point where even now in my late 30s I struggle with interviews, shops or even speaking up infront of family members who often make fun of anything that might give rise to some poor excuse for humour.
Feeling this to such an extreme level, is this normal, does this happen to you? How do you cope with situations where the attention is directed and you, your work, or your life?
I have always tended to brazen it out until needing to totally retreat. It felt as though I could never admit to what I was feeling inside and that, especially in the workplace, pretending to be confident and extravert was an essential defence. I had to throw people off the scent because otherwise I didn't think I could survive in the workplace and I needed the money. Admitting to anxiety only led to typical comments about seeking help, everyone getting "butterflies", desensitisation techniques and other strategies that, of course, I'd investigated long ago. So I stopped doing it and carried on, feeling as though I was "walking the plank", getting further and further out and more and more wobbly until I had to take time off sick - obviously for a physical problem as owning up to anxiety would have contributed to me being bounced out of my job, one way or another.
It basically felt as though it was unacceptable to be myself and the only point at which things got better was when I was able to leave my well-paying job and do something more aligned with my interests. I would go so far as to say that I'm "allergic" to the corporate world, hierarchies and office politics. Self employment works much better for me, but I had to reach a certain point in life to feel able to do this. I also had to realise that I'm autistic and reflect on the role of masking in my life.
Self employment & autism are def a win:win. I'm back to self-employment after working corporate for a short time of 1 yr. I was self-employed before that for 10 yrs. I thought going back, to increase my income for a short-time would be that bad...it's 2019, business environments had surely improved? Nope....there can be some serious mental illness that exists there that affects people like us. That's why I got into change management....to improve people issues, as well as processes. Everyone deserves to be themselves, happy & healthy in a work environment. People are not there to be robots or be abused. BRAVO that you made it out!
Yes, the self employment grew out of my need to protect myself from typical workplace environments. Mental health was definitely a factor but working on myself while the environment remained unchanged did very little for me. Radical change was the only answer but I needed to feel secure about my finances before I could make that move. The mortgage still needed to be paid.
I'm not sure I actually have that quality in that I only became "brave" once the financial risks were very much reduced. I also had a couple of redundancy payments in my back pocket so I could invest in retraining (and it would also be illuminating to zoom in on the reasons I often found myself at the top of the redundancy list). Still, for me the suffering caused in my PAYE employment was slowly destroying me, even though, from school onwards, it seemed like the "easy", well-trodden route and, because of my decent academic performace, I somehow expected to become a huge success. It took me a long time to realise that the old assumption that hard work and application will pay off wasn't working for me and would probably lead to my early demise. Even longer to realise that I'm autistic and that none of the almost continual attempts to "improve" or "fix" myself were going to help. Basically an ounce of self acceptance would have saved me a ton of futile striving.