Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi! I'm Jack.
After spending the better part of a year trying to get a job, I finally got one that I really wanted. I've been in it for four months now. It involves a lot of one-on-one talking to people about their problems and feelings.
The thing is, I get fatigued by social contact, to the point that I'm completely useless for several hours after each session, sometimes even dissociating from exhuastion. It isn't just the fact that I'm talking to people; it's the fact that the topics are stressful by nature! I'm on a zero-hours contract so I only get paid for the hours that I'm talking to clients, so I really need to be racking up more hours on the job if I'm going to earn enough to pay the rent and eat!
I really enjoy my job, and don't want to have to give it up, but if things continue this way I'll have to because currently I'm only working four hours a week and even that is making me constantly tired (I have some volunteering for something else as well, but that doesn't take up much of my time).
My question is: will this tiredness go away? Does anyone have experience of 'getting used to' social contact? My hope is that I'll build up some kind of emotional resiliance and be able to slowly take on more clients. If it doesn't go away, I might have to get a different job
- Jack
Well if you meet enough people with similar types of issues, and the same type of questions and answers, then over time those things become predictable and you might have more of an automated response for it eventually.
But new information that's being processed by your brain is always going to be tiring and slow at first, but then your brain eventually recognizes the patterns, and you will get faster and more proficient at it.
Talking one on one with people is draining though, and listening to others for hours is hard to do. If you're already drained from the hours you're getting, then give yourself some time before adding more hours into it. You might be handling other people's mental health (I'm just assuming), but you also need to be taking care of your own mental health first, or else you'll get burned out.
Thanks for your reply!
I think you're right about taking on new clients slowly - the reason I only have four clients is that I'm doing exactly that! I started with only one, and just last week I got my fourth.
I think you're probably also right about things getting easier when I get more used to the sort of issues that might come up. I'm trying to build a written database of problems and solutions for that very reason - so I don't have to engage my brain as much (saving my energy), and so I can start to memorise the patterns to make them easier.
My hope is to mitigate the problems as much as I can with my database, and build up confidence in experience so that I don't get additional stress from worrying that I'm giving bad advice. I suspect this can only take me so far though - I'm still a bit worried that listening to people talk about their anxieties is inherently stressful. I don't want to panic and throw away a perfectly good job prematurely, but I plan to keep an eye on things in case it gets too much!
I think that if you're already going at a pace that allows you enough time to soak up new information, and that you're making a database of problems and solutions, that you'll become more proficient and use less brain energy over time, as the information becomes more and more ingrained in your mind.
People talking about their anxieties is hard, but if one method of therapy does not work for them, just try something else. The only way to make it bad is if you just talk about yourself for an hour and forget that the client is there.