Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all, I'm new here.
I'm still in the process of a formal diagnosis much later in life. I'm still trying to get to a better understanding of my new normal instead of pretending I'm "normal"
I'm a single mum, my kids are growing up and I'm 4 months into a full time customer services job after 15 years of only part time work. I scraped through the long group training weeks and team building hell and now I have to be happy and chirpy on the phone 8 hours a day to customers, group teams meeting and being fake/masking all day. Ive found it really rough.
I have recently had to also deal with some pretty serious ongoing drama. Trying to stay afloat and balance it all but I'm about 14 hours deep into panic attacks today. Already petrified for clocking on again in the morning
I guess what I'm trying to work out is if this is a burnout and it might pass with some self care and solitude or if I'm kidding myself that I'll ever survive this job..
Have any of you got past anything like this?
NAS95929 said:I'm 4 months into a full time customer services job after 15 years of only part time work
I come from 32 years of this line of work as both 1st line, 2nd & 3rd line and management so can suggest a few things.
1 - read up on mindfulness. Learn to look at situations like you are solving a problem and decide if the situation needs your care or just your technical skills and only give the emotional investment to the stuff that really needs it.
2 - Develop scripts for speaking to people so you can fake being interested while getting the job done and just switch it off afterwards. This takes practice but is a life saver on 1st line work.
3 - Carve out time in your non-working schedule for recharge time and use it. Maybe this involves preparing meals in advance or planning which days to get takeaway food etc but make space with no commitments so you can switch your phone off and escape for a few hours every day if you need to.
4 - Schedule downtime on weekends. Don't allow friends and family to drag you out every day while you are adjusting to the new work - be firm and say I can't do it. Tell them the doctor ordered rest if they push on why.
5 - learn to meditate and some of the skills from this allow you to de-stress quickly using muscle relaxation techniques. It may feel cookey at first but stick with it as it can work well.
6 - when at work use all your breaks to the full and escape from others. You can use the meditation techniques to wind down and will soon learn to de-stress while you work if you stick with it - a lot of it is to do with relaxing your shoulders and breathing which have a knock on effect to the stress levels.
7 - don't get dragged in to work social events - tell them you have family issues and most won't press further.
A simple list but some tricky stuff to master - but if you do it you can survive well in my experience.
Good luck.