Posting my situation
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| Fri, 01-07-2005 - 4:52pm |
Hello. I am fairly new here. I have read a few of your posts from time to time. I hope you can read my story too.
I have been dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression. I know that I need to get help for it, but I am afraid to get help for a lot of reasons. One of the more practical reasons is that someday I want to adopt a waiting child from overseas- and that having these problems makes you kind of look bad. I fear that getting help will cause me to have to give up on that dream. I have more anxiety than depression. It is not very severe, as I am a fully fuctional person. Most of the time, I am more than fully functional. I do a lot with my time, but that is a choice. My childhood was very blank because my mother never let me do pretty much anything, and so now I just feel comfortable doing things with my time. When I am not working, I volunteer and I read books and I educate myself particularly in foreign languages. I take Russian lessons from a Russian lady in her home. I experiment a lot with cooking, and just try to keep myself busy.
Another not so practical reason for not getting help is that I am afraid I am not deserving of help for whatever reason. I can't seem to shake the mindset that other women deserve this more than I do, although in rationality everyone would chirp that the help is there for everyone regardless, and that no matter what, I am entitled to it. I often think that people just say that to make it okay for them to get help, but in reality, I am really not deserving of help if that makes sense.
While talking, my husband and I tried to trace the origin of my anxiety and I think it had to do with growing up in a very religious home which was so religious that it got to the point of mental abuse. I found a very helpful website for people loosing their religions, and the people on there became like my family, although my personal opinion was that they were a little too extreme sometimes. The website people referred me to a book called "Leaveing the fold", which is a guide for people who used to be fundamentalists and all the mental turmoil that it causes. Reading this book is like reading my own mind and things that I know to be true of myself that I couldn't put into words before. The woman who wrote this book must have written my EXACT life story. DH and I are both reading the book, because he has similar issues as well.
Things were going very, very well until last week. I have a supervisor at work who, over two years ago, showed interest in me, but I wasn't interested. I was involved with my now husband, and this supervisor was not my type. Over the past two years, he has made things difficult for me on and off. He has made comments, laughed at me, gotten beligerant, mistrained me in the beginning of my time there, and so on. I never said anything, because I was always taught that your job is kind of your identity and that you are to be some kind of slave or whatever to bosses, customers and so on, because "They pay your paycheck". I always saw jobs not going well as a huge enormous failure, and so always pushed the harassment from this supervisor of mine under the rug. Often, if I ignored him, he would stop for months at a time, then start up again, then stop for another few months. So I always figured if I left it alone, it would stop again.
This past week, it got way, way, way worse. I mean WAY worse. We ended up having a meeting with the boss's boss, and she heard both of our sides. When I told her how he treats me on and off, and some specifics, he flipped out and started getting really really crazy with me right in front of her. He even threatened me right in front of her.
Martha, the boss, was very very understanding to me and very nice. She was trying to remain neutral, but I think she was on my side. The two of us even talked in private after he left, and she even gave me a hug when we were finished. She gave me her number and everything.
But the way he was talking scared me. He never got that bad with me before. He called me names and said I was crazy and making all this up in my head. He even told me he would make sure I was sorry I told her those things. It was a week ago, and I am still shaking. I have become deathly afraid every time I am to leave my house and especially when I am to go to work. A few days later, this supervisor tried to get together a meeting of everyone who works with us just to talk about me and how horrible I am. No one went for it, as a matter of fact, most people came and told me about it right away because of how bizzare it was to want to do that.
I don't need this job. We live on half my husband's income and have a lto of savings. However, it brought on a huge wave of depression and I feel like I can't function anymore. I hate quitting, because I have always been led to believe that a failure in your career means you suck as a person and are not good enough for anything. I have been here for a little over two years, and want longevity on my resume. I don't like to fail. I want to be a successful person.
This experience has brought on a huge wave of depression, but aside fro mthe one experience that brought it on, I need to get to the bottom of my anxiety/depression as well.
Thanks for listening.

Hi Marina and Welcome!
The thing I just would like to stress to you is that to be the best Mom you can be to the child you would like to adopt you first have to be the best you can be to YOU!
*hugs