Is there anyone around who works in health care, social work or something similar? If so, how do you deal with times in your life, when you feel overwhelmed by your work and/or doubt your abilities at work? I have worked with mentally ill people for several years now, but currently I completely doubt myself and even think that I'm a fool for choosing this career, because I have trouble adjusting to my new job. I am so scared of being fired or doing something wrong, that I feel constantly tense at work and it basicly causes me to hate my job, my life as a whole and myself. Hating myself in turn makes me sprial deeper into self hatred, because I think that it is completely insane that a person who can't even stand herself would choose to work with mentally ill people. I don't really know how to get out of this.
That's the short story, for the long story continue reading.
Self hatred is nothing new to me, in my late teens, shortly after moving out of my parents' house with the help of social services ( my father was physically and emotionally abusive, my mother was comparatively nice, but still told me all the time that I wouldn't get anywhere in life, that I was fat, lazy, selfish.... insert any negative attribute here) I struggled a lot with self hatred. Even back then I knew that it wasn't rational and I actually had a relatively realistic perspective on myself while at the same time thinking that I didn't deserve to live, that my mere existence was a burden to everyone who had the bad luck to know me. Although my self hatred caused me to have near constant thoughts about killing myself for several years, I managed to not let these thoughts dominate my life too much. I somehow found a way to deal with it by allowing my self hatred limited outlets that wouldn't have real impact on things important to me. For example I decided to restart cutting myself, but only in a superficial way and on my private parts, so as not to run in any trouble with having to hide scars from friends or at work. This allowed me to satisfy to a certain extent my desire of self destruction while at the same time allowing me to change my life for the better (for example by becoming more outgoing and less insecure, enabling me to form more friendships). Slowly my state of mental health improved. Eventually I also understood the link between certain difficulties in my life and the abuse I had suffered in my childhood. This helped me to understand myself better and caused my self hatred to mostly vanish.
A lot of time has passed since my teenage years, I finished school, went to college and eventually decided on a career that involves working with the mentally ill. In the past 10+ years I felt relatively stable and happy with my life. Although I was always a bit worried about not being able to deal with the responsibility that comes with this kind of job, I also knew that this was what I wanted as a career and most people who knew me encouaraged me to pursue this goal. There were 2 notable exceptions: My mother who made fun of me, telling me that I was crazy myself, because obviously only a crazy person wouldn't want to have contact with her parents (At this point I refused to have any contact with my father and limited the contact with my mother to phone calls and letters) and my then best friend, who told me that I didn't even know how to deal with self hatred myself (as I never got fully rid of my self hatred and also never stopped cutting myself although I don't think cutting myself is a problem as noone sees it and it doesn't cause any real harm) and thus shouldn't try to work with mentally ill people. However, this friend shortly afterwards tried to persuade my boy-friend that I was cheating on him (which wasn't the case), so I'm not sure how much of a friend she really was at that point.
By now I have worked for several years with the mentally ill and at first I felt ok with it and actually had the feeling that my background sometimes even helps me to understand my clients. The feedback I received from past employers and supervisors was mostly also quite positive. However, in my new job I have a lot more clients and much less supervision and support, which makes it extremely tough for me to not be completely overwhelmed by the responsibility that weighs on me. This makes me feel that I'm bad at my job. On top of it I am now an employee while before I did freelance work most of the time. Being an employee makes me extremely paranoid, because I still have the voice of my parents in my head telling me that obviously I won't ever keep a job , because no one wants to employ a shitty person like me... So I expect every day to get fired. Everyone tells me that this is not going to happen, as there is currently more work than workers in my field of work. But it makes work a chore, because I am constantly full of fear of doing something wrong. This makes it extremely stressful to work and it also causes a variety of other problems like headaches (from tensing up so much), not sleeping very well and often waking up after only a few hours of sleep and being unable to go back to sleep, which in turn makes it hard to focus during work. Plus I don't enjoy life any more. I judge myself for that, because I think how am I supposed to work with mentally ill people, if I don't even know how to handle myself and my own life? It makes me feel like a complete failure. And all the problems this job is causing me also make me hate my job and my clients and of course I hate myself even more for that. However, it's not an option to quit as the job is exactly what I had hoped for (and actually not expected to find it so early in my career), both from the type of work as well as the conditions (part time, not too far from where I live, decent pay, nice co-workers and boss). I think that I would probably do ok with this job, once I have a bit more routine and if I wasn't so scared all the time.
But I don't know how to get rid of the fear. I have huge trouble calling in sick when I have a cold, because I'm convinced I will be fired (which is irrational, but I still have this fear, as my parents didn't allow me to stay home from school when I was sick, so I'm used to functioning no matter what and I have actually trouble even making a realistic assumption, if I'm well enough to work or not). This makes me go back to work too early after being sick and then being even more overwhelmed with everything and hating myself even more, because I'm not even able to do a simple thing like going to a doctor, getting a sick note and staying home till I feel ok again.
That's the short story, for the long story continue reading.
Self hatred is nothing new to me, in my late teens, shortly after moving out of my parents' house with the help of social services ( my father was physically and emotionally abusive, my mother was comparatively nice, but still told me all the time that I wouldn't get anywhere in life, that I was fat, lazy, selfish.... insert any negative attribute here) I struggled a lot with self hatred. Even back then I knew that it wasn't rational and I actually had a relatively realistic perspective on myself while at the same time thinking that I didn't deserve to live, that my mere existence was a burden to everyone who had the bad luck to know me. Although my self hatred caused me to have near constant thoughts about killing myself for several years, I managed to not let these thoughts dominate my life too much. I somehow found a way to deal with it by allowing my self hatred limited outlets that wouldn't have real impact on things important to me. For example I decided to restart cutting myself, but only in a superficial way and on my private parts, so as not to run in any trouble with having to hide scars from friends or at work. This allowed me to satisfy to a certain extent my desire of self destruction while at the same time allowing me to change my life for the better (for example by becoming more outgoing and less insecure, enabling me to form more friendships). Slowly my state of mental health improved. Eventually I also understood the link between certain difficulties in my life and the abuse I had suffered in my childhood. This helped me to understand myself better and caused my self hatred to mostly vanish.
A lot of time has passed since my teenage years, I finished school, went to college and eventually decided on a career that involves working with the mentally ill. In the past 10+ years I felt relatively stable and happy with my life. Although I was always a bit worried about not being able to deal with the responsibility that comes with this kind of job, I also knew that this was what I wanted as a career and most people who knew me encouaraged me to pursue this goal. There were 2 notable exceptions: My mother who made fun of me, telling me that I was crazy myself, because obviously only a crazy person wouldn't want to have contact with her parents (At this point I refused to have any contact with my father and limited the contact with my mother to phone calls and letters) and my then best friend, who told me that I didn't even know how to deal with self hatred myself (as I never got fully rid of my self hatred and also never stopped cutting myself although I don't think cutting myself is a problem as noone sees it and it doesn't cause any real harm) and thus shouldn't try to work with mentally ill people. However, this friend shortly afterwards tried to persuade my boy-friend that I was cheating on him (which wasn't the case), so I'm not sure how much of a friend she really was at that point.
By now I have worked for several years with the mentally ill and at first I felt ok with it and actually had the feeling that my background sometimes even helps me to understand my clients. The feedback I received from past employers and supervisors was mostly also quite positive. However, in my new job I have a lot more clients and much less supervision and support, which makes it extremely tough for me to not be completely overwhelmed by the responsibility that weighs on me. This makes me feel that I'm bad at my job. On top of it I am now an employee while before I did freelance work most of the time. Being an employee makes me extremely paranoid, because I still have the voice of my parents in my head telling me that obviously I won't ever keep a job , because no one wants to employ a shitty person like me... So I expect every day to get fired. Everyone tells me that this is not going to happen, as there is currently more work than workers in my field of work. But it makes work a chore, because I am constantly full of fear of doing something wrong. This makes it extremely stressful to work and it also causes a variety of other problems like headaches (from tensing up so much), not sleeping very well and often waking up after only a few hours of sleep and being unable to go back to sleep, which in turn makes it hard to focus during work. Plus I don't enjoy life any more. I judge myself for that, because I think how am I supposed to work with mentally ill people, if I don't even know how to handle myself and my own life? It makes me feel like a complete failure. And all the problems this job is causing me also make me hate my job and my clients and of course I hate myself even more for that. However, it's not an option to quit as the job is exactly what I had hoped for (and actually not expected to find it so early in my career), both from the type of work as well as the conditions (part time, not too far from where I live, decent pay, nice co-workers and boss). I think that I would probably do ok with this job, once I have a bit more routine and if I wasn't so scared all the time.
But I don't know how to get rid of the fear. I have huge trouble calling in sick when I have a cold, because I'm convinced I will be fired (which is irrational, but I still have this fear, as my parents didn't allow me to stay home from school when I was sick, so I'm used to functioning no matter what and I have actually trouble even making a realistic assumption, if I'm well enough to work or not). This makes me go back to work too early after being sick and then being even more overwhelmed with everything and hating myself even more, because I'm not even able to do a simple thing like going to a doctor, getting a sick note and staying home till I feel ok again.
