Posted by mair on January 29, 2005, at 8:23:32
In reply to My fault I guess, posted by Dinah on January 29, 2005, at 7:27:46
Come on, Dinah, you know the work issue isn't easy. You have a job of convenience; it works for you in lots of ways. It provides you with the flexibility to give more time to your son and the additional income to make sure you can pay for therapy. Problematically, it also continually provides more stress than you can handle and constantly undermines your self esteem. Plus, since it makes you feel like you can't do anything well or quickly enough, and that you're a constant disappointment to the people you work with, it makes it impossible to imagine yourself actually getting another job. When you feel so awful about yourself, how are you supposed to sell your skills to another employer, or hustle jobs as a free-lancer? When you're having such a hard time just getting by, how are you supposed to take on a new responsibility, and attack a new job with any energy? Add to all that, the layer that you're actually very capable doing what you do and you work in a place with high standards where the professionals are viewed as competent. Do you really want to end up at a place where your colleagues wouldn't measure up to your own high standarts? PLUS, you get to deal with the added burden of sometimes feeling that you are merely tolerated because of your father (in my case, my husband).
AND sometimes worst of all, how do you live with the fact that you jeopardize your mental health by staying in such a toxic work environment? I sometimes reason that I must be some slug who's comfortable being depressed and really doesn't want to get well because if I had the true will to get better, I'd just quit my job. Mental Health h*ll is a bad enough place to be, but worst when you think you keep yourself there because you won't quit your job. I often wonder how it will change my life when I am able to leave my job. Will it made as much difference as I think it will? Will I suddenly no longer need therapy because I've been transformed into this totally non-depressed person?
Does any of this sound familiar?
I've often wondered whether I might find the energy to deal with a new job capably if I was in a better environment BUT isn't that a huge risk? Other people I know who left firms to start their own practices claim that being happier made all the difference in the world to their productivity. How can you be sure? What if you quit what you have because it makes you feel awful, and then discover that you've given up the one sinecure you need and have. If I took the same attitude and energy level into a new job that I bring to my current one, it would be a disaster. So then what? How do you replace the income you've lost by quitting job #1 and not being able to handle job #2? It's no small wonder that you feel frustrated and trapped. You are trapped in a way, at least for awhile.
So I know why you feel spineless, but please do acknowledge that for some of us, toxic work environments are a very complicated matter; not easily solved by simply leaving, even if we had the energy to.
Mair (who thinks she's often in the same boat with you)
poster:mair
thread:449151
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050129/msgs/449695.html