I was told today that my position in the current company would not be renewed. I’m to be “councelled out” of the company within the coming weeks.
I have another job lined up, but it’s dependent on my completing a medical exam, which, given my recent history, does not make this new job a dead cert.
I’ve had better days.
I have been offered a new job back in my home town and I’m considering taking it, if only to get me out of a very unhappy situation at work.
I will be leaving the current job under a cloud. Over the last few months, my self-esteem has been destroyed, I am chronically depressed, I have had regular bouts of anxiety and I have felt on quite a few occasions that maybe my life isn’t worth living. I have felt bullied, useless, unsupported and like a square peg in a round hole. Over the last few weeks, my boss has been breathing down my neck, pointing out all my weaknesses without giving me anything in the way of encouragement and support.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I am away from my kids most of the time and that I recently had a cancer scare, maybe I would stick with it a bit longer. However I am reminded that right now, things like kids and my health really should be my key priorities. Screw trying to be a hero.
One concern I have is leaving with at least some sense of dignity. Because of the nature of the work I was doing, I don’t have much I can fall back on in the way of real achievements. It will be kind of obvious to everyone that I didn’t really cut it at the job. Compounding this is a group of managers who like to gossip about who is and isn’t doing well on the job. I feel like just handing in my notice and going out sick the following day.
Another concern I have is passing the medical in the new company. It would be a cruel blow to find out at the end of the process that the job was not available because of the cancer scare last year.
In any case, least now I have options. I have been handed a chance to improve the quality of my life. It would be worse if this option was not available at all.
I’ve moved in to a place in the city where I work. It’s a big improvement compared to the temporary setup I have been used to over the past six months. The person I am staying with is a good friend who probably knows more about what is going on in my life than anyone else. Despite the fact that I am somewhat attracted to her, it’s a strictly platonic friendship and I’m happy enough to keep it that way.
The antidepressants seem to be working ok. I haven’t noticed any big change, but I’ve continued to stay away from the alcohol. I’m managing fine. It means that I am a bit less social, but not drinking has not bothered me in the slightest.
There is a possibility that I will find a job close to the city where I live. I’ll know next week. It’s not as well paying as the current job, but hopefully it will reduce the level of stress that I have been under. My boss is currently micromanaging me, pointing out faults and flaws each time I meet him. I’m at the stage it doesn’t really bother me too much.
I’ve been living back in the family home for the past month now. For most of the week I am away with work, but during the weekends I stay at home with all the kids. My wife is usually around during that time too.
Even though I am sleeping downstairs in the sitting room, everything feels normal. It’s almost as if nothing we are happy families again. It’s almost as if the horror of the last two years has been wiped clean.
It’s too normal.
I feel that we are back to a situation resembling the situation before we broke up. Many of the issues that sent us on our journey apart still exist. We remain unable to communicate properly with each other. There is no hugging and few smiles. She likes to get out for a while when I am around with the kids. The future is such a huge weight on both our lives. I haven’t changed much. She hasn’t changed much, and while we tolerate each other and get on ok, the spark of love is conspicuously absent.
I can manage all this for the time being. I’m not sure if she can.
All I feel I can do at the moment is to stick to working on my mental and physical health, my career and my kids. That will hopefully give us options in the future so that we can work out something better for both of us.
I felt good today.
It’s been just over a week since I started taking the tablets. I had no adverse effects initially, but last weekend I just one drink with some friends. The following 2 days were dreadful – an opaque sense of despair seemed to descend on me, clouding my mood. I only felt it lift from me this morning. I’ve learned my lesson.
It’s tough telling people that I am not drinking any more. They want to understand why, but I am reluctant to tell them. Telling friends that I am suffering from mild depression is something I find difficult to do.
Research came out during the week that anti-depressants don’t work so well. Ach. Even if it’s just a placebo effect in the end, I’m happy to keep going through with it. With me, my mood affects everything – my thinking, my motivations, my perception of life, and if I can change that, even in a small way, it will be for the best.
I have written in the past about the childish behaviours within me that take over whenever I am in a threatening situation or I am dealing with strong personalities. From a recent discussion with my counsellor, it transpires that these behaviours arise very frequently, particularly when things do not go well. I am unable to break free from this inner child of mine.
I don’t know how these behaviours became established. I haven’t got a clue. I had what I consider to be a relatively happy childhood, blissfully free from the nastiness that blights so many other people’s lives. But even still, I am left in a situation where a cowering, subservient child takes over with alarming regularity.
Rather than dwell on this too much (since the evidence is easily uncovered), my challenge is what to do about it. How do I go about changing this behaviour? I have been asked to identify the situations that my child takes over, and compare my behaviors to how a normal, well adjusted adult might react. A start is catching myself going into such a mode – identifying the situations as they happen,then considering what an alternative reaction might be. This would just be the start.
Other suggestions:
This is clearly one of the biggest tasks I need to undertake in my life. And the time to start is today.
I moved back into the family home today. Now, lest this seem like a great event in the story of my marriage, it needs to be put in some context. I have left the apartment I moved into last year primarily for financial reasons: I can’t keep 3 places going at the same time. When I am at home I will sleep in the sitting room.
Still though, it’s a change.
Also, I have decided to go onto medication. Talking to my mother and my sister today helped me to make this decision. Depression seems to run a lot stronger in my family background than I had realised. Both my grandfathers suffered from it, some of my aunts have had it, my uncle experienced a particularly bad bout, and my mum took anti-depressants for years. My brother-in-law, who works in the medical profession, took me through the do’s and don’ts in some detail. In my case, it may well be worth it.
My sister also spent time with me working on career issues. Her advice has been a great help to me.
So I went to the doctor, told her my story, told her how I was feeling and she prescribed me with anti-depressant tablets.
I have to take four low-dose tablets first, and then I go up to the full dose later on. I will have to stay on the tablets for around six months, and I can’t just decide to come off them willy nilly.
The tablets remain unopened.
It seems like a huge step for me. Part of me is telling me that this might help me greatly by lifting my mood, and another part of me is telling me that, perhaps I should feel unhappy in my present situation. That’s it’s no surprise I am unhappy. That it’s my unhappiness that will eventually determine whether I get up off my ass and do something about my current circumstances.I had depression many years ago, and although I am very unhappy at the moment, I’m not sure I would call it depression. My feelings are different to how I felt at that time. Back then, every day was a bad day. Back then, my feelings were unrelated to any specific cause, as far as I could see.
Right now there is a cause. Many causes, in fact. I am plagued by bleak feelings, a total lack of self esteem and anxiety about the future. Ach, you only have to read a few recent entries in this blog to understand how I have been feeling these past few months.
Furthermore I have to reduce my alcohol intake. I like going to the pub with friends. It’s a huge part of my life when I am away at work, so this is a big ask.
So, should I take these tablets? Can they do any harm, really? Could they help to lift me and give me a boost at what has to be the most difficult time of my life so far? Or am I better off leaving them in their box and instead keep on trying to cope as well as I can with what life is throwing at me at the moment?
I’ve come to a conclusion about something. I’m not a good manager. If possible, I should cease looking for management roles in the future.
For the last 10 years many of the positions I have applied for involved a strong managerial aspect. Part of the job required me to control, plan, organise and deal with people issues. I did badly in these roles. As a result I became frustrated and demotivated by my lack of ability in this direction.
Management implies being tough – making your mind up quickly, and pushing your views through despite differences of opinion from staff members. It implies having a way with people that keeps them at a distance yet ensures they do what you ask them to do. I’m not like that at all. Never have been. Even when I was a small kid, I could never make my mind up about anything. Furthermore I was not quick in my calculations. I needed time to think things through. It’s a trait that has accompanied me throughout my adult life. I was less a people person, and more the quiet intellectual type.
Many years ago I was promoted to manager in the company I worked with at the time. Instead of celebrating this big milestone in my career, I was terrified. The experience was, at times, dreadful. I left the company less than two years later and since then I have gone back in and out of management roles with varying degrees of success. In more recent times, the successes have been few and far between, to the extent that I have been told that am in danger of losing my current job because I’m not doing what would be expected of managers in my position.
So maybe I need to go back to other sweet spots in my career – analysis, derivation, presentation, training, research – and forget trying to be someone who I am not.
I don’t know how easy this will be: sometimes if you have cast yourself in a particular role for a long time, recruitment agents expect you to stay in that role. The words “overqualified” may start to be mentioned.
I know however that to continue to cast myself in a role I have never been entirely comfortable with I a recipe for ongoing disaster.
Time to take the scalpel to my CV…
I had a session with my counsellor today. It was different to many previous ones in that I was very down in myself. Defeated.
He had a few things to say to me. That, foremost for me, my health was the priority. If I didn’t look after my health, nothing else would matter. He suggested I speak to a doctor about my emotional state. I’ve never really considered medication – I always battled through. Maybe now. Maybe.
He suggested that work was making me miserable because of the huge clash between the company’s culture and mine. I also have to deal with a degree of bullying on the project I am part of, and I’ve been given some notice that I will not be working there by the middle of the year.
He gave me a few CBT tools to work with. He also asked me to come up with a plan for myself for this year – things that I can do to set me on a direction with my career. I’ll try to work on this if I get a chance.
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