Overcoming Anxiety: A Day in the Life of a Social Anxiety Sufferer Part Two

Overcoming anxiety is a large challenge for anyone to undertake, but I have made it past much of the anxiety that has been interfering with the quality of my life, and here is what another day may have been like in the past. One large step in overcoming anxiety that seemed like a negative but ended up being a huge positive is work and defining a career path.

My first career choice was computers, and in particular I chose computer networking. I had always had an affinity and natural understanding of computers, and it also happened that the high school where I attended offered a few courses in compute networking that could also be counted for college credit. Things seemed to line themselves up pretty naturally, so I decided to go ahead and take the courses, and I ended up doing decently and somewhat enjoying the courses.

Fast forward a few years and life had changed a ton. I had attended a technical college and finished the computer networking program there, achieving excellent grades and honors status. Now, I was ready for the world of work, or at least so I thought. I felt that I was pretty competent and capable and that anything a job threw in my direction was something that could be handled.

The first job I landed happened to be in 2003 toward the tail end of the technology crash or “.COM Bust” as some called it. I was so excited to have a job because there was extremely high competition for technology jobs in the area and even though this job had lousy hours and moderate pay, I was thankful just to be able to land it. Unfortunately, the highlight of the job itself was just landing the job; after that everything else went downhill fast.

I realized that while I probably had the skills to perform the job, I still had to work on overcoming anxiety in order to perform it well. I sat in a cubicle right next to the department manager, and the primary function of the job was to take calls while simultaneously remotely monitoring computer networks from all over the country and even in Canada in some cases. There was also a ton of pressure in the job; if a computer device went down and the company who owned the device was not notified within twelve to thirteen minutes, the company could cancel the contract if it so chose. The job involved extensive amounts of documentation and other monotonous and repetitive tasks. Nonetheless, I was a young professional without any experience and I had no knowledge of what types of jobs I would fit well with, although astute readers will notice that this job is not lining itself up so well.

I can recall one day that seemed to highlight the absurdity of the job, and just how incredibly anxiety-provoking it could be. Sitting next to the manager all day at a job where the person was required to stay at his desk nearly the entire day with no break just did not work out well. Besides the work being stressful and not all that enjoyable, the manager was an abusive person, unafraid to stomp on others. I was extremely anxious while taking a few phone calls, and I could hear the manager pound his fist on his desk each time I said something on the phone that was not quite as he expected. Each time the phone rang, it was a complete nightmare. The tingling that was already in my back and neck and the shakiness in my limbs was horrible because of the work environment as it stood already, and each time the phone rang, a huge surge of tingling shot up my back and neck much like water fires out of a sprinkler. The anxiety was incredibly intense because I was so consumed with thoughts and fears of how the manager would react to what I was doing, and simultaneously customers might be very upset with what I was saying and doing, or they might be upset about something that was not even my fault at all. Overcoming anxiety was a distant thought in this work environment; the name of the game here was survival.

Later that same day the manager asked me to update an internal web page with an announcement, and I entered in what it was that I thought he had said. He reviewed it later and asked me what I typed in, and he screamed, “No, that is not what I said!” Not only was the work that I was doing constantly eating away at my anxiety, but so were the actions of the manager. During this day there really was no relief possible. I would sometimes take an additional bathroom break or two just to go and find relief from all the stress and anxiety. Sometimes, I would think that if I worked at this job and overcoming anxiety, maybe some day I could get to the point where it was not really anxiety-provoking at all. Aside from the work and the manager being significant stressors, the employees there were far from friendly. One would constantly enter the room where everyone worked and complain about the idiocy of the customers, other coworkers, or the manager himself. The other worker was the suck-up to the manager; anything the manager needed, this guy did and often times he did more than was required. There are people who work this way because they are excellent workers and people who work this way to suck up, and he definitely fell into the latter category. The other employee did not really care about the job and she constantly needed help doing various things; she was probably just trying to make a living and no one can blame her for that. The eerie thing about this job was that all my coworkers seemed to hold some level of reverence or awe for the manager. He was a “cool” guy who had previously been in a heavy metal band and who also attempted to be the office comic at times; he had his moments but he really was not anything special in that regard. The picture that is being constructed is that the social environment was more about survival and was in no way conducive to overcoming anxiety; it was every man for himself.

The environment here, and I have learned this even more since working at that job, was probably the least possible conducive to overcoming anxiety of all possible work environments. Everyone was chained to his or her desk and there was no escape. Everyone was stressed because of the high pressure and there was nowhere to go to escape. As a side note, this job had a ridiculous amount of procedure, which was somewhat of an anxiety-producer for me, but it was also just very ludicrous in general. I learned just how ridiculous the level of procedure was on that day when going through the back of the procedure manual. On one of the last few pages, there was a procedure for replacing the toilet paper. The tube had to come out and the roll had to be hung a certain way. The concern on the behalf of the manager and other co-workers was that if hung one way, the paper would come hang off the roll closer to the wall, whereas if hung the reverse way, the paper would hang off the roll further from the wall and closer to the person. The manager actually asked me, and this was a real conversation, “Which way do you think it should hang, Dan?” Of course, this was not a matter of scientific debate for me as it was only toilet paper on a roll, and I responded, “As long as I can wipe my ass, I don’t care!” (This was one of the few moments on this job for me of honest self-expression uninhibited by any anxiety). It became clear from this point that a rigid, up-tight, and controlling environment was just not going to help in overcoming anxiety, especially social anxiety.

Aside from the work itself just being terrible and very highly anxiety-provoking, the stress and anxiety about the job when I was not working it were incredibly high as well. I can remember literally feeling a sense of dread coming on as long as two days before I was scheduled to work. It felt like an enormous crater in my belly that I was going to have to do something that was horrible, and there was a very real possibility that there could be further events which occurred on the job that made life even more difficult. I was very restless also; sometimes I would pace for hours or go on long walks, some so long that by the time I returned home my legs felt as though they were going to fall off. I would also call friends to try and help myself calm down, but even after talking to various people for a couple hours or more at a time, I still did not feel completely calm. And to top it off, I was only working part-time at this job!

Clearly, this job was making life completely unmanageable and the process of overcoming anxiety an impossibility. With no other options left, I decided that for the sake of my own personal sanity, I had to quit this job. I had a fair amount of anxiety about going through that process, but I left the manager a voicemail and he returned my call asking my plan. I told him that I would work for two more weeks and then be all done. He even sent me an e-mail detailing why this place was a great place for network professionals to get their career started, but my mind was made up and I did not back down. My parents also objected to the decision, as I had nothing else to go on, but I eventually found just enough work to keep myself afloat. That day at work was the hardest day because I was going against the grain of everything and everyone around me. Now that was an anxiety producer!

But, even though that day was an anxiety-producer, it taught me a great lesson in overcoming anxiety: anxiety recovery is something to be viewed as a long-term approach. Even though there were massive amounts of anxiety during the job and for the next few months where I was unemployed, my life now is so much better because I decided to quit! I had a few other poor experiences in computer-related work and either was fired from those jobs or ended up hating them and leaving. I did not actually overcome the anxiety as in I was able to adjust to the work environment; what I did learn is that part of overcoming anxiety is making changes in the environment around me. In this case, I had the power to change jobs, and that is exactly what I did; the profession I work in now is wonderful and brings large amounts of joy each and every day and I have no regrets about making a career change. Hopefully, this article has helped to teach readers to be fearless when it comes to making major changes in order to improve one’s anxiety level. When overcoming anxiety, it is important to be ruthless and rigorous from the very start so that one’s longterm sanity is preserved!

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