hangingon
07-24-2011, 06:28 PM
Hello, my name is James,
This goes on for a while, but I thought I would try to tell most of it at once. This is still vague in places, but hopefully tells you my situation. I have been trying to solve problems accomplishing anything in life ever since I was very young. Teachers complained about me being slow, indecisive and eating too much from the time I was in grade school. However, I have always been extremely good at math and science, academically. I had a mother who was afraid to let me play sports because I might hurt myself, so that, I think, shows where my anxiety probably comes from. I also had a very impatient, bad tempered step father who belittled me all the time and was sometimes physically abusive. So, I can add that to the anxiety pattern and absence of adapting/learning life skills. I was very shy and lacked self-confidence throughout school and got picked on a lot until I was 16. I was fairly big by then and started pushing back, but had a very hard time doing it.I would get so shaky and paralyzed. I was very weird in term of behavior, when I look back now, from the time I was 6 or 7. I really enjoyed chemistry, math and physics. In college, I remember finding most of the lectures horribly boring as well as a lot of the reading, but loved the problem solving. As far as being weird and not very self aware, I would usually just stare at attractive girls all through lecture and not pay attention. I would make friends, rarely, but then lose them from getting obsessed with school work. I always dreamed of getting a girlfriend, or even regular friends, but never got the nerve. I constantly worried about embarassing myself, but was oblivious to how different I was. Fast forward...I graduated with a 3.8 gpa in chemistry and went to about 12 years of graduate school in chemistry. It really should have taken me a lot less time, but here is where my problems really started building up. I kept expecting to start leading a 9-5 life with an enjoyable life with people like me, after all, I was top of my class in chemistry, this should be easy. But it was very hard...other people shied away from me, I shied away from other people, professors expected 100% devotion with little supervision, but I had a hard time with decision making and got panic attacks from the long hours of tedious "grunt research work", that other people seemed to have no problem with. I would avoid work all the time, which is why it took so long to get done, but I got through because I was an extremely good problem solving and creating at solving problems. I started going to counseling about 6 years into graduate school to find out how to "be a better worker". Although I hated my work and my life, I *needed* to get my PhD so employers would see I was successful. I didn't want to go into something else, because I figured I might hate that field just as much. I couldn't see how I would know what career I would actually like.
I graduated with my PhD in chemistry, went to a post-doc for three years, which I found as boring as graduate school, worked very inefficiently, but still impressed my boss. I got a job teaching at an undergraduate university. As the new instructor, I suppose, I had students constantly trying to tell me how to do things to make my class "friendlier" to them, while constantly getting told by my colleagues to be tougher on students and work more hours. As a professor I struggled with making decisions and being able to "know when to stop" when preparing for lectures and labs. I did a pretty good job my first year, although I worked like 85 hours a week, and was regularly harassed by pushy students and colleagues. I gained 30 pounds my first year trying to keep up the work pace and not get too depressed. I tried to correct it the second year, but ended up making students and colleagues upset for "Not working hard enough" to make them happy. By the end of the second year I was burnt out and all I wanted to do was sleep, my gland were swollen all the time and I was spending everything I earned on who knows what...no illicit drugs, but money ran through my fingers. I had a couple very short term girlfriends, who were also very anxious people, but they both ended up disliking me within a couple months because I wasn't what they wanted, which was attractive or rich. I resigned from my professor job because I had put on 75 pounds in three years and was so burnt out and depressed. Since then, I have tried teaching again but always run in to the same problems. I feel like I have to do everything I can to make everything work well and be clear too much and students and colleagues always expect me to put teaching over the rest of my life. Students are always griping that the class needs to be easier and professors are always griping that I am "spoon feeding" the students too much by making the material and instructions too clear. I know I should not let it bother me when people complain, that they are just the bossy ones who think everyone needs to do things their way, but it makes me really hate my job and stresses me out. I work 75-85 hours a week when I teach full time and you cannot live on teaching part-time because union rules only let you teach a 35% load per year if you are not full time. Even when I teach part-time I get so stressed I have stomach pain, naseau, allergy-like sweats and chills, body aches, fatigue, swollen glands about three months in. I am better if I can get enough sleep, but I usually end up on a sleep deprivation schedule while teaching and if I don't work long hours, I get the same problems from the added worry and griping from students. I am always exhausted and have no energy to exercise - exerrcise just makes me more exhausted -instead I get through the rest of the term on lots of sweets, caffeine and meat to keep my mood and brain up. I regularly get feelings of vertigo, like looking off the edge of a 40 story building. So, every semester I have taught, even part time, I put on weight - between 10 and 20 lbs per semester depending on how many credits I am teaching. I've tried using antidepressants, which help a little, but anything but a low dose give me jitters - even more anxiety. I tried buspirone...I don't know that that did any good.
I am now working 12 hours a week and will have another part-time $8.50/hr a week job in a couple weeks as a teaching assistant. I have had interviews for jobs making $30,000-$50,000 a year teaching, but I don't think I want to take them because the stress will be bad on my health a cause me to gain more weight or crash and burn. Instead, I am going to try and live on $12,000 for a year or two and live with my bossy mother, so I can still make payments on my $45,000 in loans. Whenever I am not teaching lectures or taking classes, I lose weight, but doing these boring jobs and staying with my mom is depressing, working so below my interests and intelligence and with so much education - these are two-year degree qualification jobs, and add to that a mom that treats me like I'm 10 years old. However, if I have a simple, fixed-time schedule, perhaps I can lose enough weight to try teaching again...I do not want to get any heavier than I currently am. I tried finding jobs in chemical industry, but manufacturing is dead, they usually hire people with years of experience and there are so many foreign scientists and so many jobs going over seas: 50% of people getting Ph.Ds in science are chinese nationals. Anyhow, I think trying to do well in industry these days would be even more stressful than teaching. Most Ph.Ds in science get laid off after 3-4 years, because they don't want to pay someone the salary unless it is for a very specific project and do not want to hire someone who is overqualified unless they have many years of experience.
So, currently, I have a part-time job - about to have two, will be living with mom, have no health insurance - so getting prescriptions or counselling is difficult and expensive. I can get prescriptions cheap and can see a doctor at $100/visit, but I need to know exactly what I need and get the doctor to prescribe it. I am wondering if Inderall would help with my stress working with people and constant job worry or if there is something better for my situation. Also, I don't know what other work I can go into except teaching to make a living, with my current situation. I thought about going back to school, but going back to school would only increase my debt more and I doubt I could get enough loans to pay both educational *and* living expenses, and the stress of classes would probably make me add more weight. Should I just be poor, bored but stressed by working with people (but only 7 hours a day) so I can go to the gym and get enough sleep and try to go back to full-time teaching when I am back in shape. I think I could get full health benefits, a counselor and easier access to trying medications - but in two years or so. Other teachers seem to take lots of short-cuts in their teaching to manage their time and the resulting lack of clarity in their teaching doesn't bother them, nor do the students who complain. In fact, they still get good teaching reviews because they have "personality, charisma and assertiveness" that gets them respect. I could work on this more, but I would want the wiggle-room with my weight because I would probably be gaining weight while figuring it out. After a few years of teaching, I could pay off my loans, save some money and go back to school. I wish there were a simpler way.
One other thing: I got tested for anxiety about 12 years ago and they said I was in the 3rd standard deviation of anxiety, which I think means in the top 0.3% of the country. My username comes from when I first started meeting with a psychologist, I told him life felt like I hand to hang on to all these different ropes that kept slipping out of my hands while I hung over a brewing volcano below.
This goes on for a while, but I thought I would try to tell most of it at once. This is still vague in places, but hopefully tells you my situation. I have been trying to solve problems accomplishing anything in life ever since I was very young. Teachers complained about me being slow, indecisive and eating too much from the time I was in grade school. However, I have always been extremely good at math and science, academically. I had a mother who was afraid to let me play sports because I might hurt myself, so that, I think, shows where my anxiety probably comes from. I also had a very impatient, bad tempered step father who belittled me all the time and was sometimes physically abusive. So, I can add that to the anxiety pattern and absence of adapting/learning life skills. I was very shy and lacked self-confidence throughout school and got picked on a lot until I was 16. I was fairly big by then and started pushing back, but had a very hard time doing it.I would get so shaky and paralyzed. I was very weird in term of behavior, when I look back now, from the time I was 6 or 7. I really enjoyed chemistry, math and physics. In college, I remember finding most of the lectures horribly boring as well as a lot of the reading, but loved the problem solving. As far as being weird and not very self aware, I would usually just stare at attractive girls all through lecture and not pay attention. I would make friends, rarely, but then lose them from getting obsessed with school work. I always dreamed of getting a girlfriend, or even regular friends, but never got the nerve. I constantly worried about embarassing myself, but was oblivious to how different I was. Fast forward...I graduated with a 3.8 gpa in chemistry and went to about 12 years of graduate school in chemistry. It really should have taken me a lot less time, but here is where my problems really started building up. I kept expecting to start leading a 9-5 life with an enjoyable life with people like me, after all, I was top of my class in chemistry, this should be easy. But it was very hard...other people shied away from me, I shied away from other people, professors expected 100% devotion with little supervision, but I had a hard time with decision making and got panic attacks from the long hours of tedious "grunt research work", that other people seemed to have no problem with. I would avoid work all the time, which is why it took so long to get done, but I got through because I was an extremely good problem solving and creating at solving problems. I started going to counseling about 6 years into graduate school to find out how to "be a better worker". Although I hated my work and my life, I *needed* to get my PhD so employers would see I was successful. I didn't want to go into something else, because I figured I might hate that field just as much. I couldn't see how I would know what career I would actually like.
I graduated with my PhD in chemistry, went to a post-doc for three years, which I found as boring as graduate school, worked very inefficiently, but still impressed my boss. I got a job teaching at an undergraduate university. As the new instructor, I suppose, I had students constantly trying to tell me how to do things to make my class "friendlier" to them, while constantly getting told by my colleagues to be tougher on students and work more hours. As a professor I struggled with making decisions and being able to "know when to stop" when preparing for lectures and labs. I did a pretty good job my first year, although I worked like 85 hours a week, and was regularly harassed by pushy students and colleagues. I gained 30 pounds my first year trying to keep up the work pace and not get too depressed. I tried to correct it the second year, but ended up making students and colleagues upset for "Not working hard enough" to make them happy. By the end of the second year I was burnt out and all I wanted to do was sleep, my gland were swollen all the time and I was spending everything I earned on who knows what...no illicit drugs, but money ran through my fingers. I had a couple very short term girlfriends, who were also very anxious people, but they both ended up disliking me within a couple months because I wasn't what they wanted, which was attractive or rich. I resigned from my professor job because I had put on 75 pounds in three years and was so burnt out and depressed. Since then, I have tried teaching again but always run in to the same problems. I feel like I have to do everything I can to make everything work well and be clear too much and students and colleagues always expect me to put teaching over the rest of my life. Students are always griping that the class needs to be easier and professors are always griping that I am "spoon feeding" the students too much by making the material and instructions too clear. I know I should not let it bother me when people complain, that they are just the bossy ones who think everyone needs to do things their way, but it makes me really hate my job and stresses me out. I work 75-85 hours a week when I teach full time and you cannot live on teaching part-time because union rules only let you teach a 35% load per year if you are not full time. Even when I teach part-time I get so stressed I have stomach pain, naseau, allergy-like sweats and chills, body aches, fatigue, swollen glands about three months in. I am better if I can get enough sleep, but I usually end up on a sleep deprivation schedule while teaching and if I don't work long hours, I get the same problems from the added worry and griping from students. I am always exhausted and have no energy to exercise - exerrcise just makes me more exhausted -instead I get through the rest of the term on lots of sweets, caffeine and meat to keep my mood and brain up. I regularly get feelings of vertigo, like looking off the edge of a 40 story building. So, every semester I have taught, even part time, I put on weight - between 10 and 20 lbs per semester depending on how many credits I am teaching. I've tried using antidepressants, which help a little, but anything but a low dose give me jitters - even more anxiety. I tried buspirone...I don't know that that did any good.
I am now working 12 hours a week and will have another part-time $8.50/hr a week job in a couple weeks as a teaching assistant. I have had interviews for jobs making $30,000-$50,000 a year teaching, but I don't think I want to take them because the stress will be bad on my health a cause me to gain more weight or crash and burn. Instead, I am going to try and live on $12,000 for a year or two and live with my bossy mother, so I can still make payments on my $45,000 in loans. Whenever I am not teaching lectures or taking classes, I lose weight, but doing these boring jobs and staying with my mom is depressing, working so below my interests and intelligence and with so much education - these are two-year degree qualification jobs, and add to that a mom that treats me like I'm 10 years old. However, if I have a simple, fixed-time schedule, perhaps I can lose enough weight to try teaching again...I do not want to get any heavier than I currently am. I tried finding jobs in chemical industry, but manufacturing is dead, they usually hire people with years of experience and there are so many foreign scientists and so many jobs going over seas: 50% of people getting Ph.Ds in science are chinese nationals. Anyhow, I think trying to do well in industry these days would be even more stressful than teaching. Most Ph.Ds in science get laid off after 3-4 years, because they don't want to pay someone the salary unless it is for a very specific project and do not want to hire someone who is overqualified unless they have many years of experience.
So, currently, I have a part-time job - about to have two, will be living with mom, have no health insurance - so getting prescriptions or counselling is difficult and expensive. I can get prescriptions cheap and can see a doctor at $100/visit, but I need to know exactly what I need and get the doctor to prescribe it. I am wondering if Inderall would help with my stress working with people and constant job worry or if there is something better for my situation. Also, I don't know what other work I can go into except teaching to make a living, with my current situation. I thought about going back to school, but going back to school would only increase my debt more and I doubt I could get enough loans to pay both educational *and* living expenses, and the stress of classes would probably make me add more weight. Should I just be poor, bored but stressed by working with people (but only 7 hours a day) so I can go to the gym and get enough sleep and try to go back to full-time teaching when I am back in shape. I think I could get full health benefits, a counselor and easier access to trying medications - but in two years or so. Other teachers seem to take lots of short-cuts in their teaching to manage their time and the resulting lack of clarity in their teaching doesn't bother them, nor do the students who complain. In fact, they still get good teaching reviews because they have "personality, charisma and assertiveness" that gets them respect. I could work on this more, but I would want the wiggle-room with my weight because I would probably be gaining weight while figuring it out. After a few years of teaching, I could pay off my loans, save some money and go back to school. I wish there were a simpler way.
One other thing: I got tested for anxiety about 12 years ago and they said I was in the 3rd standard deviation of anxiety, which I think means in the top 0.3% of the country. My username comes from when I first started meeting with a psychologist, I told him life felt like I hand to hang on to all these different ropes that kept slipping out of my hands while I hung over a brewing volcano below.