LizzyH
12-30-2011, 10:59 PM
Don't even know where to begin, but I'm feeling very alone right now and, of course, anxious and stressed. I've been at my current job for about 2 1/2 years now, it's complex tech sales, and is in itself a very stressful field, tough competition, tough economy, tough quotas to meet (or not meet in my current situation), etc. I had issues with panic attacks my senior year of college and a few times in grad school, then they cropped up again in 2007 for a short period during a stressful period at another job, but I had a long reprieve in between then and recently. But now they're back, in a bad way.
I've had serious issues with my boss from day 1, in fact, he was removed from being my boss for the better part of 2010 because of sexual inappropriateness and his general lack of common sense when dealing with subordinates. He was reinstated in early 2011, he was no longer sexually inappropriate anymore, but he was still inappropriate for the past year, constantly crap talking my employers, micro managing every little task I did and ignoring what I really needed help on, which was getting strategic position in these large, competitive accounts. He digs for personal info every chance he gets and often expresses his disapproval of my personal choices or just plain insults me. He's screamed at me 3 or 4 times this year, verbally berated me dozens of times, he's passive aggressive, and just plain aggressive. Basically he's a micromanaging egomaniac. I've been just kind of dealing with it by letting him walk all over me and control everything for the last year, it's a good job otherwise, good money, etc, but the final straw came in late October when he came into my office and told me I needed to go on prozac. It's escalated since then, I went over his head, again, and they reigned him in again, and ever since then I've had to deal with the expected backlash and revenge. We have moved into a new office, he spent all the profit I made the company getting this state of the art new branch up and running and hiring a bunch of people. I also lost 2 separate 500k deals in the last 4 months. This is when my panic attacks started again and they've only gotten worse over the last two months, I'm not at the point where they feel like they're constantly brewing, even when I'm at home, even right now. When I go into work, it's ten times worse, all day I'm trying to beat off a panic attack. The owners (very small 17 person company) have decided that my manager should no longer be my manager, again, but they haven't told him that yet, so he's still in the process of torturing me. On top of that, i missed my sales goal by about 350k. My other colleagues are starting to think I'm a weirdo cause I stay in my office w/ the door closed all day when I'm not out at client appointments and I say next to nothing at meetings, I just don't want to engage with him at all, the thought of engaging with him makes me panic.
I am currently interviewing at two well paying jobs, I'm hoping I get one out of the two. In the mean time I'm still at this job, having panic attacks every day. I know my reactions are just way out of proportion, but I'm just not having any success controlling them. I did get a refill on my xanax prescription, and I discussed buspar with my dr, I tried that for about 3 weeks but it didn't seem to help and i didn't like the side effects so I stopped recently. The xanax helps but I refuse to take it every day since I know it's habit forming. So here I am, I wake up and go to work it gets harder and harder. What is wrong with me? Why can't I get this under control? I consider myself a rational person, but I'm just so not rational right now.
I know this is a very long post, thanks to anyone patient enough to read it all. I just don't want to continue feeling as alone as I do right now...
I've had serious issues with my boss from day 1, in fact, he was removed from being my boss for the better part of 2010 because of sexual inappropriateness and his general lack of common sense when dealing with subordinates. He was reinstated in early 2011, he was no longer sexually inappropriate anymore, but he was still inappropriate for the past year, constantly crap talking my employers, micro managing every little task I did and ignoring what I really needed help on, which was getting strategic position in these large, competitive accounts. He digs for personal info every chance he gets and often expresses his disapproval of my personal choices or just plain insults me. He's screamed at me 3 or 4 times this year, verbally berated me dozens of times, he's passive aggressive, and just plain aggressive. Basically he's a micromanaging egomaniac. I've been just kind of dealing with it by letting him walk all over me and control everything for the last year, it's a good job otherwise, good money, etc, but the final straw came in late October when he came into my office and told me I needed to go on prozac. It's escalated since then, I went over his head, again, and they reigned him in again, and ever since then I've had to deal with the expected backlash and revenge. We have moved into a new office, he spent all the profit I made the company getting this state of the art new branch up and running and hiring a bunch of people. I also lost 2 separate 500k deals in the last 4 months. This is when my panic attacks started again and they've only gotten worse over the last two months, I'm not at the point where they feel like they're constantly brewing, even when I'm at home, even right now. When I go into work, it's ten times worse, all day I'm trying to beat off a panic attack. The owners (very small 17 person company) have decided that my manager should no longer be my manager, again, but they haven't told him that yet, so he's still in the process of torturing me. On top of that, i missed my sales goal by about 350k. My other colleagues are starting to think I'm a weirdo cause I stay in my office w/ the door closed all day when I'm not out at client appointments and I say next to nothing at meetings, I just don't want to engage with him at all, the thought of engaging with him makes me panic.
I am currently interviewing at two well paying jobs, I'm hoping I get one out of the two. In the mean time I'm still at this job, having panic attacks every day. I know my reactions are just way out of proportion, but I'm just not having any success controlling them. I did get a refill on my xanax prescription, and I discussed buspar with my dr, I tried that for about 3 weeks but it didn't seem to help and i didn't like the side effects so I stopped recently. The xanax helps but I refuse to take it every day since I know it's habit forming. So here I am, I wake up and go to work it gets harder and harder. What is wrong with me? Why can't I get this under control? I consider myself a rational person, but I'm just so not rational right now.
I know this is a very long post, thanks to anyone patient enough to read it all. I just don't want to continue feeling as alone as I do right now...