Guilt and Shame

[Nervous Mark]

Hello everyone - brand new here. I'm hoping to use this community to gain some social support, as well as providing some support to others as well. Anyway, I've been dealing with some significant anxiety throughout the majority of my life and it has become really intense lately. Most of it is centered around my job (which is, ironically, in the healthcare field), and I'm having a hard time dealing with it. Through therapy I have come to understand that much of the anxiety that I feel surrounds shame. Not necessarily past shame (although I have my fair share of that) but avoiding future shame. I conceptualize worst case scenarios for everything that occurs in my life and play them out in my head. It's exhausting.

I'm trying to avoid one of those long posts that I know most people just skip over, so I'd be happy to provide further details that others might find helpful or relevant. However, my essential question to the community is whether others have dealt with similar issues, and how they have been able to move past them. Thanks in advance to anyone who responds, and I look forward to becoming a productive member of the community.

[jkb]

Hello everyone - brand new here. I'm hoping to use this community to gain some social support, as well as providing some support to others as well. Anyway, I've been dealing with some significant anxiety throughout the majority of my life and it has become really intense lately. Most of it is centered around my job (which is, ironically, in the healthcare field), and I'm having a hard time dealing with it. Through therapy I have come to understand that much of the anxiety that I feel surrounds shame. Not necessarily past shame (although I have my fair share of that) but avoiding future shame. I conceptualize worst case scenarios for everything that occurs in my life and play them out in my head. It's exhausting.

I'm trying to avoid one of those long posts that I know most people just skip over, so I'd be happy to provide further details that others might find helpful or relevant. However, my essential question to the community is whether others have dealt with similar issues, and how they have been able to move past them. Thanks in advance to anyone who responds, and I look forward to becoming a productive member of the community.

Hm. As an anxiety sufferer, I would probably say that a lot of us deal with issues related to this in some way as a part of our disorder. For me, it does bring to mind feelings that I would sometimes have regarding not wanting to make a fool of myself, and thinking I might ahead of time which includes feeling guilty or shameful or embarrassed, and I would have already thought it through plenty. For me this was an issue a while ago, but nowadays I actively try to make good decisions with taking into account the future, as I do not want things to come back to haunt me, as it were.

Whilst most of my thoughts today are not shame or guilt, I do conceptualise everything, it's something most of us share here I would say - it is very exhausting I agree. Your mind has just gone down a day dream about what would happen but then this happen or if this happens oh no and then all of a sudden you realise you've been staring at the wall in a worry day dream thinking about things that haven't even happened or probably won't ever happen! I come out of it, take a deep sigh and think to myself what was all that about? Stop it!

It's a battle with trying to know our own personal triggers, it's not a case of always avoiding them, but learning how to deal with them. I'm a huge over thinker, I pace around the room and I have always done that and people around me hate it haha but its when I'm thinking, conceptualising, worrying.

[Enduronman]

"Most of it is centered around my job (which is, ironically, in the healthcare field), and I'm having a hard time dealing with it." However, my essential question to the community is whether others have dealt with similar issues, and how they have been able to move past them?

Hey Mark, (newbie, yay!)

Stupid questions?
1. What is your personality type?
2. Explain the "shame" thing briefly.
3. Do you seem to "feel" for other people or "feel" how they feel?

E-Man..:)

[JustAnotherMe]

Hey buddy,

Short answers as still ill as hell but feel free to expand upon what triggers you off. And what currently helps with those current triggers. There's a lot of experience here so I'm sure we can share ideas and go from there.

[Lee Grant Irons]

Hi Mark,

I hope this is what your talking about. If not, just ignore the following. LOL

My mind also follows the track into the future on likely bad scenarios at work. And the thing is that I am usually right. LOL Really, what matters most in the work environment is how you handle your precognition and how you communicate it to other people in order to try and prevent bad things from happening at work. If you freak out and start yelling, then would not be good. If you explain that you think thee is a problem in a reasonable tone of voice, then people are more likely to listen to you. Finally, you need to depend on the management chain at work. Ultimately, you don;t make all the decisions at work. Other people have to make their own decisions, and some decisions are made by your managers. So, along with all of this, you should not take shame upon yourself if you have done your best to provide actionable advice to your management chain and they make a different decision other than you advise. It is not your fault.