My final bellyache
Jun. 8th, 2009 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4I feel like I'm retreating further and further into some kind of shell.
The weekend was horrible, not least because I spent most of it doubled up with stomach pain. Had about 3 hours' sleep last night, agonised about whether to go into work this morning (illness is unlikely to be anything infectious and I'll be in just as much pain if I stay home and do nothing, possibly worse because I won't have things to take my mind off it), eventually decided that if I dragged myself in for the (mildly important) meeting at 9am I could always go home afterwards.
The first thing my office-mate said when I got in was "Good weekend?" ("Not really, but at least it's over now.") I know you're not supposed to tell the truth in response to that sort of question, it's nothing to do with information-gathering, but I'm generally too shattered to think of convincing lies. I suppose I ought to get into the habit of giving a non-committal "Yeah, not bad" no matter what.
Meeting was productive, but the boss thinks that the reason I'm ill is "stress" and thinks I "may be in the wrong sort of job". Yes, I am stressed; being in discomfort and pain a lot of the time tends to make most people less-than-relaxed, I would have thought. But now I'm worrying about getting fired for being ill as well. (Yes, I know they can't fire you for being ill, but in straitened circumstances they're less likely to make an effort to keep the flaky sickly people, & the effect is the same.) The boss probably sees more of my emotional angst than a lot of people, but that's only because I've trusted him enough to talk to him; we seem to get on well most of the time, I've come to see him as a friend as well as a colleague (though I'm wary of using the word because it suggests some kind of reciprocality & it seems presumptuous to assume that). Now I feel like I shouldn't have given that trust so readily, and I worry that it'll just end up being used against me.
When I get up in the morning, I don't want to go to work. (I always do, though, because I know what happens if that starts seeming like an option instead of a necessity.) When it gets to the end of the day, I don't want to go home. (See above.) I am so deeply and bone-wearily tired that the effort of context-switching is just too much. If you gave me a reasonably comfortable place to sit and a simple task that would take 10 years to complete, I would probably just sit there and complete it.
It's getting harder and harder to talk to anybody about anything (online or offline). I feel like I'm watching the conversations from the other side of a pane of glass. There are a handful of conversations which I can have on autopilot, mostly set-piece rants or hilarious catchphrase-trading.
I feel as though I still have something to say but no way to say it.
I'll take a quiet life. Retreating into my shell.
The weekend was horrible, not least because I spent most of it doubled up with stomach pain. Had about 3 hours' sleep last night, agonised about whether to go into work this morning (illness is unlikely to be anything infectious and I'll be in just as much pain if I stay home and do nothing, possibly worse because I won't have things to take my mind off it), eventually decided that if I dragged myself in for the (mildly important) meeting at 9am I could always go home afterwards.
The first thing my office-mate said when I got in was "Good weekend?" ("Not really, but at least it's over now.") I know you're not supposed to tell the truth in response to that sort of question, it's nothing to do with information-gathering, but I'm generally too shattered to think of convincing lies. I suppose I ought to get into the habit of giving a non-committal "Yeah, not bad" no matter what.
Meeting was productive, but the boss thinks that the reason I'm ill is "stress" and thinks I "may be in the wrong sort of job". Yes, I am stressed; being in discomfort and pain a lot of the time tends to make most people less-than-relaxed, I would have thought. But now I'm worrying about getting fired for being ill as well. (Yes, I know they can't fire you for being ill, but in straitened circumstances they're less likely to make an effort to keep the flaky sickly people, & the effect is the same.) The boss probably sees more of my emotional angst than a lot of people, but that's only because I've trusted him enough to talk to him; we seem to get on well most of the time, I've come to see him as a friend as well as a colleague (though I'm wary of using the word because it suggests some kind of reciprocality & it seems presumptuous to assume that). Now I feel like I shouldn't have given that trust so readily, and I worry that it'll just end up being used against me.
When I get up in the morning, I don't want to go to work. (I always do, though, because I know what happens if that starts seeming like an option instead of a necessity.) When it gets to the end of the day, I don't want to go home. (See above.) I am so deeply and bone-wearily tired that the effort of context-switching is just too much. If you gave me a reasonably comfortable place to sit and a simple task that would take 10 years to complete, I would probably just sit there and complete it.
It's getting harder and harder to talk to anybody about anything (online or offline). I feel like I'm watching the conversations from the other side of a pane of glass. There are a handful of conversations which I can have on autopilot, mostly set-piece rants or hilarious catchphrase-trading.
I feel as though I still have something to say but no way to say it.
I'll take a quiet life. Retreating into my shell.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
oh, not at all
Date: 2009-06-09 04:47 pm (UTC)So, onto the stress, I have a history of stress related pain myself, and take the following tack with Doctors; yes, stress may be causing it, but I still need to stop it, what can I do? They can be very unhelpful (stop having such a stressful life? Er, right...), but occasionally I get something useful.
So, stomach pain -- I went to a Doctor when I was getting very bad persistent pain in my stomach. He poked me around a bit and agreed that the whole area would be tender, yes, because I had hurt myself by repeatedly tensing my muscles in anxiety. Then the pain had started worrying me, leading to me getting more stressed, leading to me tensing up more, which made it more painful, and more worrying, and so on. He suggested I try consciously relaxing the muscles, which I probably should have figured out for myself, but I'd been thinking the pain was coming from my internal organs or something. I found that helpful (certainly more helpful than counselling*, anyway, which always left me feeling more stressed -- but that was later and for something entirely different) and while I still get stomach pain, I don't get it as bad as I used to -- because if I'm awake I can step in and force myself to relax.
House stress at the moment, though, and you can't really turn that off, it's too fundamental. It feels like someone's kicked me in a flying rib. Thanks so much to our buyer's exchange anxiety. I can stop myself during the day, but at night the stresses all come out. Could be worse, though -- my little sister grinds her teeth!
*I have friends and family who have benefited from therapy which concentrates on methods for breaking cycles of stress like the one you describe ("being in pain makes people more tired and stressed and cross than usual")